May 21, 2018

    In the morning it was overcast, temperature was 14°C  and not much wind. Today we took the train from Brussels to Aalter, Belgium.  This is the town where Larry’s paternal grandmother was raised 100 years ago.

   Belgium is a bilingual country where the people of Flanders, in the north, speak a Dutch dialect and the people in the south speak French.  In Brussels we saw bilingual signs which sometimes had added English explanations.  Aalter and Gent are in the north, the language is Flemish.

   We walked the 85 stairs down to breakfast and again up to our fifth floor room (there are two elevators that most people use). After breakfast at our hotel, we walked to the train station, Brussels – Centraal, in about 12 minutes and bought tickets to go to Aalter.  There was a long line to buy tickets with only 15 minutes to catch our train, so Larry used the automated machine, with the help of a staff member, and easily secured the return tickets for an equivalent of about $11 Canadian each. There are train cars for first class and second class, with about four second class cars to one first class car. As we left South Brussels to the southeast, I saw an IKEA sign.  On the other side of the train was older Brussels and the dome of the Palace of Justice above the rooftops.  A conductor checked and stamped the passengers’ tickets. The Intercity trains have two levels, but the reflection on the windows does allow photos to turn out well. The trip was about 50 minutes through Belgium countryside where we saw many fields for grain, pastures with cattle and horses. Sometimes the railway rose to cross four or five canals and some roads. We passed through the university city of Gent, also a place where Larry’s grandparents knew from their childhoods.  There are small towns and villages along the route.  Some houses had chickens in their yards. The train went through a brief shower before the Gent stop. The probability of rain is measured differently in Europe.  If the precipitation is 0.3 l/m² , it means that there could be a few light showers, based on today’s experience.  We crossed four or five canals with tow paths running parallel to canal.  In past centuries the path would have horses pulling canal barges as a way of getting things from village to village. We saw wind turbines and on older windmill along the way.

    Once in Aalter, we had plenty of time to explore the town of about 20,000.  There are many new houses and apartments on one side of the railway station and the older town on the other side of the tracks. We walked through a few streets of newer homes, most built with reddish bricks. We took out our umbrellas for a five minute light rain. There are still spaces with newly dug forms for foundations. On one pile of soil there were wild flowers growing including red poppies. Aalter is in Flanders. As we walked along the main street we heard chickens clucking and they got louder as we approached. We stopped at a Delhaize store to see the interior of a Belgian grocery store and they had a large selection of wines.  We found two wines which we had enjoyed in Chile and Argentina a few months ago.  

   We strolled to the older side of Aalter as the sun came out, following the road under the train tracks and walked to the Sint Cornelius Kirk, passing some late 18^thcentury houses, one was named Herenhuis. In the church square was a bandstand. From trying to figure out Dutch, the church has a history dating back to 1513, parts of the current church were built in 1655. In the churchyard were places to park your bicycle, including plugs for electric bicycles. About a street away we found a neat cemetery which contained a separate section for Belgian soldiers killed during World War 1.  We were able to enter the church which had black tile floors, beautiful wood paneling and stained glass windows.  Then we continued our walk. We passed an 18^thcentury cottage called ‘t Vrijhof, which is in the same style as the house where Larry’s grandmother was raised. We did not know it at the time, but we walked past Larry’s second cousin’s leather goods store at least twice.

    We returned to the station, on the new homes side, thinking we would meet Larry’s second cousin, Ingrid, at 1 p.m. We bought a Nutella candy bar and a BelVita chocolate chip cookie from a vending machine as a quick snack.  We had exceeded our daily goal when at home and had recorded 9.51 km since we thought that any sightseeing would be done in a car. We had not remembered the suggested train time in an email from Ingrid correctly and were 20 minutes late.  After waiting awhile and then finding we had the wrong time, we had to figure out how to reach Ingrid, since there was no wi-fi in the station. Meanwhile Ingrid was waiting for us on the old town side. Finally, we connected when Ingrid walked under the tracks to the new homes side. We were all relieved. Ingrid’s home is just a five minute drive from the train station.

   We reached Ingrid’s home  only to realize we had been past it earlier.  The store is on the ground level of the building and their spacious home is behind and above. There is a garage and a beautiful yard stretching over 70 meters and a covered porch with a fountain and pool by the house. We met Ingrid’s sons and her husband, Alain, and after refreshments Alain drove us to Drongen, the suburb of Gent where Ingrid’s older sister, Martine, and her family live.  We picked up Martine’s husband and drove to the older part of Gent to park the car and begin our walk through Gent.  We were pleased to know that we would be walking through the central area of Gent and experiencing the walks over canal bridges and along narrow alleys. We started in the university section and walked along many cobbled streets.  A lot of old buildings have been converted to classrooms for many faculties. We walked along canals and the Lieve river in the Centrum, city center. The new modern library was built right along the central canal.  We walked along Cathedral street and Alain and Wolfe?? Told us about the history of the city and the buildings. On top of the bell Tower a golden dragon was mounted in November 1980.  On the steps of Minard Schaoueburg, the theatre was a statue of a famous Belgian comic actor, Romain Deconinck who was wrote shows and acted in the theater for decades. We saw the Handelsbeurs, concert hall. We toured Sint Baafskathedraal while the grand old organ was being played. Its history goes back to the 16^thcentury. It has gorgeous stained glass windows and in the crypt are beautifully crafted silver goblets used in the masses in the 1600s and 1700s which rich citizens donated to the church and other wall painting that might be 500 years old. There are magnificent paintings by Flemish artists of the 300 years ago including the masterpiece “the Altar of Ghent” We saw the Gent Town Hall with portions from different centuries. The Post Office is in one of the many building built for the 1913 World’s Fair in Gent.  We saw the old meat market and where Orval beer was first made by monks in a monastery. Another benefit of the 1913 World’s Fair was the clearing of old rundown houses near the 12^thcentury castle fortress, Gravensteen, and the rebuilding of the castle which was a ruin at the time. The castle had been built by the dukes of Flanders inspired by the castles built by the Crusaders in Syria.  From its roof there is a panoramic view of Gent.  After over two hours of walking in the sunshine, we stopped by a canal pub for Belgium beer and elderflower cider.  We had doubled the distance that we had walked in Aalter. 

    We walked back to the car through some of the streets we had seen and returned to Ingrid and Alain’s home for a reunion with Ingrid’s sister, Martine, and their mother, Solange whom we had last seen in 1975. We also met some of the children all in their 20s. There were 15 for dinner.

    We began with drinks, snacks and chatting on the covered patio, overlooking the garden and decorative pool.  Dinner started with fresh buns and hot white asparagus soup, followed by delicious plump white asparagus onto which was added chopped eggs and either butter sauce or hollandaise sauce and sliced ham. Before dessert a family photo was taken on several cameras by the girlfriends of Ingrid’s sons.  Dessert was the most delicious strawberries we have ever tasted.  They were ripe, flavourful and not too sweet.  Then we had to leave to catch the direct train back to Brussels. We had such a fun time with the Belgian cousins.

    Alain drove the few minutes to the train station with five minutes to spare.  As we climbed onto the train we noticed that it was manufactured by the Canadian business, Bombardier. On the train ride back to Brussels, a conductor passed through the coaches to check and stamp the train tickets. The train passed through some rain shortly after leaving Aalter station but it had stopped by Gent station.  The walk from Brussels Centraal station to our hotel was 11 minutes.

     

 Distance walked 20.81 km