Tag Archives: rathaus

Sunday 1st November 2020 – HAVING SET …

… the alarm for 08:00 this morning, I promptly slept right through it. it was 09:00 when I finally awoke and so i had to get a move on. Alison would be here at 10:30.

First job was to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

We were in some kind of really posh hotel last night, a whole group of us in the USA and to get to where we were going we had to walk through these labyriths of corridors, up abd down stairs, everything like that. Someone had left a parel in my room soI opened it. There were all letters in there, a cardigan, and they were for my friend June and as well as that there was a robot-type doll child who was also for June as well so we set off through this hotel labyrinth thig to find June to give her all of her things and this doll. This doll took off and ran off down this pathway and climbed down these stairs as if it knew exactly where it was going and there wasn’t really much that I could doas I wasn’t able really to run after it and catch it.It certainly had a most ungainly way of walking.
The I had to go and fetch Liz and Terry. They were asleep in their van and it was freezing outside so I went and woke them up. Terry came out and he was dressed like Nanook of the North, quilted jackets with newspaper round him, and a hat and balaclava helmet as if he was sleeping at the North Pole. He eventually got out of his van. The frost was really deep, it was a really cold night. I said about going in to get some food. I could see that for some reason they weren’t all that concerned.
Later on I started driving for a taxi firm in Crewe. They had apparently taken over my business and were getting themselves organised and I’d started to drive for them. They were giving me all information and I’d sorted out some leaflets. I could see my old driver’s badge that they had and the plate off the car that I had. They were going on “if anyone ever gives you any trouble you’d better give them one of these leaflets and explain that you are a driver. I said “that’s not a problem because my badge is here and I can hand that out”. So off I went to get into my car. The woman from the place and a few of her friends were outside drinking coffee and I went to get into the car that hey would let me drive for the night. But in this yard there were all kinds of old cars, a Singer Gazelle, other kinds of cars there, obviously derelict and I thought that it must have been quite an unusual taxi company in the past if these were the cars that they were driving.

By now it was time to leave so I grabbed some toast and jam and headed to the door Alison was waiting on the corner so we headed off towards Aachen. We had to go via Liège instead of taking the short cut through the Netherlands because of the virus controls. But we were soon in Aachen and parked the car;

if there’s anywhere more dead than a German city on a Sunday, it’s a German city on a Sunday when the Sunday is a Bank Holiday.

And when the Sunday Bank Holiday comes in the middle of a pandemic lock-down, things are yet more dead.

We had to tramp for miles until we came to a café that was open. This is the Cafe Extrablatt on the Markt overlooking the Rathaus, which I think is a wonderful name for the headquarters of Local Gevernment.

Here I had a big monster coffee while we sat and listened to some woman bashing out the arias of an opera while stading on the steps across the way. i was surprised that it wasn’t pelting down with all of that going on. The packed crowd of about 8 people listening to her must obviously have enjoyed it, but everyone else (not very many else, that’s for sure) kept a decent distance away.

Next stop was to find some food.

Our Great Trek took us through the Munsterplatz and past the fountain that was destroyed during the war and which was rebuilt in 1951. We wouldn’t normally come this way, except that our favourite restaurant was closed and, once more, we had to tramp for miles before we found another that was open and which offered vegan food.

Eventually we found a suitable place, whose name I have forgotten, down by the Spa. I can’t remember now what Alison had but I had a bown of falafel and salad which was certainly delicious and well worth the money

After our meal we planned to goto the Cathedral so we retraced our steps;

There are some beautiful old houses in the Cathedral close that are always well worth a good inspection and a photograph is always worthwhile. No photos of the interior of the cathedral though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that despite the immense wealth of the Church in general they actually employ people to go round and physically prohibit people from taking photos and we have encountered them before.

If you want to photograph the interior of the Cathedral you have to buy a permit to do so and there is no chance of that.

If they are short of a few bob here and there, they can always start by selling off some of the opulent treasures that are there. “Give all that thou hast to the Poor!”. Bah! Humbug!

We then went for yet another coffee and then headed back towards the car via the Square at the back of the Rathaus

The rear of the aforementioned building is not very often photographed so I thought that I would do the honours. You’ve seen a few of my photos of the front in the past.

It dates from the first decade of the 14th Century and is on the site of a much earlier building. There’s a kind-of grid that you can peer down to see the old stonework from the building that was here in Charlemagne’s time and when I come back with the NIKON D500 instead of the NIKON 1 J5 I’ll take a photo and show you just what I mean.

And shame that it is that I am obliged to say it, when I poured heaps of scorn onto the PLANNERS OF THE EXTENSION and said that it was some kind of mess that only a British architect could make.

