meanwhile on my journy

Ok, so here are the missing moments between my last post in Antwerpen and the one from this afternoon.

After I had finished my blog post, i searched for a youth hostel to spend the night at. Google told me, that there'd be on in the vicinity of the main station, so I headed there.

On arriving i discovered, that the hostel in question had been closed down, probably years ago.

After some helpful people had given me new directions, i took a tram to the town's outskirts, where i found the youth-hostel. Meanwhile it was 11pm and only the mercy of the lady at the reception, who had just started to shut things down for the night, when i came in, through a door, that should have been locked allready, saved me, from sleeping outside.

The next day started for me with a lift by Jan Dupour, who was on his way to an open door day at the school he tought architecture at.

He helped me to get on the highway, where i hitched a lift with a salesmann for carpeting named Jurgen Loof. He spoke german quite well, and had even worked for a company based in muniche for a couple of years. While talking about languages he made the point, that english while being quite easy to fundamentaly grasp, due to its limited set of grammatik rules, actualy becomes far more difficult as one progresses, because it has a lot of idiomatic phrases.
German one the other hand, while having a very complex set of basic grammatik rules, is quite easy to learn at a higher level, once one has learned these rules.

Since I learned both languages solely by hearing, I realy can't say much about that. but I certainly find the theorie intriguing.

Jurgen gave me a lift to Kotrijk, from there i got a lift from Wendy, Jonathan and their son Noa, who where the first and only family to gave me a lift, on my journey. And they even shared their food with me. They gave me a Mattetaart, a tasty, typical Beligum, pastry.

After they had dropped me of, and adviced me to go see Brugge if i could manage (wich i'll definatley do on some other journey) I spend several hours, during wich i also made a short excursion to a small but beautiful village next to Brugge, trying to find a good spot to hitch a lift to Calais.

While I was standing at the street, trying to get a car to stop, it happed. I was stoped by a policeman, who thought i might have fled from a nearby asylum. (I belive my grandmother will take special pleasure in this news, as she predicted the exact same thing to happen to me). After I had told him my storie and he had checked my data, he even allowed me, to take his picture. He wouln't tell me his name though, which i can totaly understand.

Shortly after that incident, I was given a lift by Emanuel, a guitarmaker from Oosten, who specialized in classical and barrok guitars and of cause also plays his instruments.

Getting a lift at the gasoline station, Emanuel had droped me of at, was a pain in the a.... It was during that time, that my sunburn got a little fed up with only plaing a small part in my life and decided, that it was time to take center stage, which it did.

After five hours i finaly met Bagias Joszef, a truck driver from Hungaria. He didn't speak a single word english or german and I'm therefore not shure, weather we even spoke about the same things, but i think he told me, that he had two children, and had worked in London before.
He took me to Calais habour, where we arived at about 22:23pm.

Unfortunatley for me, the next ferry, that would take footpassengers, such as myself, was scheduled for 6:50pm.

Because i had no idea, how to get to town, and also doubted, that, even if i would be able to make my way back, i would find a hostel still accepting guests, at that hour, i decidet to sleep outside.

That was around 23:23pm

00:23am I knew, that it was definitley to cold to sleep outside. So I spend the next four hours wandering up and down, partly to keep warm and partly to kill time. Finaly i was able to get into the terminal where i slept for about an hour, before i bought a one way ticket to Dover.

Arriving in Dover, at 7:20am London time, i had to wait until 11:40am befor a car even stoped, which might have been partly due to the fact, that to protect myself from further burning, I had wraped my towel around my head. The man, that had stoped was Rubez. He offered to take me to london provided I would pay him 30£ for gasoline. after haggling him down to 25£ I accepted and we were on our way. Originaly Rubez had intended to take me to London center. But due to unforeseable circumstances (he wasn't able to reach his nine month preagnent wife) he decided to drop me off, at a train station in london, called Sidcup. He gave me 5£ for a day travelcard and off he was. From there I took a train to London Bridge where i finaly found an internet cafe. (Can you belive, there is none in Dover???)

So far for today. I'll write about my time a the grave as soon as I'm back home (I'm going to take a coach back to Germany tomorrow and will arrive there, the day after tomorrow)

Mark> If you could send the Photo to Semphora@gmx.de, that would be amazing.