Week 5 - BE and DE

 

 

Dinant:

·         Birthplace of the saxophone (his name was Sax and he held dozens of patents.)  There’s a museum in his honor that is small enough to visit in the time it takes to play Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.  I think printing the Wikipedia entry for him would have been more informative.

·         We visited the Leffe Brewing Museum, with a decent sample beer and outstanding cheese.  The brand is Belgian but part of the Anheuser-Busch empire.  The museum is in a former convent, which is now a hotel and restaurant.  KK noticed there are swastikas in the tiling by the bathrooms - the bartender didn’t know why or seem curious. 

·         The town speaks almost exclusively French (we heard what might have been Dutch from tourists.)  The waiters were friendly but not skilled in English or their understanding of gluten-free.

·         The dam along the river Meuse opens fully for maintenance and drains 95% of the river every 5 years.  The next time will be in fall 2027.  So, there weren’t the river cruises we’d seen advertised and I think the vibe is a little diminished with the smell of mud being more of a presence than the flowing of the water.

·         We stayed with Janvier, a native of Dinant.  The listing in booking.com said private bathroom with views of the rivers and mountains.  His hospitality almost made up for the inaccuracies - we shared a bathroom with him, and it was a 50-yard walk to the views.

·         One day we visited a castle started around 1300 that charges admission and the next a rival castle from a few years later that is now in ruins.  They were within sight of each other, guarding over the northernmost and southernmost reaches of territory in the valley.

·         Dinant was the site of a massacre by the Germans in August 1914 after they encountered more resistance than they expected (mostly from the French Army) and killed 674 civilians, about 10% of the population.

·         We ate at our first Michelin-starred restaurant, based on Janiver’s recommendation without checking carefully.  Really good food and not outrageous prices but we said we’ll be fine without ever eating upscale like that again.

·         The last night a fellow diner, a local, heard us and asked if we were British.  When we said American he said in broken English (not much better than my French) that America wouldn’t exist if not for France and mentioned Yorktown.  He said he loves history and I think military history.  Friendly but the language barrier kept us from engaging as much as I think we all would have liked.

·         We walked 3 miles to dinner so on the way home we decided to try Bolt eScooters along the riverfront – pretty cool.

Wiesbaden:

·         We stayed the weekend with our semi-niece, Kelly (Roger and Joy’s niece) and her husband Drew, as they’re both on assignments with the Defense Department.

·         We took 4 trains to get there including a change of trains in Luxembourg but we aren’t counting that as a county we visited.

·         As we rolled along the Rhine, about 200 meters across (I’m still learning metric) most of the way, we saw barges and trains with materials indicating manufacturing seems to be healthy across Germany.

·         Kelly and Drew were great hosts and a lot of fun.  Their apartment is dead center in Wiesbaden and in a 6-story building that once housed a newspaper.  The newspaper now occupies a fraction of the space, possibly not much more than their 2-story, sweet apartment.  They’re 2 years into their assignments, which will run 5 years max, and making the most of it, travelling around Europe (they fly to Glasgow on Wednesday.)  They gave us good travel tips, especially for northern Italy.

·         Kelly and Drew have great taste in beer, meaning it’s close to Dan’s and Jonathan’s as well as mine, and a stash of Belgian Ales.  Kelly fixed omelets both mornings and we all fixed tacos for Saturday dinner.  My contribution was heating the tortillas in a skillet.

·         Karen and I spent most of Saturday walking around town, taking a small tourist tram with limited view and a booklet with an English translation of the cursory narration.  We found 2 parks, one of which had a section that felt like you could be miles from civilization. 

·         The city was spared most of the bombing in WWII because it was foggy during most of the Allied runs.  It’s about 30 miles west of Frankfurt with a population of 300,000. 

·         Our visit has us thinking even more about a potential work assignment in Europe someday.

 

Misc:

·         Belgian trains are better than Boston’s commuter rail but not as nice as the Paddington line and no wifi but at least mostly uncrowded.  There 3 differences I can see between first and second class:  There are fewer passengers in first class, there is a “1” or a “2” on the wall designating which class you’re in, and first class costs about 50% more.

·         Germany is again requiring masks on trains, which was a reminder about how they change the mood of a group.

·         On the more major train lines we’ve been on you can request a type of seat (e.g., window/aisle, quiet car, front-facing) but not as pinpointed as airlines.  When you get your tickets, it tells you the seat number, which often has a semi-obstructed view.)  Then, when you get on board a display tells you which seats are reserved, and sometimes for which stretches.  If I remember right Amtrak, has a low-tech version of this.

·         European sirens still remind me of Nazi movies.

Week 4 

London:

·         We walked through Holland Park, Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, and around the Tower of London.

