I drove to Belgium

This weekend we took a roadtrip to another country. It was my 3rd time driving into a foreign country, if you count Canada. I've been to others, but driving in is a rare experience for me. Last time was 2 years ago when I drove to the Netherlands. I didn't realize how close Belgium was or else I would have done this sooner.

It's great fun to drive into another land. All the signs change, and in this case, they were in French. I even saw a sign that said Paris, because that's not too far beyond Belgium. The thing you have to remember, though, driving out of Germany, is you cannot just carry on at whatever speed you like. Even though the highway doesn't change much, there is a speed limit of 120. Imagine if Canada had no speed limit. What signs would you see as you crossed into the US? Something that would get your attention, right? Belgium doesn't seem concerned about light-speed Germans navigating through their land.

I chose Liege because it's close, and it's a citadel town and I have a thing for European citadels. I love the idea of building an elaborate star-shaped wall around your town for protection. I visit every citadel I can. Liege as a city can be traced to the year 558, but the earliest form of its citadel was begun in the year 1000. Check out the Wiki page for some interesting diagrams of the progression of the shape of the citadel over the centuries. In 1977 it was listed as a classified structure. (!??) A citadel has no place in modern warfare, but it sure did good work in history. Castles and cathedrals are cool, but I am drawn to these fortresses. They are not trying to be anything, they just are awesome in repose, inspiring imagination.

Half of this citadel is still here, overgrown with trees, and being propped up with posts in some areas. I love all the archery holes in the walls. Since it is on the top of a steep hill, they had no moat around this one. I picked up a fallen stone and put it back into the wall. "There, I fixed it."

There are 197 crosses for the victims of German invasions.

The town of Liege is kind of run down, trying desperately to avoid slumification. The architecture amazed me. The homes are row houses, and each one is only 5 meters wide, and usually 3 stories tall. Each one had a front door and a window facing the street.

Like Wuppertal, Liege is a town built along a river, with its inhabitants living on the steep hillsides over the river.

A 400 step stairway was a popular tourist stop, and I took lots of pics. Going down was surprisingly difficult - at one point my right leg was trembling from the effort of simply being careful not to fall.

I couldn't help but think of  Henri, the Existential Cat, when I saw this. My man says that Perdue means Lost. Please note that since I live in Germany, I cannot watch all of Henri's videos due to copyright music laws. But what I see, I enjoy along with 5 million others. It took me a while before I learned that this cat lives ..guess? In Seattle. Proving, again, that All Good Things Come From Seattle.

You notice the smell of coal going through Liege; I believe they heat with coal.

People speaking French all around us really shut us out - here our 2 languages cannot help us.

My goal was to eat a Belgium waffle. I've never been fond of waffles, but I was curious. Sure enough, they are different. A Belgium waffle looks like what you'd expect, but they must fry them in sugary butter or something because they have a sugary crisp coating. They are served with chocolate sauce and whip cream.

Going into a restaurant was a challenge, neither of us know French besides just a few words. I wanted to be brave and order something traditional, but avoid eating horse if possible. (I've heard they breed draft horses for food in Belgium.) I ordered asparagus wrapped in bacon. Well, that's what I thought it was. It was a salad with tomatoes and cucumber, with some canned, limp white asperagus on top with a slice of salted ham around them. On top of it all was mayonnaise. It was all served cold. The ham was actually really good. I hate canned white asparagus. I don't really even like white asparagus much because I'm spoiled on thin green crispy asparagus. I was able to eat my cold meal though, it was an experience. My man ordered an omelette, which is a common all-day food I think.

Then it rained. I really got to test my new riding raincoat, the one Aarene recommended (Muddy Creek). After 3 hours of pouring rain, only the sleeves failed to keep me dry. It wasn't cold out enough to be completely miserable, even though my feet and pants were soaked through.

I had a hat on and the hood over that so my head stayed warm. My man was starting to suffer as his jacket was not as waterproof, and then at one geocache on a muddy hillside, he fell down and got completely muddy, head to foot.

We pressed on, finding caches in the dumping rain, wondering about our bad luck, but I knew that a hot shower was waiting for me so I was fine. Our bathroom is (still!) being remodeled and I have not had a shower in several weeks. (I've been using my kitchen sink.) We took a rain break in one of the passageways, it was quite a place to hide, watching a sliver of sky with sheets of rain like waves in regularity.

