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Tuesday 28th February 2017 – COLD, GREY, WET, MISERABLE AND WINDY.

But that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about Oostende, because that’s where I am right now. And this is the train that brought me here from Leuven – a nice comfortable modern and clean express train. And we didn’t have a derailment either.

Having been liberated from the hospital for the next 6 weeks, and having things to do around Belgium this coming weekend, there’s no point in going home. I may as well go and find the seaside for a few days.

As seems to be the custom these days, one really good night is followed by one that is really bad. And last night was no exception.

By the time that I’d finished everything that I had to do, it was almost midnight, so I didn’t listen to the radio at all but simply switched off the laptop and settled down for the night. I’m not sure whether I dozed off at any time, but I do know that at 05:00 I was up and going for a stroll down the corridor – and hasn’t it been ages since I’ve had to do that?

I must have gone to sleep after that because the alarm awoke me at 07:00 as usual. I just about made it to breakfast where I was joined by my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder friend up to his usual antics, and my Dutch/Russian friend who wanted a long chat – but he must be joking.

This appetite thing is getting to me too because I decided that rather than throw most of my breakfast into the rubbish bin as I seem to have been doing these last few days, I’d just have a slice of toast. And if I’m off my food you know that something is really wrong;

After a relax, I packed up my stuff, said goodbye to the aforementioned Dutch/Russian guy and hit the streets, in the direction of the railway station.

And once there, I had a choice of two trains for me, the 10:19 changing at Gent St Pieters on the stopping train, or else the 10:34 direct to Oostende. Only 15 minutes difference so I chose the latter, which is just as well because at that moment my suitcase fell apart. Rather, the dragging handle broke off and that rather defeats the purpose of bringing it instead of the big shoulder bag that I usually take with me. I knew that there was a reason why this lives in the back of Caliburn – now I remember why, that it’s not up to all that much. I have a couple of others at home but I’m clearly going to have to buy another one before I go much farther.

This time I’d come prepared, with the big Nikon handy. On the way out of the station we took the same track as the other day close to the carriage sidings and I could take a much better photograph of the front bit of that ancient multiple unit that’s parked up here.

And it looks even worse at a higher resolution, the poor thing. It really does need a good home

That’s not all that there was that was exciting over there.

There’s some kind of ancient carriage parked up there too. With a rear platform like that it looks something like out of the wild west that we encountered in New Mexico when we were on our travels over there in 2002.

I don’t recall seeing photos of anything like this on Belgian rails, but you never know

We took the high ground out of Leuven and passed above where the railway derailment had been on the 18th of February. You can see quite a bit of debris still by the side of the line, and the new ballast where the track has been relaid.

When I passed by here the other day on my way to Lokeren I hadn’t been quick enough to photograph it – but today I was ready with the Nikon and so I could add it in.

The weather was really confusing today. When we arrived at the railway station it was cold and wet, with a gale blowing that threatened to whip off my cap.

But then the clouds blew away, the sun came out and although the wind didn’t drop, it wasn’t too unpleasant. And then the clouds came back, and brought the rain with them again.

And round and round we went.

We were not the only things that were going round and round either. There’s a wind farm just offshore here at Oostende and the weather was such that they were going round and round too – like the clappers in fact.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a big fam of wind turbines and I’m really surprised that, with all of this wind energy freely available, that other countries don’t take advantage of it.

I can count on on hand the number of commercial wind turbines in New Brunswick and Labrador – all of this free energy going completely to waste.

How long is it since we have had a Ship of the Day? You must have noticed the big one out near the wind farm, and so I cropped a part out of the photograph and blew it up. I can do this kind of thing despite modern terrorism legislation.

I’ve no idea what kind of ship it is, but the flattish front makes me think that it might be some kind of ro-ro freighter, and the load that it’s carrying is suggestive of railway wagons.

However I don’t know of any rail-freighter operating around here since the closure of Dover Western Docks.

We can have another Ship of the Day while we are at it.

As you know from our previous visits to Oostende, fishing is the big thing here since the ending of the Oostende Ferries. We’ve visited the big fishmarket and seen the outdoor stalls. The fish is mostly fresh out of the sea, due to the fishing fleet that’s based here in the port.