So, before I go off and eat some humble pie, let me show you the Charlemagne Centre – a museum dedicated to the memory of Charlemagne whose capital Aachen was.

This Square is surrounded by the cathedral on the eouth side, the Rathaus on the north side, some nice early medieval stone houses opposite on the east side and a beautiful medieval stone meeting hall next door.

And the best that the modern planners can come up with to showase all of those is this God-awful monstrosity. I despair.

But at least, despite the best that the RAF and the USAAF could throw at it, Aachen’s cathedral remains pretty much intact, not like that did at Coventry where the planner did for the bits of cathedral that the Luftwaffe couldn’t destroy.

Said to be one of the largest and one of the oldest religious edifices north of the Alps, it started off life in 793 as the chapel of Charlemagne’s court and is where he was buried in 814. His remains are still in the Cathedral although there is dispute as to where they might be.

Charlemagne had been made Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in 800 and from then on until 1531 almost every successive Holy Roman Emperor and German King, 31 of them to be precise (and 12 Queens) was crowned there

On that note we headed back to the car and drove home. Alison came in and had a coffee and a chat and after she had gone I switched on the laptop.

“An upgrade is taking place” it informed me. “Do not switch off”. So I didn’t and by 23:30 it was on 20% completed. So I gave it up as a bad job and went to bed.

Sunday 2nd August 2020 – TONIGHT, I’M IN …

… Munich in Germany.

It’s Sunday today but even so, I set an alarm. Only for 08:00 though as I need to be up and about, breakfasted and gone by 10:00 today.

And despite the later alarm time and the fact that it’s Sunday, I still awoke bolt upright at 06:03. No chance of gtting up at that stupid time. I turned over and went back to sleep until a more reasonable and respectable time.

All of this meant that there was plenty of time for me to go off on my travels again last night and I started off at Rosemary’s. We were discussing kitchen arrangements, cooking, that kind of thing. I ended up swapping slow cookers and letting her have mine in exchange for one of hers because one was a bigger size than the other and I can’t remember now which way round was which. But it suited me to have the one she had and it suited her to have the one that I had so I proposed a swap

Later on I was with Nerina and we were on our travels. We came to a freighter that was going to take us on to somewhere but we suddenly realised that we didn’t have any insurance and there was no security patrol or anything on board this ship so I had to set off leaving Nerina with the car in this queue to run down the road and came to some kind of insurance place. I went in and it really was a dive. The people there were dirty and certainly weren’t clerical types at all but I explained what i wanted. They went away and came back with a green form. I gave them a £20 note and they gave me £12-something back and a box of chocolates. I had to run back to the car because they would be loading by this time. I’d told them in the insurance what was happening about this and what I wanted. So I ran back and came to these steps and had to run all the way up these steps, stone narrow steps and i was counting them as I went up. I got to 60 but I was still running up these steps and still going and I came round the corner and a couple of kids were playing right by the edge of this cliff drop which I thought was a bit strange. There were still more steps and I had to keep on running up here to try to get back to where Nerina was with the car, carrying the change in my hand, this green card, this box of chocolates

Finally, I was a bit loaded up last night. I had all of my holiday gear with me including the camera. I ended up with a guitar and I had a long way to walk. I was hoping that I would find somewhere where I could leave the guitar and come back for it later. My first idea was the church so I went there but it was all locked up. I was wondering what to do and someone else told me that there was another church further on downtown. I walked down there and came across some kind of building and the church was built on the back of that. I went round the back there just as the policeman was locking up the door ready to go away. I thought “forget that” and continued walking. I suddenly had this thought “what have I done wiht my camera?” I had a search among the stuff that I was carrying and in the end found that the camerz was slung around my neck but for some unknown reason it was underneath my jumper. At least I had it. I had to carry on walking towards where I was going to go and that was where this voyage broke off.

After breakfast it didn’t take too long to pack and tidy everything up, and by 10:00 I was on the road heading northwards.

The weather had started off as a gloomy morning and that didn’t help my mood. And neither did all of the grockles driving around at about 20mph admiring the scenery. They might have had nothing better to do, but I did.

There were several roadworks and diversions too. Because of the winter weather there’s only a short timescale in which to do road-mending so of course it has to be in summer.

The closer I came to Munich the greyer the weather became and by the time I came out of a tunnel on the Munich ring road I was in the middle of a torrential downpour.

One thing that I have noticed is that this Satnav is not using the same program as the previous one. Despite setting the preferences to exactly the same as the previous one, it brought me into Eching in a completely different way and I drove past Hans’s apartment building before I had realised where I was.

