Tag Archives: hotel de france

Friday 9th December 2022 – “THERE’S ONE THING …

… that I got to tell you man, and that it’s Good To Be Back Home”.

So said Barry Hay on the beach at Scheveningen in the Netherlands back in 1993 when I was there on my old CX500 and I can’t disagree.

But I owe a great big thanks to two of my neighbours who drove to the railway station here at Granville at 19:00 to meet me off the train because, believe me, I was finished, totally finished when it pulled into the station

And I was right about my affairs at the hotel. I really was given the run-around and at 07:00 when I was on the point of leaving and wanted to pick them up, I was told that they weren’t there as far as they could see and I could stand there all day and wait for them if I liked and it would change nothing at all.

So that’s the NIKON D500, the 70-300mm LENS and all of my photos from Canada along with all of my portable electronic equipment gone the Way of the West.

Ahh well!

It’s not surprising that i was in a bad mood about this because I’d had a bad night, as I always do when I’m having to go somewhere early. Not that it stopped me going off on my travels and although I don’t remember much about my travels, I do recall that had I not awoken suddenly, I would have had a visit from one of my favourite young ladies.

So maybe that’s why I awoke suddenly. My whole outlook on life has changed just recently.

Having finished my rather acrimonious but otherwise pointless discission with the hotel staff (I seem to be arguing with everyone right now) I set off in the ice and freezing cold that made my already unsteady gait even more so.

But not for the railway station at Bruxelles-Midi. Instead, I clambered gingerly down the stairs into the metro station at the Boulevard Lemonnier. Crossing the road to get there was fraught, and no mistake.

Even more fraught was crossing the tram rails to the opposite platform and I was convinced that at one point rather than travel by tram I would be out on my ass but in an incredible feat of gymnastics I just about managed to keep my feet.

The platforms at the Gare du Nord were a mess and I must have staggered for miles trying to find my way up to ground level, having to be helped up a few steps by a few people. But when I did I had to go round and round in ever-decreasing circles in order to find my way out of the station.

Yes, “out of the station” because I’m not going by train.

Eventually I found my way outside in the freezing fog and having completely lost my bearings, I wandered around (such as I can) until I stumbled quite by accident on that for which I was looking.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back several years ago when there was a rail strike I ended up HAVING TO GO BY BUS. I remembered that it called at Caen and then went on via several stops to Bruxelles-Nord – without going via Paris.

It was going via Paris that was frightening me. Can you imagine the fight in the Metro and the long walk down to the station at Montparnasse? Not on your nellie!

But trains now go from Caen to Granville and there were, to my surprise, two that corresponded with the arrival of this bus. So sitting comfortably (not that it’s comfortable on these buses but you get the point) all the way to Caen without moving has to be a good deal.

It’s not surprise to anyone that I had to be lifted onto the bus, and then I was sat in a seat by the door. And to make sure that I didn’t move, I didn’t eat or drink anything all the way to Caen. What doesn’t go in can’t come out.

It was a long, boring drive all the way to Caen but every time I started to become fed up, I began to think of the fight through the metro in Paris and that restored me to my senses.

We were late arriving at Caen which means that I missed the 16:11 but there was plenty of time for the 17:16. And that wasjust as well because it’s a long walk from the bus stop to the station. Once I’d bought a ticket from the machine I bought myself a coffee (first drink of the day) and made a tomato butty while I waited for the train.

And what a stagger it was to the lift, through the subterranean tunnel and back up the lift on another platform. I was really gone by this time and I just fell into the nearest seat on the train. My journey had been well-documented on social media and you have no idea the size of the sigh of relief that I breathed when Marie and Anna asked if I would like to be picked up.

The station at Granville was iced up and I was even more unsteady that I had been in the morning and I took hours to leave the station. Marie and Anna were heartbroken to see me because, believe me, I am not the same person who left here in September. That trip to Canada was one trip too many and one trip too far.

When we arrived back here there was a little ad-hoc reception committee that met me but I was really in no mood to see anyone. Marie helped me into my room here at Ice Station Zebra and that was that.

