Gary Neil Briggs

After seven years with the same company in the United Kingdom, the job I had was not really exciting any longer, not like it used to be anyway. Every day was almost identical to the next. The same destinations with the same routes. So when I heard that the transport company which had recently bought the company I was driving for, had taken a decision to reduce the fleet, I jumped at the chance to take voluntary redundancy. I was going to receive quite a large severance package for the seven years I'd been there, so looking for a new job wasn’t “too” urgent. I left the company for the last time on Friday evening, with no idea that within one short week my life would have changed so much. "Continental" truck driving, as I was soon to find out, was to present me with a whole new set of challenges, leading me to some very different adventures from those that I had previously known.
Abroad and alone, with almost no knowledge of any foreign languages, quite oblivious to the fact that...
“Over there things were very different”
I started upon a new career which would take me all over Europe, to some of the nicest places that an everyday tourist doesn’t normally get to see. You see, I was the new boy alone in a strange place, learning by my numerous mistakes, and the situations I so often, unexpectedly, found myself in. The events which I encountered in the nineties driving around Europe were all new to me. "The excitement was back."
For me, it was one of the best decisions that I have ever made in my life. I fell in love with Italy and France, but it was a different story in Austria and Luxembourg.I have been inspired by the many weird and wonderful people I have met during my travels. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent, some to protect the guilty.I soon found out what’s wrong with over there,and what’s right too! There were also the bad times,the times when I started asking myself questions like:
Was I really poisoned in Luxembourg?
Can I really eat that?
Is a gun the latest fashion accessory in Italy?
and most of all "What the hell am i doing here"