Day 9 (Mon 10 Sep) A Challenging (and eventful) Day of Travel

Our day got off to a bright, if very early, start.  Hendrick, father of the owner of our flat, very kindly called at 06:45 to drive us to the station with our luggage and we managed to be in the right place in plenty of time to catch the train to Gent.  The morning train had much easier access and we had a seat!  There was some agitation at Gent, where we had 15 minutes to find and position ourselves on the correct platform to Bruxelles Midi the destination on our ticket (in french).  The panic mild consternation that ensued was due mainly to the only possibility on the Departures board being described (in vlamisch) as for Brussel Zuid.  Our limited linguistic skills told us that ‘Midi’ had connotations of ‘Central’ and ‘Zuid’ was likely to mean ‘South’.  There being no time to ponder, we took the plunge and got on the ‘Zuid’ which, happily, ended up at the same station that we had left on Day 3, whatever it was called.

The next ‘leg’ of our journey was to Celle, in Lower Saxony and involved three trains (two further dismounts and re-mounts).  By this time we had worked out a routine procedure for such connections and were a bit more confident in our approach.  Surprisingly, because we were boarding a German-owned train and had been brought up to believe in innate German efficiency, the train to take us from Brussels to Koeln was running late by about 30 mins and was very slow in its progress.  German pride was restored when it was announced that the problem was due to the Belgian permanent way.  We missed one connection at Koeln and hence lost our rights to our pre-booked seats – we soon learned that the standard procedure in this event was to take any vacant seats that we liked.  When the Hannover train also proved to be very slow, ‘Storms’ got the blame and we were two trains late.  Nonetheless, the whole system got us to Celle by about 5:30 pm, in good time to check in to our hotel, a process associated with an event, best recounted in person, involving an undertaker!

We were also in good time to appreciate the very friendly, country-town atmosphere of the regional, family-owned hotel that we had picked out for our short stay of two nights.

The next step was to make an attack on our first exposure to Niedersachsen cuisine in the nearby, 350-year-old, xxxxxx restaurant, all of which proved to be a very pleasant experience, complete with decorative antlers and hunting-lodge atmosphere.  Nostalgic for Doug and Novel for Helen.  Pfifferschnitzel and Heferweizen Beer proved to be the ideal vehicles to help us forget that our first German meal had been taken on the run during our exciting journey and consisted of a butter pretzel and a can of Coca-Cola!

(Photo)