It’s nice to see Hans again. We had a coffee and then despite the showery weather we climbed into Hans’s jeep and headed off to the nearest metro station to catch a train into Munich.

Hans knew of a little vegan restaurant so we headed there for a drink and some banana cakeand then wandered off in search of excitement.

Our first port of call was the Wittelsbacher Brunnen, or fountains.

The Wittelsbachs were the royal family of the Kingdom of Bavaria until the political upheaval at the end of World War I. Munich was their capital and the eplendour that survived the bombing of World War II gives some kind of indication of their wealth.

The fountain was designed by Adolf von Hildebrand, a famous German designer of fountains, and sculptor Erwin Kunz and was built between 1893 and 1895.

Its purpose, bizzarely enough, was to celebrate the arrival in the city of the new high-pressure water pipeline from the Mangfall, a river in Upper Bavaria that is a tributary of the river Inn.

A site was chosen at the junction of the Karlsplatz and Lenbachplatz where the old city walls had been, and it was unveiled on 12th June 1895. We are told that the design consists of all kinds of allegories connected to the power of water

The fountain suffered damage during the bombing raids but was restored by one of Hildebrand’s pupils and reopened on 3rd October 1952.

From there we pushed off down the road to continue our little exploration of the north-west corner of the inner city.

Our little stoll brought us to the Karolinenplatz. This is named for Princess Caroline of Baden who married Maximilian Joseph, Duke of Palatine-Zweibrucken and became Queen Caroline II of Bavaria when her husband became King in 1806.

When Napoleon set off for his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, he took 36,000 Bavarian troops with him, but only 6,000 returned home. The column, designed by Leo von Klenze, is a monument to those 30,000 Bavarian soldiers who disappeared.

The Square was designed by Karl von Fischer (who died in 1820) who based his design upon that of the Place de l’Etoile, where the Arc de Triomphe is, in Paris.

The big building to the left of the column is the Palace of Prince George and you might have expected it to have been easy for me to tell you all about Prince George, but instead I’ll merely mention that so far I’ve been able to trace about a dozen Prince Georges so you can take your pick.

Our next stop is going to be the the Konigsplatz so we walked down the Briennerstrasse, another part of von Fisher’s great design.

On the corner of the Arcisstrasse are two very large and heavy plinths that I didn’t photograph, because there are the bases of a couple of temples erected to the memory of thse supporters of Hitler who were killed in the Munich Putsch of 1923.

There was no summer festival in Munich this year because of the virus, which was a shame although it was quite understandable, but what we had instead were little festival sites scattered around the city, like the one here at the Konigsplatz.

This is another part of Karl von Fischer’s masterpiece. He had been charged with organising an orderly expansion of the city beyond the old city walls at this point.

The Propylaea Gate that we can see in this image though isn’t by him but by Leo von Klienze and dates from 1862. It was originally intended to be a commemoration of the accession of King Ludwig’s son Otto to the throne of Greece in 1832 but it took so long to build that in effect it became a monument to the overthrow of King Otto from his throne by the Greek people after 30 years of rule.

The whole area is bedecked with “Summerin the City” banners as people make the most of whatever entertainments there are in the area.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying the fun, even if there wasn’t all that much of it. It’s a far cry from the traditional Munich summer festivals but we are living right now in extraordinary times.

Having wandered around loking at the sites and being unable to go to either of the two museums here, we went off for a wander around to look for a metro station because we were going to be heading from here into the town centre. We eventually found something in the Louisenstrasse and from there we ended up in the Marienplatz.

One thing that I like about the German language is the name that is given to the local town hall and civic administration offices in the towns – the Rathaus. I can’t think of anything more appropriate.

This is the Altes Rathaus, or Old Town Hall. The building was known to be in existence in 1310 and underwent a reconstruction, the first recorded of very many, between 1392 and 1394.

The spire beside it is actually the old Talburgtor gate in the eary city walls. As you can see, the gate is quite narrow and so in the 1870s they actually tunneled through the ground floor, with a second tunnel being put through in 1935. And in 1938 in the Great Hall Josef Goebbels made the speech that launched the Kristallnacht – the destruction of Jewish property in Germany in 1938.

It was badly damaged by bombing in World War II and not restored until the early 1970s. Somewhere in my ancient collection of photos I have a photo taken of it in 1988 when I was here with Nerina and when I get back to the farm, whenever that might be, I’ll dig it out.

This building here looks absolutely magnificent so it’s very easy t lose sight of the fact that this is a much more modern “Gothic Revival” building.