When I’m finally tired enough to sleep, whenever that might be, I’ll go to bed. And there will be no alarm until Monday. Not that I care either. It’s been weeks, if not months, since I’ve slept with no alarm and I deserve some time off

And when I’m ready, I’ll rebuild my life with what’s left of my health and what’s left of my possessions and start again until the end. I just can’t fo it any more.

A big thank you to everyone who has been so kind to me on my travels around and who has helped me in my difficulties. So many of you that have helped restore my faith in humanity. I love you all, more than I can say.

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Thursday 8th December 2022 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a room in a hotel by the railway station in Brussels.

And I actually made it here without falling over and if that isn’t a miracle I don’t know what is.

But there is one thing about which I was right, and that is having spoken to several different people in the hotel, my missing possessions have yet to reappear. Every time I see someone, it’s “you need to see my colleague who comes in later”. At the moment I’m down to “seeing the cleaning staff” which, seeing as I’m leaving at 07:00, is going to be difficult.

The alarm went off as expected at 06:30 but I didn’t care all that much. It was about 08:30 when I finally arose from the dead.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone. Last night I was on my way to bed. It was midnight when my father turned up. I was so surprised to see him. He’d been out partying or something and came back and said “did you know that we had some taxi jobs on?”. I said “no” but I had a quick look at the book. There were 2 jobs, one of which was a trip to Colwyn Bay and the other was to a place called Kingsley near Wrenbury. I sent my father off to pick up this Colwyn Bay job and put a SIM card in his microphone. I went to get another car to head off. Then I heard a voice on the radio or something. I said to my mother “do you know if Alpha One has a radio on?”. She said something so I said “I’ve sent him to Colwyn Bay and I’m going to Wrenbury. Do you know anything about this Kingsley?”. She said that it’s a big place where a load of chartered accountants hang out, but that’s all she knew. I basically said “never mind. I’ll try to find it when I’m on my way out there”. I headed off for Wrenbury and this place called Kingsley. It was strange how my father turned up just as I was going up for bed, there were taxi jobs on and there was no-one around at all and I knew nothing about it.

It was a slow morning when I didn’t do all that much except fend off the cleaning staff who were trying to make their way into my bedroom. It was just like Mrs Mopp from ITMA and her “Can I do you now, sir?”.

Anyway by about 11:40 I was on my way. I left all of my “extraneous possessions” at the hotel reception desk and Alison will try to pick them up. If they end up going missing it won’t be too bad because there isn’t anything of earth-shattering importance in them and I shall still continue to live.

It was a slow struggle, and I do mean “struggle” down to the station. Slow and uncomfortable. Luckily there was a ticket machine in the subterranean passage so I was able to buy a ticket without having to go all the way across to the station building.

A train had come in early too and was waiting patiently at the station. A type 08 multiple unit on its way to Kortrijk so I climbed aboard and found a seat right by the door where I was joined by a young family with a hyperactive toddler.

At Brussels I alighted with difficulty and found an escalator down to the ground floor.

According to the map it’s 460 metres to the hotel and it was the longest and most difficult 460 metres of my life. All I had with me was my backpack with the laptop and that alone weighed a tonne but I staggered on regardless and to my great surprise I made it here.

Here the fobbing off about my possessions began but at least I have a nice room – not really surprising given the amount that I paid for it.

Later on I went down once more to see about my possessions and then out to the shop a couple of doors down for some food. I’ve had bread and tomatoes and a large bottle of orange juice and that’ll do me for tomorrow.

And tomorrow, assuming that I find my possessions, which is not always guaranteed, I’m off on what might be my final leg home. That’s going to be difficult although I’ve tried my best to make it as easy as possible.

To prepare myself, I’ve had a few naps but now I’m off to bed for a good sleep as it’s an early start tomorrow. Let’s see how we get on.

Keep your fingers crossed.

