8 April, Wednesday:
Today met our friends Walter and Frieda Prevenier at In deWulf, a small inn in a town called Dranouter near Ypres, deep in the Flemish countryside. Dranouter is part of a relatively newly formed municipality called Heuvelland (hilly country in Dutch, although the highest hill is Mount Kemmel at 156 meters). There is no town called Huevelland, it is just a governmental creation which contains the towns of Dranouter, Kemmel, De Klijte, Loker, Niewkerke, Westouter, Wijtschate and Wulvergem. Huevelland’s total population…all 8 towns…is 8,217. So when I say it is deep in the Flemish countryside, you know what I mean. We got to the inn (or perhaps I should say that it is a restaurant with rooms) at about 5:15, having been delayed by a huge traffic jam with no apparent cause…more on that later. We went for a pre-dinner walk on tiny roads that allowed us to circle the inn. Smells of cow manure abounded. Made me homesick for the farm. The restaurant has been in business for many years, but a while ago the woman who was running it decided to turn it over to her son, who had been studying cooking at a variety of places, including France and Spain. It had been raining as we drove to Dranouter, but by the time we got there the sun had come out. Dinner started with, of course, champagne, and about 4 amuse-gueules (literally, mouth entertainers). Then we went to our table and had a magnificent meal. We all took the “modest” tasting menu as opposed to the big time tasting menu, which was a good thing. We started off with about 4 appetizers, which were followed by about 4 main courses, which were followed by 4 desserts. Plus we had a riesling from Austria, a chardonnay from Chile, and a red wine from Italy that contained cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and one other obscure grape the name of which our wine waiter had forgotten. Incredibly enough, it was a pretty light meal. All of the portions were very small…sort of like tapas…there was a fair amount of fish, etc. Everything was beautifully served and imaginatively presented, and at the end of the evening while we were ready to stop eating, we weren’t really full. Very nice. Michelin gives this tiny place one star, but there are those who think it is the best restaurant in Belgium.
9 April, Thursday:
After breakfast we went for a walk around and up Mount Kemmel. I had been there before on a tour of WWI battlefields and graveyards. Interestingly enough, Mount Kemmel features prominently in a letter that my father has from his father when he was fighting nearby during WWI. On my last visit, many years ago, I even saw a monument to the men of a US machine gun company that I think was my grandfather’s. Mount Kemmel, being the highest point for miles around, was a great vantage point and artillery location, and when the Germans occupied Mount Kemmel, they kept pretty busy shooting at and shelling the soldiers down below, including my grandfather,. As I recall he talked in his letter about the “accursed Mount Kemmel” lurking over them. In any event, this whole area is beautiful and sobering at the same time. There is a monument on the side of Mount Kemmel to 5,237 unknown French soldiers who are buried there, along with 57 who were identified. At Ypres, only a few kilometers away, the Menen Gate has inscribed on it the names of 54,896 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in that area before August 16, 1917 but whose bodies were never recovered. It is estimated that there were 90,000 British soldiers who died in this area whose bodies were never recovered. And that is just the ones whose bodies weren’t found. There are dozens of military cemeteries, seemingly down every little road, containing the bodies of those who were recovered and identified. So on to more cheerful things. It seemed that the cause of the big traffic jam yesterday was a big bicycle race from Gent to somewhere nearby. It is run on tiny little roads, and one of the most interesting parts is where they ride up and down Mount Kemmel. Twice. On a steep, narrow, wet, slippery, cobblestoned road. As we were walking up, we saw a huge tractor trailer truck that was trying to make it up the hill, which advertised a 23% grade in addition to cobblestones so slippery you could barely walk on them. The truck was from an equipment rental company, and was clearly trying to get to the top of Mount Kemmel to pick up tents and other bicycle race paraphernalia at the top. The driver tried heroically, but failed about 5 times. Each time he’d get about a third of the way up, just before it started to get really steep, and then