D. S. Friberg Blog

April, Part 1: Netherlands and Belgium

Our life during the last month has been busy, to say the least.  As mentioned in my last post (long ago!), Katie’s family was here beginning April 2nd, and for two weeks we traveled all over the place.  Just a few days before her folks were to go home, the  Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in Iceland caused the closure of most northern European airports, including Brussels, stranding them here for an extra week.  The day of their eventual departure, April 23rd, coincided with the arrival of MY mom and aunt for a one week visit.  Finally, wrapping up a month full of visitors, our Norwegian friend Merethe was here yesterday and today.  Even without going into much detail, multiple posts will be needed to cover everything.  My rather ambitious goal is to get all caught up this week, but we’ll have to see how things go.  

So….  

Dave, Cindy, and Steph arrived by U.S. Airways at the main Brussels airport Friday morning, April 2nd.  Katie and Danre had gone there by train to meet them.  It was a happy reunion!  

In the meantime, I picked up a rental van that we had reserved for the weekend.  It was a diesel stick-shift Mercedes Vito.  This was the first time that I had driven in Belgium, and I have to admit that it was initially nerve-racking.  It took me ten minutes to figure out how to put it in reverse (I eventually had to ask the rental place guy), and then when I came to my first roundabout, I got stuck in the middle lane just like Homer did when the Simpsons went to London.  By the time I got to the airport to pick everyone up, though, I was feeling more-or-less comfortable.  Our friend Jelle had given us a child’s car seat for Wes, and I bought another one at Carrefour for Vera.  I also bought a GPS there, which came in extremely handy.  From the airport we went to St. Peter’s Station in Ghent to pick up Steph’s boyfriend, Keagan, then back to our apartment, where we relaxed and opened presents from home.  

We got everyone checked in to their respective hotels, gave an abbreviated tour of Ghent, ordered a couple of pizzas, and then went to sleep.  

First thing Saturday morning we piled into the van and drove 3 hours to Amsterdam, making a stop along the way to visit the world-famous Keukenhof gardens.  It was too early in the season for most of the tulips at Keukenhof, but it was still beautiful.  There was an authentic Dutch windmill, a playground and petting zoo for Wes, and several indoor gardens.  Once in Amsterdam, we had lunch, took a boat tour on the canals, and saw the Anne Frank Museum.  It was rainy for most of the day, but it didn’t slow us down much besides dissuading us from waiting in the long, outdoor line for the Rijksmuseum. On the way back to Ghent, we made a midnight stop in Brugges, arriving home about 1 a.m.  

Sunday, April 4, was Easter Sunday. We attended mass at St. Bavo’s Cathedral, ate a terrific Belgian lunch at Du Progres in the Korenmarkt, and then had an Easter egg hunt for Wes at the park. In the afternoon, we visited Ooidonk Castle in Deinze, a small city located about 10 km southwest of Ghent.  We had dinner at one of our Turkish places in Ghent. 

Monday morning, Steph and Keagan left by train for Germany while the rest of us drove to Ieper, a medieval Flemish city that was the site of some of the most brutal and prolonged fighting of the First World War. It is better known by its French name, Ypres. I have been wanting to visit Ypres since last fall, and especially since finishing Robert Graves’s excellent memoir, Goodbye to All That. Graves details his experiences in the trenches, and in Ypres you can see and learn about them firsthand. Ongoing battles took place there over the course of the war, with a half-million troops (British, French, Canadian, and German) dying to move the battle lines by only a few miles. Ypres saw the very first gas attacks, including the first deployment of Mustard gas. Although it was never occupied by the Germans, the city was completely descimated by shelling. Amazingly, it was rebuilt in exacting detail following the war, and today looks much as it did when it was a center of the cloth trade during the Middle Ages. We toured St. Martin’s Cathedral, went through the In Flanders Fields Museum , explored the authentic Yorkshire Trench outside of town, and visited Tyne Cot cemetery, the single largest Commonwealth grave outside of the UK. After our daytrip, I reluctantly returned the van to Europcar.  

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