Hotel Kasteel Terworm Heerlen

... boy on the bus and asked him if the bus was going where I needed to go. He said that he was also going where I was going (Ponttor) and that he could show me which bus to get on. It was funny, cause when I asked him that he answered and I immediately knew that German was not his native tongue. I guess perhaps my ear for German has become more refined after all.. Well we were going to have to wait 11 minutes for the next bus, and it is only ...

One of the teachers that I assist couldn't be here at all this week, and he asked me if I felt comfortable taking over his class for the week. I said I would, and this weekend he emailed me some information about what to do and discuss in class.

Our topic today was "If you had the power to change the world, what would you change?" The students are to write their own first chapter of a book entitled "Ecotopia." Today we ...

... use my fingers to eat wings, but other than that, very delicious.

Tomorrow I have to:

1. get up and go get my apartment looked at by the rental agency to make sure of the apartment's condition so they can ensure that the room is returned in the same condition
2. go to the electric company and sign up so I can have power at my new place
3. go to the bank and finalize my damage ...

... They told us we were at the highest point in Belgium, which was somewhere in the Nature Park.

We decided to call it a day for the roadbook, and make a detour to just get into Luxembourg for fuel, and to make sure we 'did' all the countries.

Looking back that detour cost us some time, but did mean we visited Luxembourg, even if it was too dark to see it.

... on.

We stopped at one point, because the roadbook wasn't very clear, at which point Gaz and Charlotte came up behind us. They had been left behind by the V8s, as they were in a Series vehicle, so we said we'd stick with them.
At this point, Kieran noticed a strange noise from our engine, which was duly investigated by James. It was diagnosed as the fan belt tensioning pulley. But we didn't do anything about it at the time.

... beautiful, and you can see lots of pictures of it on my gallery:

www.juliesours.com/gall ery

We saw lots of old churches from the 1500s and a castle/fort, which is in the pictures.

Also yesterday I signed the lease for my new apartment! Nil came with me and basically did all of the talking, and I am very grateful for that, because it would have been difficult to do by myself, signing ...

... I’m here, my passport, and my insurance card. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

Also, I think I have found an apartment! I have told the landlady that I wanted it, but I’m not going to say it’s my apartment until the keys are in my hands. It is a small but very nice one room apartment, furnished, with a separate and very nice bathroom. The bed and other furniture look brand new, there is a hard wood ...

... none of my pictures turned out well enough to post. But this was a pretty amazing day. It helped me realize the difference is scale between Canada and Europe. We travelled through 5 countries in one day without even trying. We woke up in Luxembourg, ate breakfast, drove through the old town then parked and explored it on foot, ate lunch and wandered around ring roads for over an hour, including a side trip to ...

We 'trundled down past Maastricht towards Germany. The deviations were big ones but we still were able to make good time! The scenery was worth the deviations though. We past by some wonderful little towns and river gorges. Very nice bit of countryside. Will have to return there sometime, God willing!

... there, but I had no idea how we were going to find Vince or his hotel. Whaddya know, they were all standing on the platform the second we got off the train. Hallelujah. Eight people in his group were going to Bonn for the night (apparently Bad Neuenahr is not the most happening spot in the world and the average age of the residents is somewhere near 60). Vince thankfully was going to hang back anyway, so we were lucky they were there when we arrived! We ...