04.03.07
Code Red! Code Red!
Hello again.
I’ve been away hence the lack of postage. Lots to tell.
Started last Sunday by going to Hull to get the ferry over to Rotterdam. Nice journey with no roughness of the sea.
Drove to a little town called Breda which considering it was 9.30 on a Monday morning was completely dead. No shops beyond a supermarket were open, no people bustling around at all neither. So we upped and headed to Antwerp. Quite soon we realised that Antwerp was a dump with no apparent redeeming features so we drove on to Brugge and there we stayed for a couple of days.
We’d been here before but it was certainly worth a trip back, it’s a lovely little town and worth anyone’s time and effort to visit.
Whilst there we had a day-trip to Brussels which showed itself to be a niceish sort of town and remarkably full of really Belgian looking people. But Alby, you cry, Brussels is indeed in Belgium nicht wahr? Well yes but its denizens are far more Belgian than the Belgians in Brugge. Really. Bought lots of chocolate and some beer.
Then we drove to Luxemburg along appallingly wet and sprayey motorways which the Belgians seem to have built whilst neatly avoiding the concept of drainage.
Luxemburg was alright too. K liked the richness of the place apparent in their clothes. No real events going on there though and we got our first real nasty rain so we didn’t see too much.
On to Germany and we stopped in Trier just over the border. Nice hotel and finally able to speak German for a bit instead of the mish-mash of french, flemish and luxemburgian so far. As we got into the rooms for a kip in the afternoon my phone rang. It was Radio 5 asking if I could do a bit on the Anita Anand show that night! Unfortunately they suggested that they’d keep me for another day as I was away. Bugger. Should have kept that one quiet.
The town is very nice but snobbishness dictates that I should mention the mere presence of plenty of Germano-chavs. We’re definitely back in Anglo-saxon realms here.
Next day to Aachen. I’d heard a lot about this town and how lovely it was and I’d failed to get here about 10 years ago so was keen to get there eventually. Big mistake. Dump of the highest order. What a disappointment. It probably didn’t help that most of the place was post-war rebuild rather than the lovely pre-war stuff we’d seen so far but there were no redeeming features beyond a rather nice cathedral. But there are plenty of other rather nice cathedrals throughout Germany in much nicer towns. Save yourselves a trip and go to Trier instead.
Our final day was spent driving to and looking around Rotterdam. Nice enough big city I suppose. More chavs and the messiest place we saw but still substantially better than most english cities.
So home via the ferry again. This time a much more “exciting” journey. We’d had shocking weather that morning where the wind was blowing us around on the motorway and the rain came down spectacularly hard. Thankfully that settled a bit but the wind was still due to be around force 6-7 with occasional 8′s (according to our tireless captain) on our crossing.
Actually things went well with very little buffeting around and no nausea from anyone. So to sleep. At 2.30 in the morning we were all woken with something along the lines of
“Code Red. Code Red. All crew to their stations immediately!”
What!?? Cue terror and confusion in some. Finally the captain comes on.
“There is an incident ongoing. Please be calm there is no threat to passengers. We apologise for the worry this alert may have caused”.
May!
Turns out there was a fire in the funnel. Still we had the coastguard and all local shipping warned “just in case”. Poor K couldn’t sleep a wink after that.
And now we’re back in old Blighty. Sigh, work beckons tomorrow. I’ve heard nothing from various folk looking after my house and stuff (thanks to all – beer is on its way) so I assume my house is still standing proud and unbroken by the scum who frequent the area.
So back to normal.
Have fun.