The Oct 3 holiday in review - Part II

Following on Part I of the story, we walked all the way to the end of the street festival. I was surprised at how crowded it was considering it was still the work day, but we later found out it was the last day of the fair. Along the way we saw lots of rides and games, but nothing really stood out. I would have done the nice ferris wheel, but neither of us had brought a camera to capture the surrounding view.

I pointed out to D the camel racing game. It was a game I played often at the Jersey shore while growing up, but ours were jockeys on horses. It's sort of like skee ball, you have a small ball and must roll it up and aim for one of the 7 holes. The more difficult the hole the higher the points, or if you aim poorly the ball just comes back down the gutter and you get no points. As you get points, your camel/horse moves forward, competing against the other 13 or so players doing the same thing.

D. kindly offered that we should play a round, after I mentioned that I was 'the absolute best' at this game in my younger years. After overcoming the embarrassment that it was mainly children playing, we were signed up for two games each. Of course I won. I'm not sure if D was more embarrassed that I was as good as I said, or that his gf just triumphed over a group of 8 year olds. Then I lost the second game by a hair to the little girl sitting one seat over from me. The winning little girl gave her prize to her little sister who was sitting next to me. So I then gave my prize on the previous game to that little girl.

All gamed out we wondered back through the town for some final shopping. It was also a shopping Sunday that coming Sunday. Back at the car we had planned to have a drive back to Roermond to go to the supermarket. It was just before 17, but fortunately there wasn't much of a commuter backup in Weert. We made a quick stop at the garden center on the way out of town, but they did not have what I was seeking.

Earlier in the afternoon I had spotted a farm selling I was guessing pumpkins and that sort of thing based on a big pumpkin filled cart in the field. They had a Dutch flag out front and a sign saying something in Dutch, but it may as well have said 'Dutch drugs' for all we knew. I spotted it on the way back and we took a chance in pulling into the driveway at exactly 17.00. Once in the driveway you could see what you could not see from the road--the most beautiful display of bright orange pumpkins, along with other assorted gourds and that sort of thing.

It seemed to be a hobby farm as all they had were pumpkins and gourds, and each one had a tiny little handwritten price sticker. The display was laid out tastefully and meticulously in the garage/barn. Each item had been handwashed so everything was without a speck of dirt. The stems were fresh like everything had come from the immediately adjacent field. The best part was that the prices were a lot cheaper than in Germany where pumpkin retails for 1.50 eur/kilo.

D and I ended up with all that we could carry for 14 euros. For that princely sum I bought one perfect Halloween pumpkin, perhaps 5 pounds, a tall dark green gourd maybe 3 pounds, a short, squat and bumpy varigated 2 pound gourd, a small perfect pumpkin perhaps 2 pounds to sit next to my door in the hallway, a one pounder for the office, and two jack be littles at 50 cents each to give away to Germans who are temping for me. Yes, Halloween is my favorite holiday still.

-->If you want to go to this wonderful pumpkin stand, it's easy to find and a short trip if you've already made the trek to Roermond. Go to Roermond to the outlets. If coming from Germany from the east you'll probably come in on the N280, so that the outlet center is on your right and town proper is on your left. Just stay on the same main road and follow the signs toward Weert. The road will narrow down from two lanes in each direction to one, and you'll start to see crop fields.

The farm has a large Dutch flag out front and a sign in Dutch that meant nothing to either D or I understanding German. IF you happen to pass it (and you may as it is only a little driveway between a house and a cornfield), don't fret. You'll know for sure if you've passed it once you see a large horse-drawn cart filled with pumpkins etc. parked in the field next to it, which would be your signal to turn around.

Anyway...with the car filled with pumpkin purchases, we kept heading back in the Roermond direction, and upon reaching the outlet area again at 1720, we found it to be an absolute parking lot. No worries as we had planned to turn off anyway to go to Jumbo in Roermond. I like Jumbo as much as I like Tref in Venlo. Both have nice selections overall and good vegetarian selections. And, some recent good news:

JUMBO IN ROERMOND IS OPEN ON SUNDAYS FROM 12-17 FOR THE REST OF 2007 as some sort of trial phase. Supermarket shopping every Sunday of the year if I would like. Do you live in the Cologne/Dusseldorf area? Send me a note and we can arrange a train station where I can find you and I will drive you over to Roermond to share in my happiness and my desire to shop there on Sundays to show support of such a policy. My Dutch colleague found it amusing that the announcement was in Dutch on a sandwich board in front of the supermarket, but that they also provided a smaller translation in German.

While I shopped, D had 'bottle duty.' I have begun to carry around all extra bottles that need to be recycled outside of Germany. Like it's not enough of a hassle inside of Germany. Since I sometimes have worktrips to Belgium I end up picked up some raspberry beer there, as well as sometimes in Holland. I had around 20 extra bottles that belonged somewhere, but I was not sure where. Interestingly, the exact same cherry beer has two different bottle shapes depending on if it is purchased in Holland or in Belgium, and of course it can only go back from whence it came.

The people in Jumbo Roermond were so helpful trying as D was putting things into their automated machine and making it unhappy. Sometimes when you get a person, they know the bottle dimensions, so they will override the machine and take another bottle if they are selling the same exact thing but of a different variety, so the person recognizes what the machine cannot with its barcode rules. At the end of the day they managed to take everything except one type of Hoegaarden bottle that they explained says on the back that it is not a deposit returning bottle (oops) and a six pack of Budweiser bottles that they sell, but in a different bottle shape, so not returnable there.

We hopped back into the car at 18.00, but traffic was still an absolute parking lot so we decided to stop for dinner rather than risk getting home at 21.00 starving. We parked up and took a walk around already knowing in general Roermond town center. We went to New Delhi Indian restaurant which is located on Neerstraat 32 (very near to the town/mall entrance of Jumbo NOT the parking lot side) and is open Mon-Fri from 18-22.30 and Sat 17-23. It was not 'burn your mouth out' Indian, but a gentler, full of flavor Indian. Everything tasted like it was freshly prepared. The man and his daughter who run the customer side (I think Mom was in the kitchen cooking) were absolutely delightful in personality. Highly recommended and we would go back even if we didn't need to wait out a traffic jam. They do not serve alcohol, and my only regret was that I did not try their alcohol free wine as I saw another table order a second glass.

Finally it was after 20 by the time we were back in the car, and thankfully all the Germans were back over the border so the drive home only took an hour or so. We got pummeled by the fantastic rainstorms upon arriving back in the Cologne area but that was the first rain we saw all day, so ok.