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Thursday 27th October 2022 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but lying in a hospital bed. They took one look at me during my second examination and that was that;

But anyway, the hotel was nice and comfortable and I actually managed a couple of hours sleep at some point. During the night I dreamt that my missing parcel had turned up last night. There was a note on it “delayed due to suspicious contents”. I was wondering whether it was the nutmeg in it that had attracted their attention or not.

1817 sncb class 18 gare du midi brussels belgium Canada Eric Hall photo 27th October 2022At about 07:00 I set out for the station, hobbling all the way down there to the ticket machine where I bought my ticket for the 07:24 express to Leuven.

It’s one of the pushme-pullu trains powered by a Class 18 electric locomotive, number 1817 as you can see.

With it being a double-decker there are steps up into the carriage and I’m beginning to have difficulty climbing in now. I hope that that isn’t a portent of things to come. I shall be having real difficulty if I do because many of the “Leuven” trains are like this

sunrise flanders belgium Eric Hall photo 27th October 2022You can see how early it is that I’ve set out this morning. As I hurtle across the Flanders plain, the sun is only slowly beginning to rise and dawn is slowly breaking

And we all know the old saying –
“Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight
Red sky in the morning, Leuven’s ablaze.

Although the train was on time it was held up on a couple of occasions and ran at a snail’s pace all the way Consequently we were 15 minutes late arriving.

Added to that the buses were all in chaos and the one that I wanted didn’t arrive. I had to wait 10 minutes for the next and as a result I was very late arriving at the check-in.

The first test was a breathing exercise which I failed miserably, coughing everywhere. In the end she didn’t bother with the final test.

The second exam was my nephrology test. There I poured out all my woes, not just about this illness but about everything that is affecting me too. They gave me several tests of all kinds of things, including a balance test where I had to walk by putting one foot in front of the other. And I forget how many times they had to grab me to stop me falling over.

That was enough for them. They telephoned to arrange a room for me. And here I am.

The rest of the day was spent being pushed around in my bed for a pile of examinations.

One of then was to push a camera down my throat to check my lungs. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s the kind of thing that will happen over my dead body, as I explained. Despite their assurances, I was still unwilling so they gave me a pill to “relax” me.

Three hours later I regained consciousness with the examination completed. They told me that I have an atypical viral pneumonia.

This kind of thing they tell me usually clears itself after a week or so but with me having no immune system it’s anyone’s guess when it will clear. Consequently I’m here for a while being pumped full of antibiotics in the hope that something might work

So right now here I am. I’ve asked for and been given a sleeping pill and I’m hoping for a really good sleep.

And I might even have one too.

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Friday 13th October 2017 – IF EVER I GET …

… my hands on the person who decided that it would be amusing to play his music at full volume at 04:40 this morning, he’ll be drinking soup through a straw for the foreseeable future.

Having a little party in one’s room at 01:30 was rather disturbing, but this was something else completely.

Mind you, it’s taught me a lesson, which is to make sure that all of the windows in my room are closed in future. The noise wasn’t half as bad once I had done that.

And this was all a shame because my room was quite pleasant and I was very comfortable in my bed. I shall look further into this hotel once I return home.

So wide awake, I attacked some stuff on the internet that needed doing. And found some more stuff about my grandmother Ivy Cooper performing in Winnipeg in January 1923. Hard to believe that just 33 months later, she was back in the UK, remarried and giving birth to my mother.

With not having paid for breakfast, I had bought some raisin buns and orange juice from the supermarket while I was out last night, and they made a very agreeable breakfast.

And so all of that was followed by a nice shower and shave (and it really was a nice shower too) and change of clothes, and then I packed everything up to go.

The owner was on duty at the Hotel Midi-Zuid. He apologised for yesterday too and let me put my suitcase in the cupboard as my room wasn’t ready (so what REALLY happened yesterday?)

I wandered off down to the Gare du Midi to buy my ticket to Leuven. And here I made something of a mistake. It was well before 10:00 when I bought them so I had to pay full price.

But it was a nice day anyway so I went early (falling asleep on the train) and sat on the Square outside the railway station, soaking in the sun and also supping a well-earned coffee.