Back at the hotel I took a hairdryer to our clothes. We had not even brought extra clothes, cuz we were only staying one night. So I had exactly two tshirts with me, and the soaking wet jeans I had on. I used that hairdryer a very long time, and our room was extremely damp and every surface was covered in wet things, including the contents of our wallets, purse and backpack. 

In the Formule 1 hotels you share toilets and showers in the hall with other guests. I call them robot hotels cuz the bathroom stalls have cleaning cycles after you step out, and it's really loud, like a bunch of robots are cleaning them. Also, these hotels are so automated, if you arrive in the evening, there is no one working. You use an automat to swipe your card, and it gives you the combination for the door to your miniscule room. I cannot complain about room size when you only pay 50E per night, and it's somewhat clean.

I should say more about those robot bathrooms. If you do not lock the door, the light simply turns off on you, and when this happened to me and I screamed, my man was there waiting so he rescued me. It's terrifying to imagine the robots beginning the cleaning cycle when you're still in there! Even the shower, later, though I was enjoying being under running water again, I was on edge the entire time that the robots would malfunction and begin purging it.

For dinner, mostly dry, we found nothing open near us except for Buffalo Grill. It's a big old fake American steakhouse. I, again, tried to find a good steak in Europe and failed. It was raw looking even though I asked them to cook it again (they had one German speaking waitress, thank God). Before and after it was cooked again, it was so tough, it was nearly impossible to cut a bite with a steak knife. I had to saw at it a LONG time to get a bite. Then, imagine how hard it was to chew, if it took me that long with a serrated knife. Ugh. I'll keep looking. My man ordered this awesome baked bread with rounds of Brie on each piece. The Brie was to die for.

That night we watched TV and I can't believe it, even Belgium has an American Idol, called Belgium's Got Talent - just like the German one, with the formulaic nasty male judge, young attractive female, and older nice judge. Afterwards we flipped to another channel and watched Italy's Got Talent - their singing is a lot like shouting.

For breakfast, I was so disappointed. My mom would have demanded her 5 Euros back. Normally these economy hotels give a continental style breakfast that is very limited: a few types of bread, butter/jam, some corn flakes, coffee, milk, and OJ. This one was pa-the-tic. Or as the Germans say, "Pa-the-tisch." They only had white bread. A big long Baguette, and a loaf of white (Wonder) bread. That was it. You just got to select jam or butter. I found some little spreadable cheese and ate about 4 of those and some coffee but that was the most minimal breakfast I've ever seen at these places.

It worked out though because I wanted to stick around long enough for lunch before heading home.

This photo shows the little "street" at the bottom of all the stairways leading up to individual houses above the train tracks below, the Rue du Baneux I've pictured above.


We spent about an hour here looking for a geocache. Every 15 feet or so, there is another stairway up to another rowhouse, but they were all so overgrown with plants, I don't see how they could actually use this walkway.




We made our way down 400 stairs again, this time another 400, twisting and curving through passageways.

Down at the river we discovered a big street market stretched out through the streets and along the river. I was delighted to see what they had. Lots of bread, candy, American style Tshirts (NY Yankees, Bob Marley), and so many hotdog/hamburger booths I lost count. All the same. I did not want a hot dog (bratwurst) nor hamburger. There were lots of cheese booths and everytime you approached you knew it, they smelled really bad!

I was mostly surprised when I saw live animals being sold at this market. Apparently the rules in Belgium are a lot looser than in Germany (for many things). There were cages with all types of rabbits, chicks, and canaries in tiny cages so small they could not move. I wanted some canaries but my man says for every new animal, an old one must go: )

Finally we had had enough of the press of people so we went into the cafe district to look for lunch. I was happy to find a Tapas bar, perfect! I ordered cheese wedges and a dish of chili con carne (which was mostly carne and nothing else). My man got tortilla, which is quiche in Spain. I drank Bitter Lemon Schwepps and he drank Coca (that's what they call Coke there). They also gave us some spicy tortilla chips, those were really good dipped in my chili.

Then we made our way back up 400 steps, finding other passageways and wonderful narrow 
paths all the way up to the citadel where we parked.

It only took 2 hours to get home, traffic around Cologne was bad, and I was thrilled to see we didn't even need to get gas for this trip.

I know there are a lot of better cities in Belgium, but I was delighted with Liege, its citadel and its narrow pathways. Perhaps my standards are not very high, but I don't need to stay on that highway to Paris for a while.