Travel Monologue, Five of Five

I know I wrote the epilogue already but this is Bollywood, no one cares about continuity or content, as long as the costumes and songs are new.

So, on Friday, after 12 months of bike, tram and metro, the nut-doctor finally relented and wrote a note to my loving employer who promptly endowed me with a day-glo blue/green family car. Very funny. Luckily Girlfriend owns a decent vehicle which I can also drive again.

The very next day (Saturday) I jumped into the drivers seat and set off like Ben Johnson going to an all-nighter in Amsterdam. Which is not far from the actual location of a most excellent barbecue/birthday party to which we were invited by Girlfriend's friend's boyfriend. Maarvellous.

We stayed in a hotel, not far from his house. They had a trainee on reception so we shuffled about and smiled politely while the cross-eyed supervisor guided her around the system. On seeing the room had twin beds I immediately said we had to swap. Girlfriend was not convinced to go to the effort for one night, but when she saw the bathroom she changed her mind. All the towels were on the floor, drenched, just like that scene from Planes, Trains And Automobiles after John Candy leaves the bathroom for Steve Martin. It's a small town, near Schiphol airport, where we discovered a full blown shopping centre complete with a tech shop which had a remarkable collection of movie classics, proper old classics not Man About the House, or Carry on Tits. Being something of a cultural black hole myself, I drooled over the camcorders while Girlfriend poured over the entire collection and picked out a couple of flics.

It was quick drive back today, not much traffic only to find the Tervuren Annual Street party is going on, not a bad end to the weekend. There's something about those things, the smell of food cooking in the open air brings back the childhood excitement of fun fairs and the seaside.

But now, I have to prepare the week. Monday night I'm off to Helsinki, Tuesday night I'll head to Copenhagen, back to the Sprout on Wednesday night, from Thursday I've got three or four days cycling around Loire with Girlfriend.

JJ