Wednesday 26 July 1995
To set us up for today's journey, Lorraine cooked a quick egg and veggie sausage breakfast on the camping stove and we then packed up our tent and checked out of the campsite. We were sad to leave Ghent behind. It was a great place to kick off our holiday but it was also good to be back on the rails once again. We weren't actually planning to travel too far today although we would be visiting a different country. After catching the train to Brussels, we changed onto a comfortable regional express bound for Luxembourg. This train took us through French speaking Wallonia which even from the train appeared to a have a completely different feel about it.

Not surprisingly, the bars and cafés had a French flavour and many had faded red and white Stella Artois logos adorning their dark stone walls which helped to evoke that ambience. The landscape was at first gently undulating but after we passed Namur, the train followed the valley of the River Meuse towards the Ardennes which gradually provided us with an altogether wilder vista. Namur and Dinant further down the river were beautifully situated towns and certainly looked worthy of a stopover but my guidebook warned that our options would have been a bit limited in the Ardennes without our own transport so we instead pressed on to Luxembourg. It wasn't too long before we crossed over the border into the Grand Duchy but it would have been difficult to notice the change if I hadn't been looking at my map. We alighted at Luxembourg City station which was a modest affair although it was still something of a hub as I noticed that trains waiting there were destined for places like Trier and Koblenz in Germany as well as Liége and other such exotic Belgian destinations. Not surprisingly, even for a capital city and a centre of the European Union, Luxembourg had a distinctly small town feel.

Despite the fact that French was mainly spoken, listening to the local dialect Lëtzebuergesch and reading some of the signs here gave the place a slightly German flavour. After dropping into the tourist office for a few information leaflets, we caught a bus to Camping Kockelscheuer. This campsite was situated in a forest on the edge of town on the intersection of several attractive looking walking trails; overall a very pleasant location. The campsite itself was a slightly different matter. Unlike at the laidback site in Ghent, it soon became obvious that we would be subjected to a far stricter regime here. Instead of being allowed to find our own pitch, we were led to a tiny space between an unhappy looking German couple in a motor home and an equally unhappy looking Dutch couple with a tent. Although the pitch was only about 50 yards away from reception we were led there by an annoying man on a moped who herded us to our pitch like sheep into a pen. It was obvious that none of the guests here were particularly happy with this arrangement and I watched one couple drop their jaws in disbelief when they were led by the man to a pitch just outside the toilet block even though there was plenty of room elsewhere. However, they kicked up quite a fuss and were eventually given a slightly better position.

We decided to stop here for the night so I went to the campsite shop to sort out some food and drink. Although the food was expensive, the booze was incredibly cheap so I bought a few bottles of Mousel beer to keep us going for the rest of the evening. Despite the cramped conditions of the campsite, there was a table and a bench nearby where Lorraine set up the Camping Gaz equipment and cooked up a blistering veggie curry which tasted delicious even if the strong aromas drew sour looks from our plain-eating European neighbours. Luckily, we were soon joined on the table by a couple of more friendly travellers, Matt from Australia and Glynn from England. Matt was someway through a jaunt around Europe in his Nissan van whilst Glynn had arrived in Belgium on the same day that we did and had stayed at the same campsite in Ghent, a fact born out by the Gentse Feesten t-shirt that he was wearing. Luckily Matt and Glynn had a few beers with them so we shared some drinks and exchanged oft-told stories of life on the road and rails. Unfortunately, the beer didn't last very long but luckily the campsite shop was still open and we managed to scrape up enough cash to buy a couple of bottles of cheap red wine.

