A Twenty First Century Christmas Carol.. It began early, very early. We had decided, five of us, to go to Monschau which is a picturesque 16th century town just over the border of Belgium into Germany. The idea was to visit the Christmas fair. A telephone call from Johan Desseyn the artist soon put paid to that idea. "Oh no Joe, it is only held at weekends so (vulgarity) on you my friend!" he said. Back to the drawing board. At his suggestion we opted for Valkenburg in Holland instead. So Tuesday December 10th at 5 a.m. YT was getting up, showered ready for the off. In a bitterly cold breeze which has been coming from Siberia over the past week, we set off to go east into the teeth of the cold as it were. First hurdle was getting past the fast-building traffic of Brussel, that rapidly growing European city, then eastwards towards the Hurtogenwald. We stopped near Luik (Liege to the French) for a breakfast and decided to go to Monschau anyway for the morning, but first a stop at Eupen. It was colder, and we availed ourselves of the chance to buy an Ardennes ham. Then a visit to the rather beautiful old church there. It is Saint Nikolas. The present building is fairly recent being finished rebuilding in 1774, but the original church on that site goes back to 1213. We looked at the facade, a strange mixture of well dressed stone frames with panels of white roughly cut stones to fill them. Inside men were building a very high background for a traditional nativity scene. These tableaux are very popular over here. The baroque interior was quite magnificent, even by the standards of most European catholic churches. Makes my north country churches seem like bare barns in decor comparison. We looked our fill and then left, back into the biting cold. Onwards to Monschau, the road a narrow ice-bound strip through the gloomy pine forest until we passed the sign which told us we were in Germany. Parked up in the old town and walked its cobbled streets for the second time in 5 months. The log cabins of the Christmas market were closed awaiting the weekend, but I noticed on one an indication of the motive. It said, " Stollen, E 2.50 fur eine stucke." In simple terms, a small slice of a fruit loaf would cost 2 and a half Euros, i.e., 2 dollars fifty U.S. I was happy they were closed. (#}:0)) We wandered the streets and then to the Café Terras for a long and very good lunch, same place as we dined in July. It was empty at first, but by the time we were to leave it had filled. Must be good quality eh! A visit to the Weihnachtshaus (Christmas House) was imperative. It is hewn from the rock of the cliff like many of the houses in that town, as the whole town is in a deep hollow and room to expand was at a premium. Was odd to see huge mottled stone slabs for a floor 3 floors up. Every nook and cranny was of course filled with things to do with Christmas. The ladies in our party bought some trifles and we men stood about pretending it had nothing to do with us. (#}:0)) Having seen the best bits we moved back to the car and took leave of the alte stadt and headed towards Valkenburg in Nederland by the back roads, as once again the ladies in the party wanted the scenic route. Eventually we got there through a landscape looking amazingly spring-like in the sunshine, but very frigid by the thermometer. Through Vaals and some small villages and looking all the while at the passing rolling hills of the Ardennes. Turn right at Gulphen and at last rolled into Oude Valkenburg, what a pleasantly old village. It achieved what many a picture postcard painter has failed to do. Not far beyond is the newer version, but even that has a ruin of a fairly ancient castle. It dominates the skyline above the town. We had to walk up some steps alongside the castle, a difficult task for me but worth the climb. At the end, an abrupt left turn and there was a welter of grottyburger stands. Next to them a small office with the word "Kassa" emblazoned above the door. That's where you buy your ticket to enter the market. That's where the magic begins, you see, it could not be purpose-built and look as good. We went into a cave-like entrance and found ourselves in, well, a cave! There is a great labyrinth which has been centuries in the making. The local sandstone is so soft that I thought it barely useful for building stone but it seems that the whole complex was dug out for building materials. Each niche in the walls had a stall selling mostly Christmas things and the atmosphere could not be better. Talk about Santa's Grotto! Eat your heart out cheap copyists. Really it was a surprise to me because we did not know about it. The effect is magical, literally. It was packed with throngs of visitors and speaking many languages, I even heard some British folk among them. We slowly wandered through, looking at the various stalls but there was more to come. Here and there were pictures on the walls, some so good they were almost photographic in their appearance. There were initials, names, dates carved into the very stone. I turned a corner, and there before me was a life-size Triceratops in bas-relief as if in the act of walking out of the solid stone wall. It was electric! There were many framed texts with English translations and then a mention of how the labyrinth was full of refugees during the bombardment of the town by the Allies. It said that silhouettes of some of the Americans could be seen further on. The local folk guided the Americans up to the ruin of the old Valkenburg castle above, and it was an ideal artillery O.P. from which to direct the Allied fire onto German positions. I came across the promised silhouettes, protected by metallic screens. They looked so ordinary, those extraordinary men. Many of them dated not from the time of the action just prior to Christmas 1944 but to September 1945 when the shooting was over. Leroy Halberts of Glidden Wisconsin. Where are you now? Are you still alive? Do you recall when grateful Dutch folk did your silhouette? You are there yet Leroy, and thousands see you every week. And Steve J. O' Hara of New York; - and what about the curiously named Wilson Woodrow of Columbus, Ohio. Somebody got his wires crossed, <G>. It was eerie watching the faces of those men. Did they make it through the war? And if so, did they tell the folk at home about the weird and wonderful caverns of Valkenburg Holland? It was a serious touch in an ethereal experience. There is even a bar in that grotto, we took a table and had a small beer while watching the shuffling throng go by. Rita told the company I'd write an account of our day, and I told Christiane it would be better than the real day itself. She laughed at my comment. I was wrong. Nothing I can write would be as good as the feelings we all had by the end of it. At last we reached the end of the long winding caves and the stalls and debouched into the cold wind of the outside. It was dark! We should have known, but the strange sensations of that timeless place had lulled us into a time-warp. Walking back through the town in festive mood we saw the great red cross lit up on the hillside below the castle ruin. Many other aspects of Christmas illuminations were on show, particularly an almost new moon! Further on we chanced upon a bar/café and went in for a drink. It was named for another despot of an earlier war, the Buonaparte! There on the far wall before me was a magnificent painting in the heroic vein of the late 1700s, a fine handsome young man with blowing hair and far-seeing eyes. It was nothing like Napoleon, although that's who it was intended to represent. I must say though that I was impressed by the work. It is sufficiently in our past that we see not the terror, the brutality nor the sheer wanton waste of life he caused by his egocentric vision of himself as world ruler. As I sat perusing this picture and thinking such thoughts it was all swept aside by the haunting magic of a simple tune. I'd been hearing it all day in the background wherever we'd gone, and here it came to the fore. Stille nacht, Heiligen nacht.... As the calming magic of that special well known tune swelled even old cynics like me get swept away in a tide of goodwill (to coin a phrase), <G> and I felt the ghosts of many, many Christmases crowding in on me. Some gaunt, with damp brick walls of air raid shelters, some with warm pubs and good cheer, some of simple family times in the past when I was young, and some in a later past when my bairns were young. In that bar, in Valkenburg, it felt good. Merry Christmas everyone, and God bless Tiny Tim! Joe Armstrong.