Welcome home....the long way round

On Tuesday 15th May we discovered that we might be able to get a temporary car license plate, so I got home from work, called Direct Line who emailed me the necessary form although, with some experience of German bureaucracy, I was still a little dubious about our success. Early the next morning I went to the car registration place and...hey presto....they gave me a license plate valid for five days, oh ye of little faith.
So at short notice we booked a train to pick up the car in Wuppertal and decided, that since we were more than halfway there anyway, we would go onto Brugge in Belgium for the long weekend to join Lynne, Keith, Roger, Liz and Corrine.

Thursday 17th May was a public holiday in Germany although the office in Wuppertal was open for us to pick up the car. We left the apartment about 6.15am and four train rides and a one mile walk (all uphill) later we were re-united once again with the car.

A quick survey showed that all that needed to be done to make it conform to German standards was to fit a rear fog light, put in some white lights instead of yellow in the front and add a couple of reflectors on the rear bumper.

We headed off, via KFC, to Brugge and got there about 5.30pm to find our hotel in Damme was about 5 miles outside of there, the wrong side of Brugge.


We spent a good weekend there, good enough weather without being too hot, plenty of food and walking.










We did face a difficulty in spending money since the Belgian bank / government cannot decide if it wants to join the rest of the EU banks in adopting a common (Maestro) banking system. Where did someone say the EU HQ is? Oh yes, Bruxelles in ....Belgium!


We had warning signs of the trouble ahead in the Carrefour store when the cash would not accept four of five different cards from Germany, UK and even Canada. With a basket load of stuff we were summoned to the customer service desk where we repeated the exercise but this time the system decided to work and it accepted our card.


Saturday night was another fiasco in trying to get cash from ATM's although I found one (in six) that accepted my card at the third attempt. Many other tourists were also having trouble, we had to queue with about 15 others to get cash from the only ATM in Brugge that seemed to be working for tourists. Sunday morning, checking out of the hotel was another round of 'try this card...again'....the hotel owner said he was used to it, most visiting tourists seem to have problems with their cash and credit cards.



We left at 2.30pm on Sunday, a little later than planned and it didn't help getting home when we decided to stop to shop at a 'Euro Store'. There was also some showers on the way out of Belgium as well as some slow traffic and diversions. Once we got on the Autobahn we could at last pick up some speed although we still didn't get back to the apartment till almost midnight.


Anyway scattered throughout this post are more pics of the entire weekend, be thankful I didn't post all 94 pictures!