We probably got a bit louder as the evening went on and our German and Dutch neighbours didn't seem too impressed by the fact that we were actually enjoying ourselves here but at least we didn't let the humourless regime of the campsite get to us. Matt was unusual for an Australian because he appeared to have eschewed the whole Aussie backpacking scene by travelling on his own and generally avoiding the traditional Pamplona to Munich 'Combi Circuit'. What was even more unusual was that instead of basing himself in London, he had moved to Brentwood in Essex which as far as I knew had yet to open a branch of the Walkabout pub chain! It was interesting talking to Matt and Glynn about their travels. Matt had spent some time in Uzbekistan whilst Glynn was raving about his experiences in Israel. All we had to offer was our Eastern European trip last year and a trip through France that I had done about five years earlier but that was enough to keep us going for quite a while. It was a warm night and we stayed up quite late. Unfortunately, during the night the cheap red wine had an unpleasant effect on me but thankfully it appeared that I didn't disturb the neighbours too much in the process!

Thursday 27 July 1995
I woke up feeling a little hazy but otherwise I did not feel too many serious residual effects from last night's excesses. We had agreed with Matt and Glynn to do the sights of Luxembourg with them today but when I checked out their tents, there wasn't much sign of life so we instead caught the bus into town without them. Armed with our walking tour map which we had picked up at the tourist office, we wound our way around this small but picturesque city.

This year Luxembourg was the nominated European City of Culture, which of course gave the organisers an excuse to pepper the streets with bizarre sculptures and abstract murals but most of them were pretty good and they added a welcome splash of colour to the surroundings. However, the city itself didn't really need too much sprucing up and its location on top of the gorges of the Pétrusse and Alzette rivers was as spectacular a setting for a capital city as I'd ever seen.

We started off our walking tour along the Grande Rue which was the main shopping area of the city. Looking at the window displays, it was easy to tell that this was a prosperous place which was hardly surprising given Luxembourg's position as a world financial centre. There were plenty of clothes, jewellery and electronic gadgets to choose from but nothing was cheap. What really caught our eye though was the exquisitely crafted chocolate cakes and fruit tarts that were on display in the windows of the numerous patisseries that lined the street. They were made with such taste and attention to detail that it seemed a shame to even eat them but we didn't get the opportunity to do that in any case because they were so outrageously expensive. We did however pop into a supermarket and bought a couple of cheese sandwiches which came accompanied with a thick purple paper napkin and we ate those on a street bench before recommencing our tour.

We first made our way to the Palais Grand Ducal, the home of the Royal Family, which was a small but nicely laid out residence with its turreted, renaissance façade. There where a few guards in blue uniforms standing outside but there wasn't much else to see there so we moved on to the Notre Dame Cathedral whose slender spires could be seen from the campsite bus stop. The church was brightly lit on the inside and the stained-glass cast red and white hues across the altar which neatly matched the tricolour Luxembourg flags that hung from the walls. The cathedral had a perfect setting on the edge of the gorge and as we looked down we could see trains crossing a spectacular viaduct as they chugged their way through the valleys.

We walked through some atmospheric back streets and then made our way to the Bock Casemates, an extensive series of underground tunnels built in the seventeenth century to help defend the city. We decided to look around them so we passed through the visitors centre and descended into the damp labyrinth only occasionally emerging into daylight. We stopped for a while at a cannon placement which overlooked Grund, a beautiful village at the foot of the valley marked by the slender-spired chapel of St-Quirin. It took us quite a while to work our way out of the maze and some passages went deep into the rock but we eventually emerged into daylight. We then wandered up to the Citadelle du St-Esperit which had a pleasant park where we sat and enjoyed the views across the gorge. After spending a little more time exploring the shops and bars around the main squares of the city we headed back to the bus stop where we happened to bump into Matt and Glynn who had done a similar tour to us.

Back at the campsite we bought some more booze from the shop and Lorraine cooked up a nice chilli for us. Whilst we were eating, I noticed that the man on the moped was watering the trees with a hose even though there had been showers earlier on and the ground was still quite wet. It seemed like rather a strange thing to do but I suppose he had to keep himself busy until more guests arrived. I noticed the Dutch couple next to us had gone but the man on the moped soon led an Irish couple to their pitch. However, when I tried to talk to the couple they were actually quite unfriendly which seemed to contradict national stereotypes but sod 'em I thought as we instead joined Matt and Glynn for a few more drinks.

