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Published: August 15th 2008
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Alaskan friends
Veronique, Sylvia, Philippe and Martina G'day
The first thing I noticed about Belgium, was that it is incredibly flat, the second thing was that were a few strange things about. This started as soon as we landed, after the rather normal straight forward landing, the entire plane burst into applause. But then maybe that was because we were flying Turkish Airlines? Philippe was there to greet us at Brussels airport, and whisked us away in his car to his home, just outside of Antwerp. Philippe had taken the week off work to tour us around Belgium and did a wonderful job of playing tour guide, navigator, host and personal translator for the entire week.
The slight change in weather (37 degrees in Istanbul, and Belgium was 14) was a little much for Sarah and I. But despite the cold, Antwerp was increbabily pretty. There's a huge gothic cathedral in the town centre, the buildings are in a traditional Belgium style, with the stair case styled roofs. A statue in the town square depicts the story of how Antwerp got its name (a legend about a boy who cut of a giant's hand and threw it into the river - the giant was mean and
control the river traffic demanding tariffs from those that passed, Antwerp is a morph of the Dutch words for hand and throw). Water gushes out of the giants arteries. From Antwerp we drove up to Ghent, and it's summer (ahem!) carnival. After wandering around Ghent - which is a lovely town, we hid from the rain and watched a puppet show in English. We met up with Veronique, for her personalised tour of Ghent, watching random music shows - including a pile of musicians with little farm animals on their heads (as I said strange goings on). Oh, and we found another Belgium speciality - WAFFLES!! and of course beer too.
The weather cleared up when we headed for Bruges. Bruges is the medieval Venice of northern Europe. After exploring the streets and taking a boat trip down the canals, we headed into the another very important Belgium speciality, the chocolate museum. With the compulsory samplers 😊. From Bruges we headed to the Belgium coast, where there was a South African writing sand calligraphy. I'm not sure what Belgium people do to their animals but, in Bruges there was a strange duck who kept trying to swim / fly
upside down, and a dog at the coast that was obsessed with barking at the sea, his yelps could be heard for miles.
On the Wednesday, we headed into Brussels. The idea was to first visit the Atomium (huge statue of an iron atom), then have a quick look at Brussels, before dropping Sarah off at the train station. It took longer to get to the Atomium than expected, then the exhibition inside was interesting, so by the time we'd finished at the Atomium, it was a rush to get Sarah to her train on time. Sarah said her final reporting time was 3.29 and we got there on the dot. After Sarah had left, Philippe and I went on a hunt for the symbol of Brussels - a tiny statue of a peeing boy (and yes, there's a statue of a peeing girl as well). Then went to look at the rather overwhelming EU Buildings, Brussels government buildings and palace.
The following day we headed south into Wallonia (French) region of Belgium. The French area is more hilly, greener and less developed than Flanders (Dutch) part of Belgium. Here we explore some cool caves with the stalagmite
and stalactite things, and a cute town, Dinant with a citadel with an awesome view. All tours were run in either Dutch or French - so poor Philippe spent entire the day translating for me (and some random mildly lost and confused English guy at the Citadel).
Antwerp is about 1/2 hour drive away from the Netherlands (the novelty of being able to drive from country to country still amuses me), so with a little bit of prodding, Philippe took me to a town (Breda) just over the boarder where he occasionally does his shopping. It was a pleasant town, with a beautiful church and a market that sold very tasty cherries. From Breda it was back to Brussels to pick up Sylvia from the airport, then to the site of the battle of Waterloo, and then back to Brussels again to pick up Martina.
It was great to see most of the Alaskan crew again. It hard to believe that it has been almost a year since we all saw each other. We went for a wander around a local park, visited Veronique's new place and then headed into Antwerp to explore the town again (in the
sunshine this time). The evening end at a bar, where they had made an artifical beach and deck chairs.
So after saying goodbye to everyone, I flew to Munich and explored the town until Sylvia arrived. Dinner that night was spent in the park listening to local music, before hoping on a train to Syliva's hometown in Bavaria. Bavaria is a gorgoeus area, with lakes and mountains and German villages. Despite threating thunderstorms we decided to go hiking anyway, taking the gondola up to save time. The thunderstorms swirled around us, but we were never actually rained on. Lovely view from the top and then we hiked down to the Neushwanstein castle. Sylvia's mother made us roast lamb for dinner - which was incredabliy tasty.
Sylvia is a teacher at a local school, and they were kind enough to invite me on their annual school trip to the castle and trip around the lake. I was part of their "intercultural learning". The kids have been taught a little bit of English, so they could ask me a couple of question such as "what is your favourite colour?" and "what is your phone number?". The kids were really sweet,
and it was great to see the way Sylvia interacted with them - and that they really looked up to her. It's awesome to see someone who really loves their job!
Then it was a train Frankfurt, where I met up with Sarah again. From Frankfurt it was a very sad good bye to Europe and hello to New York (next blog).
Big thank you to my lovely hosts - Philippe and Sylvia. You guys are awesome 😊 I had a fantastic time.
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Sylvia
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Hey Cielle, had a wonderful time with you in Bavaria and really hope you'll find the time to come back, without the thunderstorms! Just came back from my hiking vacation in northern Italy. Was beautiful and dry, although not as warm as I expeted. Take care!