Damn Rotten

The North Sea shed a good portion of itself over the coast of northern Europe last night and for much of today. Not terribly nice if you're living in a tent. Although, one learns during these times; the first is that waterproof tents really keep the water out... but the sides are as wet and chilly as an oil rig off the Scottish coast and anything that touches them becomes totally soaked. These include the thick winter jacket, the foot of the sleeping bag and the road atlas - although the latter getting wet may have more to do with the half empty bottle of water that was knocked over sometime during the early hours. It's also important to have change with you when you plan to camp. Or at least you need it at the campsite in Brugge where the shower operates from electricity which can only be kick-started with a One Euro coin. Having left all my change with a decidedly happy, but still old, bar maid, the only option was a cold wash-up over the basin. That dreadful affair, along with the evil weather outside led to the decision to spend the next night in a proper hotel with proper amenities. And so, with the rain lashing down, the wind pumping and a very distinct smell of deodorant abuse all around, it was off to a brief stop in Antwerp and on to discover the wonders of Rotterdam. Antwerp wasn't enthralling and is hardly worth a mention except to say that it exists.* Rotterdam was something else altogether and it is a wonder. As in: it's a wonder that it works. The traffic intersections are the worst and... well... what kind of insane mind designed them? Never mind three or four phase traffic lights; these are a several multi-confusing phases variety. This is necessary because not only do motorists, cyclists (they are numerous and impolite and not averse to using their little ringy-bell-things in disdain at anything that looks remotely like a foreigner) and pedestrians use them, but trams do too. Drive on the wrong side of the road, take weird turns at strange intersections, criss-cross these turns with tram lines and even the Sat Nav will do its head in. Which it probably did, considering the events of the rest of the day. Anyhow, if you think it might be a good idea to get out of the car and take a walk; forget it. There aren't any vacant parking spaces and the few that do exist are connected to horribly complicated parking meters that require a credit card to use and then cost an arm and a leg and the utterance of several expletives to get them to work.. So, figured I, just ask the Sat Nav thingy to find a shopping centre - they always have free parking and I needed to get to a hole-in-the-wall anyway and there weren't any openly visible on the streets (even if there were, there wouldn't be any way to park close enough not to go through the whole expletive thing again). The Sat Nav came up with several options, the most likely seemed 'The Promenade' and it was less than a mile away.. What could go wrong? Just bloody everything; the first being the complicated nature of those tram-lined crisscross intersections which led me to drive around the block where 'The Promenade' was located. It was during the second circling that it became apparent that there was no entrance to a parking area, except one that was private. Fortunately there was a vacant parking bay along the street and Two-Euros-via-credit-card later, the car was safely parked for half-an-hour and it was off to 'The Promenade'. As it happens, 'The Promenade' shopping mecca, as suggested by Sat Nav, is not any ordinary shopping centre and it has exactly three shops - all of them cafe-like. Sure it's in this big impressively modern building, but the vast majority of it is hidden from the public and the little bit around those cafe-type shops is frequented by people in long flowing black robes gracefully adorned with frilly white bibs strung around their necks. It's a freaking temple of lawyers... it's presumably the magistrates' court even if the bailiff's office looks more like a banking hall. And it had no hole-in-the-wall. Despondently, it was back to the car to ask Sat Nav for directions to a hotel; the Mariner Hotel was visible across the bay and it looked clean enough but not that clean that it would be as expensive as the parking facilities. Sat Nav got us there, terrifying though the journey was, but there was no parking for three blocks around the place. It was time to throw in the towel - the North Sea was still pissing down on the place and while there appeared to be some good photo opportunities around the harbour, it just didn't seem worth it. Finally, Sat Nav was told to find a hotel near Gouda, if nothing else, any town named after cheese, even if it isn't Cheddar, must be a bit of alright. Sadly, Sat Nav with it's usual inefficiency found the Tulip Inn, which just happens to be very far outside of Gouda, but very close to the highway. That's enough for me, and even if the room is expensive, the parking is free. So is the internet and that's why you are reading this. A long deep-soaking bath later and everything seems okay again - except that the hotel rooms don't have a kettle and the accompanying packets of coffee, long-life milk and packets of sugar or sweetner... But that's okay, because for just 50 cents, the machine in the road-side petrol station next door will give you a shot of expresso, and for just one Euro more, you can add into the expresso a dose of something that must be coffee because it looks like it to fill the paper cup. It might be colder than a witch's tit outside, but this stuff - along with a generous dash of Jameson's that someone was clever enough to buy at the duty-free at Folkestone - is enough to make a brass monkey not worry about freezing balls. Tomorrow? Well tomorrow's another day.

*Along the road to Antwerp there was a stop off at a road-side petrol station for some semblance of breakfast, amazingly the young lady at the counter was very good at English this despite working in a place that is on the border of several countries where people speak Dutch, German and whatever-it-is-that-Belgium-folk-speak (it doesn't sound French). This mystery was, perhaps, solved while driving along in Holland and listening to local radio stations - all the songs are English (well mostly American really... but that's just English spelt incorrectly, isn't it?)