Our 1996 Visit to Brussel's "Grand Place"

      The next day we got up at 6:00 to travel to Belgium.  We walked to Amsterdam’s Central Station, and caught the train to Brussels.  Crossing the border into Belgium was a non-event.  The train just continued on to Brussels, and we got out there.   

    Our first impression of Belgium was not very positive, in fact we found the Brussel’s Central Station depressing.   We departed our train underground, whose decor was black walls with dirty yellow trim.  It didn’t help that that the gloomy surroundings were inadequately lit with fluorescent bulbs that didn’t put out much light.   Hopefully, Brussels’ Central Station is more cheerful-looking these days.   Upstairs in the main part of the station, things seemed much more welcoming, until we were charged 10 Francs to use the washrooms.

    It was a day of smells.  The woman that sat next to my wife on the train had body odor.   The dark area where we got off of the train smelled of urine, and there was the smell of sewage seeping up from the grates on the streets later when we were walking around in Bruge.

    We weren’t very well prepared for Brussels and so we found it very confusing to us at first.  We didn’t know where to go when we left the Central Station.  Both the map displayed on the sidewalk and the map in our tourist guide didn’t help us at all.  We decided to just follow the other tourists, and that worked for us.  We eventually found the Grand Place.  I was pretty skeptical about anything with a name like that, but found it very impressive.  I hadn’t realized that “Grand Place” was just a French term for a square.

    The Grand Place is designated as a World Heritage Site.  It is a  large square surrounded by 17th Century Baroque, Gothic, and Louis XIV buildings, with fancy ornamental stone facades.  There were preparations going on for some festival.  Workers were busy marking out a design that would be used for covering the large surface of the square with colorful flowers.

    After being impressed by the architecture of the old buildings surrounding the square, we wandered out onto a street, not knowing where to go or what to do.   We came upon a statue of a little boy peeing.  It was surrounded by a huge crowd of tourists, busily snapping photos.  I managed to restrain myself.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1996: Our Day in Holland's De Hoge Veluwe National Park

      The next day we made our first use of our EuroRail pass by taking the train outside of Amsterdam to visit De Hoge Veluwe National Park.  We were quite impressed with the comfort and efficiency of the European train.  I became even more impressed after showing the conductor our EuroRail pass and he told us we should be up in a First Class car instead of the Second Class one.  We moved, but even the Second Class car was plenty impressive to me.

    After about an hour, we got off the train and waited for the bus that would take us into the park.  The Hoge Veluwe National Park was not exactly what we had expected.  Back home we live close to the Mountain National Parks in the Canadian Rockies, and we were spoiled by the spectacular views and wildlife of those internationally known parks.  In comparison, De Hoge  was a let down, but we nevertheless enjoyed seeing it.  Its landscape was flat, partially heath and partially treed.  I guess they have herds of Red Deer and other wildlife, but while there, we didn’t see any.

    De Hoge Veluwe Park was a bit of a strange mixture.  It was initially created by a wealthy couple, the husband of which was an avid hunter, and the wife, a passionate art collector.  They bought up the land to create the park hoping to bring both nature and art together for the public.

    Once we got off the bus, we got ourselves a map and climbed on the free white bicycle, to begin our exploration of the place.   The area was very flat, so biking was a lot easier than in the Robson Valley.  

    We biked down Trail One, which led us to a sandy area which held the hunting lodge.  It mysteriously emitted “machine gun” sounds (?).  The Hunting Lodge was an architectural interesting building which featured a high tower. (Photo below) It certainly didn’t look like any hunting lodges I had ever imagined.

    More to our interests was an art museum that surprisingly, had paintings by Van Gogh, Surat, Pissarro, and Picasso.

    After a lunch at the museum, we got back on our bikes and took Path Two.  There were a lot of other bikers on the trail whizzing by us in both directions.

    It was a long bike ride to the Park entrance, and we were quite dismayed upon discovering that we had ended up in a different entrance that the one we arrived on, and that our return bus ticket, weren’t valid at this other entrance.  We ended up hiking out of the park, and buying another bus ticket to take us to Arden, where we used our EuroRail pass to get us back to Amsterdam.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

I Am Going to Run Out of Spring Projects

     Our BC winters normally give me a lot of slack days, enabling me with a lot of time to think about what outside projects I will do when the weather gets warmer in spring.  However this winter, with its unusual warm spell that melted the snow, has enabled me to do a lot of those spring projects already.

    One of those projects I was planning to do was to replace the coroplast skylights I had on the barn roof.  The very sunny summers we have been getting had caused the plastic coroplast sheets to turn brittle and deteriorate.  Taking advantage of the mild temperatures (11°C, 52°F), I was able to get the job done yesterday.

    I have a lot more respect for working at heights, now that I am in my old age, so I wore a safety harness and made sure the ladder was secured the barn. 

View muy paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Unusually Mild Weather Continues

     I couldn’t think of any other thing to blog about today, so as I often do in such situations, I have fallen back to our weather.  We are still sitting in a very unusual warm spell for the first part of what is normally a frigid February.  The temperature was 11°C (52°F) yesterday, and is expected to be 10°C today.  