Here’s one of the aforementioned on its way out to sea. It’ll be back here in the small hours and its catch will be on the market shortly afterwards

While you admire the rear of the Casino, having seen the front last time I was here, I headed off to my hotel.

It’s the same one as last time, the excellent and impressive Hotel Imperial, and I have the same coach-driver’s room that I had last time, stuck down in the corner. Last time that I was here it was a dark red – today it’s a light blue with yellow and green stripes

It was about 12:30 when I arrived and the receptionist, efficient, polite and as curt as ever, told me that check-in time was 15:00 and if I would like to leave my bags in the luggage store in the basement and come back then, she’d register me in.

And so I went off for a butty and then had a good walk along the seafront in the biting wind and watery sunshine to find a café. A nice hot mug of coffee was definitely on the cards.

Having dealt with the food and coffee issues, I went to continue my walk along the promenade. I ended up at the Villa Maritza – one of the last vestiges of the Belle Epoch along the seafront here in Oostende.

Originally known as the Villa rosenda, it dates from 1885 and was the home of the manager of the casino at the turn of the 20th Century.

In the 1980s it was abandoned and threatened with demolition, but was bought by the local council. They used the upper floor as offices while a restaurant occupied the ground floor. Now it’s undergoing a process of renovation.

I made it to the beach too, but didn’t stay out there too long what with the wind. It really was savage. But finally it was time for me to head back to the Imperial and book myself in.

What I didn’t like was the booking clerk looking at me. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”. No wonder that there was no silverware on display and there were no young and nubile serving wenches loitering in the vicinity. Anyway, I headed up to my room

First thing that I did was to unpack my stuff.
Second thing that I did was to have a beautiful hot shower and to wash my clothes – and of course I had some clean ones from the launderette on Sunday.
Third thing that I did was to lie down on the bed and to close my eyes for five minutes. My eyelids were terribly heavy.

A couple of hours I was out for, and a good couple of house it was too. It mush have been a good walk that I had had, that’s all I can say.

Both Liz and Alison were on line so I had a good chat with both of them to pass the time of day in pleasant company, and this tookme nicely up to tea time. There’s a nice little fritkot across town and that’s where I decided to aim for.

That wasn’t as easy as it might have been, seeing as by now the rain was absolutely streaming down. I had the usual joke with the night porter about
“How can you tell when it’s summer in Belgium?”
“Well, the rain is usually much warmer”.

Of course, having gone all of that way, I discovered that the place was closed tonight. That was rather odds-on wasn’t it?

Instead, I walked back to the fritkot down the road from here and had a falafel butty for tea instead. Wasn’t quite the same but this really wasn’t the weather to go about exploring.

Instead, I found my way back to my hotel room and called it an early night. I was pretty well exhausted after my long day out and the distances that I had travelled.

And it’s not looking good for the weekend when I need to be on my best behaviour, is it?

Saturday 25th February 2017 – IT’S THE START …

… of the Krokusvakantie here in Belgium this week. That’s the school half-term, and while it might be known as “Carnaval” in the French-speaking areas of the country, you can see why it has its name around here in Flanders, can’t you?

On my travels and I had a walk back from Caliburn through the Kruidtuin – the Botanical Gardens here in Leuven and the flowers are well and truly blooming today, aren’t they?

If you ask me what kind of flowers they are, I would say that they were mauve ones, because I know nothing whatever abut flowers, so they might not even be crocuses at all, but whatever they are, they are quite prettu.

So what was I doing at Caliburn then? And not once today but twice too.

In fact, I’ve made a start on emptying my room out reading for (hopefully) leaving on Tuesday if all goes according to plan.

But first surprise of the day was that the crane on the corner of the Brusselsestraat and the Kruisstraat has now disappeared. Work seems to have finished on the facade of the building across the road.

And what a good job they seem to have made of it too. I imagine that they’ve re-pointed the brickwork and sealed the joints underneath the roof, and now they’ve added some tiles to the wall to weatherproof it.