In the second half of the 19th Century it became apparent that the old town hall was becoming too small for modern needs so in 1867 construction of a new building, designed by Georg Hauberrisser, began.

The Town Council offices moved here in 1874 but as the building was still too small, further enlargements took place. The building was not finally finished until 1906. It has 400 rooms and covers an area of over 9,000m²

Somewhat surprisingly, it escaped severe destruction during the bombing attacks of World War II and was very quickly, if simply, restored

One thing that was nice to see here was a group of musiciens entertaining the crowd of people.

Although masks are not compulsory in the open air, it’s pretty much a waste of tie to just wear one over your mouth and not over your nose. And I would have loved to have seen the flautist play the flute wearing a mask. That would have been interesting.

Having finished our wandering around we ended up in the Munchener Freiheit at a little Indian café that I know, rather like the one in Montreal. A bowl of curry was delicious – it’s been a long time since I’ve had a decent one of those.

By now the heavens had really opened and we were being pasted in a torrential downpour. Walking from the metro to the car, we were drenched.

A couple of films and a good chat finished off the evening and then we all went our separate ways.

The sofa here is really comfortable so I’m settled down for the night. We’ll see what tomorrow will bring me.

Sunday 26th January 2020 – WHAT A NICE …

… day out that was today!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen a photo similar to this a while ago. It’s the town square in Monschau in Germany, just across the border from Belgium and about half an hour’s drive south from Aachen.

And that’s where I’ve been today.

We’ve been celebrating – if that’s the correct word – the last day that we can do an outing like this free of any control whatsoever, thanks to 17.4 xenophobes and racists in the UK who have voted to stop me living where I like, working where I like, travelling where I like, receiving medical treatment where I like, and receiving the full amount of retirement pension to which I am entitled after all of my years of paying into the system.

What’s worse is that these racists and xenophobes loudly trumpet the “democratic will of the people”, but they refused to allow me the right to vote on an issue that affects me more than any of them.

What’s “democratic” about that?

So this morning the alarm went off at 06:00 and I was up pretty quickly after that. I had the medication and then looked at the dictaphone.

And hello to Esi, who I don’t think has joined me in a nocturnal ramble before. I’d met her somewhere and we were heading for a train. We were talking about the trains and she was going to one place and I was going to another and we were walking around the outside of this car park. We suddenly came to an area which was fenced off and they were doing some brick rebuilding. I suddenly realised that I’d walked this way before and I couldn’t get out this way so we had to retrace our steps and go across this car park rather than around it. We ended up somewhere, she went and I ended up in a rom somewhere with my things. I was thinking “should I take my big camera? Should I take my small camera?”. In the end I decided on the big camera. My train was at a quarter past the hour. For some unknown reason I had in my mind all things like when I used to walk all the way across London to go to my hospital appointment which of course I don’t do, and all memories about other nocturnal voyages on which I have travelled before like that petrol station out in the countryside in London (… the BP one to the north-west …) that kind of thing. I was reminiscing on all of this and suddenly I looked at my watch and I had 15 minutes to get to the station. I thought “God I’d better get a run for my train won’t hang about long’. It took me a minute or two to get all of my things together and I wasn’t sure that I had everything. I had to climb out of this train because I realised that I was in a train. I had to climb out of this train and there were lots of people in my way dropping things off and someone had lost their suitcase locks and there were a couple about where I was and they picked up their locks. I was already to go and these guys were talking to me about all kinds of different things and I was getting ready to run back across this car park to the station but the train started to move but had to stop to give way to something. It was in my way and wouldn’t move and I couldn’t go behind it and I couldn’t go in front of it or behind it or underneath it and time as ticking away while I was waiting there to get on my way to move and it was all very very strange. It was like heading towards one of these panic attacks again
later I was back in the Brusselsestraat looking at that mannequin that I like, being used as a model for various childrens’ clothes, adjusting and cutting them. And if that makes any sense to anyone, please let me know.

Breakfast next and then time to head for the hills

Around the ring road towards the station, and wasn’t it looking magnificent in the dark, all illuminated with the war memorial in the Martelarplein standing out so well?

It’s all fenced off now as they are constructing an underground bicycle park just there. Yes, bicycles are big business here in Leuven. The way the road system is and the issues about parking, it’s pretty pointless owning a car in the city.

My train was at 08:2 and I was in plenty of time for it

It pulled in bang on time too, but I couldn’t see which engine was propelling it because it was another one of the “pushme-pullyou” sets and it was running engine-last, something that always surprises me on a high-speed train.

These trains start out at Oostende and you would have expected there to be a run-round facility at an important station like that so that the locomotive could take its proper place at the head of the train.

