MAAS, Maastricht, Andre, Aachen, Shops

Tuesday 26/6, we left latish in the morning and head into Maastricht town centre. We find an underground car-park by accident and upon walking out onto the street; we are right beside the Andre Rieu concert stage. We walk around the old town, exploring old watermills, town walls and buildings 400 and 500 years old. We have lunch and do some exploring of the Maastricht University precinct and another look at the concert area before we get the car and head back to the hotel. No patch-work shops were visited, darn says Jean. We get all glammed up and have dinner, then onto the bus to head to the concert. The concert started in broad daylight at 9PM and for an hour we were all enthralled. By 10:30PM, the east half of the sky is dark, but the western half is still blue and intermission has just finished. From here on the concert just gets better and better, and it finished with several Dutch folk songs. We couldn’t understand much of what was said, but the music was just fantastic and the atmosphere just had to be experienced. Jean waved her arm off, with her Aussie flag flying high. 11:45PM and the concert was over, we headed to the bus pick-up point and travelled back to the hotel. We weren’t the only Australians there; we saw several other Aussie flags and meet another couple from Melbourne as we were leaving the concert area. They heard our accent as we were saying good night to the Dutch couple who had been sitting beside us.

Wednesday 27/8, we head off in search of elusive patch-work shops. Jean’s in charge today, her first real drive of Gina. Back to Belgium we go, to the city of Liege. Jean is re-finding her left-hand driving skills. We find the shop and a car-park is directly opposite. Jean wanders around the shop for about 30 minutes, marvelling at the material, but alas it’s not patch-work fabric. They tell us we need to visit their other shop in Awans. Coffee time, you know when you swap old coffee for new, then into the car and off to Awans. Jean says, George you can drive. We find the Awans patch-work shop, it’s hard to miss. 2,500 sq metres of floor space, well over 1,000 rolls of curtain fabric on display, and that’s about ¼ of the shop, patch-work fabric from all over the world and everything else a patch-worker with withdrawal symptoms would ever need. Jean thinks she is in patch-work heaven. And they cater for men too. Four flat screen TVs, with lounge chairs so you can watch sport or whatever you fancy. This shop has a remarkable sales table, one piece of timber over 7 metres long, 1 ½ to 2 metres wide and about 100mm thick. It weighs 660kg and was brought all the way from Indonesia by the shop owner, who is Dutch. 2.5kg of patchwork stuff later, Jean and George depart for Aachen, Germany, in Gina. Those Germans and smart engineers, they can morph cars. Actually, both Jean and George are both amazed that no one has asked about Gina. At Aachen, George arrives in Gina, a white Italian 2 door petrol buzz-box, a Fiat 500, and 15 minutes later George departs in Elly, a black German 4 door diesel limousine, a Mercedes E220 Elegance. Hmm, a nice drive back to Maastricht. Alas, Jean has to return to Maastricht in Gina; actually Jean didn’t mind driving Gina, she was a lovely little buzz-box, reminds Jean of her green Mazda 121. A lovely little car! We then return Gina to Mr Hertz, with close to an extra 2,500km on her odometer. We had planned to travel to Frankfurt by fast train, but weren’t keen on lugging all the cases on and off the train, and we had to change trains on the journey too. So tonight, we unpack our bags, and re-pack them into an orderly fashion, don’t forget we have to get that 2 ½ kg of patch-work stuff and the odd tourist item into those bags that were bulging when we left Brissie 4 ½ weeks ago. Bags are packed, blog to be updated and then sleep before we head to Frankfurt tomorrow.