All in all, it loks very impressive from here

And so after yet another bad night, I was once more alone at breakfast (which suite me fine) although my garrulous Dutch/Russian friend did stick his head around the corner to make himself a coffee – I really am not up to social conversation at 07:00.

But after a relax downstairs in my room, I set to work.

It was a case of going through everything that I have here and deciding upon its priority – am I likely to be using it between now and a week on Tuesday (and there are reasons for this particular date)? And if not, I started to load it up into a couple of IKEA bags that I had lying around. That includes most of the food for a start – no reason for most of that to be hanging around for a start. And books, and bottles of pop and the like. I remember thinking when I was in Sedan back in November that I would buy just enough stuff for the first month of my stay. Here I am, three months in, and I haven’t eaten half of it.

Once I was loaded up, I set off to Caliburn to deposit it all, and then down to the Carfefour by the football ground for the stuff for pizza night tomorrow.

A little deviation (and I’m always up for a little deviation as you know) through the Kruidtuin to see the crocuses and then back here, via the Supermarket on the corner. And there’s a thing – there were plenty of black plastic boxes of the sort that I had been liberating, but all stacked up neatly at the back of the warehouse. My response is that if they don’t want people to liberate them, they shouldn’t leave them outside by the bins.

After lunch, we had another session of loading up the IKEA bags, and then after a brief pause I went back down to Caliburn with the stuff and deposited it there.

While I had been having a relax just now, I was idly scanning the internet. And something that I saw gave me an idea – I have plenty of ideas, don’t I? Furthermore, a little research on the internet proved that it was a feasible proposition too. Thus I had a quick coffee, and hit the streets.

Here I am, at the Antwerp Berchem railway station on the south side of the city, waiting for the train to Gent and Oostende which is just a-cumen in.

But I’m not going to either of these places.

Somewhere just after St Niklaas is the small town of Lokeren. It’s a place that I’ve never ever visited before and seeing as how I’m hoping to be on my way in early course, now seemed to be the right kind of time to deal with that issue

No derailments today – we were in luck – but we had to take a different track out of the station. My luck was in, for this one took us close to the carriage sidings and I had a good view of something that had caught my eye away in the distance on several occasions.

It’s actually a very sorry example of the first-generation Continental multiple units, one of the ones that you used to see painted red and cream that used to wander over the French SNCF and presumably Belgian SNCB rail networks in the &950s

Mind you, this is just one of the driving carriages of a multiple unit set and it has long-since lost the colours that it might have carried on the SNCB. But it’s beautiful all the same and I wonder what it’s doing here.

And more to the point, why no-one has seen fit to rescue it. I’d take it home with me in a heartbeat.

No prizes for guessing why I’ve come to Lokeren, is there?

I owe myself a football match from last weekend, what with the train derailment in Leuven, this match is a Belgian Jupiler Pro League (the equivalent of a Premier League match).

I’ve never been to Lokeren, never seen either of the clubs play, and KAS Eupen was on of the teams on my list of clubs to see

The ground is only a 20-minute walk from the railway station, and that means that if I exert myself and the game finishes on time, I could catch the 22:17 to St Niklaas, change for a train to Mechelen, and then catch a train from there to Brussels and then on to Leuven.

If I missed it, there is a train at 23:11 in the other direction to Gent St Pieters and then the last train from there to Leuven, getting me back to the railway station at Leuven at about 01:00.

That sounded like a plan.

I found the Daknamstadion easily enough – it was quite straightforward, rather like the walk that we have made so often to het Lisp at Lier. And the stadium resembled that at Lier too. They must order them off the peg or something like that, I reckon.

I had a cheap seat (€18:00 for a Premier League match) behind the goal, but in a corner where I wouldn’t be hemmed in by chanting supporters.

But they were up at the far end in the standing bit, with the away supporters right next to them. That’s bizarre crowd segregation, I can say.

But … tragedy! We had the mascot, not that he was up to very much of course, but there were no cheerleaders!

All this way on the train and not a single cheerleader to be seen anywhere. how disappointing is that? I had a good mind to go and ask for my money back.

But at least it’s a Premier League match, so entertainment and excitement was sure to be guaranteed, wasn’t it?

But right from the kick-off, I could tell that this match was going to be something completely different.

