Whisky GaLorelie

Something caused me to remember my first independent foreign holiday to the Moselle valley in Germany recently. It wasn't entirely independent. I was accompanied by about 29 other 3rd and 4th Years and a handful of teachers. It was probably 1985.

I am surprised at how little I remember of it. I know we watched a movie on the Dover-Bologne ferry and I wasn't very impressed with it so I spent most of the time out on the deck undoubtedly inspiring a more well-known scene involving Kate Winslet. The drive through France and Belgium was punctuated with a stop-off at a service station where I bought a Mars Bar, my only nourishment at the time, for 5 quid 'cos I didn't have the proper currency. I do remember lots of candles burning in the pre-dawn gardens that we passed and imagined them to be dual-purpose shrines and vampire deterrents. I've always been a bit wary of garden flares ever since.

We had a week in a hotel in a hamlet ( more like a country lane with nothing but the hotel and the owners' chalet) just outside Traban-Trarbach, Bad Wildstein. I've scoured through my chestful of photos and all I can find are numerous snaps of the Lorelei Rock ( see above). Loads of 'em. All incredibly poor, amazingly boring and almost identical.

The boat trip down to Koblenz might have been monotonous were it not for the fact that we had discovered that the small kiosk on board sold miniature bottles of whisky for 1 Mark each. I was the maturest looking and soon had a steady trade going buying bottles for the younger and more cautious of our party. I also bought cigarettes in Trier ( the only other thing I recall about that place was a magnificent Roman Gatehouse and they had an amphitheatre too but no-one would go look at it with me so we congregated round the Tabac). Vikki Clover handed them in to a teacher when Nick Denton said he wanted to go out with me and not her on the way back.

I know I spent a lot of time on my own at the hotel due to my "bad knees" ( which miraculously righted themselves as soon as P.E. and the encumbent awful showers were no longer on my timetable) because otherwise, Marko, the hotel proprietors' 15yr old son, would not have been loudly and proudly declaring his liebst for me every night beneath our penthouse cell window, the window ledge of which was groaning with tiny bottles of spirit hastily bestowed back into my care for fear of a teacher inspection by the scared 3rd Years. I think I've still got a couple kicking around somewhere.

The highlight of the trip was a visit to Bonn. I bought my first Fischer-Z album which years later impressed Mrs Roger and can still take me back to mid-80's Germany ( I went back a couple of years later and did it justice) and gravity-defying, fire-hazard hairstyles.