Later on, despite still aching just about everywhere, I decided to walk right across the city to the hospital. It was market day down the main street so I fought my way through the crowds, stopping to admire the fruit and veg stall with its lovely collection of grapes, which were so irresistible.

The Loving Hut wasn’t open yet but nevertheless I blagged my way in to buy some more vegan cheese, seeing as I had forgotten to bring over any from Canada. And the manager gave me a couple of names of mail-order vegan suppliers who might help me out.

mini traveller leuven belgium september septembre 2017And here’s a thing. it’s been a while since we’ve featured an old car in these pages.

I didn’t really have the time or the inclination to do much around the USA. I need to catch up, and here by the merest chance happens to be an old Mini Traveller.

rare enough in the UK these days so I never expected to see one here in Leuven.

But then again, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a mini van here in Brussels a couple of years ago.

Calling at St Pieter’s Hospital for the usual morning reasons, I continued on my way only to bump into one of my former co_kottiers from the Hostel. He’s now managing the little bistro place that’s attached to the other hostel and he invited me in for a coffee and a chat.

Unfortunately I was obliged to decline, seeing asI had a prior appointment, but I made a note. And then pressed on to the hospital.

We had a new student nurse today, so it was a good job that I knew the routine. And when she told me to “move over to the far side of the bed”, I couldn’t help but reply “that’s the most exciting thing that I’ve had said to me for quite some considerable time”.

The news though isn’t so good. While the protein might be “stable”, whatever he means by that, the blood count not so. That’s dropped from 9.6 last time to 9.2 just now. And he reckons that there’s also a leaky valve in my heart.

None of this is anything that I particularly wanted to hear. Things aren’t sounding quite so good just now, so i’m glad that I took the opportunity to carry out all of the tasks on my “to-do” list when I was able to.

It took the doctor until 17:20 to come to tell me that I could go, and to give me my prescriptions. I have to come back on Thursday 14th December, but to go to a different department, and I don’t like the sound of that.

But now I’m horribly late. I was hoping to be gone from here hours ago. I have to run to the pharmacy to collect the prescriptions and, as usual, they are short of product.

And then run for the bus, which is in no hurry. No chance of going for that coffee now.

Luckily the trains to Brussels are quite regular and I don’t have to wait long. Mevertheless it’s 18:33 when we arrive. I have to run down to the hotel, register (why he wouldn’t let me do that this morning I really don’t know), leave my backpack, and run back to the station. And i’m on the platform southbound with just three minutes to spare.

Since I’vs topped going to see OH Leuven, they have been on an impressive run of form and are up there in 2nd place in the league. On the other hand, AFC Tubize are on a woeful run of form and are well adrift at the foot of the table.

There’s a football match played in each division on a Friday night, and by pure coincidence, tonight is AFC Tubize v OH Leuven. it’s just a handful of stops down the line from here, and I’m at a loose end.

Obviously a home banker then.

But we have a tragedy – i’ll tell you that. They’ve reorganised the times of the trains and the last one back is at 22:12. The 23:12 has been taken off. What that means in real money is that if I don’t want to walk back to Brussels, I’ll miss the last 20 minutes of the game.

But never mind. Grabbing a bag of chips from the fritkot across the road from the station, I set off to the ground.

afc tubize oh leuven belgium september septembre 2017It’s a modern stadium, but they ran out of money after doing just two sides.

And that’s hardly surprising because it’s another one of those places where they announce the crowd changes to the team.

I have a coffee, chat to a couple of people, and take my seat in the stand.

AFC Tubize aren’t all that bad. In fact they can match OH Leuven in most departments but you can immediately see the problem that they are having. Their centre-forward is ploughing a very lonely furrow up front, with no service and no support.

OH Leuven are on the attack from the kick-off and only a brilliant save from their keeper stops them going 1-0 down in the first 5 minutes.

But they are in front after half an hour with a brilliant glancing header from Casagolda from a free kick.

Tubize equalize in the second half and I start to have this rather uncomfortable feeling. But it can’t be helped – I need to be on my way.

