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Short trip in autumn 2007
14.10.2007: Sunday lunchtime we started from Bad Kreuznach to Brussels, Belgium. Unfortunately we had in the area Cologne a big traffic jam and arrived therefore later as planned in Brussels. We had the allowance from Rudi Mécs to stay on the companies ground of Studiotech – thanks again very much!
15.10.2007: After a short tour through the company saying hello to everybody the offered me electrical hook-up because we wanted to stay overnight once more. They even checked for us the best connection with public transport into the city. So we started with the tram to basilica Koekelberg to visit the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition. The exhibition in the new basilica war was very interesting. The separation into different periods such as his life, his art- and scientific heritage worked very well and showed the genius of him.
Afterwards we used the tram again to get into the city centre, which we continued to explore by feet. One of the highlights was the central market and of course we enjoyed the specialities such as pralines and waffles. The day was full of exciting impressions and with hurting feet we returned in the dark to Big Foot.
The royal palace:
16.10.2007: Before we started to a visit of the Atomium, which was recently renovated we thanked Studiotech for their hospitality. Even though I had been to Brussels quite often it was the first tour through the Atomium itself and besides the views from the top the documentation about the renovation was very interesting.
We started from here to Antwerp, which is roughly 50 km away. We found a nice parking area directly at the Schelde, some more meters further down would have been a real place for camper vans. But we remained on the first one and didn’t had any problems till we left. It was a nice, short walk till the historical city centre, which we explored intensively. Some waffles helped us to re-strengthen ourselves so that we were able to walk through lots of very old & beautiful streets before we had finally a dinner in a restaurant.
Again we returned with aching feet to Big Foot were we enjoyed our very old family films, saved from video-8 onto DVD (special thanks to „Flossi“!!).
17.10.2007: It was a little bit fresh in the night because the diesel tank was so empty that the heating couldn’t reach the rest but for driving was still enough in. So we started from Antwerp and took the first opportunity to fill some litres into the tank – but not too much because our target was Luxemburg! In Liege we went shopping in a supermarket. My navigation system caused some troubles and therefore I was not sure about the distance to Luxemburg and wanted to add some litres of diesel but the reasonably priced gas-station at the supermarket didn’t accept my Visa-card without a pin-#! OK, shouldn’t be too difficult to find a gas station soon – so I thought! So we started and the gas station directly at the motorway seemed to be too expensive and there should be some cheaper alternatives close to the motorway – so I thought! For the next 70 km (due to my feeling it was 700 km!!!) was neither a gas station at the motorway nor a bigger town were it was likely to find one! With a bad feeling we reached Habay and looked for a gas station – without success! Passing through the town-centre was not allowed and so we had to return to the motorway and take the next exit for the industrial area of Habay. Again we circled around and found only a huge Esso-centre but without public gas station. After some more circles we asked some pedestrians who told us that it possible to tank at the Esso-centre – although not immediately visible. So we drove there again and really – there was a pump. Unfortunately it was only for “professionals”, their industrial clients. But they understood our problem and allowed us to fill up with max. 50 litres. This were good news, but it was bad because all the truck in front of us had really huge tanks and they only had one working pump! It was as well bad that we were in the cue #7! So after 45 minutes we finally had our 50 litres, which were more than enough to get to Luxemburg without problems where we filled finally up the tank completely. The lesson for us was: Being avaricious can cost a lot of time! So we arrived very late in Trier at the camper area close to the exhibition centre and because of the rain we hired a taxi to bring us into the town centre to an Italian restaurant.
18.10.2007: The camper area is very good located, directly at the river Mosel, with a bus-stop – but even by feet the city centre is not too far away. Our target was the Constantin-exhibition, which was split in three locations. Our first target was the museum in the Simeonsstift next to the Porta Nigra.
It was quite crowded, e. g. they had run out of the audio-guides. After +/- 1 hour we had finished this bit and combined the tour to the next destination with a short shopping tour before we reached the “Rheinisches Landesmuseum” close to the roman thermal building. We were not too happy when we saw a long cue in front of the entrance but we were lucky that soon after our arrival the doors were re-opened and we were able to enter before they closed again! The amount of exhibits was much, much more than before in the Simeonsstift and so we spent here more than 3 hours. Meanwhile it was 16:00h and we decided to leave off the third part in the „Diözesanmuseum” because the religious issues weren’t that much of interest for us. With a lot of complaints from my wife we walked all the way back to the parking area and drove through the hills and forest of the Hunsrück back home – it was very beautiful because it was sunny and the trees were shining in different colours in the Indian summer.
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