“Never mind” I thought. I can photograph it when I alight at Liege Guillemins station. I have 12 minutes to wait for my express there. I don’t even have to move because the Frankfurt train comes in at the same platform as the Eupen train goes out.

But for once the Tour de Finances building in Liege is pretty much unobstructed and looking quite nice so while I was awaiting the Eupen train moving out, I went over and took a photo of the Tour de Finances.

So if you live in Liege and want to know where all of your money went, then there it is. I admit that it looks fantastic but it’s not exactly the best way of spending public money on an extravagant building like that.

While I was waiting for the Eupen train to move, there was an announcement on the tannoy “passengers for the Deutsche Bahn ICE train to Frankfurt am Main, please note that your train will be departing from …” a different platform.

So we all had to scramble up the steps, across the walkway and down another set of steps and I never did get to take a photo of my train from Leuven as it was still in the station – somewhat delayed – as we pulled out.

So I’ve no idea what was the matter with that but whatever it was, I’m glad that it happened after I had alighted from it. It can do what it likes then. We were on our way.

Alison was waiting for me at the station but Jackie’s train wasn’t due to arrive for another half hour so we went for a coffee and a chat to catch up on the latest news.

When Jackie turned up we went into the city centre to look for a coffee.

There’s a beautiful church there, the city church of St Nikolaus and just for a rare change today, it actually was open so we stuck our heads inside.

It’s nothing like how it was supposed to be in the interior, but subsequent investigation revealed that it had been the victim of a fire and a considerable amount of damage had been caused.

So that might explain everything then.

We eventually found a cafe that would serve us just a coffee – Sunday morning is a pretty sacred “brunch” day in Germany.

We had a good view over the square where there was something clearly going to be happening. People dressed in historical costume, sword fights, people walking around with falcons on their arms.

But as the crowds started to gather we decided that we would move on. It looked as if it was going to be a really lovely day so we planned to move on the Monschau in the hills.

We made it to Monschau but the good weather didn’t. It was overcast, misty and foggy here and that was a disappointment.

We found a place to park the car and then walked down the hill into town. Considering that it was mid-winter there were crowds of people about and roadworks that blocked the main street.

It wasn’t easy to navigate ourselves around and see what was going on down there today.

There’s a handbag shop in the town with a name that will delight almost any one with a warped sense of humour.

We went inside for a look around and Jackie struck lucky. The prices had been slashed to a figure that even I thought was a good deal and she found a handbag of a decent size that exactly matched a jacket that she owned. So that found its way out of the shop.

What caught my eye was a really nice leather-look backpack, small with plenty of pockets that would have been ideal for a lightweight camera bag, and at 9:99 too. And had it had a shoulder strap as well as the backpack straps I would have brought that home with me too.

Just what I needed.

By now it was pretty well past lunchtime so we retraced our steps back through town to a place that we had seen earlier.

They had these flammenkucke pancake things on offer so the girls had one of those each. As for me, there was a beautiful fresh vegetable soup with bread and that was delicious. The vegetables were actually in proper chunks and it was really well done.

There was fresh hot ginger tea on offer too and a mug of that went down really well in the cold weather that we were having.

But my eye was diverted to what was outside the restaurant.

It’s a long time since we’ve seen a Trabant – one of the East German fibreboard cars that came flooding into the West after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and which vanished without trace almost as quickly as they appeared.

The ones that I see these days are mostly used for publicity purposes and this one here is no exception. It’s so full of knick-knacks that you couldn’t drive it anywhere even if you wanted to.

We dropped Jackie off back at the railway station in Aachen, and after another coffee, Alison and I headed home. We had another one of our really long chats on the way back and made some further plans.

But what will happen about them I really don’t know. It depends on the hospital visits and the radio commitments before I can actually decide on anything.

For tea I used up the rest of the food that was lying about and having written up my notes, I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow starts at 05:30, something to which I am not looking forward, so I need to be at my best.

Here’s hoping that all of the trains are running.

Saturday 17th February 2018 – I’M A MISERABLE PLEADER.

Yes, I’m definitely losing my touch.

Maybe it’s trying to do it in Flemish that’s the problem, but on the other hand being a miserable ignorant foreigner who has travelled for for no avail usually works wonders.

But retournons to our moutons as they say back home.

Yet another miserable night as my neighbours awoke me when they returned home at 02:00 and carried on their party until 04:00 or whatever. And as I have said before, it’s not really their noise that’s the issue – it’s more the fact that i’m a light sleeper and the walls are very thin.

I compensated by setting the alarms for 07:30 and 07:40 instead of the usual time one hour earlier. After the medication and breakfast, I had a shower and change of clothes and then attacked a few things that needed my attention.

