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What is travel? An addiction - perhaps. Does travel lie behind curtain number three - an unknown? My recipe for “Travel” requires preparation, reading, beforehand knowledge. Then it requires an openness to whatever happens, flexiblity, going with the flow - a mystical combination of plans and no plans. You know a lot beforehand and you know nothing.
How did I pick Belgium? Really, it picked me. I wanted to attend a conference for transgender surgery (I work on the voice changing surgery part). The conference was in Belgium this biennium, so if I wanted to participate, my travel would be Belgium. I am not sure I would have chosen Belgium based on its high mountains, its grand canyons, its beaches or some other famous natural site that might typically attract me.
In the end, there were wonderful historical sites to see, but it was really the people that made Belgium special for me. If I told you let's go look at some cemetaries, you might wonder if that would be worth a trip a third of the way around the world to see.
The magic on the trip began when Luftansa upgraded me to Business class for some unknown reason. That luck, if you will, continued throughout my journey.
Just as a contrast, on the plane, I sat next to a young college woman whose parents were taking her to Italy. She really wasn't sure if it was worth going to visit Rome or if there was really anything interesting to do in Italy! She hadn't read a thing about Italy - it was just a vacation, perhaps a Disneyland approach to touring the world.
Each week, I continue to study French with my mentor Martine Purcell. We talk in French about the week. I review vocabulary and study grammar - fascinating topics? That study, though, was a key factor in opening doors on my travels.
The evening of my arrival I wandered throughout Brussels - a city that predominantly speaks French. I had planned to spend time in France during my travels to use my French, but I used it plenty in Flemmish Belgium. It was the second language of most everyone, perhaps even more than English. The very young and the elderly typically spoke no English and I enjoyed talking with everyone.
Architecture is always fascinating for its age and stories it tells if nothing else. At 8:20 in the evening I was wandering down a narrow cobblestone street and stopped in front La Samarataine with a half-height doorway where a "spectacle" was happening. I ducked (entries in Europe would not meet the requirements of the ADA (Americans with Disablities Act) by the widest of margins. I descended a stairway that approximated a ship's ladder and purchased a ticket for the spectacle that began in 10 minutes. The door closed and I found myself listening to Wallonian fiddle music. Now that music is probably not high on your list, but it ranks near the top on mine close behind Celtic music. If fact, I didn't know what or where Wallonia was, much less the type of traditional music played there before arriving on this trip. Through three hours of wonderful music I gradually learned about it from my neighbor who conversed with me in French. The show was accompanied by Belgian Beer - if you have been there you know the seductiveness of those abbey ales. Even with the internet I doubt I could have planned to find an old pub that was playing traditional Wallonian music on the particular evening of my arrival in Brussels and if possible close to a hotel that I didn't book until I arrived.
I found opportunites to speak French at every corner and on every train. The only truly English speaking opportunity came in the beautiful, though touristy, town of Bruges where I took a group bike tour along the canals in the countryside. Several participants were doctors and everyone was from the United States, though the tour guide was from New Zealand.
History began to unfold (What is Europe, if not History?) and though there is some old history in Belgium (remember I have been to Provence and Italy where the Romans had been for a couple of years) it was really this century's history of war that came to light in Belgium. We came across German bunkers in the middle of fields and on the same short bike ride passed across the Front into Allied territory as well. Such a tiny distance, so easily travelled in peacetime. Without a guide or a knowledge of history, there was no discernable difference between the two landscapes. This closeness is Belgium, it is Europe - a lot of people in a small area.
My soon-to-be friends had proposed a trip to a cemetary when I arrived. Lieve Delseuphe, Filip Baert and their three lovely daughters I knew only from previous correspondence. Lieve and I had both studied voice with Robert Bastian - at different times so we really did not know each other, but had in some way shared a life experience. When travelling, I make every effort to know someone locally, if not before, then after I arrive. In this case, we knew of each other and I had planned to meet the family for a weekend.
I rented a cell phone at the airport so for the first time in Europe, I was as reachable as I am at home. Pushing 13 digits on a phone anywhere in the world and you would locate me within seconds - unimaginable really! In addition to the near daily family calls, Lieve phoned and invited me a little sooner, and then I stayed a little longer for four wonderful days in Roselaere. Belgium really came alive when I was no longer a tourist in a tourist town.
Arriving outside the train station in Roselaere, four blondes got out of a car and perhaps it is my Scandinavian blood and blondes, but I felt like I was home. I was welcomed into their home and shared "la vie quotidienne" for a few days. Laure, the eldest daughter showed me around, inviting me to her music lesson, the bakery, and to join in on games. She spoke no English and I no Flemmish, so we both worked our way through with schoolbook French.
We headed out to Ypres, a town annihilated in WWI, yes annihilated! There we found the cemetaries of students who ended up forced to study a war chosen by their elders. Many remained forever at the site of their studies. Taking some time lapse photos as the sun set on the cemetary, the movements of Laure and her sisters became ghosts in my lens and stirring inside me the perhaps obvious, but perhaps missed observation that the cemetary is about people, not the stones that you see.
The world today is "the way it is" because the unknown German student and Australian boy are buried under these stones, perhaps even having shot at each other.
Among many other pleasures, Filip loaned me his Eddy Merckyx road bike and I took off along the canals. Yesterday I had ridden to Holland and today I rode to France. Everything is close. In one town on this Sunday, the Flemmish half was open and across the street the French half was closed. One city, two countries.
I rode over a hundred kilometers and it was all, off road, on bike trails. There were restaurants and pubs along the trails and they were filled with cyclists. There clearly was no age limit, young or old for cyclists. An apparently frail couple would rise after lunch and instead of heading out to the parking lot, they head to the bike rack, swing a leg over and pedal off. Even Portland, Oregon, a "bike friendly" town has quite a ways to go. As I rode back into Roselaere, there was a bike race going on. Everyone seemed to be outside their shops, lined up along the road. Incredible, the enthusiasm for cycling.
I had wanted to include some of France in my trip, so I took off by TGV and headed to Alsace. While the wine was the attraction, after learning about WWI in Belgium, my train travel unknowingly took me along the "Western Front" of WWI. After my trip, I have since read several books and my travels through Champagne, the Ardennes, the Alsatian hills were really the site of the entire Western Front. I couldn't have planned better if I were a war buff.
The desire to speak French again opened doors for me as I got to know quite a few people on my train rides. Stuck in a compartment it can be quiet and cold or warm and engaging.
In the end, I left prefer ing the Belgian beer to the Alsatian wine, though buying a bottle of imported beer at home is not quite the same as drinking in a Belgian pub. The taste and smell of a Belgian beer do take me back momentarily and even Susan is finding the Belgian ales to be a fun alternative to wine.
I finished my travel in Ghent at the medical conference, meeting up with friends and colleagues from the US and making new friends from around the world. Ghent was neither too small and touristy; trying to be what the tourist wants it to be, and not so large that one cannot get a feel of the town. It was working, yet had history preserved throughout. People were friendly, just a lovely combination.
People, Food and Beverage define a trip whether it is the trout smoked on a campfire with friends during a canoe trip to the Algonquin lakes or the Belgian triple ale sipped in a pub with a Jewish poet, the postman, the Lithuian ambassador and daughter in Brussels while muddling through several languages. While Scenery might often be construed to be trees and mountains in the distance, people a distraction in the image, there is not much that really does not constitute scenery everywhere I go, for people are scenery. In summary, this is my defination of travel!
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Filip Baert family
