It does indeed, and unfortunately an afternoon doesn't suffise to find the more interesting ones. I spent a lot of time there walking the streets at night where the play of light from the old fashioned lanterns and shadows from the old buildings on the cobblestone streets does a lot to increase the uniqueness of Maastricht. Unfortunately it takes a brave hiker to travel to all of them by foot as many of the more interesting sites are far from the city center.
Still, the city center does offer a lot already. It was also a bit of a shame the Sint Servaas church doors remained closed.
A little about my day today.
I got up early around 7 this morning. Made coffee, enjoyed the view, baked some buns in the oven and repacked my camera bag for what feels lik ethe 10th time (must have been more though)
We once more agreed to be back early because Amy would have to stay at home (bringing two dogs into a bustling city is a bit straining for a pregnant woman).
Our first stop was a small parking lot at the edge of the forests where we often go to let the dogs run free a bit. Lumi was allowed to play around for a short while and I tried to set the GPS navigation to our destiny, Maastricht.
The GPS device is officially dead!
With my knowledge of Maastricht we just took off without satnav. It took us 45 minutes to come to the outskirts of Maastricht where I noticed that the exit we wanted to take to find to the parkinglot was closed due to construction work. I quickly darted off an earlier exit and we cam in through the North of Maastricht. Made our way to the MECC from there.... where the brakes of our car failed. We had no brakes at all at that stage, so I parked the car (EUR 6 for the whole day folks
) and we started walking to the Cafe Zondag.
Because of these unforseen hassles we were just a bit late, so I called Jakov and asked him to hold the crew there for a little while longer.
The events of the morning unfolded. We met the nice NG bunch, had far too few conversations and the weather was quite taxing on Kristina. Lumi in the meanwhile had a pretty good time, even though she was a bit too excited and needed to be calmed down on the one or other occasion.
I was actually quite glad when we made a short stop for coffee. And after that we decided to go back to the car to find a way to get home.
I called the ADAC and the first thing I heard is "we will send out a towtruck which will bring you home" Thank goodness! That shouldn't take to..... "They should be with you in about 2 hours so hold on" .... damn!
While waiting we met a nice couple who allowed Kristina to use their bathroom and brought us a bottle of water. Hospitality can be such a great good to those who need it, and we could do with a little hospitality at the time. About 2 hours after the initial phone call a big yellow truck stopped, we mounted the car on the truckbed and made our way.... to Aachen.
As things worked out the to wtruck company had no intention of bringing us home. Not enough personell for the 1 hour drive they said. While still on the way to Aachen I called the ADAC again. Informed them of the situation, but as much as I was promised "things will be straightened out" nothing got straighter and we were finally dumped in Aachen.
From there I would get a rental car and our car should be brought to our home tomorrow. Again, a lot of promises that were not kept. In the end I had to choose between getting a rental or having my car brought home but I couldn't have both without me paying for either one.
More promises and more breaking of those later, and after another 10 phone calls I finally made arrangements to have someone drive 200km to pick us up. Heroes do exist. The tow truck company threw us out at around half past 7. We still had to wait an hour and a half in the cold. Our car locked away. Fortunately we took our camera gear out, but we forgot our jackets. We got home at around 10 in the evening. Our car should be delivered tomorrow, but I will have to see if that will really happen before I believe it.
I really fealt a bit stranded in the middle of Aachen. No wonder that I feel so at home in the middle of a forest where all of these logistics, politics and false promises are like myths and fairy tales from a world far away from mine.
