Vrijheids

I believe that today was the longest ride of my journey. According to my Google timeline I biked over 43 km in just under 4 hours. But what that doesn't capture is that there were hills at the end. Not just one hill. There were ups AND downs. And more than one ups. I admit that I am terrible on the hills. But my hotel for the night was on top of one of these hills. You would have thought I knew that ahead of time because it is in a town called "Berg en Dal" which literally means "Mountain and Valley".

The reason why I stayed at that hotel is because they appeared to be all out in Nijmegen. I figured that it would be a good opportunity to go through Groesbeek and take a look at the Freedom Museum. I might have looked harder had I thought for a minute that "Mountain and Valley" might not have been just for show. I may need to do the hill again from the Nijmegen side tomorrow as I am staying here two nights in a row. So it goes.

It was very noticeable today how much easier it was to keep dawdling along as mainly I unlike yesterday I was mainly passing through beautiful country side rather than industrial parks or along side big busy highways. It really is true that your aesthetic surrounding has a big impact on your mind set.

As my ultra-light Doobie traveling companion is demonstrating, the scenery was particularly nice. Someone was even nice enough to frame it for us.

The first historic place I got to was Grave. Grave itself is a nice little previously fortified little city where I took a break for some more water and snacks.

From the banks of the Maas river you can see what is now called John S. Tompsonbrug. It was one of the success stories of the entire operation. A small group of American soldiers let by this John Tompson of the 82nd US Airborne Division crossed the river and took the germans holding the bridge by surprise. They were able to hold out and on Sepetember 19th (again 80 years from yesterday) the British tanks arrived from Eindhoven to cross it on their way to Nijmegen.

On the south side of the bridge is a fitting memorial. The plaque reads:

The E-Company, divided over eleven C 47 Skytrains, had orders to capture the south side of the Maas bridge at Grave. Do to a premature jump, the largest part of the E-Company ended up in the village of Velp and surroundings. In the leading aircraft, Lieutenant Thompson, standing in the doorway of his C 47, saw that they were flying above the built-up area of Velp and decided to wait. Having reached open terrain, they then jumped and landed in the Marspolder close to their target: the Maas bridge at Grave. Completely cut off from their unit, it was decided to begin the mission.

 After fierce githing and without any losses, they sicceeded in carrying out the order and capturing the south side of the bridge. After the area on the north side had also been captured they were able to report to Colonel Ticker "Bridge No. 11 is ours".

 Lieutenant Thonpson, with fifteen men, had carried out what had been a company-sized mission.

Not far on the other side of the bridge is a memorial to the 82nd Airborne. It is right out there on the side of a field next to nothing else. I surmise that it was one of the fields that the paratroopers landed at.

It seems this monument has been around in various forms for quite some time.

Past this was a few small villages along a peaceful country road that eventually led into a town called Malden. I was lost for a time in Malden before I was let onto a dirt path through a whole forest. This forest path went on for quite some time! It eventually took me around some railroad tracks and directly into central Groesbeek.

Once in Groesbeek I found myself a simple lunch and landed a quick bit of ice cream. However, tuna sandwiches and cookie ice cream was not why I had come to Groesbeek. Groesbeek is home to the Vrijheidsmuseum (Freedom Museum).

With a flick of the Museumkaart I was let in to the exhibit. The exhibit was simple and mainly consisted of looking at photos and reading descriptions. The purpose of the museum was to show how movements can bring and end to freedom and what great costs are incurred in restoring them. The exhibit focused mainly on the Second World War but went beyond to describe the end of colonialism and the eventual fall of the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe.

Most memorable was this creepy diorama. It's hard to see but there is an injured person between the soldier on the left and the boat. This injured person had some mechanism in their chest that made it look like they occasionally took a belabored breath. I can easily see someone coming up with the idea, but what kind of maniac does it take to actually build it!

Fear not, I enjoyed the visit. I was most interested in how the exhibit would discuss freedom in the Netherlands. There was one such paragraph that stood out in my mind immediately. It talked about refugees that were fleeing from repressive European countries before the war. It seemed eerily familiar...

Shelter?

In the 1930s the number of refugees in Europe greatly increased. Large groups of Jews fled Germany,but also Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union because of antisemitism. In addition, many communists and socialists fled Germany. Many European countries started closing their borders to refugees. In the Netherlands there were antisemites who wanted fewer Jews in the country. Others throught providing shelter was too expensive or feared that the dissatisfaction about the refugees would lead to more support for the NSB (Dutch Nazis). 

...

"A refugee will from here on out be considered an unwanted element in Dutch society and for that reason will be viewed as an unwanted alien." - Minister of Justice Carel Goseling of the Roman-Catholic State Party, March 1938

In case you were wondering, they also had a destroyed Russian tank out front from 2022. This tank had been placed in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin as protest. It is a reminder of the threats to freedom in our own time.

And now we come to the hardest part of my journey. The last 5 km to Berg en Dal! I am not proud to say that I could not complete all the ups and down while remaining entirely on the bicycle. I am not ashamed to have walked a few steps of this Highway of Hell.