Kröller-Müller

On Wednesday, Heidi and I made plans to spend Saturday at the Kröller-Müller museum. It is well outside of Amsterdam, but Heidi had heard great things about it, and getting out of town sounded lovely. I went to the web site and looked up the directions for getting to the museum by train, and I thought I had it all planned out when we met at Central Station this morning at 11:45.

Cut to 4pm, when we actually arrived at the park. By that time we had:

- Missed the first train because I had to buy bread and cheese at the station market for the "hour" long ride. OK, there was wine to buy too, but that didn't have anything to do with anything other than fulfilling my romantic notions of what a train picnic should include. Drinking the wine directly from the bottle wasn't so romantic, but that's another story...

- Caught the next train half an hour later, but overshot the stop where we were, apparently, supposed to switch trains. Heidi asked the conductors standing on the platform what we should do, and they said, “Take this one,” pointing to the train in front of us. We went to get on, but something told me to ask if we had to change trains again after this stop. They said -- completely deadpan, “Yes. You will need to change trains at the next station.” Good to know. And that is the Dutch system of communication in a nutshell. You’ll get 85% of the information you need, but you’ll have to guess what questions to ask in order to get the remaining 15%.

- Finally reached the Apeldoorn train station after about 2 1/2 hours, and went to catch the bus to the museum. In the information station, the woman told us, after laughing at our pronunciation of the museum name, the bus ride takes half an hour, comes once an hour, and we just missed it.

- Thrown a hissy fit and almost went back to Amsterdam, but went instead to use the WC (.50 cents), where I couldn’t find the button to flush the toilet, and a woman who had already paid for HER turn and opened the door as I was pushing anything that resembled a button. Heidi couldn’t find the button in her WC either, so we had a bit of a laugh as the woman hurried me out because, “I paid 50 cents and can’t close the door now because I will have to pay again.” So I gave up my stall and walked quickly away.

- Caught the bus and learned that we would have to transfer to a small, white bus, after about 30 minutes. Fine. Fine. Whatever. We got off the bus when the driver told us (after passing some really cool houses) and boarded a small bus, telling the driver where we wanted to go. By this point we thought we’d just go to the national part that surrounds the museum, since the Kröller-Müller closed at 5. So we told the driver we wanted to go to Hoge Veluwe park and he said, “OKAY! I can take you there.” We drove for about 10 minutes and then saw the same buildings go by. He drove us in a circle! Seriously! About 500 metres past the point where we started, we arrived at the park and the fun really began.

Everything about the museum was amazing – the architecture, the collection, the sculpture garden, everything. I went in with a grumpy attitude and came out completely jazzed about life. We didn’t have much time there, so I want to go back when I can enjoy the whole place at a slow pace.

The park has over 1500 free white bikes that you can use while you are there. After we left the museum we got on bikes and rode about 10 kilometers to the other side of the park in search of food. We went through forests that smelled like Black Butte in summer and big meadows and, surprisingly, a desert! With sand dunes! Where the heck did that come from?

The restaurant we ended up at only offered a 24.95 all you can eat and drink buffet, which we were so excited about. We ate outside on the patio and enjoyed many sub-par but still strangely satisfying trips to the food bar. Lots more fish offered in the Dutch buffet than at a typical American one. But there was still soft-serve ice cream, so it wasn’t completely different.

The ride home was much easier, as we caught a bus about 200 meters away from the restaurant that took us directly to the central station in another town, where we caught a direct express train to Amsterdam. We got back in a little more than an hour. All told, a great day.