I find it interesting that when you enter Belgium from the south the language immediately changes to Flemish from French and when you leave The Netherlands and enter Belgium to the south you immediately enter the French speaking part of Belgium, from Maastricht to Liege, for example. No transition, just a line. Wouldn’t logic say that the Flemish speaking part of Belgium would be close to the Dutch border and the French speaking regions near the French border?
Wonderful youth hostel in Brugge
We stayed in another excellent youth hostel in Brugge. In order to have a private room for two nightswe had to change rooms after the first night. There were really no private rooms left so the good ladies in charge gave us what they called the “bus drivers’ room.” It was like a suite. I think they were protecting us from the hordes of school kids in the hostel. One night, though, we ate dinner in the hostel and we thought the kids were just fine. Of course, sleeping in the same room with them would be a different matter.
From this point on in the trip I was basically taking Maun on a sight-seeing tour because I had been to all these places before. She loved it.
We did laundry in Brugge, took a canal cruise which was incredible, snacked on famous Belgian frites, ate dinner one night on the main square and generally had a very good time, Maun had read a lot about the beauty of Brugge and it lived up to its reputation.
One day we took the train to Ghent. There, on the other hand, Maun was a little underwhelmed. We took another canal cruise but there was so much road construction and no real way to get a sense of the city that I think it was a little disappointing to her. In the old days, I had been in Ghent in 1959, there were so few tourists that when you went into the art museums you basically got a personal tour with the docent. If you had any interest in Flemish art it was quite an experience. Funny though, even then I didn’t particularly enjoy the castle, probably the most important tourist site in the city. Torture implements and the like are not my thing.
We did have a delightful lunch in Ghent, another sit-down restaurant lunch. We had the special which was, of course, fish, cod, as I remember and it was very nice. We ended up sitting at a table with a lady who was by herself and we had a very pleasant conversation. I had noticed that another group of ladies were speaking French. The lady we were sitting with sort of knew them, at least knew who they were, and when I asked why they were speaking French she told us that they were being pretentious. Were we in on the vague beginnings of what is going on in Belgium now with regard to the two languages?
Just another little detail, besides finding bike paths everywhere as soon as we entered Belgium, we found a definite lack of ATM machines and they were much trickier to use than in France. The French are simply very good at making it easy to spend your money. And another detail I noticed. Since we were now riding on roads because it was so much easier and more straight forward, I had the opportunity to observe the traffic. I couldn’t get over how many farm trailers were being pulled by brand new Mercedes automobiles. Lots pulling trailers with horses. Those industrious Flemish.
Sitting on the curbstone watching the Mercedes' go by
One the other hand, on one of the bike paths we abandoned, we found ourselves in the middle of a herd of sheep being led along the dike cum bike path. Picturesque, but difficult to navigate.
We abandoned in favor of the sheep.
With the help of the map the Dutch lady had given us in Amiens we rode to the town of Breskens and our first ferry. The ferry landed in Vlissingen, the town where my mother was born. On another trip I had found the actual house but it would have been difficult to find it again and the weather was less nice now so I spared Maun that little adventure and we rode on to Middleburg where I had never been before.
On the ferry to Zeeland and the Delta
Rain was threatening now and it was time to find a place to stay and admire the beautiful square and later. It wasn’t as easy as it had been but finally I noticed a little tiny hotel sign in a window. We had to ring to get in and when we did we noticed that the furniture was sort of stacked up as if the people were getting ready to move. The lady asked us how we found her and said she was trying to get out of the hotel business. Considering the circumstances she certainly treated us nicely. The room was very nice and the breakfast was great and she made sure we had enough for lunch. She charged us a guilder for a shower and then fed us like royalty with no regard to cost. The Dutch and hot water. Maybe water in general. Someone could write a book about Dutch attitudes toward water, I’m sure they have. I am personally convinced that their attitude is affected by where they live. And, after all, we were in Middleburg really only a short time after the disastrous floods of 1953.
We asked the lady where we should eat and she said it was a pity we weren’t there a little later because then it would be time for the first mussels of the season. So we just poked around in the light rain and we hadn’t gone far before I saw a sign in a restaurant window saying they had these very mussels. That was for me, it was special. Sort of reminded me of the queen being presented with the first herring of the season. I had mussels and Maun had a schnitzel, both garnished with frites and still close enough to Belgium for the frites to be delicious.
Riding on the dike. The Dutch trust their lives to these dikes (along with gigantic hydraulic gates)
We rode around the square on the way out of town the next morning. It really is pretty. Then by way of roads, bridges, dikes and ferries we rode through the Delta Works before finally arriving at Hoek van Holland. At one point we were able to ride right up to the base of a giant modern windmill. It was impressive and very, very noisy.
My bike in my life 