Bigger Than God

It would be far too easy to do things like this, and not get to see anything of the local area so we made a point of heading out to do a spot of touristing before hitting the road again.

Xantern was once an old Roman settlement, so they have some quite interesting old ruins there, and it also has a very impressive twin towered cathedral as well as a beautiful old market square. We didn't have a huge time to look round, so the ruins got the briefest of glimpses (having failed to blag our way in for free), although having done that, we then got caught in the Cathedral for ages, which is a really beautiful building. I had to try not to laugh as we walked past a school party and all the children suddenly started whispering and pointing at us. The Beatles got in a lot of trouble for saying they were bigger than god. I’ve no idea if we were bigger than god on the grounds that I don’t know how you measure the height of an existential being, but I think at that moment we were 'briefly more interesting to anyone under about 12'. I doubt very much there was as single child in Xantern who didn't know who we were by now. It was definitely time to make an exit ...

Clive had been really helpful trying to work out where we could get a ferry from Germany to Latvia. I wasn't so sure about this as I was quite looking forward to the road trip, and I got the impression that Jonathan had the same feeling. However, it didn't hurt to know what the options were. Horsch had commented on how hard it must be driving for so long being stuck in the van. I'm not sure he understood when I explained that we'd spent the entire time from Salisbury to Xantern telling each other jokes, making up stupid stories and coming up with ideas for things we could perform. We had a great laugh. I was quite looking forward to doing it again.

And so the time came and we eventually set off onto the long and lonely road. Well, not that lonely, there were millions of buggers on it, but allow me some poetic license. I'm not a big one for goodbyes and everyone we'd met in Xantern had been really good to us, so even though I was looking forward to the trip, it was with a slightly heavy heart that we hit the road again.

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