Bidding farewell to Paris was a hard thing to do. But tourists are always running short of holidays and money - and and so did we. So we bade farewell to Paris and drove towards are next destination: Viersen - a German border town, 20 km east of Venlo, Holland.
As I have explained in my last post Goodbye Paris, it took as quite a while to leave Paris visiting the Notre Dam cathedral and the Carrefour store and a lunch break half way from the Belgian border. So by the time we reached Viersen, it as already very late - something like 12 o'clock - but our host Mr Qamar Baig was awake waiting for us with his big smile and warm hospitality.
He had dinner laid out, cooked by him personally in pure Pakistani style. And its was treat to eat a homely food after munching burgers and pizzas since our last eastern / Moroccan food at Rotterdam, Holland. We were served with sizzling hot 'Channa Pulao' and chicken curry along with assorted salads and cold drinks.
My son in front of Mr Qamar's house
Although the German wife of Mr Qamar loved gardening and had made a beautiful lawn, the house adjacent to theirs had a big back courtyard full of fruit trees. Herein under are tow photos of the apple and pears. The pears appeared much bigger than what we have in our country and looked juicy and ripe.
The morning began with a hefty breakfast table, which Mr. Qamar's German wife had laid down for us. As I told in my previous post, she missed to see us the night before as she had a long day in her office. But was up early to share her part of hospitality by making omelets and fried eggs besides many types of German breads, creams, jams and jellies.
Pre departure good bye photographs with our hosts
A few words about Viersen: Viersen is a small German border town with roughly a population of 75,000 and is the capital of the district of Viersen, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Viersen is twinned with Peterborough and Cambridgeshire in Great Britain, Pardesia in Israel, Lambersart in France and Kaniv in Ukraine.
Some of the international events that take place at Viersen are:
- March: The World Championships of Carom billiards take place in Viersen's Festival Hall (Festhalle).
- September: International Jazz Festival in Viersen's Festival Hall (Festhalle).
- September: International Biker Meeting, organized by the local biker-club
- Viersen Bismarck Tower
- Dülkener Narrenmühle und Narrenmuseum
- Städtische Galerie im Park Viersen
- Viersen sculpture collection
Being a small town, it has a typical look of a modern village landscape with farmlands with ready crops, swaying in the morning breeze as we left. The tall trees along the road and the farmlands was a treat to see as we left Viersen for backhome Kiel.
We could not see the Viersen town itself as we were running short of time and before Kiel, we had one more destination: Dusseldorf.
Dusseldorf - here we come!!
Since we were not to come this way again, though for the time being, we thought of visiting the nearby big cities of Cologne and Dusseldorf. But as we had a long distance to travel to Kiel up in the north, we skipped the former and chose to pass through Dusseldorf city centre doing some window shopping.
So my next and last post on our first part Schengen tour would be on Dusseldorf. Please stay tuned for my next post before we reach back Kiel and prepare for our second leg of Schengen tour that includes Switzerland and Italy.
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