    Yesterday afternoon, I spent an hour bucking up the big cedar that had fallen a couple of months ago.  That was a job I thought I would put off until spring, when the snow had melted, but since the snow was already gone and it was just “jacket” weather, I thought I might as well take advantage of the situation.

    This morning I took a walk around the pond for a bit of exercise.  There is now water sitting on most of the ice, and as you can see in the photo, there are even a few small bits of open water around some of the cattail stalks.   I am sure the ice is still at least five inches thick over most of the pond, so even if our mild weather continued, it would take quite a while for the ice to disappear. 

    I must say, so far our February sure feels like spring.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

We've Got Spring Weather, What's Going On?

     While a lot of my friends and family are suffering under unusually frigid weather where they live in more southern climes, the Robson Valley residents are shaking their heads wondering what happened to winter.  The 8 inches of snow we had on the ground, which suggested that we were finally going to get a normal winter, has melted away after we received a spell of above freezing temperatures and rain, making it really feel as is Spring had arrived.

    Today it is forecast that our daytime temperature will be 11°C (52°F).   Back in my hometown in Southern Indiana, today’s temperature is -2°C (28°F), and they have a foot (30cm) of snow on the ground.  Things sure seem to be mixed up and unreliable these days.

    On the positive side, the BC’s snow pillow equipment that is up in the mountain alpine and measures the amount of snow and precipitation, is showing that things up there have finally returned to normal after a record breaking low accumulation last winter, which was below historic normal readings.  That is a positive development.

    Time will only tell how the rest of our winter season will pan out.  I don’t really mind the unusually mild temperatures, but would certainly prefer snow to rain.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1996: Wow, The Trains of Europe

     One of the things that impressed me the most during our trip to Europe were the trains.   I had never done much traveling by trains.  I had gone on some long poky train trips in Mexico, were where we sat, rocking back and forth on old hard seats, watching the dry countryside slowly go by.  We felt spoiled, sleeping overnight, in an ancient Pullman Sleeping car. 

    I knew well, the bad reputation of Canada’s Via passenger trains that come through McBride, which are extremely unreliable, arriving either very unexpectedly early, or unexpectedly late.  I knew that when passengers thought they were making good time, the Via train would pull over, sometimes in sight of the destination, and sit on a side rail for 30 minutes to let a freight train go by.

    Anyway, while being aware of those train experiences, I expected that Europe’s trains would be a whole lot superior, but I was blown away at just how much more superior they were.  They were fast, modern, comfortable, convenient, and very efficient.  They ran like railroads were supposed to run, always on time.

    My wife’s experience in Europe had led us to purchase EuroRailPasses, and although expensive, they ended up being worth it.  The passes allowed us to board any train traveling through any European country, without making any reservations.  It was pretty mind blowing.

    I remember one incident, when we arrived at a train station, planning to go somewhere in one direction, then upon discovering that the train departure time was an hour away, we just decided that didn’t want to wait around, so we immediately changed our minds about where we wanted to go that day, and got on a train that was about to leave going to that new destination.   We didn’t have to make a reservation or buy a ticket for the train, we just got on the train and showed our EuroRail Pass.

    On our first European train trip, we got onto the modern car, settled down in the comfortable seats, and being very impressed with it all.  When the ticket clerk came around and asked, we showed him our EuroRailPass, and after looking at it, he said there was a mistake.  “Yikes,” I thought, “What could be wrong?”  

    Then the ticket collector said, “You are in the Second Class Car.  You should be in a First Class car.”  

The Second Class Car was fancy enough for me, but we did gather up our things and walk up to the even more comfortable, First Class Car.

    A lot of Europeans travel to Canada to vacation and I often wonder how they feel after being used to those European trains, and probably expecting much the same train experiences traveling in Canada.  I know it must be a shock to them, to see how our old trains run here.   There is a plan in the works for a fast, modern, efficient train to be built between Calgary and Banff National Park, which I imagine will be closer to the European train experiences.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Yummy Dutch Treats: "Frits with Mayo" and Vla

     On our 1996 trip to Amsterdam, I was introduced two Dutch gastronomical treats that I remember with great fondness and hunger.   While my wife and I were wandering through the streets, we came upon a small food trailer with a crowd of people congregating in front of it.  It was a vendor selling Frits (French fries) with a generous glob of mayonnaise on top of it.  The only condiment I had ever had with my North American, French fries was ketchup, and I found these freshly fried frits topped with mayo, amazingly delicious.  Just now writing about them, makes me hungry.  

    The other food we were introduced to while visiting my sister in Amsterdam is vla.  Dutch vla, also known as vlaflip is a creamy, silky vanilla custard pudding, but what I found unique about it (besides its scrumptious creamy taste) was the fact that it came in milk carton-style containers.  While originally a vanilla flavored puddling, it had evolved, and now also came in chocolate and caramel flavors.  There were rows of Vla cartons lining Dutch grocery shelves.  

    When my sister served us some vla for dessert, she mentioned that vla was very popular with heroin addicts, something that has always stuck in my mind.    You really didn’t have to be addicted to heroin, to also become addicted to vla.  It is probably a good thing vla is not available around here, because it would be something I could probably not pass up in the grocery store.

    I am sure that there were other delicious Dutch treats that were available while we were in Amsterdam, but these two are the ones that are most memorable to me.

        You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca