Visiting Friends in Lübeck

After loading our entire luggage in the car, we started our trip in Grimbergen at 10 a.m. We still had to go to the Abdijstraat and after saying goodbye to Frank’s parents we left without any traffic jams. The trip itself was fine, of course we had to stop several times to change and feed Caitlin. Today was probably the most problematic (traffic-wise) since we had to cover the long distance between Belgium and the North of Germany in one day.

At around 6:30 we arrived at our hotel, an Etap hotel with the typical practical Etap design. This means it is one star more than a Formule 1 hotel (a little bit more comfort, an acceptable breakfast buffet and free internet in the rooms). The toilets and bathroom (separate) reminded me a bit about those in a train wagon, and cleaning them will probably take 30 seconds with a high-pressure water gun and some disinfectant.

We unpacked, rested a bit and left for my friend Tinchen and her mother Anni, a friendship that dates back to the times when young kids had pen pals and sent them real letters… We were welcomed with warmth and first of all exchanged some news about what had happened in our lives. Old memories were revived too and on top of all the nice conversation we were served a delicious gratin with meat, peppers and tomatoes.

Caitlin was her usual friendly and curious self, only quite late did she get tired and a bit cranky, so we decided to go back to our hotel room and went straight to bed. Having Caitlin sleep between us proved very comfortable. Maybe we shouldn't bring our travel bed anymore next time.

Tomorrow we will test www.bewelcome.org in Rostock :)

Friday 13th - Bad Luck in Bremen

This article was first published on Friday 13th, 2007

In April we visited my brother and his family in Peer, then we drove to Düsseldorf to meet Anja and finally we drove to Bremen with Claudia’s family to celebrate her mum’s birthday. What was supposed to be a nice little get-together turned into something close to a nightmare!

On our first day (Friday the 13th) somebody broke into the hotel and stole all our stuff : 2 laptops, mobile phone, mp3 player, exams by Claudia’s students (which they had to redo later that month…poor children), all of Claudia’s pictures which had been burned on CDs. This means that for most people I don’t have their telephone number anymore. Please send me an sms with your full name so I can add you again.

At night we went to the police office to look at pictures of criminals, but no luck. And now 8 months later I received a letter from the Bremen Police saying that they are closing the case as they have no chance of finding them.
I didn’t lose a lot of money as the hotel was insured and most of my stuff was quite new, but Claudia’s pictures were of course irreplaceable.

We tried to have a good time in Bremen and in the end we did enjoy ourselves (the weather was great) but there will always be a part of me that associates Bremen with bad luck and Friday 13th.