Because if ever there are two more inept teams as these playing anywhere in the top flight of any football league anywhere else in the world (and I include Rockall and the Lofoten Islands in this) I just wouldn’t believe it.

These two teams were totally clueless from start to finish, and I mean every word of that. If this was a Premier League match, then God help them all

KAS eupen had a player sent off after about 20 minutes – what for, I couldn’t really see. And KSC Lokeren scored a penalty during the match – a rather strict penalty if you ask me.

But KAS Eupen scored two goals, even being 1 man down. And that’s not an idication of how good they were, it’s an indication of how totally inept KSC Lokeren were.

KAS Eupen’s two goals were a breakaway down the wing, a cross into the centre and a rather hopeful volley from about 20 yards out, and a ricochet off the referee that dropped nicely for an Eupen player to hoist over the wall into space where there was a team-mate running on
.

KAS Eupen hit the post too, and their keeper made five or six magnificent saves too.

In fact, the KAS Eupen keeper, Hendrik Van Crombrugge, was by far and away the best player on the pitch. The KSC Lokeren n°14, Mehdi Terki, had a good game, but I wouldn’t have given you twopence for the remainder.

And if you want to see the … errr … highlights of the match, they are now on-line. But it beats me how they managed to find 8 minutes of them. I’m on the far right of the screen at 04:34 – in the bright yellow coat.

Despite the late start ond the 4 minutes of injury time, I put on such a turn of speed that not only was I comortably in time for the 22:17, the earlier 22:11 for Gent St Pieters. I hopped on board – and wasn’t that a fatal mistake?

Yes, everyone would expect that with almost all trains running at one-hour intervals, then all trains would run at one-hour intervals. That is almost true, and the only exception is the express train from Oostende across to Welkenraedt (that goes through Leuven), and that runs at 90-minute intervals. And so the train that I had caught arrived in Gent 20 minutes after the previous one had left, and the next one was the one that I would have caught had I come here on the 23:11 from Lokeren. In other words, being early at Lokeren station had made me as late as it is possible to be.

So here I was in Gent, stranded yet again with well over an hour to wait for the train. At least it gave me an opportunity to go for a stroll around in the late evening.

The station really does look magnificent in the urban light, like most of these beautiful Victorian piles, except that it isn’t a Victorian pile. The railway station that was here was nothing spectacular, apparently, but when they announced that they would be holding the 1913 World’s Fair here, they designed and built a railway station building to suit the aims and the ambitions of the Fair

The interior is fairly spectacular, had it been allowed to settle in its own surroundings, but it was partitioned off into shops, full of coin machines and people sleeping all over the place. I was rather disappointed.

I sat there with the bag of fritjes that I had bought from the fritkot across the square until my train arrived.

It was almost 01:00 when I arrived at the station here, and about 01:45 when I returned here. Cold, tired and exhausted.

I went straight to bed, and straight to sleep too. It was late.

Monday 20th February 2017 – I’M BACK …

… in the bad sleep rhythm again unfortunately. Last night was one of those like I was havong a few nights ago, tossing, turning, waking up, unable to go back to sleep.

MInd you, I was asleep enought to go on my travels. To Tibet, I told myself, but it was actually Nepal where I was – with no Chinese soldiers about. I was crossing the country and in the centre was some guy who was restoring these three-wheeled motorcycle things that had a motorcycle front and a flatbed at the back for the carriage of goods. They had all kinds of weird vehicles there and I was really keen to buy something unusual to take home, so I had quite a chat with this guy. But I was in a hurry to be on my way so I continued on my trip. Later that evening I was looking for a hotel but I realised that I had left the country and that was a shame – I hadn’t thought about it at the time but it would have been a good idea and a feather in my cap to have stayed for a night in Nepal/Tibet and add it to the list of countries where I had stayed.

My Dutch/Russian friend was at breakfast and so was the other guy, so they talked amongst themselves and left me to it. But the other guy is leaving today so the Dutch guy and I tomorrow are going to empty all of the fridges, clean them, and throw away everything that doesn’t belong to us.