·         We took a cruise on the River Thames to Greenwich and back.  Next time we’ll get off and wander Greenwich.  The narrator stressed he wasn’t a professional but kind of a staffer who added this to his job description as part of a gentle appeal for tips (which seemed only moderately successful as het stood with his tophat in hand as we exited.)  He gave us history on some buildings, prices on some flats, and nicknames of some of the skyscrapers (e.g., Walkie Talkie, Cheese Grater.)  The egg that once stood out is now a lot less noticeable after the height limit was upped about 20 years ago.  It was capped at the height of a cathedral, similar to the 100’ limit in DC to keep the capitol and monument stand out.  The narrator lamented the loss of dockwork, being replaced by high-end flats without a lot of life in them.  I didn’t know Wharf stood for warehouse at riverfront. 

·         We met 3 groups of work friends.  Sam and Joanna from Vertex for lunch in Paddington.  The number of employees in Europe is increasing and they are adding a 3^rd floor to the Paddington office and opening a new office in Rome, a sign Vertex is doing fine without me.  We forgot to get a picture of them but they were smiling.

·         Terry, Ben, and Roy in at a cool place in Wantage, near Oxford.  Terry might have the longest tenure for all IT staff in Vertex.  There was a rail strike that day but the rail company we had tickets on kept 3 out of their dozens of routes intact and ours was one of them but the overground delays made us miss one, which made us too late for Margo to meet us.

·         Then we met Graeme and Brian near the Sitecore office (I screwed up the dates and missed Mark.)  Graeme grew up in Scotland and plans to return someday.  Brian grew up in Romania and gave us good travel tips and background.

·         The hotel had only 5 rooms, a bar downstairs that served us a simple breakfast in the morning, with Juliette being the best waitress of our trip so far (she also has a business for architectural photography.)

·         London food was more hit than miss.

·         The city is huge.  It was culture shock going from Balloch (population 10,000?) to Glasgow and then again when we got to London.  Just a whole different vibe – even more international and a different level of intensity.  We tried to avoid the streets crowded with tourists.

Belgium:

·         Thursday was walking to the tube station, a short walk to the coach station (which is not the bus station), then a long bus ride to Brussels, a train to Ghent, and walk to our place.  The train direct to Brussels was under 3 hours but without advance purchase that was $275 vs $35.  Each.  So, we decided to save the $480 difference for wine, etc.

·         At the British end of the Chunnel our bus got selected for extra inspection, meaning everyone got off, gathered their luggage from below, showed their passports a second time, and place them on the ground in a row in shifts for a Cocker Spaniel to sniff.  Her trainer said she’s (the dog) is still learning but she picked a few for deeper inspection but it seemed everyone got through fine.  The officers also checked the bus thoroughly, even the engine and underneath.  No explanation as to why they chose us, but it added about 90 minutes to the trip.  We were lucky the weather was good.  One woman (who is travelling to Marseilles, I think) had 4 medium and 3 extra-large roller suitcases but survived with help from strangers.  I admit I was kind of disappointed we didn’t find out we were travelling with a drug trafficker.  We spent a lot of the time talking with Omar, who now lives in southern France and said we should call him when we pass through.

·         I had thought buses drive in the Chunnel, just like the Lincoln Tunnel but I was way wrong.  They drive into a version of a cattle car with what looks like 6 inches clearance to the left and right then park for the 30l-minute ride.  We got off the bus and talked with Omar some more in the compartment.

·         Ghent is population 250,000, including a lot of students who stay up late drinking.  Most things are listed in Dutch (first), French, and English (last.) 

·         We made a day trip to Brugges, which has a ridiculous amount of charm.  I had figured after the movie In Brugges it would be overrun and spoiled and I was right only the first, luckily.  Credit to Timmy for convincing me.  A ridiculous amount of charm in the architecture.

·         In Ghent we took a simple canal tour (in 3 languages) and then a night walking tour (led by a grad student from Toronto, who led an earlier one in Spanish.) 

·         Saturday, we met Ali from Sitecore in Brussels, who took us to a Pakistani restaurant.  He moved there from Kuala Lumpur only a year ago but was a very welcoming host.

·         And we walked around a lot.  To not-very-humbly brag, we set our own record on Saturday by hitting 18 miles.

·         The cities were almost clogged with cyclists and a few Vespa-type scooters sharing space with cars and pedestrians at various times.  The bigger train station in Ghent might have had almost 1,000 bikes parked there.

Misc. notes:

·         It’s stunning more people don’t get killed by buses in London.

·         I’m wired for numbers not words – I think if I lived in Ghent for a decade, I’d still be working on my third Dutch verb.