Simmy and I have been on a little roadtrip from Monday till last night. Since Germany has nine neighbouring countries, I decided it was time to have a closer look at four of them and go on a little adventure. Plus, it gave Simmy four more countries to tick on his list of nations he’s been to. All in all, we drove approx. 1350 km - 840 miles.


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We started out Monday morning, left Solingen just before 10am and drove along the Autobahn A4 towards Aachen and the border to The Netherlands. It took us roughly an hour, until we crossed the first border of our trip. Our first stop was in Maastricht, a Dutch city located on the shores of the river Maas. We parked the car and walked around the old part of town with its town hall, Vrijthof, cafés and coffee shops. We had been quite tempted to see for ourselves what Dutch coffee shops are like, however, we didn’t have adequate ID on us at the time. While we walked around Maastricht, we tried to avoid accidents with cyclists, as they have right of way. While we had a cold drink at one of the cafés, we also wrote our first postcards from our trip.





After two hours in Maastricht, we got back into my Nissan and continued south. It was only 10 minutes of driving until we crossed the next border and entered Belgium. Liège, the city that would be our next stop en route was only 30 minutes away from Maastricht and yet worlds apart. The Maas, in Liège the name changes to Meuse, divides the city, and unfortunately we got lost and parked the car on the wrong side of town. Everything looked pretty run down and dirty, however, we managed to find a great ice cream parlour at the Quai de Tanneurs, which made it worth it. It was seriously the best ice cream we’ve had in ages – and also the first we had to order in our broken French. In the Coeur Historique, we wandered around the Palais in search of a post office or letterbox to post our next postcards. Looking at the map, trying to get our bearings, a lady asked what we were looking for. “Notre voiture” (our car) was my reply, and I meant it! We walked straight past the post office and had to ask for it again. For 2 stamps, we had to queue for quite a while, which makes it fair to say that the most we saw of Liège was its post office. We had another cold drink and found the car to get out of Liège. If I’ve learnt one thing there, it was not to go back there.





I had planned to go to the Grottoes of Remouchamps, however, last admission was at 4pm and we wouldn’t have made it in time. So we skipped that bit of our print-out directions and continued on our way towards Bastogne and into the next country: Luxembourg. We entered the Grand Duché Luxembourg and stayed overnight in the YHA of the quaint little town Wiltz in the Ardennes. We checked-in and luckily, they all spoke German there. It was a little weird, though. I never knew in which language to begin a conversation. French? German? Dutch? Or should I go neutral and use English? After check-in, Simmy and I explored the town a little and had dinner at a small restaurant on Grand-Rue. We sampled some of the local brew, including a dark beer which had 11% vol. alcohol. The next morning, we went back into town and had a look at Wiltz castle and got some drinks for the rest of the journey.





From Wiltz, we drove my '92 Nissan 100NX into Luxembourg City. Or rather: we drove it around Luxembourg City eight times. To be fair, though, it is a fairly small place and we just couldn’t find a parking space anywhere. Luxembourg City is a very nice place. Small, but charming. We had lunch in the pedestrian zone and wandered over the Grand Ducal Palais where we had a coffee and a so-called “hotchocspoon”. A mug of boiled milk and a wooden spoon with a block of chocolate at the end, that you dip into the milk.





From Luxembourg City, it was straight down the motorway into France and via Thionville and Metz to “La cité des ducs” – Nancy. There we stayed overnight at the YHA Château Rémicourt, in the suburb of Villers-les-Nancy. Although it was a small French castle, they could have made more of the YHA – or at least put up a vending machine. Well, at least I managed to check-in in French. What we hadn’t considered was that we entered France on Jour de la Bastille – the French National Holiday on the 14th July. That meant that the YHA’s kitchen was closed and we were too far out of the city centre to get a more or less decent meal. And then Simmy had THE idea! He found a take-away menu of a local pizza parlour. Unfortunately, our French was not good enough to call the place up and order our pizzas ourselves. Do I need to mention how embarrassing it was to go down to reception and ask the lady there to call the place for us? I was way more knackered than Simmy was – after all, I was the only one driving. I was amazed, really, how sore muscles can get after two days driving.





The next morning, we drove into Nancy city centre – without having any directions. We found our way to the train station and parked the car. At first, I was not impressed with Nancy. It looked like a more upscale version of Liège. But after a coffee at a really nice bar which called a collection of sofas its own, we turned a corner and were suddenly in the posh bit of town. At Place Stanislas we had a look around and wandered up and down the streets for a bit. At Les Artistes Café (with chairs bolted to the ground outside) we had a coke before we got back into the car to make our way home. The Artistes café is a nice spot, and wouldn't look out of place in New Orleans or other jazzy places.





Since I wanted to avoid the toll routes, we couldn't just follow the signs for the motorway. We had to find our way back to the hostel and follow directions from there - however, the second street we had to turn right on was a dead-end street. We got completely lost, but somehow we managed to get onto the right motorway, and onto the dual carriageway that would lead us towards St. Avold. It took us about two hours to reach the border and drive back into Bundesrepublik Deutschland. I had planned a lunch-stop in Saarbrücken, just across the border, but decided against it. Already running late, I wanted to stop somewhere along the Autobahn and have the rest of last night's pizza and something to drink for lunch, together with a quick toilet break.



Because we didn't follow instructions, we both missed that we had to change the Autobahn before we got to Saarbrücken. From A6 we should have gone north on either A8 or A1, towards Trier and then on towards Bonn and Köln. However, we stayed on A6, and later continued onto A61, which meant a 180km detour via Koblenz. Luckily, there were many stretches which were not speed-restricted, so we made good time - until we were between Bonn and Köln and hit rush-hour. Everything came to a standstill. What should have taken half an hour took almost one hour! But we made it, in the end. Back in Solingen, and still in one piece. Although my muscles were quite sore, especially in my arms and legs. What should have been a 5 hour trip from Nancy back to Solingen, took us more than 7 hours thanks to the detour and traffic jam.

Somehow, we've managed to get lost in every city we've been to, although we had detailed directions.... We also took a few wrong turns and wrong exits on the motorways, causing us to add mile after mile to the trip. Though the biggest screw-up happened in Germany, out of all places. But I reckon, you can't really drive till you've driven abroad and found your way back.

Lesson learnt: Check traffic reports on the radio and study the roadmap before you go! But: Have an absolute blast on the trip!