Later that morning I went up to the hospital to see the Welfare girl. I need a prognostic of my condition because it’s possible that if they acknowledge that my health will deteriorate, I might be able to claim an extra allowance for home help, and that will be nice. But she wasn’t so hopeful that this kind of thing will be possible.

After lunch I got on the phone to the people in Evaux les Bains. Caliburn still has his bump in the rear and the insurance company says that this garage can fix it for me. You remember that I visited there in December for an inspection of Caliburn. He’s booked in for Monday 13th March and they will let me have a rental vehicle while Caliburn is being fixed. They’ll also be dealing with the rust issues on the nearside sill.

As usual, I had a crash out and then I went up to make tea. Oven chips, beans and veggie burgers, followed by the last of the pineapples and vegan ice cream.

I’ll be having an early night now and getting ready for yet another day out tomorrow.

Saturday 18th February 2017 – YOU’RE LUCKY …

… that you are reading this today. Had I been more organised and more patient, I would possibly not have been here to write it.

Just for a change, I had a good night’s sleep last night. Asleep reasonably early – woke up just once to switch off the laptop, and slept right through until the alarm at 07:00. With it being weekend, there are no workmen about at ridiculous hours of the morning.

I had company at breakfast – a new arrival in the building, and that meant that my Russian friend (he’s not actually Russian, he’s Dutch who lives in Russia with a Russian wife) had someone else to talk to at breakfast so I could be my usual quiet self.

Back down here, I had a play around with my 3D program, something that I haven’t done for quite a while. And then I had a good wash and scrub to get myself clean ready for my day out.

OH Leuven are playing at Brugge to day against Cercle Brugge. This is an important match as Cercle Brugge are 3rd bottom and OH Leuven are second-bottom. OH Leuven must win this to avoid relegation – a spectre that has been staring them in the face for a good few weeks.

Not only that, I’ve never been to Cercle Brugge’s ground. It’s a hell of a long walk away from the station – the second-longest after Royal Antwerp – so I needed to be on form.

With the beautiful weather, I walked up to the station and bought my ticket for the train. And then I was presented with a conundrum. There was a choice of two trains – one at 13:19 which is a stopping train, and one at 13:34 which is an express and actually arrived first.

So having had nothing to eat for lunch, I decided on the second train and went to the bakery in the basement to buy some bread and coffee to eat on the train.

Back on the platform with my lunch, my train pulled in and I clambered aboard. And then we waited. And waited. eventually we were all asked to alight as the train would not be leaving – there was an “obstruction on the line”.

I blagged my way onto an Antwerp train where I could change for Brugge. But then, that wasn’t leaving either, even though it takes a different line out of the city.

Eventually, they closed the station, saying that no trains would be leaving for the rest of the day. A fleet of buses was laid on to take everyone to Brussels-Nord railway station where they could catch a train and continue their journeys but it was pointless for me. I’d never make it to Brugge for the match so I walked home.

Back here, I found out the reason why everything had gone to pot. A train had left Leuven station and had derailed itself, falling off the rails at the points, fallen over onto its side, and there had been deaths and injuries.

Further enquiries revealed that it was the 13:19 to De Panne – the train that I would have caught had I not gone downstairs to buy some bread and coffee.

This reminds me of that famous incident many years ago when someone said that some woman “had been badly injured in a rail accident but had survived, and all of her friends expressed their regret”.

Yes, looks as if I have had a narrow escape.

Back here, I crashed out for a while and then watched some football on the internet. I even missed my afternoon coffee due to sleep issues.

For tea tonight I had pizza and garlic bread. I’m out tomorrow evening so I reckoned that I would catch it today. And my garrulous Russian friend was up there making his tea. He wanted to chat. And I’m sure that someone else has been nibbling away at my pineapples and ice cream.

Another early night and a good clean up tomorrow, as I’m out with Alison. I’ll need all of my strength.

