Day 74

3 July 2013

Flying through a Sauna in Deventer

My friend Rob, who is an aviation aircraft instructor, invited me to come to join him on a training session, meaning attending class. He works at a smallish airport between the cities of Apeldoorn and Deventer. The class consisted of about 15 students who aspire to become pilots one day. Lessons are conducted in English as there are foreign students amongst the Dutch, originating from the UK and Italy and possible other countries.

It was an early start as by 7.15 Am we were in the car and or our way. We arrived about 45 minutes later at "Twello International Airport" ahem. A cup of coffee and some introductions and we were ready to go. The first part of the lessons was about engines and carburetors relating to small airplanes and I must say I learned a lot as conditions in a airplanes are of course very different from a car or motorcycle. After the break there was another session about propellers both fixed and the moreover the workings of propellers with adjustable blades. By means of real components and via text books all was explained. Towards the end Rob asked me to come forward to address the class and let loose some of my philosophical skills and psychological knowledge (if I may call it that) by means of the excellent GAS graph sent to me by one of my friend in Australia. This graph I had shown and explained to many travelers while on my journey and I must say that 99% just loved it. Of course now I have let the cat out of the bag as some of you want to know about too, right? Well, perhaps not today, but I will come back to it another day when I don't have much to report.

After lunch Rob dropped me off in the medieval town of Deventer, I think perhaps to the delight of my good friend Eddie Verdriet in Vietnam who hails from there. Now that I am an “experience tourist” I headed to the tourist information office which is located at the old weighing station building right in the middle of town. The building also doubles as the local historical museum.

When I walked in I was greeted with a “You kind bring you bag in here !” barked a bald man from behind the counter , (the small day pack I always carry with my laptop and some other stuff) in Dutch. So when I said excuse me? he repeated it in English followed by “you must go down stairs and leave it in a locker”. Ok then. I did as requested and asked for a ticket to the museum which cost me the sum of 5 Euro’s (about 7 AUD) The bald man stood up and now I noticed the reason for his loudness- he was also short ! That explains it all I thought. He had a nice badge on his chest. I was not sure of it was a the real thing or if it came from a promotional program of some cereal producing company and he found it in one of the cornflake boxes. The visit of the museum took me just 15-20 minutes and was, to me, one of the most boring museums I had encountered thus far on my journey. Back at ground level is the tourist information office where I noticed several computers. I sat down and saw on the bottom of the screen a sticker with: “for tourist information only”. I sat changed the screen from the tourist info screen to Yahoo which of course was noticed by the staff as they had not much to do. Within a few minutes the plastic badge man walked over and pointed to the sign on the bottom of the screen and sayd “only for tourist information!” to which I replied: “Yes I know- I am a tourist and I want some information “ The badge turned around and walked away. Ten minutes later as lady came around and said “we only allow 15 minutes on the computer” I greeted her first in a friendly way and said, Good afternoon…. looked at my watch and answered her with : lucky I have only been here 12 minutes so there 3 minutes left. The lady didn’t say anything and just left.

I had planned to do the usual 2 hours city tour which I had done in many towns and cities before but of course this is not the rest of the world and you have to pay 4 Euro’s first. I didn’t mind that as long as it was not as disappointing as the museum, which I already knew it wouldn’t be because the city of Deventer is very old and very pretty. Moments before I put don my 4 Euros is spotted the badge carrying guy heading towards a group of people who were waiting outside- ah… the badge man was the tour guide ….

I decided give the guided tour a miss and do it myself with the aid of one of the smaller books available at the tourist office.

Deventer is a nice town, the building I was in, used to be a weighing station where goods were taken to be weighed (obviously) traders could also check their own weights and scales for calibration. Outside the building, hanging on the wall, was a very large copper pot which has been recorded as having been used to boil oil in, in which was placed a man who had falsified the local currency. A very drastic of execution but no doubt also a very effective of bringing a point across. These things were performed in a public place, right in the town square for all to see and would have been a mega deterrent for others with similar aspirations.

One of the interesting things in the town that there is a building which is known as the oldest brick building in the Netherlands. Yeah yeah I always think, until… I see another even older one. But… if all information is correct this IS the oldest one and hails from 13th century, so at least it is very old.

Around 4pm Rob had arrived and could we relax over a beer, have some food and visited the largest ice cream shop in the Netherlands/ Europe/Northern hemisphere. Etc (here we go again) I suppose a shop which is about 100 meters long and only sells ice cream is somewhat special, however the problem is that as soon as I hear the words “this is the longest/highest/widest/oldest etc in Europe/world etc I feel pressured that I now need to check out all the other ones first before I am able to tick them off.

After all this we proceeded to the tiny town of Busloo to spent some very relaxing hours in a most magnificent sauna complex. I experienced something new there. In one of the sections of the building there was domed area with circular warm water pool. Blue lights all around and blue lights under water. When you float away you can hear soft relaxation music; not in the room but only under water. I actually fell asleep while floating in the water. I suppose my subconscious stopped me from inhaling water. We visited many areas such as steam rooms, sauna, infrared sauna, spa bath, salt bath, heated pool, etc and stayed until closing at 11 pm.