Grey Skies Over the Autobahn

One cool, rainy day in early May I took a bus from Frankfurt, Germany to Eindhoven, Netherlands. The sky was so full of clouds and fog that it was just a dense grey ceiling. We drove through forested hills and crowded truck stops. It had been raining a lot the few weeks prior (April showers), and the highway is lined with bright green trees, thick fields of tiny yellow flowers, and occasional patches of enormous white windmills. 

We drove through serious, functional Frankfurt with its Sunday afternoon shop windows shuttered.

I went to use the on board bathroom and bounced against the walls, trying to touch as little as possible but feeling like a single tic tac being shaken around in the box.

We skirted the graffiti scrawled edges of Bonn.

I tried to stretch out my tired legs and got stabbed by some little metal rods sticking out from the bottom of the seat in front of me.

We made a quick stop in the little town of Leverkusen which included the pub "Uncle Sam's Food, Drinks, and Fun."

I made t-rex arms while I tried to type this blog post in the tiny, cramped bus seat.

We rumbled past Koln, along the Rhine River, looking slow and muddy and underwhelming. A sliver of sunlight poked out of the clouds and glinted off a set of long flat barges loaded with mounds of black something...coal? Silt? Central European licorice? 

probably licorice

We drove slowly through the crush of Turkish shops and restaurants in the southeastern edge of Dusseldorf, turned off the engine and sat for 20 minutes with cold air seeping in through open doors pooling at my ankles.When we got going again, the wide open river front downtown of the city was finally the charming, attractive scene I'd been missing - even under grey clouds yellowed by factory smoke.

I used two full blotting sheets on my face...18 hours on the road down, 2 to go...

Have to pee again but trying to keep it together for the next hour so I don't have to battle the cubbyhole again.

I need to buy germ x immediately.

The small city of Mönchengladbach is best know for its football/soccer team, and as the home of Joseph Pilates, founder of pilates (lol seriously), but I noticed the plethora of large, beautiful, 3 and 4 story homes...I wonder how people here make their living.

Just over the Dutch border, in Roermond, horses graze along the river, then cows!

I broke down and went to the bathroom again. Someone broke the plastic faucet off the sink...

This part of Holland is more agricultural (and sooooo flat) than the part of Germany we went through.It's a wide rural area dotted by livestock pens, small barns and homes, and country pubs

The suburban streets of Eindhoven are lined with beautiful ivy-covered all brick duplexes and triplexes

okay I'm here, time to meet Bacho, bye!!!!!   :*