When Europe was a place of wonder and Germany had a 'West'

Whether or not we remain a part of the eternally dysfunctional European family is not a matter to be debated in these frivolous column inches. But while I shan't use today's 500-odd words to put a case for or against remaining one of Brussels' company of wolves and lambs, I would like to use the subject of Europe – and its enormous allure for a little boy from Glasgow – as the launchpad from which to send this week's rocket skywards.

My first foray into Europe took place when I was 13 years old. It was a school trip to "West" Germany (the Berlin wall was still up and very much open for business... or not) and we would be visiting Heidelberg, Munich and, briefly, Cologne.

I don't know if things are different now, but back then we were told about the April trip at the start of the school year, in September. This gave us enough time to pay the cost of the trip in instalments; I recall we even got a little book in which to record each payment. I expect kids now just wave their own contactless debit cards under the nose of their form teacher to pay their school trips in full, but in the dark-age early 1980s, it took us most of the school year to raise the funds.

But finally I paid off the £120 – or whatever it was – and my seat on the trip was confirmed.

What amazes me to this day, though, is how much of this five-day trip to West Germany I can recall with remarkable clarity.

We boarded a coach outside the school gates and set off. But not to the airport. No, there was no flight involved. I guess they were trying to keep costs down, in the pre-easyJet era, but believe it or not the coach took us the entire way to southern Germany – an unimaginable ordeal, both then and now.

Our first stop was Hull, where we boarded a ferry to Rotterdam. It would be an overnight sailing.

I don't recall how I slept, but I definitely remember getting up early the following morning, just as we were making preparations to pull into the Dutch port. I scampered up to the deck and gazed at the coastline as vague fragments of Dutch life began to coalesce out of the morning fog.

As the cold sea air buffeted my astonished little Scottish face, I began to see vans trundling along the coastal road; commercial vehicles bearing the artwork and contact details of whichever product they were transporting; their livery providing me with my first sighting of something just so completely foreign that I couldn't help but gape. Nowadays, we are used to seeing Dutch, Polish, Spanish and Italian lorries thundering around our motorways, but back then, the Dutch words written on the side of these vehicles could not have been more bewitching to me.

Here was another country. Everything looked the same, but my goodness it was different. Join me next week for more...