In Bruges

The drive back to England was substantially better than the drive out to Berlin. Mostly as it was done in a sensible amount of time (3 days rather than 24 hours) plus the addition of a couple of stops along the way. The first of which was near Dortmund, staying in a road side chain hotel next to an Ikea. And thats about as interesting as that stopover got.

The next day was a quick drive down to Antwerp to meet up with Mr & Mrs B for lunch, all was going well until the main road into the city was closed due to a market. My Sat Nav then decided to have a bit of a laugh and take me round all these tiny roads whilst occasionally loosing its GPS lock, ending up in giving me the wrong directions. After some ignoring of the sat nav I found the main road myself and worked my way round to the water front. Didn't spend a great deal of time there, just time to eat and a 10 minute wander around, this photo about sums up me and Antwerp :

Non-Plussed

A quick hour drive to Bruges then followed, with my Sat Nav having another giggle at my expense by taking me down cobbled streets overflowing with old grey haired tourists who didn't seem to understand that they were walking on a road, and therefore couldn't grasp the concept of getting the fook out of my way. The hotel itself was pretty shitty, not updated since the 70's and in a weird shade of blue, but it sufficed for an evening of sleep.

The rest of the day was spent (unlike most of the other tourists there who I'm sure were interested in history or some such other mundane thing) wandering around the filming locations of In Bruges (staring the, up until this film, very irritating Colin Farrell). This took me all over the city and was quite fun indeed, in part because some of the places I was going to see nobody else was arsed about so it gave a slightly tourist free atmosphere.

Splat

Peeking Dog

Park Benching ala :

Time was spent sat in the places, walking over the bridges and drinking in the bars where it was all filmed. Its certainly a much better way of seeing a city, especially if (like me) you're not a fan of old crumbly buildings (give me steel and glass any day). The evening was spent at a free concert/mini festival that was down the road from the hotel. Very nice of them to organise it for the one night that I happened to be staying there.

The next day I awoke after an odd nights sleep (the air conditioning was akin to a 747), got some coffee

and wandered the streets some more. I bought some chocolate (as is the law if you visit Belgium) and set off mid afternoon for the short drive to Calais. More eurotunnel fun was had, driving down the train is quite entertaining

The drive back through England was long, tiring but uneventful. But, around 8 hours after I left Bruges I arrived back in Warrington

Which was quite odd indeed. I'd just about acclimatised to life in Berlin and suddenly I was back in a mostly empty house, my addled brain not quite sure where I was, where I was going or what I was doing.

A week of frantic insanity followed while I sold off the rest of the furniture in the house, sold the car, disposed of more or less ever other trapping of my Warringtonian life and put the house on the market. A party was had on the Saturday night, a final farewell as it were, attended by the barest minimum of people. If ever a sign was needed to validate my reasoning behind my move to Berlin, the party was a fairly big one.