Back at the hotel I find my room, and its quite comfortable too. One of the bigger ones. I learn that OH Leuven went on to win the match but it’s bed-time for me. It’s been a long day and it’s going to be another long one tomorrow.

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Thursday 12th October 2017 – I HAD AN INTERESTING …

… flight back from Canada. Playing “Bejeweled” all the way across the Atlantic.

That’s not a polite way to say that the in-flight entertainment was total garbage either. I mean – it was, but once I found the “games” section of the things, I didn’t bother too much about the rest.

And never mind my worries about not having a special meal either. The two options of food offered on board was either chicken or … pasta with vegetables in a tomato sauce – with no cheese.

Sleep wasn’t too much of an issue either – I just had a fitful doze here and there and that was really my lot.

air canada flight paris charles de gaulle airport france Octobre october 2017It seems that Air Canada is having issues with the landing fees at Charles de Gaulle airport too.

Admittedly we were considerably early in landing, thanks to a helpful tail wind, but we ended up moored on the concrete apron and having to be bussed over to the terminal.

And just two passport control officers at the “EU” desk to screen us. But they weren’t too bothered about much and we were soon through.

The baggage was reasonably quickly out too so I was able to make good my escape. On the way out I was accosted by a couple of pirate taxi drivers. “Do I have the word ‘idiot’ tattooed on my forehead?” I growled.

10:30 was when I made it to the railway station – that has to be something of a new record. And my train from Paris to Brussels was at 14:35. A mere 4 hours to get into the city.

But – wait! There’s a train from here direct to Brussels at 11:07!

TGV paris charles de gaulle brussels belgium Octobre october 2017My ticket is not refundable, and it’s more expensive than I was expecting.

But sodomisez ça pour un jeu de soldats! as they say around here. I’m not struggling all the way into Paris and hanging around on a draughty station for several hours.

The moral of this story is – don’t book your ticket from the airport “on-line”. Wait until you arrive and then do it. It works out cheaper in the long run.

When the train was called we all trooped off to the gate, to be turned away by a security guy. “You have to use the other gate”
“Why’s that?” called out Our Hero
“Because over there they are controlling the passengers”
“So what are you doing then?”.

I ended up in the company of a woman who needed help to find her seat. She told me that she was from Russia, to which I replied “Ja ne gavariou nichivo pa-Russki”, which always helps in moments like this.

So, by 13:00, instead of still having ages to wait on a draughty station 320 kilometres away in Paris, I was banging on the door of my hotel.

And “banging” too, because it was all locked up, in darkness, with “FULL” on the door.

Eventually, the manager appeared.
“Sorry, we’re full” he explained, which with the Hotel in total darkness looked totally unlikely.
“I’ve a booking here!”
“Ohhh yes – you must be Mr Hall”.
Manager takes me to a hotel down the street – a much better one than the one where I am supposed to be staying.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience. You’ll need to stay here tonight. But you’ll be back with us tomorrow”
Manager retreats into the total darkness of his hotel.

So what’s going on here then? Knowing the usual kind of places where I stay when i’m on my travels, my money is on a Police raid.

The Hotel de France is quite nice, and so it goes without saying at all that the first thing that I did when I arrived was to crash out. And that was that for … errr …some time.

Later on I went to the café around the corner and had a bowl of lentils, some bread and chips for tea. And the thing about that was that they had the TV on. And being in this particular little corner of Brussels I was entertained by watching RAJA Casablanca beat FUS Rabat in the Moroccan Cup.

concrete lego pieces Octobre october 2017I went down to the all-night supermarket in the Gare du Midi for a bottle of pop and some food for breakfast, and encountered these giant lego bricks or jigsaw pieces all over the place.

They are probably road-closers or something like that actually, but my imagination had endless moments of fun imagining builders in giant cranes amusing themselves with these lumps of concrete, building all kinds of things.

Keep them out of mischief for days.

Back here, I sat on the edge of the bed pondering my next move, and the next thing that I remember was that it was 23:00. i’d been out for about 90 minutes.

Well out too. I wasn’t going anywhere else so I curled up under the comfortable sheets. I needed it too.

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