Alison came through at 10:30. She was just about to leave home so that gave me 15 minutes to gather up my wits (it doesn’t usually take me that long these days as you know) and go to loiter on the corner at the end of the street.

She arrived on time and we hit the road for our day out. She had made several suggestions as to where to go (I always have this problem of people telling me where to go) but the one that stood out above all of the others was Aachen of course – in Germany.

The thing that I like about living in Belgium is that you have a choice of four countries – France, Luxembourg, Germany and the Netherlands – on your doorstep. Luxembourg at 100 minutes is the farthest away and the rest are a lot closer than that.

The weather wasn’t what I expected though. Considering that it was Germany in February I was hoping for sub-zero temperatures and several feet of snow. Instead, we had a glorious Spring day with a beautiful blue sky.

I felt rather disappointed.

Alison is off skiing in a few days so she wanted to look at some of the clothing in the big Sports shop on the edge of the city centre. So that was to be our first port of call

But we were distracted by a café that we hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t the vegan options on offer but the fact that sitting in the window were four rather large cats.

This place is called the “Katzencafé” and the idea is that you can go in there for a coffee and cuddle a kitten. And on chatting to a few friends later I was told that there are these cat cafés springing up all over the place these days. I’m all in favour of that idea of course except that these cats were rather aloof.

Still never mind. The coffee was good and we enjoyed the company.

There was nothing that took Alison’s fancy in the Sports shop (at least, not at a reasonable price, that is) and so we went up the road to the Muller supermarket where I bought some more of that white vegan chocolate that I like

We found a square that we hadn’t noticed before where there was a good view of the rear of the town hall and the rear of the cathedral.

I’d not seen the town hall from this angle before, and I do have to say that it was quite impressive.

As an aside … "you’ll get used to this" – ed … the German for "Town Hall" is Rathaus, which is rather appropriate, as I’m sure you’ll all agree.

Our new little route took us on an exploration of the city in places that we hadn’t visited and past sites that I hadn’t previously seen. And that’s always good news.

And to my delight, I discovered a Bio shop that sold the very brand of vegan cheese that I like. They only had two packs of it though, and now they don’t have any at all.

I also discovered a huge model railway shop and we passed a good half-hour in there. I would love to have a little N-gauge layout back at home, but not at the prices they are asking. There was an HO/OOgauge Big Boyof the type that we all know and love and which was on sale at an astonishing €2599.

Passing via several other shops we made it to the Source where I had another drink of the hot sulphuric water. It tastes disgusting of course, but there’s no point in going to the Waters if you have no intention of taking them, even if you have been misinformed.

Unfortunately there wasn’t all that much of a photo opportunity seeing that the building was cluttered with pedestrians and street furniture and the like. I shall have to come along here at 05:00, and bring a Stihl Saw with me too.

The market stall that was selling those delicious fennel-flavoured sweets last time – that wasn’t here today which was bad news. And although our walk was quite interesting there wasn’t really all that much to see that was exciting.

And so, feeling the cold and the exhaustion and the hunger, we detained to the little restaurant that we know – the one by the Roman remains. Alison had a spicy chicken meal and I had the quinoa salad.

Being duly fed and watered, we set off for a slow wander back to the car. But Alison drew my attention to the rays of the early evening sun that were just catching the clock tower right by the town hall.

Alison reckoned that it was worth a photograph, and who was I to argue with that?

Back in the car we headed for Leuven in the early evening sunset – our journey being interrupted by the scenic tour of the roadworks halfway along the highway. And when I arrived back I had a coffee and a little … errr … relax.

Round about 19:30 I set off for the football ground. OH Leuven were playing KFCO Beerschot-Wilrijk, a team that I have yet to see, so I was quite looking forward to the match.

But hereby hangs a tale.

With there having been “certain incidents” in the past, the whole ground and surrounding streets were surrounded by police and admission was by prebooked ticket only. And no amount of pleading on my part would convince anyone at all – Police, admission booth, security staff, stadium management (yes, I got to see them all) would change their minds.

Of course, arguing with Belgian administration – particularly from a position of weakness – is a pointless argument as anyone who has ever tried it will tell you. But you have to go through the motions anyway – I don’t give up without a fight.

However in this case, I was singularly unsuccessful and repaired to a bar across the street where several other people, including someone who had come from Italy, in the same position as me were gathered to watch the match on television.

I’ve never understood the fascination for watching football on TV. Yes, fair enough if it’s the only way of seeing a game, but it’s nothing like watching the match in the flesh – nothing at all. There’s no atmosphere for a start, and the focus of the camera cuts out all of the interesting stuff going on in the background.