would run out of power and traction. Then he would have to back down this steep, slippery hill, around a slight corner, avoiding the French cemetery on one side and a café on the other. We were terrified that he would loose it and crash into us, so we took to the woods and made it up to the top. As we started down the other side, we observed that the road was not quite as steep and not quite as slippery as on the other side, although it was longer and had more curves. And who should appear again but our friend the truck driver, driving us off the road once again. I guess he gave up on the other side and thought he’d try to make it from this side. Nice try, but no cigar. After watching him make a few more tries, we took to the woods again and the last we saw of him he was almost to the top, but stopped and partially off the road sort of leaning into a steep bank. We finished our walk and tried to get lunch in Kemmel, the tiny town we had parked in. As we were taking off our hiking boots, who should reappear but our friend the truck driver! It took him about 10 minutes to get through the town, since the road was so narrow, his truck was so wide, and there were cars parked on either side of the road. When last seen he was happily picking up tents, etc. left over from the bicycle race in Kemmel. Other than the people taking down tents and loading trucks, the village appeared deserted, but when we went into the only restaurant in town, we discovered that it was jammed. No room for us, so we drove 10 minutes to Ypres to get something light…a sandwich or something. It was getting late for lunch, but the restaurant we picked was pretty elegant and they said that they could still give us the menu of the day, which we agreed to. I should have been alerted by the words “puréed potatoes,” but I was hungry and this was our last chance. We had a lovely vegetable soup, elegantly presented. This was followed by stoemp with a huge sausage on top. It was Beagle’s first experience with stoemp and she handled it quite well. Even though Madame was not amused, she ate about half.
10 April, Friday:
Friday was a gorgeous day. It was sunny and in the high 70s. We walked around, checked out a restaurant in Place Saint Catherine and learned that not only is there a Mannekin Pis statue in Brussels, but there has also been a female equivalent since 1987 called Jeanneke Pis and there is even a statue of a dog lifting his leg on a fire hydrant. Those Belgians sure know how to attract the tourist crowd! We also did some shopping, and since Beagle is going back to NYC tomorrow, she went to about 100 stores looking for chocolates and other stuff to make Easter baskets for John and Vic. En route we stopped and had our first ice cream cones of the season. Very satisfactory. I got wobblier and wobblier as the afternoon went on, and by the time we got home, I had to lie down. I had a fever and as far as I was concerned, I had heat stroke! These New Englanders just can’t stand the hot weather!
11 April, Saturday:
Beagle left for New York today. She is going to see my hip doctor to see what can be done about her hip. Her back surgery was a success, and that pain is gone, but it appears to have been masking other pain that originates in her hip. She is getting better, slowly, but this is ridiculous. This has been going on for months, and looks likely to continue forever, so she finally decided to try something other than Feldenkrais and PT…which help, but which, in my opinion, can’t cure the underlying problem. So I packed her bag for her yesterday (including some of my winter gear, which was the excuse she gave for making me pack for her) and drove her to the airport this morning. I was still feeling sick, so I went back to bed for about 3 hours, then did some grocery shopping and pretty much stayed inside except for that. I did manage to watch most of a rugby match between Cardiff and Toulouse, which was evidently very important…part of some tournament or something. Anyway, Cardiff won. I had to do the grocery shopping because Sunday is Easter and Monday is a holiday as well…which means that all of the grocery stores and 95% of the restaurants will be closed. One of Beagle’s students who is in Belgium for a year or two is a Catholic and he tried to find a church where he could attend Easter service in Brussels. Apparently there are none. Despite Belgium being a Catholic country (when it is not being Socialist or “Free”), the churches appear to be shut on holidays, including religious holidays like Easter…and, as far as I can tell all churches are shut on Sundays anyway. A day of rest and all that.
