OS Wayfarer

Normally Lidwina and Gerd Jan take a couple of weeks at the end of the summer in a small town called Epen in the south near Aachen. However, since Gerd Jan is recovering from a broken hip he was unable to go and so Lidwina reduced it to a week. Luckily, we were here for the start of that week and also heading to Germany so we got to spend two days at their retreat. It was great.

Saturday was spent travelling to Epen and on Sunday we went to the Maastricht food tasting festival. We parked a little way out of town and on the walk in we spotted a “kennelvan”; the usual collection of bikes; and the seemingly endless pots of geraniums. The cobblestone type streets were also becoming almost unnoticeable.

Leo and Denise were also in town so we met up with them for a drink and lunch. The festival was really good with drinks and fine food available. All the flash restaurants in town send their chefs downtown to prepare tasty morsels for the masses.  A fine orchestra was playing classic music and dancers from the local arts school performed the tango, cha cha and odd waltz etc. It was pleasing to listen to this music rather than a rock band blasting out incomprehensible sounds (getting old?).

The festival is held in the main square annually and some of the photos show the crew outside the oldest pub in town dancing to the music of another band (after the wine – I might add). A little further up the road on the way to the ubiquitous ancient church (every town and village in Europe seems to have a special one that can’t be missed) we spotted a couple of male only “portaloos”.

Later that afternoon we returned to the serenity of the retreat to pack and prepare for the train journey from Aachen to Mainz the next day.

Totziens

PS – And what’s this: