Bilderberg near Garderen

Yesterday travelling through to Bilderberg residence near the small town of Garderen was uneventful. We realised we were pretty tired and after picking up some supplies in Garderen township, so we settled to an arrangement of nibbles in front of television. Tineke has headed back to Rotterdam and we will see her again on Friday in Amsterdam. I slept really well last night- ten hours straight.

It’s very quiet here and very relaxing.

                              Our hotel for the next 4 days

We decided in the morning that we would venture out to see the Kroller Muller Museum which Tineke had highly recommended. There’s a pleasant ten minute walk from our hotel to the bus stop, and from there an exchange of three buses over an hour to finally reach the park. Every bus is n time, and we knew where to get off based on time alone. At the entrance, it’s again highly recommended you hire a bicycle and cycle the final 10-15 minutes to the museum itself. This was a part I really enjoyed but for S?...not so much. The museum itself it most impressive. Full of sculptures and paintings by artists like van Gogh, Mondriaan, Seurat,Picasso, Grien, Ensor, van der Leck, and Rodin. My choice of artist today was William Degouve de Nuncques and in particular, his night pieces.

The building itself was originally designed by the famous van der Velde and added to by Wim Quist. The history of how the Kroller Muller museum came to be was fascinating in itself and told through a short film inside the museum- also a must see. We loved eating our picnic in the sculpture park, and then wandering through this vast area and discovering sculpture after sculpture. The three hours we had allowed really wasn’t enough but we decided to stick to our plan (in case the three buses didn’t go an hour later).

This morning’s chapter from Bryson’s book had told us about corn. I didn’t know that corn was the first fully engineered plant and that it is entirely dependent on man for its survival. Kernels do not disengage from a cob without help. Today corn is so engineered that every stalk is molecularly identical to another. So, having learned this this morning, I was rather more interested in the many cornfields we drove past on our way there and back and consequently took way too many photos.

This evening we booked a table at the restaurant down stairs. We decided it was really more like a pub meal, but the ambience was pleasant enough and we enjoyed the scene… The old recycled wooden floor, the high windows with long curtains, the long central table with two candelabra, the huge railway clock above the bar, and, of course the Greek waiter. We were still quite tired, so after our meal we headed back to our room to finish our wine.