Week 9 - Winding up Belgium

Sunday, September 25, 2005

As you may recall from last week’s installment, we left Jan, caregiver to the cat athlete, in Oudename and headed for the Brussels area.

On the way, we had to stop for a bike race, the first one I’ve seen since my teens. I heard later it was the Tour de Belgium, but I’ve no idea if my leg was being pulled or not.

Our next host was Luc Hellinckx in Halle, Belgium. Halle is still in the Dutch-speaking part of the country. (We always seemed to be about six kilometers from the language border.

Luc is a math teacher at a local technical school. His wife, Hilde, is not home. She runs some schools for Afghan refugee children in Pakistan. They only get to see each other four times a year, which is a shame given that he is a great guy.

Luc took us out for dinner at a local restaurant. He likes to cook about as much as we do.

Terre's favorite part was the cherry-flavored beer.

Monday, September 26, 2005

We stayed home, rested and caught up on e-mail. A thrilling day.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

We took the train into Brussels where Terre took the mandatory picture of the little pissing boy. I, on the other hand, fell down and tore my knee open—again. This is the third time I have skinned my left knee on this trip. This time I also tore my jeans. I now have a small, Canadian flag patching it.

On the way home, Terre had to use her French skills to check whether the train we were getting on stopped in Halle. I had tried in English and failed miserablhy. We needed to check because (a) we weren't sure which train we were getting on (b) if we were on the right platform (it was very crowded) and (c) if this one might be an express that skipped our stop. We'd had to rush to catch it—we only had four minutes—and we weren’t sure.

Once on board, we had to carefully watch for the station since we didn't know the order they were in.

Dinner was out choice of frozen entrees. Luc started to apologize but I told him he cooked like we did.

Actually they were much better than the ones we usually have.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

To Waterloo in the rain. This was a BIG disappointment. It’s a big pile of dirt with a statue of the lion on top. They want a €8.50 to let you climb up the big pile of dirt to the lion. We passed.

There’s really nothing to see unless you want to take a tour and pay even more money. Cornfields. That’s about it. Historic cornfields, I’ll admit, but still just cornfields.

Terre cooked us a gourmet meal that night of her exquisite corn beef and cabbage soup, something new to Luc. She laid such a beautiful table that both Luc and I got out the cameras.

After dinner, I played badminton with Luc and one of his friends for their regular Wednesday night game. I lost. A lot. Badly. There will not be pictures of this humiliation.

Thursday, September 28, 2005

We stayed another day with Luc. We are really enjoying his company and, apparently, he is enjoying ours.

Terre made lunch, this time. Egg salad sandwiches and more of her corn beef and cabbage soup. We took more pictures.

Friday, September 29, 2005

Finally, we were going to have to move on. We hung around Luc’s as long as we could. Neither of us wanted to leave! He didn’t want us to go. But our next hosts were expecting us. Nonetheless, we didn’t go until after 4:00.

Our new hosts were Jo Verwimp and Cecile Sillis, an older couple – probably my age – who have been deeply involved in the Green Party forever, like since it was yellow. Their son, Johnathan, is a law student in Brussels.

They had a great wireless Internet connection. To us, this is important. On a scale of 1-10, it gives a host 12 points. I think Jonathan set it up.

They have been very involved in SERVAS as well for many years. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to really start to get to know them until breakfast of our last morning when the conversation become animated and interesting. But then they had to rush off to a Green Party meeting and we had to move on.

Saturday, September 30, 2005

We visited the Atomium, a building designed to look like an atom. It was put up for the 1958 world’s fair in Brussels. We couldn’t go in, however, as they were working on it.

Saturday, October 1, 2005

We had several more invitations in Belgium, but we decided to move on to France—finally—since it was now October. We headed south towards Amiens and its marvelous cathedral. We camped for the night in a village campground, about 25 kilometres north of Amiens.