So at the final whistle, I headed back home again in the cold – to total silence next door. Perhaps they are out partying and they’ll be back at something silly like 03:00. So I’m going to bed quick and grab a couple of hours sleep.

Saturday 14th January 2017 – PHEW, I’M WHACKED!

I’ve had a really busy day today and I’m going to pay for it tomorrow. But ask me if I care!

I’ve always said that I’ll do what I have the opportunity to do whenever I have the opportunity to do it, and today was just like that.

Remember when I went shopping with Alison last weekend? She ended up not buying a ski suit but she did manage to pick one up during the week. But she decided that she would go to look for another one today – in Aachen, Germany, to be precise. Did I want to go?

Well, do bears go for picnics in the woods?

Last night was another typical bad night with an interruption in the small hours as usual. And that’s annoying me as you can imagine. But I made it into the kitchen for breakfast bang on time all the same.

Now here’s a thing that is more than unusual. it’s more than surprising too, and certainly extraordinary. And that is that I was down at the Delhaize in town, doing my shopping and back in my room afterwards for 09:00. When did that ever happen?

By 11:00 I’d showered, shaved, had clean clothes, all of that and gone outside where Alison was waiting for me.

And so, all aboard, we headed off eastwards down the motorway to Aachen. We farhn, fahrn, fahrn’d down the autobahn, in fact.

The weather could have been better though. It was cold, although not that cold, and grey and overcast with snow flurries throughout the day.

We arrived at Aachen where the snow had beaten us to it, and first stop was to sort out some clothing for Alison.

While Alison was searching around in the shops I went for a little wander around in the vicinity. Of course, when women are buying clothes, there’s plenty of time to do that, and even more so when people are in the queue for paying.

It seems that almost everyone in the city was shopping for ski-wear. After all, it’s Carnival quite soon and this is the traditional time for the kids to hit the slopes.

From there, we walked up the hill into town past some nice fairly-modern brick-built buildings that looked quite nice and blended quite well into the surroundings.

A coffee was next, and Alison knew a pretty good cafe. And I’ve drunk much worse coffee than that, I can tell you. I was surprised though, that there was no public toilet in there. I wonder what the EU would have to say about it.

But it does reinforce everything that I have said about the different attitudes that different countries have. Most countries agree to everything, and then have a very lax attitude about enforcing it. The UK fights tooth-and-nail, wasting everyone’s time, about various legislation, end then enforces it to the most ridiculous lengths. Remind me to tell you one day about the tip at Leek.

After the coffee we went off up the hill into the city centre, and while Alison went off in search of a woolly hat to go with her new ski jacket that she had bought, I went off for a wander around.

Luckily, Aachen was spared the worst excesses of the Allied terror-bombing of World War II so there is a great deal of the medieval city remaining, despite the American shelling and the SS demolition squads during its capture in October 1944.

And while it’s not the most attractive medieval city that I’ve ever visited, it certainly retains a lot of its charm.

The Town Hall, or Rathaus, which I always thought was a quite appropriate name for a town hall in any country or any language, was damaged during the capture of the city, but you would never ever think so from just looking at it.

And I don’t just mean the quality of the restoration either. The building could do with a really good clean for a start and it would look so much better if they were to take the time to do it.

One of the things that I did like about the Rathaus were the beautiful medieval wooden buildings – a pub so Alison told me, that were attached to the side, taking advantage of the stone wall of the Rathaus at the back.

It’s not the first time that we’ve seen this style of construction. There’s the same kind of construction in Belgium at a church near the Bourse that has wooden buildings constructed against it. It certainly saves on construction materials

Round the side of the central square was another small square tucked away out of sight. Alison told me that there was a restaurant there that had vegan food advertised on the menu, so that sounded like a good place to go for lunch.

It’s over there at the back, on the right, hidden by what look very much like historical remains. And I was intrigued to see these remains still standing – they look like the kind of remains that would have fallen down years ago.

Alison had a salmon steak and new potatoes, and my vegan ratatouille made with fresh vegetables of the day was even better. It was a little over-priced in my opinion, but it was still delicious and light years away from a bag of chips.

It too was served with sliced new potatoes and that worked so well that I’ll be trying this as soon as I can, now that I have a bag of spuds to play with.

But I didn’t think that the name of the restaurant was appropriate – fancy calling it the Living Room, which could be translated into Lebensraum, the project which concerned the Nazis invading Eastern Europe and exterminating its population.

And I shan’t say anything about setting the décor on fire either.

