Apeldoorn - City #5

June 23 - City #5 -- Apeldoorn

Apeldoorn is not far from Deventer and about 30 km from Arnhem. Until I saw the weather forecast I had been planning to cycle from Arnhem to Apeldoorn, but it was easy enough to make it my last stop on my train trip.

Apeldoorn is where my dad was born. I was able to find records of my family on the city website. The address where the family lived was there, so I thought I'd check out this house, too. 

So, I got off the train in Apeldoorn at about 6:30 p.m. Everything was closed and very dead. The market square was huge and virtually empty. In the distance, you can see the old city hall and weigh house. The weigh houses were very important in the old days -- every Dutch town seems to have one.

And this is the new City Hall. The tower thingy has a spiral staircase inside, but I am not sure who gets to climb it. 

I walked from the station about 1.5 kilometers to the street where my dad's family ostensibly lived. The street was not hard to find, but there was no house with the house number given on the archives page. I did see this house, dated 1914, five years before my dad was born. It is across from the site where my grandparents' house should have been.


I thought it was strange that there was no house with the number given in the town records, and I had to wonder if my opa had given a false address, like the bad guys do in detective stories. Probably not, because from what I've heard about him, he was a man of principle, but... it does give one furiously to think, as Poirot might say.





There were some large and beautiful old houses on the same street, so if my opa did give a false address, he certainly chose a good street to claim as his place of residence.

On my way back to the train station, I passed this lovely old church. I liked the little red dormers on the roof and the skinny pointy steeple.

The Apeldoorn train station is older and has a lot of character. I think it must be the same one that my dad's family would have used.









To round off my visit here, and to help me show everyone back home that red pants are indeed a hot item among Dutch men this season, this guy agreed to ride in front of me to the station. (Not really -- he has no idea that he is lucky enough to feature in the record of my travels!)

When I got to the train station, I found to my dismay that there was no direct train to Arnhem. Hmm. I asked a young lady who was handing out free cans of Coke, and she told me I could take a bus. The bus was due to leave in a few minutes, so that sounded like a good option. But when I scanned my day pass, which was allegedly good for all forms of transit, it didn't pass muster. I was turned away. I was truly baffled, but I meekly stepped down from the bus and returned to the train station, where I took a train back to Utrecht and transferred to the Arnhem-bound train. Afterwards, I found out that I should have scanned my ticket at a transfer machine. Live and learn.