Summer Holidays, July 2007

On 30th June Liam and I set out on the gruelling drive to Northern Germany to Herford, to meet with Emma who is stationed there. It actually was not as bad as I had anticipated and the excitement of seeing Emma in her own surroundings was incredible. We took the ferry from Dover to Dunkirque, then motored through Belgium, Holland and finally Germany. 575 miles. We managed to drive without any missed turnings right until the last 25 yards, when we drove past the top of Emma's road only to see her on the mobile directing us in. Funny really and with a quick divert round the block we were all together. We spent a week camping just a half hour's drive from the barracks at Rinteln. Germany really impressed me, it is beautiful, very clean. The weather let us down badly that week and fair to say we were paddling in mud, but we did not let it get us down and we had many a laugh together, not least at the lack of our linguistic skills. I had expected the Germans to speak English and that Emma would know some basics. How wrong could I be, yes Emma can order Ein bier and zehn Chicken Mcnuggets, and the Germans seemed to enjoy watching us struggle. ( I am sure that the sight of Emma and Liam doing the goose step around the camp did not help our plight!) We did a lot of travelling around, visited Hameln, famous for the Pied Piper, we know it as Hamlin. Little white rats were painted on the pavement floor to show a path down to the river. The week went too quickly and the usual flood of tears arrived when we had to return Emma to her base. It is always hard and seems to get harder when we part, however Liam and I travelled east to Amsterdam, which was actually a bit of a disappointment; so many people, bikes, trams, cars. After that we drove back into France and headed for Normandy. I had visited there as a child and wanted Liam to see the war memorials. He wants to return but with Emma. It's a place we should all visit and take stock of the terrible cost of war.
The last few days of our holiday were nice but it really was a bit flat after Emma left us so we headed home on 11th July for a couple of days at home to dry out and rest. After all in 12 days we had covered an enormous 2225 miles!