Outside the Living Room there was a view of the cathedral, to the right of the historic arches, and if you excuse the building work and the crane thing in the way.

It’s not the best view in the world but unfortunately, like many other well-preserved medieval cities, the cathedral is tightly hemmed in by buildings and it’s not possible to do any better than this.

If the RAF and the American artillery can’t clear the scene, neither can I

The cathedral itself is a magnificent pile and I expect that you are waiting with bated breath to see a whole raft of photos of the gorgeous interior, the tomb of Charlemagne, and all kinds of relics, including building materials such as marble that were sent by Pope Hadrian I to incorporate into the construction

Unfortunately there was a person loitering just inside the interior whose task it is to pounce upon anyone pointing a camera at anything, and demand a “licence fee” for the privilege of so doing.

Clearly the cathedral authorities have never ever heard of “Christian Charity” and don’t understand the concept of “sharing”. It’s not the first time that I’ve passed comment on the quality and value of the treasures contained in a church – something that goes totally against the concept of Jesus viz “give all thou hast to the poor”, but when it even comes down to naked exploitation and profiteering of the idea of sharing images of what the church possesses, then I’m convinced that there is something totally wrong with the church’s morality.

The oldest part of the Cathedral dates from 792 and is part of Charlemagne’s Palace – probably the only surviving part. And its rare octagonal shape is an indication of its age.

The stained glass therein is stunning too and all in all, it’s quite an impressive building. One day I shall go back – alone – and bring you back some photos to demonstrate what I mean.

The streets surrounding the cathedral are not without interest. Small, tight and cobbled – the very typical medieval street scenes that were swept away in the mid-20th Century in most cities in the UK

And this sculpture was quite exciting too. All of the models on it are mobile and can be manipulated around. It drew quite a crowd and I had to wait ages for a suitable opportunity to photograph it, when there was no-one else loitering in the vicinity.

Aachen is quite a historic city.

Settlement dates back to neolithic times and was settled by the Romans, attracted to the site by the warm sulphur springs. It was in fact on the frontier of the settled Roman area.

Excavations have taken place in the city from time to time and some of the discoveries are on display, like this site in one of the town squares that is surrounded by a glass case. I particularly liked the idea of the drainage channel just here in the foreground.

The warm springs are just lower down from where these ruins are located, and I went off for a taste. Very sulphuric, and quite warm too. The taste was disgusting, but I had to try it. No point in being here if you don’t do something like that.

There is no photograph of the springs, and no photograph of the plaques with the list of names of the notable personalities who came here to take the water. This was because at this moment we were engulfed in something of a snowstorm.

As the snow eased off we walked back to the car.

Parts of the town are still decorated for Christmas, and some of the shop windows are phenomenal. This was one of my favourites, with the snowmen and other winter scenes, but there were plenty of others too.

And I can’t get over the bakeries either. I love German bread – there is just so much of it and it’s all good, and Aachen is no exception. Thoughts such as working out where the railway station might be in connection with the railway line to Leuven started to run through my mind.

As it grew dark, we hit the highway and headed for home. The return journey was quite quick and I was back here by 18:15. Many thanks to Alison for a good day out.

My day wasn’t finished though. OH Leuven were playing at home against Tubize, kick-off 20:00, so I braved the snowstorm and the freezing cold to go down there, grabbing a bag of chips on the way.

For a change, I wasn’t behind the goal but high up in the stand along the touchline level with the edge of the penalty area. A grandstand view, especially of down there where I usually sit.

AFC Tubize looked the better side and they had a player, the n°97, who looked streets ahead of anyone else on the field. His name is Jae-Gun Lee and he’s a recent signing, aged just 19, from Korea.

He’ll go far in European football, that’s for sure. Remember that you heard his name first on here

But OH Leuven went into the dressing room 1-0 up at half-time, rather against the run of play, thanks to an audacious step-over in the penalty area that totally flat-footed the Tubize defence.

I said that there was still plenty of time for OH Leuven to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and how prophetic those words were. From the first attack of the second half, Tubize won a penalty and it went all downhill after that.

And so in the torrential snowstorm that we were having, OH Leuven’s hopes drifted away. Tubize ran out 3-1 winners, and ended with the crowd booing the home side and cheering on the visitors.

That was rather harsh because OH Leuven had tried very hard, but their final ball was always falling short of where it was supposed to go. Nevertheless, they had plenty of chances to equalise, if not to win. But it was one of those games where nothing at all went right.

I walked back, freezing cold, and I’m tired and ready for bed. And I know that I’ll pay for all of this effort in the morning.

I’ll leave you instead with about 2,000 words and hope that you enjoy it.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality