Sunday 21st November 1999

Jan: "The next morning the quartet got up first, because Tobias had to prepare a presentation for the next day, so we made our way quietly out of the main room, leaving bodies sprawled everywhere. The advantage was being first at the breakfast buffet in the nearby hotel. The breakfast was excellent and gave back some of the energy lost in the water and during the party..."

Martin: "One by one the other members of the party rose, all looking to greater or lesser degrees the worse for wear. Progress for most was fairly slow, but hey, we were in no hurry. Danny had to go straight home, as the boys' football team that he ran was training that morning, so we thanked him for a great tournament and said our goodbyes. Eventually, we had all got our act together sufficiently to wander across the square to the Hotel Terminus, where breakfast awaited us.
Kobi: "Of course I'm a morning person. Don't I look like a morning person?"

		Jan: "The way back to Giessen was quite unspectacular. There was some early-winter snow but we arrived early enough for Tobias to do some good work. All enjoyed this trip and are interested to play in Kranj, Slovenia 2000 and maybe this time as an own complete team. Chesham against their mercenaries - might be interesting!"
		Back over the border into Germany

George: "Philip Fearnhead very kindly gave me a lift to Brussels in order to catch the Eurostar back to London, managing to negotiate the ring road around the city."

Martin: "Ralph, Toby and Martin were booked on the 7pm ferry from Calais back to Dover, so had plenty of time to kill. We looked on the map and decided to hit Bruges on the way back. Kobi elected to join us, and from there catch a train to Brussels and pick up her bus back to Berlin.

A smooth ride down the Belgian motorways saw us in Bruges within an hour and a half. We drove around a bit before catching sight of a covered car park ten minutes walk from the main centre of town. We dumped the car and walked into town, stopping a while on the way to play hide and seek behind some enormous molehills. We then wandered around the town, where we ran into the other team from the UK, who had obviously had the same idea as us of how to spend their afternoon."
Now you see me, now you don't . . .

Kobi: "Bruges was fun, when I realised that Bruges really was Bruges and not Brussels (Belgium is a long way from Australia, alright?!). The Tintin shop, the snail gargoyles, the swarms of tourists, and the discussion of the virtues of various sizes of breasts made the stopover a pleasant trip home."

Martin: "Eventually, it was time for us to go our separate ways, so we picked up the car, and then drove Kobi to the railway station where we said our various goodbyes, and then Ralph, Toby and Martin made the trek for the coast. Once again, we were up against it, as Martin's lack of sleep over the last few days had finally caught up on him, and he was having real difficulty in staying awake. "Keep talking to me, guys" came the plaintive plea.

Finally, we got to Calais and onto the ferry, where Martin laid claim to a row of five seats, stretched himself out and immediately went into low-power mode."

George: "Arriving back in Norwich at 9pm, I had just enough energy to unpack before collapsing into bed, with the very happy thought that I didn’t have to get up early the next morning!"

Martin: "Two hours later we were in Dover and Martin had slept through everything, but wasn't looking much more awake for it, and it was only through much loud music and more constant talking to the driver that we got unscathed back to Ralph's place in Kingston.

His mother made us cups of much-needed coffee, and was still smiling and cheerful, just as she had been when she brought Ralph's passport down to Dover on Friday. We reckoned he was a dead man once we were out of the way.

Suitably refreshed, we pressed on to Maidenhead to take Toby home, and thence to Amersham, chez Martin, thus bringing the UK leg of another successful European jaunt to a close."

Kobi: "I had actually planned to cruise around Brussels as my train did not leave until ten that night, but I struggled to wake up to check which station I was supposed to get off at. That coupled with the bitter cold meant that I spent my time curled up in a waiting room with a woman who compulsively ate some strange lollies with very loud wrapping, and found myself reading the same page of Peter Carey for the 12th time before I actually noticed. A German boy pretending to be American (with the subsequent accent) tried to chat to me for way too long, and I finally had to feign sleep to silence him. It worked, and after approximately 4 hours of quality bus sleep, I awoke to see torrents of snow surrounding the bus and galloped from the bus station to catch the underground to work, where I spent a justifiably unproductive day."