Kaiserslautern, Luxembourg City & Bruges

Kaiserslautern

As our journey back to the UK continued, we found ourselves in the German town of Kaiserslautern for the night. I'd seen it on the map along our route and immediately recognised the name from when I used to play against them on Sensible Soccer when I was a kid (for anyone wondering who I played as: I created my own team, and called them Sheffield City for some strange reason). I loved the name Kaiserslautern as a kid. It sounded like an amazing place, so mysterious and foreign, and for some reason it's always stuck with me. We had to go and explore it!

It was nothing special. It had some nice buildings, a Japanese garden (which was closed) and also a great statue-fountain thing which we had fun with, but other than that we could have been in Birmingham. The lesson here is obvious: ignore your childlike wonder. Or better yet, let it die, immediately. Seriously, 'childlike' is a derogatory term in any other context. Why should wonder be any different? Adultlike wonder - that's where it's at.

We had a look in the Kaiserslautern FC club shop. We bought a club badge sticker for the back of the van, as we couldn't find a Germany sticker anywhere. We also bought a Bluetooth device for playing music out of our newly revived van stereo, brought back to life by Rach.

I do have to give a shout out to young Rachael Wood. Before sorting the radio, she'd fitted some shiny new latches to keep the drawers shut when we make right turns and installed a couple of hooks above the bin to hang the deadly butane heater on, as we don't use it as often as I'd like. She is a right handy so-and-so. Gets it off her dad I believe. She managed to get a code to unlock the van radio from some helpful Mercedes employee in the motorhome FB forum she's in. Apparently they aren't really allowed to give out the codes, but he did us a favour anyway. Up until now, we'd been using a little boombox we'd bought on the original ferry crossing, but it barely registers over the sound of the engine and the rattling of the sink contents, so we really hoped this code would work.

When Rach plugged the code in, the beautiful sound of radio fuzz blasted out of the speakers. If I'm being honest, I hadn't got that excited about all the hooks and latches stuff, but the radio finally working was delightful. Thank you to whoever that code man was who flouted all the rules. A true maverick.

Back to Kaiserslautern. After a couple of hours wandering around the town, we made our way back to the van. We'd managed to park up in a paid car park for free, as someone had left a valid 24 hour ticket behind in the machine. When we left, there was still a good 6 hours left on it, so I screwed it up and chucked it in the bin. Not really.

We drove on. Eventually we got to a camper stop just outside the Luxembourg border. The weather was dreadful, so we hung around on the van for a day. I listened to Mark Kozelek's new album, Rach watched Schitt$ Creek on Netflix (it's actually quite good) and we both went to the local supermarket for a dump each.

Luxembourg City

The next day we drove on to Luxembourg City. A really nice place in the main. The lower end is a bit ropey. One street, which took three minutes to walk down, had three strip clubs. The dream. At one point a homeless man came up to us asking for change. We didn't have any, we told him (this also happened to be true). He farted and walked off.

We had some more fun with the local town statues - don't think I didn't notice how weirdly sexual that sounded the first time - before making our way back to the van and pushing on to Belgium.

Han-sur-Lesse

We spent a few hours in a pretty little town in the Ardennes called Han-sur-Lesse, where we stopped for a top notch salad and a drink in a local pub. I had a great Amber beer called La Cambree. Highly recommended if you can find it. Back at the van, Rach measured up the dimensions of the lounge/bed foam. She was absolutely adamant we had to have the blue foam replaced with the softer pink variety when we got back to the UK, and had found someone in Dover who would do it. To be fair, we have both been struggling a bit with the firmness at night. I'M TALKING ABOUT THE FOAM.

We left Han-sur-Lesse and made our way to Bruges. We'd missed it first time round, so were looking forward to it. During the journey we'd been cut up by a twat in a company van. He was on his phone. Infuriating. We wanted to snitch him up but by the time we'd had the idea we couldn't catch up with him to see who the company was. Higgins is reliable, but boy is he a slow fucker. When we finally arrived in Bruges in the evening, we parked up for free right outside a paid camper-park. Ha.

Bruges

It's tough to describe the pleasure we had just walking around Bruges. It may well be the best city we've seen. The place is a small miracle, an urban paradise. Just immaculate. They don't even lock their bikes up in Bruges. That should tell you everything you need to know. We walked for hours, right out to the town's outskirts, and not at any point can I remember seeing a building or street that was dirty or unattractive.

We visited the Basilica of the Holy Blood, a Catholic church which houses a piece of cloth said to contain the Holy blood of Christ. We got to see it up close. I wasn't convinced. The real religious experience came outside the waffle shop, when Rach took her first bite of a cheeky little chocolate number.

As we walked along one of the city's canal stretches we noticed a couple of ducks having a ding dong. Really going at it they were. As we approached the bridge we noticed there was also a dad and his son watching the anatine tussle. They were very entertained by it. The dad in particular seemed really excited, laughing and beaming with a big smile. As we walked by them, we had a brief friendly exchange. The dad mentioned the ducks, saying he wondered what they were fighting over. For some reason, I saw this as my cue to unleash a nano-lecture on 'mating rivalry' and 'dominance disputes'. To the dad's extreme credit, his smile only partially dissolved. If only I knew for sure that he liked The Fast Show, I could've said ''I'll get my coat''. Normally I would just gamble and go for it, but my confidence had been knocked and I just didn't feel like it quite frankly.

Next up - UK, bitch!

Recommended park up for Bruges:

http://park4night.com/lieu/166743/