Location
Oud-Beijerland → Ommen → Groningen, The Netherlands
Date
September 22, 2025
Leaving Naaldwijk
Good day. Today is September 22nd. I’m leaving Naaldwijk with the intent of leaving or being outside of the Netherlands by this evening. Well, I guess think again. So I made my way to Oud-Beijerland, which is a town not within an hour’s drive of Naaldwijk, where I started. What I needed to go there for was to go and get different license plates — export license plates on the vehicle. After which I would have two weeks to go to the south through Belgium, France and/or Luxembourg, Spain, Morocco and Western Sahara within those two weeks in order to be rolling around on the export license plates afterwards and still be insured for those two weeks. A tall order all the same.
The Missing Registration Card
But I did not count on the complication that showed up. I get to the license plates place, GlobalCar NL, and try to find the registration card and knew where I had put it. For some reason it fell on the ground — except I didn’t know. So I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. I had everything else but the registration, which was a bit of a surprise. And that is welcome to traveling — you get surprises and you just have to make the best of it.
Trying to Solve It
Without having looked on the street, looking for it just didn’t occur to me. I thought it had fallen out in a way or disappeared sooner or something along those lines. Anyway, it was really clear real fast that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do that day. So in no time Gertjan, whose name the car is in, was helpful and said, “Do you want to order a new registration card?” Well, I think it’s best to do that because I can’t do anything without it.
Heading to Groningen
The consequence of that — when you order a new card you have to pay money to get it, of course — and then they send it to the address of the registered owner, which happened to be Gertjan, who lives in Groningen. I guess there wasn’t much of a choice. So I gave Gertjan the go ahead and he ordered the new registration card. So I get on my way towards Groningen, so I would be able to pick it up as soon as it would arrive, which is going the wrong way for what I was wanting to do.
The Twist
Anyhow, I’m not even at my destination, my first destination that day, which is Ommen, and I get a call from the car place letting me know that someone actually had found the registration card. However, since we ordered a new one, there was no way of canceling that. So that was it. I had to stay around and make life happen and not leave yet. Was that a disappointing day? Yeah, in a way it was. But it all worked out. It gave me more time to finish up administrative things because lots of things are moving — including here in the Netherlands, and near Seattle as well. So I put the time to use and was able to stay at the Wolfskuil near Ommen — a great place for short-term group accommodation — and made the best of it.
Reflection
Thank you for coming along even though you probably didn’t miss anything with missing this part — but so much fun. Thank you.
