ON TOUR

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In early 1968 we set off, from the College of Europe in Brugge, on a study trip which took in Luxembourg, Strasbourg, Bonn and Köln.

I remember well on the way to Luxembourg we crossed the Belgian/Luxembourg border in the bus without any passport checks. After all this was not only the EEC, it was also Benelux.

It was only when we stopped for a pinkel pause just after crossing the border that I realised we had passed from Belgium to Luxembourg without my passport being stamped. As I was collecting passport stamps at the time I quickly footed it back to the border post and asked for it to be stamped.

This request was greeted with amazement and no small amount of suspicion. They must have wondered what I was really up to, them having laboured so hard to actually abolish such checks. I must have convinced them of my bona fides as I got the stamp.

Something to add to the one that let me into the UK provided I stayed no longer than three (or was it six) months. I must have gone through the wrong gate at some stage to have got that one.

I once stamped my passport myself up the Eiffel Tower with the one they use for stamping the postcards. I'm sure that was illegal, but you know how it is. Unfortunately I don't have any of those old passports any more.

Luxembourg is a spectacular city, resting on at least two levels and full of old and picturesque buildings - some of them in magnificent settings.

The building with the tower on the left, for example, looks like it has been there forever. In fact just looking at it brings to mind valiant knights and damsels in distress.

But, as my Luxembourg-resident friend Vivion explains, it is actually a bank and was built as such in 1909. It houses Luxembourg's massive State backed bank, the Spuerkees. Full of mysteries is Luxembourg.

There are two principal rivers running through the city, the Alzette and the Pétrusse.

I had convinced myself at the time that I could span the latter in true Napoléonic style. No doubt my later Luxembourg friends, Cathal & Vivion, will tell me it's just any old open sewer and I was lucky to come away alive. Such is the eventual shattering of the dreams and vanities of youth.

Well, as Vivion explains it, the answer is yes and no. "The Petrusse river is actually very clean, as is the Alzette river. The place where you are pictured straddling the Petrusse is very close to the site of the former leper colony. It is also close to the former womens' prison, which is now a museum. "

I think that might be the Kirchberg in the distance. The Kirchberg is the big European Centre in Luxembourg and in later years I attended many meetings there, mostly in EIB but also one ECOFIN from which I got a ride home as solo passenger in the Government jet (the bigger one). Wow.

This is looking down on what appears to be a masssive building site. Of what, I have no idea. But Luxembourg at that time was in a state of flux with new and expanding institutions taking up residence.

A briefing on the European Parliament, which, unlike today, was an absolute irrelevance. The Council just had to be sure to read the Parliament's opinion before binning it.

Today's students get a briefing from the EIB, but at that stage this Community institution had just moved in to the town centre from its original location in Brussels. In any event it had a much narrower role then in the Community fabric than it has today. Then it was simply a bricks-and-mortar investment bank set up to compensate for the lack of financial and physical development in Italy's Mezzogiorno.

Well, at least they fed us, before we took off for our next stop, Strasbourg.

First the Cathedral, the world's tallest structure between 1647 an 1874. Its West face, above, looks weird with only one of its two planned towers actually built.

But maybe not as weird as the façade itself with its myriad of statues and tableaux.

This is just one of the tableaux and don't ask me what all the nudity is about.

Or whether this fella is canonised or just a plain trouble maker.

All I know about this mysterious door is what I can see. It's crooked. I should really have taken notes at the time. How academically sloppy of me.

Strasbourg is also the city of Gutenberg and the panel above is one of two I took (of the four) from around the base of his statue. This panel represents the printing press in Europe, showing such renowned men of letters as Erasmus, Chaucer, Milton, Molière, Rousseau, Voltaire, Kant and Schiller.

You just can't take the moveable type out of the man. Great invention.

This, I was told, is Goethe's house. There is a plaque but this was in the days before the Ma brought me back the Pentax from Japan. So I'll just have to take it on faith.

Enough of this frivolous sightseeing and down to business. It's what we're here for.

My maiden speech to the Council of Europe, no less. Whether they listened or not I have no way of knowing as I don't remember a word of what I said, so overcome was I with the emotion of the occasion. And, it was all of fifty years ago.

I see from the photos that I did emphasise my case more than once. I don't remember from whom I borrowed the emphatic coat and hat, possibly Manolo at the extreme left of the picture.

And if twice wasn't enough I gave it to them a third time. Charlie Hebdo couldn't have put it any more strongly.

And so, with the business done, we head for Bonn, then the West German capital, passing another frictionless frontier on the way. Theresa May et al please note!

The Kennedy Bridge is the middle of Bonn's three Rhine bridges connecting the city center of Bonn with the town centre of Beuel which was incorporated into Bonn in 1969. There was a raft of re-namings across Europe following JFK's assassination in November 1963, but this one must have been one of the first, coming just ten days later.

We must have strolled around a wee bit after getting out of the bus. This is in the Hofgarten.

And this is the nearby University.

We were hosted a reception at the prestigious Press Club. I don't have any photos of that as I took movies. I may get round to including a still or two here in due course.

Finally, we stopped off in Köln and dropped into to see my German teacher, Peter Lennartz, in the Augustinian Hospital in James's Street. Peter had broken his leg playing football in Brugge and the hospital there had messed up resetting the bone. So he had to go home to Germany to have it re-broken and reset.

A final wave to the famous Cathedral, the Kölner Dom, and we're off on our journey back to Brugge.