Road Trip to Belgium

Since last Sunday, we have based ourselves at Rhea's holiday house in Belgium. It's in a little village called Hauset, about 10 minutes drive over the border from Aachen. Peta joined us in Aachen on Monday, and the three of us have spent the week making day trips around Belgium and Germany.

Autobahn!
German motorways are so cool! Excellent quality roads, wide lanes, and clever interconnections with other motorways and highways make it pretty easy to get around. I've been doing my share of the driving in Rhea's little Peugot 106, and I've really become accustomed to the idea of overtaking trucks at 160 km/h (the dial goes to 180, but I can't get it past 175), and having a Mercedes materialise in the rearview mirror, flashing its lights to pass at about 240. The little Peugot handles the Autobahns remarkablly well - even better since I inflated the tyres to spec and put some oil in the sump...


Sprechen Sie deutsch?
This week has provided a couple of key opportunities to practise my German speaking and comprehension skills. Rhea and I have been a bit lazy about this, particularly while Peta was around, but we have made a couple of social visits this week that put me to the test. Firstly, our neighbours in Belgium are friends of Rhea's family, and so we were all invited to dinner. They speak pretty good English, although the conversation tended to oscillate between English and German. They served up a delicious meal of roast pork fillet and vegetables - Belgians apparently take their food very seriously, and it shows from their kitchen! We also visited Rhea's father and his partner, who have just built a house near Aachen. Whilst Rhea's father speaks very good English, Uschi speaks none, but understands a fair bit. Again, we all enjoyed a delicious meal, and an interesting multi-lingual conversation. With a little more practice, and a few more beers, I'm confident I'll get the hang of this...

Aachen & Monschau
We visited the Dom (famous cathedral commissioned by Charlemagne), bough Printen (cardamon-flavoured gingerbread, a local specialy in Aachen), and finished the day with a trip to delightful little village of Monschau. Beatiful places to visit, but not so exciting to talk about. Take a look at the photos on my Facebook site!

Belgian Supermarkets
I've already been to my share of supermarkets in Germany, and apart from the enormous range of cheese and cold cuts, they're not that exciting. Not so in Belgium! While wandering the aisles looking for flour, I stumbled into the beer section!!! A whole aisle of the best Belgian Trappist beers, in crates, six-packs, long necks, and even mini-kegs, starting at less than 1 euro (A$1.60) a stubby! To think we pay in excess of A$7 for this stuff. Needless to say, I've bought a few six packs to take back to Tuebingen.

Rhea took us to her favourite praline shop in Eupen, just down the road in Belgium. The smallest quantity we could buy was 250g, but we opted for 1kg of assorted pralines. These are the smoothest, most delicious creations I've ever tasted. And although many things over here are a little more expensive than I'm used to, this was a remarkably well-priced investment - about 12 euros!

Chateau Bouillon
Unfortunately, the weather conspired against us in Belgium. It's been overcast and drizzly for most of the week. The morning we had planned to drive to Brugge for the day, it was raining hard, and none of us felt like driving 2 hours each way to wander around in the rain. Instead, we made the excellent decision to head south to Bouillon, just near the French border. Chateau Buillon is a superb medieval castle that is still pretty much "as it was", and the Belgians are quite happy to let tourists crawl all around the fortifications, dungeons, and grounds. The Chateau within the foritifications is off limits, but it is nevertheless an excellent place to visit. This also proved to be quite a cultural excursion, taking us away from the German-speaking provinces of Belgium into the French-speaking region of Belgian Luxembourg. Fortunately, Rhea's French is pretty good, and I could remember enough to order a steaming bowl of mussels with "pomme frites" on the side.

Duesseldorf
The last couple of days we've zipped across to Duesseldorf to meet up with some other Aussies. Matt Danckert lives in Duesseldorf with his German girlfriend, Christine. James Guy and Peete Wilkins flew in from Norway and the Netherlands to join us for the weekend, and Matt treated us all to a tour of Duesseldorf and a tasting of Altbier - stout which is the local speciality and favourite. We said farewell to Peta last night, and left her in Duessldorf to continue her travels. This afternoon, Rhea and I will head back to Tuebingen for a few days.