12 April, Sunday:
Today was Easter. Supposedly a religious holiday, but as far as I can tell it is an excuse for Belgians to eat chocolate. I watched French TV last night, and they said that the average annual per person consumption of chocolate in France is 4 kilos (8.8 pounds) and they were proud of it. But Belgians apparently eat 11 kilos (24 pounds) per year. So there, you stuck up Frenchies! Even the US, at 5.6 kilos (12 pounds) whips them. I went out today to see what Belgians actually do on Easter. Other than the young man who was checking all the cars on rue Souveraine to see which cars were worth breaking into, the streets were pretty much empty. Everyone had either left town or was lying on the grass in a park. Spring is really here. The tree in our garden, which had been violently pollarded, is sporting little green leaves everywhere they cut branches off. They’re not big, but they have appeared in the last few days and show promise. On another subject, did I tell you that the other day, when we were investigating rue Molière, we walked through a square that is apparently famous for its parrots. Evidently, some time ago some people released domestic parrots, and now there is a big colony there that has survived. They have built huge round nests in trees, telephone poles, etc., that are evidently communal lodging places. Quite impressive, especially when you are expecting pigeons.
13 April, Monday:
This being Belgium, today was another holiday. The city was deserted, and it was another gorgeous day. I can’t get enough of this Belgian weather! The big news of the day is that Beagle had an appointment with the famous Dr. Buly, one of the world’s leading hip doctors, and the guy who not only fixed my hip a number of years ago but also told me that I didn’t need my knees replaced, contrary to the advice of the quack who operated on (and made worse) my right knee. Being famous, there are all sorts of pictures of Dr. Buly in the halls of the Hospital For Special Surgery in NYC, all of which show him with large amounts of curly blond hair. It comes as quite a shock when you see him in person and discover that he is bald as an egg. Either he was wearing a wig in the pictures or he was starting to go bald and decided to shave his head. In any event, he poked and prodded and looked at X-rays and MRIs and told Beagle that she did not need hip surgery and that her problem was, in fact, severe tendonitis in her psoas muscle, a muscle that runs from your back around in front of your hip and down. The cure for this is rest and a great whacking cortisone shot. So she got her shot (actually shots…Beagle said they did 5 shots in each of 4 spots), and we’ll see. It apparently takes somewhere between 2 and 8 days for the cortisone to take effect, so it will be a while. It is nice to know what the problem was, and even nicer to know that surgery is not required. Now if we can just keep her from continuing to inflame that muscle by maniacally exercising! She should eat more stoemp and relax.
14 April, Tuesday:
Things got off to a bad start today when the cleaning lady turned up at 8:30 AM. I told her that being a gentleman of leisure, it was too early for me to do my usual routine of scuttling around the apartment trying to stay out of her way, and she left. I, however, finished my morning ablutions and desperate for something to do, drove out to Turvuren to the Africa Museum. It was a beautiful day, and I walked through the park and then into the forêt for a while. I returned to the museum and gave it a thorough going over and then repaired to the cafeteria. I had been under the impression that the museum had a pretty good restaurant, run by the same people who have restaurants in several other museums in Brussels, and which are pretty good. This turned out to be wrong. The bill of fare was pretty pathetic, and my mind was made up for me when about 50 hearty Belgians wearing “Hi, My Name Is Jean-Pierre” nametags turned up. I fled back home, only to find that as punishment for having rejected our regular cleaning lady earlier in the day, two Amazons who were doing their best to demolish our apartment had replaced her. I fled and returned after they had gone, only to find that we were without internet access, that Beagle’s computer was inert, etc. I spent the next two hours trying to figure out the problem…which turned out to be that the cleaning ladies had unplugged the surge protector into which Beagle’s computer is plugged, had whacked the cable modem with the vacuum cleaner in a subtle way so that the cable connection at the wall was disabled (but not visibly so), etc., etc. Exhausted by my labors in putting everything right, I repaired to La Régence for dinner and had veal kidneys and frites to give me strength. That did the trick…put me in a much better mood, but dining alone at a restaurant is not really high on my list of things I love to do. If Uncle Brian were to go into La Régence he’d know everyone there before the evening was out. Not me.
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