As the sun went down, the beer ran out and once again we had to resort to the cheap red wine which we bought just before the shop closed. Matt had met some Aussies in the campsite whom he knew from his home town near Brisbane. They were based on the other side of the campsite where there were nice big secluded pitches for those with larger family style tents staying for longer than a few days. Matt's acquaintances had decided to 'do' Europe in style by hiring a brand new Peugeot 205 and sleeping in a huge tent with proper mattresses and numerous other home comforts, which was quite handy as the tent provided plenty of shelter when we were suddenly hit by a heavy thunderstorm.

Although the couple were very well equipped, remarkably they didn't appear to know where they were which was probable something to do with the fact that the guidebook they were using was the Lonely Planet Guide to Mediterranean Europe! They must have taken a wrong turning somewhere along the way. As the evening went on I was beginning to find the couple increasingly irritating especially in the way that they were supremely confident of their high earning capacity once they had finished travelling even though I got the impression that most of their current wealth was actually inherited.

After a while we ignored their boring ramblings and instead chatted to Glynn who as the drink flowed told us even more about his trip to Israel. I managed to avoid the after effects of the cheap red wine on this occasion which was more than could be said of Matt who ended up suffering a fate similar to the one I had experienced the night before! Oh well, it was still good to have met some other travellers along the way and hanging out with Matt and Glynn capped off our last night in this unusual country very nicely.

Friday 28 July 1995
We got up early and had a quick fried breakfast before packing up the tent. Matt and Glynn were also leaving today. Glynn was heading back to England whilst Matt was continuing on to Germany. We said farewell to them and then caught the bus to the station where we planned to catch a train to Amsterdam. We were hoping to travel via Liége and Maastrich which was a route that would take us along the valleys of Luxembourg city and then through the spectacular wooded hills of the north of the country. We just missed that train though so we instead went back to Brussels via the route that we came.

We connected onto the efficient Brussels to Amsterdam express at Gare Centrale and it wasn't long after passing through Antwerp that we crossed the border into Holland. There was little to indicate that we had entered another country apart from the gleaming yellow trains of the Dutch Railways and the attractive, clean stations that we passed through. The staff on the train had bright uniforms and colourful ties and of course they spoke to us in perfect English when they asked us if we wanted some refreshments. I decided to go for a Heineken to celebrate our crossing of the border.

The train took us through the unending urban sprawl of the Randstad cities; Rotterdam, The Hague and Amsterdam, one of the most densely populated parts of Europe but the flat landscape also featured the odd windmill and some elegant church towers. We soon arrived at Amsterdan Centraal Station where we changed on to a Metro train which we caught right to the end of the line at Gaasperplas. Last year we had camped at a site closer to the city centre but it was a bit busy and cramped so we thought that somewhere slightly further out of the way would be a better bet for a longer stay.

The Metro showed us a side of Amsterdam which I hadn't seen before once the train emerged from the tunnel a few stops out of the centre. We went past the huge Biljmermeer housing complex which looked quite desolate in the harsh afternoon heat but compared to such schemes in other countries didn't look too badly designed. Patches of green and water were interspersed between each residential block which helped to provide some relief from the onslaught of concrete but the Metro stations along the line looked like nothing more than burnt out bus shelters. Nearly all the passengers on the train were part of Amsterdam's ethnic community, mostly from Surinam and the Dutch West Indies I assumed but by the time we reached our station, most of the passengers had already got off. Once there, it was only a short walk to the Gaasper campsite although that journey wasn't without incident as someone decided to throw an egg at us as we passed a block of flats! Luckily it just missed us but after that we walked a little bit faster towards our destination.

The campsite itself was nice and spacious and as well as the usual collection of continental stoners, there were plenty more mainstream campers here so the atmosphere was far mellower than at the campsite we stayed at a year ago. After a full day of travelling through three countries, we decided to stop at the site for the evening. A few beers and another one of Lorraine's super-hot chilli's was enough to keep me happy and the warm weather allowed us to lounge around outside just reading under torch light and listening to the radio until the early hours.