Friday 17th February 2017 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… and about today, but eve though I ended up taking four different trains, what with one thing or another I was only able to take one photograph of them. This is the train that took me from Brussels Gare du Nord to Brussels Schuman

If you notice the sign to the right of the train, you’ll see that it’s running 7 minutes late. That’s certainly a rare event here in Belgium, and it was my good luck because had it been on time I would have missed it and been obliged to wait for another half-hour

I had a reasonable night’s sleep just for a change, and at breakfast I was joined by my neightbour. He’s a Russian from Yekaterinburg in Siberia and he wanted a good chat. I’m never at my best first thing in the morning and having a chat at that time in the morning is the last thing on mine.

I alighted at Brussels Schuman, underneath the Berlaymont Building over there, and went off to chat to the people in the Public Transport Office.

All of the tickets and the methods of payment for the public transport in the city and as I shall be using the public transport quite a lot in the near future, I need to be up-to-date with what is happening.

The routes have changed too, and yet Bane of Britain here forgot to ask for an up-to-date public transport map, didn’t he?

Once I’d organised myself at the Public Transport Office, I went off to my bank (this isn’t it, by the way). I told you the other day about my bank card issues – they couldn’t sort it out and the bank round the corner from my hostel so I had to come here to do it.

However, they couldn’t do anything about it either, so I’ve had to order some new cards – because my credit card from here is overdue here too.

They are going to hang on to them for a while until I’m settled in my new abode, wherever ( and whenever – that might be. No point in posting them to Virlet right now.

We also had a go at trying to set me up for phone banking. But that was a hopeless task. We were there for over half an hour while they tried to download the Application to my mobile phone, but without any luck.

I shall have to try it some other time, and hope that it’s all self-explanatory.

That’s the Justus Lipsius Building, the home of the Council of Ministers of the European Union, and that’s where I spend nine and a half of the happiest years of my life

This was the reason why I had come here. My time at the hospital is coming to an end and I need to have my paperwork up to date and make plans for my future.

My former employers have a good social welfare department and seeing as I’m in the vicinity I ought to be taking full advantage of it.

We had another exciting incident at the security check. They discovered my knife – the one that I keep in my backpack for making my butties when I’m on my travels. They kept it back and told me that I could reclaim it on my departure.

It’s not the same as all those years ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I passed through the security barrier at an EU meeting in Luxembourg. They gave me a basket in which to put all of my metal while I passed through the security screen, and so I put my butty knife in there, went through the screen, and they then handed back to me all of my metal objects to take into the meeting, including my butty knife.

So much for security.

The meeting was quite productive in certain respects, but not too much in other respects. Nevertheless, I ended up with some good advice, a few tips and hints, and an enormous packet of papers to add to the pile that I already have.

Even more good news is that the Medical Service now has a public office where I can go for advice, to have an on-line accounting service set up for me and all of that, but as regular readers of this rubbish will be well aware, it’s closed after lunch on Fridays and I wouldn’t have time to get there now before it closes

Back outside, I went for a little walk around the Rue de la Loi. That’s a street that I know backwards, having worked in it for so long, but it hasn’t half changed and I no longer recognise it.

The Residence Palace, the beautiful Art-Deco building next door to Justus Lipsius and which was allegedly the headquarters of the German Army in Belgium in World War II has been demolished and this hideous monstrosity has been erected in its place.

It’s absolutely ghastly

I headed back to the station, calling back at the Berlaymont Building again to take a photograph of the sign on the wall. I don’t actually have a photograph of this and it’s high time that I added one into my collection.

And it was here that I had another good idea and went for a little walk in the rain. There are things that will be happening here in a couple of weeks time and the presence of the European Institutions is a vital part of any young person’s education. People should take full advantage of it

My perambulations took me past the European Parliament building. This is a really difficult building to photograph as it’s hemmed in by other large buildings and there isn’t a clear shot of it.

But outside is a fragment of the Berlin Wall that was brought here after the opening up of the city.

There’s a plaque on it that says
“in honour of the victims of dictatorial regimes and as a symbol of the European people’s commitment to peace, freedom and democracy”
and it’s something that a few countries busily building walls around themselves, whether virtual walls or physical walls, will do well to remember.

And if the European Union had any pride, honour and dignity, it would be repeating these words as often as possible in its encounters with this new wave of fascist dictators before it is too late.

