The Terrible Catsafterme

The first thing that I thought about when I popped out of bed at 6am was that I wasn’t at home. The second thing was that…if I were at home, it would have been midnight. So I scraped myself out of bed, grabbed a shower, and prepared for the busy day ahead. The Mercure Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany did not have breakfast waiting for us, but it would be the last place in which we stayed that didn’t have a huge European-style buffet breakfast until our final two days in Europe. I stopped off at the lobby computer briefly on the way out and then headed to our car.

Our first challenge was to find a gas station and then figure out how to work the odd-looking pump and get the car fueled up. I sat back and watched. Then we headed over to the Trier train station to catch my first train of the trip. Chaos ensued even before we boarded the train.

My only German photo of the day illustrates the Wiley men mastering the European gas pumps and measuring system. The gas was sold by the liter – adding to the confusion.

First of all, the Wileys had paid extra for an early drop-off of the rental car, but there was no representative to be found at Europcar on this early Sunday morning, July 6, 2008. Briefly considering leaving the car on the street with the keys inside, LJ and Kris finally got ahold of someone from Europcar on the phone and they instructed us to leave the keys with the proprietor of the train station newsstand. With things falling apart around me, I greatly enjoyed the Ciabatta Venezia that I purchased at the station bakery. It was cheese bread topped with a thin Slim-Jim-like sausage. Mmmm, I can taste it now.

My Eurail Pass had not been purchased to include any trips inside Germany, so I had to make the decision to go ahead and board the tain in Germany without a valid ticket, even though within minutes we would be in the tiny country of Luxembourg. It all worked out because no one asked to see our passes until we were well into Luxembourg. In fact the only incident we ‘nearly’ had on the train was immediately after we boarded. We were all standing together when LJ looked out and realized that his Dad was back out on the platform looking for a soda machine. He darted off the train and grabbed him, and they ran back to the train as the doors were closing. They initially thought that the doors wouldn’t open, but thankfully they did. Kris and I stood there dumbfounded, wondering what we would have done had we lost the Jimmys.

We arrived in Luxembourg City at 8:45am. We found the locker area of the train station and put all of our luggage inside two lockers and then headed into the city on foot. I found a local shop that sold magnets and puchased one for Luxembourg. Luxembourg City was a nice little town, although we really didn’t know exactly what to look for. Only the Casemates stood out as being a well-known attraction of the city – although we really didn’t know what the Casemates were.

Turns out that they were all around us the entire time. There were 23 kilometers of casemates (fortified fortress tunnels) built all around Luxembourg City in the 1600’s, making the city nearly the best fortified city in the world. This helped them hold out for long periods of time while under siege during the French Revolution. We tried to find out how to tour the Casemates, waiting for the Luxembourg City Visitors Center to open up at 10am (and then deciding to move on without actually visiting them), and then trying to ask a taxi driver who only spoke French. “Everywhere are the Casemates,” he told us.

We snapped some photos of the region and then decided that we couldn’t make the 10am tour of the Casemates, which we eventually found – conveniently located near the Casemates WC. That is, the ‘water closet’ – or restroom for you laymen. In fact I used said WC and got to the hear the female proprietor scream at two Japanese businessmen who apparently had tried to sneak into a toilet stall without paying.

 The streets of Luxembourg City

The Gëlle Fra monument (or Monument of Remembrance), honoring Luxembourgers who volunteered in World War 1

 Looking for the Casemates, yet being on top of them

Atop a section of the Casemates, overlooking the Luxembourg and European Union flags under the slate gray Victorian skies

One entrance to the Casemates

The only photo of the Wileys in Luxembourg. Kris’ hair is just barely visible as they exit the taxi at the train station.

We opted to have more time at our next stop – Brussels, Belgium – rather than delaying our stay in Luxembourg. So with a heavy heart, wishing we could have seen more, we took a taxi cab back to the train station and headed to our next destination, and third country of the day.

The train ride was three hours long, from 11:24am – 2:23pm. Upon arrival at the train station, we again attempted to store our luggage into the train station lockers. This one was much more difficult as an entire section was out-of-order and almost all others were occupied. We had to stuff all of our bags in separate smaller lockers…and acquire the necessary change to do it. Now it was feeling like a typical vacation, where seldom does anything ever go as planned – but eventually we got the job done.

 Trouble with the Brussels lockers

Jumping my first velvet rope to be photographed with a memorial in the train station. Translated, this is dedicated to Railwaymen who died for their country during the time span of the two World Wars. It’s too bad that someone felt the need to put up advertising in front of it.