Saturday 29 July 1995
As we were now at the half-way point of our trip, we decided to enjoy a nice lie-in in the morning before heading into Amsterdam for a spot of sightseeing. Once again it was really hot and I was amazed that the weather hadn't broken so far apart from the showers that we had in Luxembourg but I wasn't complaining about that as we walked the short distance to Gaasperplas Station taking care to avoid any leftover breakfast-type projectiles that might have been aimed in our direction. Half an hour later we were back in Centraal Station from where we caught a tram towards the western part of the city.

We decided to visit Anne Frank's House first and though it was still relatively early, there was quite a queue to get inside the tiny house. There wasn't that much to see inside the house as the sparsely furnished interior had been left pretty much untouched since the war but as we followed the other tourists around the confined rooms, a silence descended which was quite affecting. A few simple display panels in the rooms gave us all the information we needed to know about Anne Frank and the times she lived and died in. We really didn't need anything more than that as the sense of history in the house was tangible. The one thing that did strike a chord with me was the picture of the young English Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, that Anne had pinned to her notice board. It was hard to imagine that that was our very own Queen but it somehow made Anne Frank's existence seem that much closer to our own lives.

Like everyone else we walked out into the sunshine in a mood of sombre reflection but we also felt better for having visited the house. Apart from the exhibition itself it was interesting to actually see inside a typical Amsterdam house and as we wandered along the canals, I couldn't help thinking what a great place this would be to live in. We walked past the graceful Westerkerk near to which was a market where we picked up a tasty selection of organic vegetarian sushi to snack on. The atmosphere here was slightly bohemian and distinctly laidback and it felt good to have escaped the sleazier centre of the city. We walked along a canal and found a pleasant bar where we sat outside and enjoyed a beer whilst watching pedestrians, cyclists and boats drift by.

After our drink, we carried on along the Prinsengracht canal towards the Rijksmuseum where we found a nice park to sit in for a while. It was getting seriously hot now and we weren't quite sure whether we had the energy for some serious cultural viewing so we gave the museum a miss and cut across the concentric circles of three main perimeter canals back towards the city centre. Along the way we came across the wonderful floating Flower Market, the bloemenmarkt, which struck me as being one of the classic views of Amsterdam. Many of the stalls were covered with orange canopies which cast a bright sunny glow over the whole scene. It wasn't long before we left the relative tranquillity of the area surrounding the market and drifted back towards the bustling streets around Damm Square, almost getting flattened by clanking trams and manic cyclists in the process. We did however find an oasis of calm along the way, the Begijnhof, which like the one we saw in Bruges was an exquisite collection of tiny old almshouses surrounding a peaceful courtyard. As with many such things, the simplest approach to living also seemed like the most attractive.

We eventually reached Damm Square which was mainly full of tourists and tacky looking cafés and we didn't hang around too long except to pick up some Camping Gaz, a bottle of wine and some Linda McCartney veggie sausages from a nearby supermarket for tomorrow's breakfast. There was still time for something to eat and drink tonight and we found a nice 'brown bar' along the Zeedijk, apparently one of Amsterdam's roughest areas although it didn't seem too threatening where we were. I had read that it was easy enough to 'score' some heroin further up the road but a drink here tonight seemed sufficient for our purposes. The bar was a cosy place, neatly decorated with all sorts of paraphernalia evoking the heyday of the Dutch merchant marine and the place had an easy-going atmosphere which was in stark contrast to its sleazy surroundings. After a couple of beers, we took an obligatory stroll through the red light district where I was offered some 'e' and speed within a couple of minutes by some dodgy looking geezers hanging out by the canalside.

This area seemed to be mainly occupied by drunken English weekenders which if anything made me want to get away from the place. We therefore found a Turkish snack bar along a quieter stretch of canal where I enjoyed a tasty shwarma kebab whilst Lorraine went for the freshly-fried falafel in pitta. It had been a long day so we jumped on a train at the nearest Metro station and joined the locals on their journey back to the suburbs. Being a Saturday night, the campsite was quite busy with lots of people smoking and laughing outside their tents. We just listened to some music, drunk some wine and chatted into the night.

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