The Gare Luxembourg is next to the European Parliament and there I caught a train back to the Gare du Midi

I went for a prowl around outside to look for a fritkot as I was starving, and this caught my eye. It’s the express bus to Casablanca in Morocco and it’s one of those trips that I have always promised myself that i would do one day, although I might have missed my window of opportunity.

What’s particularly exciting about it though is the trailer that the bus will be pulling. There’s a gas oven there about to be loaded together with a pile of other stuff, bags, packages, all sorts.

It’s not quite goats and sheep of course but nevertheless it shows that the recycling economy and the recup, the system of recovering unwanted household assets, is still working fine.

After lunch I walked back to the Gare du Midi and stepped onto the platform and right onto a Leuven train which was waiting at the platform. It departed almost immediately and we were back at Leuven by 16:00.

For some unknown reason I fancied an ice cream, but all of my favourite ice cream places were closed. I eventually found one but the selection of vegan sorbets wasn’t all that exciting.

Walking back here, I came across something exciting. We had a couple of workmen on one of those lifting platforms doing something to a tree.

I’m not sure what it is that they are doing, but it’s somethign to do with a chain of decorative lights that is strung up there.

Talking it down, or putting it up? I have no idea. But it gave me something to think about.

Back here, I crashed out as you might expect. I’d been out and walked miles too.

But I was awake for tea time anyway, and the final portion of my kidney bean whatsit was excellent, especially washed down with pineapple rings and vegan sorbet.

So now it’s another early night. Part II of my mega-adventurous weekend is tomorrow and I need to be on form.

Tuesday 4th March 2014 – THIS MORNING TOOK ME BY SURPRISE

As you can see by looking at poor Caliburn, we’ve had a right pasting of snow this morning. It was certainly impressive!

But then again I had an interesting night. A couple of Security guards were accompanying some notable person and how they communicated with each other was by coded flashes of a torch. They thought that it was quite novel but I took the trouble to explain to them that we had been doing that for years – even down to having different lenses (clear, green, red) and even Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes adventures had been doing it. (The Speckled Band as it happens).

So that was enough excitement for the morning. I headed off into the town of La Massana at the bottom of the hill.

There’s a huge ski slope up in the mountains and the lifts start from right in the town. A gondola or two went a-clattering over my head and so I resolved for a closer inspection.

Seems that these days Yours Truly is entitled to a Senior Citizens’ discount but even so, €7:50 was still a lot of money to spend. But anyway, as Martin Luther once said – “hier stehe ich – ich kann nicht anders”.
I was tempted to hire some skis and other kit for a little go but I’m glad that I didn’t because of course it’s Carnaval and school holidays. The slopes were absolutely teeming with kids.

It was freezing cold too and the wind was perishing so after a cup of coffee and a wander around, I came back down again and continued my walk around the town.

But you can see where much of the money in Andorra is coming from these days. Some of the Estate Agents have their adverts written in Russian for their nouveau-riche visitors. And as for the prices, well you and I can forget it. Think of a number, double it, and then add some more on top;

It wasn’t just the house prices in Russian either. We had menus in Russian, notices in Russian, signs in Russian, all that kind of thing. In 25 years the Russians have gone from being oppressed Communists to the worst kind of Capitalists. That’s what a western lifestyle does for you.

The country is, however, very welcoming and even terrorists are made to feel at home and given every assistance possible.

Almost every commercial building has a little place where a terrorist can leave his bomb … “are you sure about this?” – ed … no sending it by post or sticking it in a waste paper bin here.

Good old Andorra!

So after a really good wander around and some falafel with hummus, I went back to my hotel.

That’s it up there – the Hotel Gaspa. And such a nice, warm, friendly place it is too that I’ve decided to stay on here for an extra day. I don’t want to be going far by road in this weather, and at least I’m comfortable here.

-3

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: russian

Tuesday 28th February 2017 – COLD, GREY, WET, MISERABLE AND WINDY.

Saturday 25th February 2017 – IT’S THE START …

Monday 20th February 2017 – I’M BACK …

Saturday 18th February 2017 – YOU’RE LUCKY …

Friday 17th February 2017 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

Tuesday 4th March 2014 – THIS MORNING TOOK ME BY SURPRISE

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