The leaflets about trips
This story has been translated with Translator. I don’t know how the quality of this is. I’m curious about this. Would you like to let me know this, if necessary, PLEASE.
In the winter of 1998, we went with friends of ours, to an absolute top attraction in England. How we got here, I’ll tell you.
My wife and I help a friend and her husband with a live, fish trade in France in winter. This trade is located in a small village near Calais. My wife is doing the household and the kitchen, I do technical work and am a driver. One of my rides is, three times a week bringing a load of fish from Calais to Heathrow Airport in London.
On the ferry, which I cross the Channel, there are leaflets about trips you can make. A tourist train ride, a castle with a garden and also The Canterbury Tales in Canterbury. This last attraction attracts my attention. I put the leaflet in my pocket with the intention to go there for a day with my wife.
The fish company also works English, putting us in a permanent state of chaos. Our girlfriend’s husband has therefore hung a sign saying, “There is no problem, just panik.”
But that aside.
A few weeks later, we go to the Netherlands for a few days to arrange some things, such as banking and sleeping. We also speak to friends who take care of the post in the Netherlands for us. During a conversation accompanied with good wines, the idea is suggested to come to stay with us in France for a weekend.
They arrive at 8:00 on Friday night at 8:00. The wine is replaced by Scottish home made whisky that they have brought, out of respect for the Scots present. During that evening, the English breakfast comes up. The English regularly bring the real sausages and bacon from England. My wife promises our friends that she’ll make such breakfast for them the next morning. During this breakfast we discuss what we can do that day. The leaflet, shoot me in.
“For a moment, I have an idea.”
I quickly walk to our room, where I put the leaflet down.
“Look, we can go to The Canterbury Tales,” I chief.
The superlatives shout the paper: “The number 1 attraction of England,” is one of them, “open all year,” another.
The latter will be fine, because it’s the end of February. Immediately after reading the enchanting leaflet, everyone is in front. The location is also also convenient, thirty kilometers from Dover. We decide to take the hovercraft. It’s storming pretty well, so I’m not sure he’ll go out. He’s not going to. We buy a car day return for fourteen guilders. After 15 minutes of waiting, we leave, in a cloud of water caused by the wind under the hovercraft. Through the windows we see almost nothing from the sea, but we do feel it very clearly. The closer we get to England the higher the waves are. Our girlfriend’s stomach ends up in a fight. The sea wants to empty him, her mind doesn’t want to. During the journey, the Hoover bounces over the waves. Just in front of the harbour, where the waves are highest, the Hoover comes to a stop almost, turning it into a bathtub dancing on the waves. The sea wins from the now easy of the mind, in the quickly packed brown bag the remnants of her English breakfast disappear.
Finally we sail into the port, where the fast connections dock. The endlessly similar roller coaster we’re in ends abruptly. A little shaky we walk to the car. After half an hour’s drive we arrive in Canterburry. We park the car and walk, the signs next, to the top attraction. At the entrance there is a set, very fake cheerful fortysomething waiting for us.
“Where you from?” he asks with a false laugh.
Immediately I have to think about Ebenezer Scrooge.
This welcome should have been a warning, blinded by the firm will to enter into this adventure, we do not see them. Whether we want headphones on which the instructions can be heard in Dutch. We want this. The price that the smiling Englishman asks for entrance will get what the sea hasn’t saved, I’m getting nauseous.
His faint jokes about Wim Kok and everything he knows about the Netherlands gives the whole neither cachet nor any cachet. Nothing can stop us from going to undergo the refined enjoyment of the Tales. We’re being led through a door, a dark space. In a kind of surreal Dutch we are told that we have to move on to the first experience. Our friend suggests that the lack of Dutch by a student, as an assignment for his final exam In Dutch, has been addressed.
“Then he’s really failed,” I can’t fail to give this student a kick.
We’re continuing our way. We come in a scantily lit space of about four by four meters. There is an extraordinarily poorly counterfeit Donkey standing there for over a hundred years, without ever seeing a duster or having any other form of maintenance. Now a story is told by the student; a Canterburry Tale. We look at each other and start laughing. We didn’t expect a roller coaster or something, but we’ve kind of imagined the story. The story ends and we are sent down to the next event. Here the technique of the attraction reaches its peak, because a curtain of about forty centimeters in the square, while telling the next story, is taken back and forth twice. The culture shock is almost too big for us. We’ve never seen such refined entertainment before. Overwhelmed by emotions, we begin to long for the end of the performance. What also contributes to this desire is that we must undergo this unprecedented enjoyment standing. In the third story we are caught up by very angry compatriots, who apparently went through in the middle of a story. We all speak briefly. After some back and forth shooter, they can pass us into the small space. They walk through and after a brief hesitation we followed their example, because we belong to a bunch of people with two children. I think they’re Danes, Sweden or Norwegians. I can’t understand it, they are, like us, not impressed by what’s being offered for entertainment, i can understand that.
Finally we have been freed from the musty rooms and come into a shop, with souvenirs, which is at least ten times the size of the entire attraction. My wife loves these kinds of shops. I solemnly promise her i’m going to divorce if she spends only one penny on this scam. Now there’s one more thing left, the Cathedral. As soon as possible, we leave the store to go there. Outside you can only see the top of the tower. Between the houses in the village, dressings are hung to keep the cathedral out of sight. The whole reminds me very much of Volendam, whose attraction I don’t understand either. For an unreasonably high amount you can pass one of the rugs to watch him. We decide unanimously. We walked to the car as soon as possible and drove to Dover. A lot of money and an illusion poorer.
We laughed at it.