Week 64: Meetups in Belgium and on Bikes

[I apologize for the lateness of these last posts. Between our recent move and other activities, it has been very difficult to catch up. After this post, there are two more coming.]

With the cool summer weather holding on for quite a while in the Eifel, we spent yet another weekend outside. On Saturday, we went to a Meetup member's house for Belgian National Day. As previously noted, Belgium has an uneasy truce between its two biggest groups: the Wallonians and the Flemish, but the national day does not so much celebrate this union as the creation of an independent Belgian state that served as a buffer between the major European powers in the early 1800s.

Much like Americans do for our Independence day, the Belgians celebrate with BBQs, fireworks and other summer outdoor activities--though they do end it with a tented and liquored dance party! We enjoyed it all (okay--minus the dance party) with the Meetup group, despite the cool weather and the rather small fireworks display thrown together in the village where we spent the afternoon and evening.

Spotted on the Way to Belgium: a River Full of Recent Rains

Sunday lived up to its name and we joined some other Meetup-ers for a bike ride along *yet another* section of the Mosel. For this ride, we started in the town of Schengen, Luxembourg. For many, the name Schengen may sound familiar due to the Schengen Agreement, which is the reason why it has been so easy for us to travel from one country in Europe to the next without any boarder controls. The agreement was signed in Schengen in 1985 and removed boarder controls between its signatories. There is a small monument to this event next to the river (and across from the bike rental location where we met up with the group).

View Larger Map

Our ride took us from Schengen to Oberbillig, Germany, up the Mosel river and mostly along bike paths that were lined with Dutch and German Wohnwagons (motor-homes). And the wonderful part of Germany in the summer? Festivals! We found a wine fest, stopped and had some Kaffee, Kuechen and other goodies while listening to the local choir and other choice musical performances. We didn't drink enough to be wobbly on our bikes, but we had enough cake to slow us down a bit. The ride was a total of 35 km (22 miles) and ended at a nice cafe with a beer and a chat before Jason and I caught the train back to our car.

An International Group

The Choir...with a Viking Ship?

Later that week, we did some driving through the countryside near our place and found, as there always seems to be around every corner, a playground with some choice equipment. Not only was there an old school steel merry-go-round (in this bone-crunching style), but there was also a great zip line. Jason was kind enough to get a nice blurry shot of me enjoying the ride!

Being Blurry Makes it Even More Fun!

Week 56: Memorial Day Weekend Roadtrip

For Memorial Day Weekend, we headed north. Our first stop was in Brussels, Belgium. Brussels is the capital of Belgium and also home to much of the management of the European Union. We made only a short stop in Brussels, primarily to see the Grand Place, which is a large city square surrounded by the city hall and old guild halls.

The Town Hall from Brussels's Grand Place

From there, we drove toward the Belgian coast and Bruges. Bruges has a large number of canals and buildings that are 100s of years old--most of its medieval buildings are still intact. We spent the evening wandering around the city and found an Italian restaurant for dinner. One thing that was very interesting about Bruges, as opposed to other cities we have been to in Europe, was that the train station was located about a 15 minute walk from the downtown. The city encourages people to park at the train station and take the bus into the town, by giving you free bus fare with your parking ticket. Not bad at all, as it looked pretty impossible to park on the narrow, cobblestoned roads.

A canal in Bruge

Much like New Hampshire, Belgium is quite proud of its diminutive coastline along the Atlantic Ocean. It stretches about 42 miles between France and the Netherlands, with the coast of England only about 84 miles away. We quickly visited the cost north of Bruges, where a ferry brings over UK tourists for a trip to the beach. As you can see, the beach is pretty enormous. We were there at the start of the season, so while there were a number of people relaxing in beach chairs, there wasn't the dense crowds that would be likely later in the summer.

Beach in Belgium

From the Belgian coast, we drove up to The Netherlands, staying on the coast for a bit and even running into a jazz festival in one of the small towns we drove through, where we stopped to have fish, fries and ice cream. Belgium is where fries were invented. They do a sort of double-frying of the potatoes, which results in a fantastically crispy fry. Yum!

Rainbow Over Netherlands

From the coast, we worked our way inland to Grave, Netherlands. We discovered that this area was the focus of Operation Market Garden, during World War II and the bridge featured in A Bridge Too Far, was located only a few miles from where we stayed. We stayed on the edge of Grave and spent the next day and a half riding our bikes around the wonderfully flat Netherlands.

Hey! We found a castle!

The weather was fantastic, so we did a multi-hour ride each on Sunday and Monday. On each day, we spent some time riding along canals and, also, on each day, took a ferry across so we could do a nice loop. We had plenty of company, including roving bands of bikers with matching bikes and uniforms speeding along with skinny tires and tight spandex.

Bike Ferry Across a Canal

Unfortunately, all vacations, and especially short ones, come to an end. On our way home, though, we hit another triple point. Our last triple point was between Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium. This time, it was between Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. This site was a bit more developed than the first and included a number of playgrounds, amusement rides, places to drink coffee and towers to climb to the top of. Part of the attraction was that this spot is not only a triple point, but is also the highest spot in The Netherlands. This point is at 322 meters, just over 100 meters higher than the highest point in Rhode Island.

Just guess which of the 3 countries I am in...

