Beer and Waffles

Current Location: Bruges, Belgium

No rest after 15 days of riding makes for dug to be a weak boy.  Even Tour riders have two break days.  I guess taking a break day in Bruges isn’t a bad thing either (they have a beer museum, hooray for beer!)  It also doesn’t help that something I ate or drank didn’t sit well with me and I spent a night heaving my guts out in the middle of a forest.  Not the nicest prospect for a cyclist as I didn’t end up with much sleep and really low on water (couldn’t even keep that down.)

I didn’t really intend to go 15 days straight but I kinda got hooked on the free camping gig and when I did try to find a hostel they were booked up so sick and all I kept pushing on.

As for youth hostels in Europe they really are for youths.  I think the average age in the one in Champlon was around 16.  Only a week later did I find out it’s Easter break for kids so that is  why they are all out in groups and not in school.

I find myself visiting a fair few abbeys now that I am in Europe, kinda like the temples of Asia.  Along side that are the museums that seem to litter each town I visit, not that I go to most of them.

A lots of the museums deal with the Great War “The War to End All Wars” or WWII.  I went to a Battle of the Bulge museum and it was pretty well done if a little low budget, most museums are privately run so they have limited budgets.  I do think I should have gone to the one in Bastone but the one in Ardeens was good on information.  Fun fact from a local in Bastone, “Some tourists don’t know where Brussels is but sure know where Bastone is.”  I’m pretty sure he was referring to the vets that come back to Bastone.

As an American I’ll be the first to admit that my commonwealth knowledge was lacking considerably before making it to New Zealand, so when poppy day came around I was a little puzzled what it was over.  I ended up looking it up online and found that it’s a reference to Armistice Day.  The poppies reference comes from a poem written during WWI in Belgium.  I accidentally ended up in Ipres and cycling past the museum figured it was worth the visit.  I wasn’t let down at all, lots of photographs and stores to be told here and really well done held in the ancient cloth hall.  They put a fair emphasis on the Christmas of 1914 where along portions of the front lines soldiers put down their arms and became brothers again for a night.  For those that haven’t seen “Joyeux Noël” I really recommend it, one of my favorite films of last year thanks to Max & Jane for sharing that one.

On leaving the museum I wanted to catch another trail that wouldn’t be marked and got somewhat lost.  I asked a gentleman passing in the other direction where this river might be and he offered to take me.  He took off in the other direction that he was travelling and I followed along.  Little did I know that this would entail him taking me 8k out of his way.  He was absolutely gracious about it playing guide along the way pointing out his daughters house, canals built but never used, memorial for the place where chemical weapons were first used, and the memorial to Flanders Field.  He showed me how to get around some construction and then set me on the right path, talk about a nice guy.

The bike is holding out something fierce, beside one flat tire and one busted tire no other problems yet.  It was something of a problem having a busted tire as I was travelling with no spare.  I spent an hour trying to thumb a ride into a town with a bike shop but nobody was stopping.  I gave up and started walking into a town I passed through several kilometers back to see if I could find some help when a guy pulled up in a van that spoke no English.  With my limited French and German I was able to express “Velo Kaput.”  We loaded up the bike into the van and he looked at me and said “1 Minute” he thought to himself for a while and took off in the direction I had come from.  He pulled up at someones house and jumped out and said again “1 Minute” he talked to a guy for a while and jumped back in the van again and we were off.  A few minutes later we pulled up to some guys house who happened to have a slew of bike parts.  He talked to the guy for a while and asked through the guy if he wanted to wait to take me back to where he picked me up and  I declined.  I said my thanks and he smiled and jumped back in the van and was off again.  I’m nominating that guy as Mr. Belgium.

The road really flattened out the last few days once I reached the Flemish area.  I thought I should get a tail wind as I turned north only to have the wind switch directions on me.  I prefer hills, at least they have a payoff.  The wind will just grind you down relentlessly.  I did end up getting used to looking at every vertical object for signs of a turn or to stay on course and it turns out to be a pretty elegant solution to the difficult problem of signing a complex yet relatively traffic free route for cyclists.  On the other hand once in the flemish area there are a multitude of signs for different routes that will take you everywhere it seems.

If only I had time to go everywhere.

Joyeux Noël

Joyeux Noël

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