Again by foot we walked around the area, strolling through the Parc de Bruxelles (Brussels Park), past the Belgian Federal Parliament building, the American Embassy (of which were denied by local police the opportunity to take pictures), the Royal Palace of Brussels, and a statue of Augustin Daniel-Belliard, a French General from the late 1700s / early 1800s. We then decided to head out via local train to the outskirts of the city to visit the Atomium.

Typical Belgian architecture

An oddly spurting fountain in Brussels Park

In front of the Belgian Parliament

 I’m the green speck trying to break into the Brussels Royal Palace

With the statue of Augustin Daniel-Belliard

The Atomium was built for the Brussels World Fair in 1958 (or its proper name Expo 58) in the Heysel plateau seven kilometers northwest of Brussels. It consists of nine spherical orbs connected by tubed walkways, representing the appearance of an iron crystal cell magnified 165 billion times. There is also a park at the foot of the Atomium called Mini Europe which houses small-scale reproductions of 350 European landmarks. Unfortunately, the price to enter Mini Europe and the Atomium was 25 Euros and we would have had less than an hour to see all of it, so we opted to simply enjoy the Atomium from the exterior.

 The Wileys relax for a minute on the local Brussels train

In front of the massive Atomium, which at 355 feet tall is much larger than it appears here

Surrounding Mini Europe and the Atomium was Bruparck Brussels, which was mostly a variety of restaurants. We decided that we did have time to eat here, so we sat down to a great lunch at a restaurant called Snack Titi. Although the food was Greek rather than Belgian, I really enjoyed great Assiettes Pita Gyros. It tasted familiar although I could not quite place it. I later found out that it was actually turkey, and then recalled that it had the flavor of the hot turkey legs I had often eaten at Disney World. I had a local beverage called a Tropico, which was merely a fruit punch.

Enjoying my Tropico and Pita Gyros plate, with plenty of frites

It had been recommended to me that I have a Belgian Waffle while in Belgium, so we stopped at a little shop called Youpy and dug in. I chose mine without the chocolate covering, and it was delicious – having had the syrup baked right into the waffle. The Wileys each got one two, purchasing one covered in dark chocolate. I tried a bite of it and it was good, but awfully rich. I preferred my naked waffle. Mmmm, I say again, I can taste it now.

Achieving my lifelong goal of eating a Belgian Waffle in Belgium

Youpy’s was good to the Wileys

We took the local train back to the Brussels train station to pick up our luggage and catch the 5:19 train to Den Haag, Netherlands. Try as I did, I simply could not find any magnets in Belgium, which I feared would leave a hole in my collection of magnets from the eight countries we would visit. Only later would I solve the problem when we stopped back at this very same train station on our way to Paris the following week.

This train traveled from 5:19pm – 7:25pm. We had a seven minute layover in Den Haag to catch another 12-minute train ride to Leiden, and then an eight minute layover to catch a final 15-minute train to Alphen aan den Rijn (or as I would prefer to say Alpen on the Rhine). We ran into fellow Sons of the Desert member Lori Jones McCaffery on this train, which was especially ironic since she was the last person who the Wileys saw at the airport when leaving Los Angeles. She had been traveling for a week on her own as well.

We took a taxi, or rather two, to our ultimate destination: the Hotel Avifauna in Alphen ann den Rijn. It was nearly 8:30pm by the time we arrived. Here we were greeted by hordes of Sons of the Desert members who had already arrived for the pre-convention activities.

Arriving at the Hotel Avifauna, where we would set up camp for the week

After checking in, unpacking (and encountering those pushed-together beds I mentioned in the last posting), and visiting with some of our Sons friends, a group of us met for a late dinner in the hotel restaurant. Since it was late and I had had a big lunch and it was quite expensive, I decided to only have a light dinner of a Ceasar Salad with bacon and a bowl of mushroom soup. I was also excited that the water here was free. Although it was nearing 10pm, there was no sign that it was yet getting dark. Service was horribly slow (as it would be all over Europe), so we didn’t get out of the restaurant until 11pm, and it was just now starting to look dark outside. It was midnight before Jimmy and I actually got to bed.

Dinner at the Avifauna with Lori, Jimmy, me, John, Big Jimmy, Kris, and Janet

I had spent the first 36 years of my life on the North American Continent, and had just been in four European countries in one day. Needless to say, it had been a very busy weekend and my sleep cycle was still out-of-whack, but there was no stopping this bullet train quite yet. True rest would really never come.

The trip will continue…

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 6:28 am and is filed under 2000's - Late, Historical Locations, Vacations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.