Week 36: Trip to Liege

Last Sunday we took a trip to Liege, Belgium, which is one of the largest cities and Belgium and was a industrial center for the country. Belgium is particularly interesting, as it has two distinct regions--Wallonia and Flanders--whose people are separated quite strongly by language and culture. Wallonia, the region closest to  us, is primarily French speaking (with a smaller German speaking area) and Flanders is primarily Dutch speaking. This difference was part of the reason that Belgium, up until early December of last year, had not had more than a caretaker government since June, 2010.

One of the big draws for Liege on the weekend is a very large market along the river. We arrived just as they were starting to pack up, but were able to walk through much of it while they were still set up. You could get just about anything you were looking for, especially if it was any of a wide selections of foods or that particular knock-off purse.

Liege's Riverside Market

In walking around the city, we stopped by the Cathedral, dedicated to St. Paul, for a wander around. There were some fantastic stained glass windows, which, unfortunately, do not photograph well on my phone. One of the nice parts of having all of these churches available to visit throughout Europe is they tend to be warmer than the outside in the winter and cooler than the outside in the summer.

Liege Cathedral

On a brief side note, we were reminded about how different Europe is from the US when we first parked our car at a garage in Liege. As I was zipping up my coat, I heard a familiar tune by Cee Lo Green, that was all over the place about a year ago in the US. There are two versions of this song. The first is the one you hear on the radio in the US: "Forget You"; the other is the album version, whose name in the listing is "F**k You". The one that was playing on the Belgian station was the second. It is funny how little things like this can still stop us in our tracks.

On our drive back from Liege to Germany, we made a stop in the old hilltop portion of Limbourg, Belgium. Our guidebook stated that it is a spectacularly well preserved example of a hilltop fortress, which it certainly is. It also noted that the main square had rather undulating cobblestones. We experienced those directly with the car. Jason though we should let Honda know about this, so they could use the area for a suspension test track.

Limbourg's Main Square

Once we bounced through the main square a bit and found a spot to park, we walked through the village. There were a number of side streets with fantastic stone houses, which looked over the side of the hill onto the main part of the town below. Since it was cold and wet (we are close enough to have the same weather as the Eifel), our walk was brief, but we did check out the exterior of the church, which was perched on the side of the hill. As the sun started to set somewhere behind the cloud covered sky, we made our way back to Germany in the soon to be complete darkness.

Limbourg--I swear I've seen this as a jig-saw puzzle...

Week 24 & 25: More Hiking in Luxembourg

The fall has been really nice here, with the trees slowly changing color--I think we are close to peak now--and some very warm days mixed in with some much cooler ones. As a result, we've been doing our best to spend a lot of time outside. This has resulted in me doing some mountain biking during the week as an option for my daily workout and us taking regular hikes in the area.

Two weeks ago, the intent was to go out on a hike for a couple hours in the afternoon, so we choose this one, which starts in Germany, crosses a river and heads into Luxembourg then loops back across the river into Germany. It was a beautiful fall day, with just a bit of crsipness in the air--just the type of weather I like for hiking. The valley we were hiking around was very pretty. There were a couple of small villages and a castle. Throughout our hike, we came across a few nice vistas, such as the one below.

Germany on the river's right, Luxembourg on its left

Now, one thing about the hikes from the site I linked to above, is that they (1) don't always follow well marked trails and (2) don't always include good trail descriptions. This particular hike had both of these problems. We found, though, what we thought to be the right trail marker to follow and did our best.

We generally thought we were on track. We found the bridge to cross back over the river. Seemed to be able to find the behavior of the trail we were on on the map and when we couldn't, we just figured the map wasn't very good, as we had run into that with other hikes. Then our 3.5 hour hike was becoming 4 hours...no need to panic, we lost some time on a false trail a bit earlier on...and then we passed another bridge. And about 10 minutes later it dawned on us. That second bridge, that is the one on the map. That was where we were suppose to cross. We had been lost and never realized it. And we agreed that often we'd rather be lucky than good.

 So, our 3.5 hour hike turned into about 5 hours. We breathed a sigh of relief once we saw the car. I was very glad I packed the extra water and food. Despite that, our feet were sore and our stomachs quite empty.  After a quick stop home, we cleaned up and headed out to a local Oktoberfest where we filled up our stomachs with meat and numbed our feet by drinking beer. It was great. I can't imagine what the scene looks like in Muenchen.

Based on our close call on the hike I described above, the next weekend, when we went out for a hike, we decided to follow one of the clearly marked hiking paths. In many towns in our part of Germany and in Luxembourg, there are well marked trails that start in the center of town and lead you out into the countryside before bringing you back into town. Generally each town has at least three: a short 2-3 km route, a medium 5-8 km route and a long 12-17 km route. We decided on the town of Lieler, Luxembourg, which is very close to the triple-point of Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium (more on that later).

The hike was very nice. We chose the medium distance. It took us along the edge of pastures and through the woods. Through our many encounters with cows, we found that Jason may have become an unlikely cow messiah: every time we came to the edge of a field and stopped to talk to the cows, then all gathered around him. Hopefully he will use his new-found power responsibly...

Jason tending to his flock

His notoriety has quickly spread to another field

On our drive back home, we came across the aforementioned triple point. There is a small brook that serves as the boarder between Luxembourg and Belgium and a small river that serves as the boarder between each of those and Germany. We found the marker and snapped a few shots.

Three countries at once!

Hopefully this good weather will hold out a bit longer and we can get out in the woods some more.