THE ROOSTER

That's the name of the little town I went to on the Belgium coast.  It sounds much more romantic in Flemish - De Haan - don't you think?

I took the train over the flat countryside, through the well-known cities of Ghent and Bruges to the coastal city of Oostende, a trip of about 1 1/2 hours.  Oostende is a bustling port and tourist vacation spot so there's lots of activity and highrise apartment buildings.

From one end of the Belgian coastline to the other (a distance of about 68 km from the French border to the Dutch border), you can ride the "Coast Tram" or the "Kusttram" for 5 euros a day.  It's the longest tram line in the world and it stops at all the little villages along the way, like ..... De Haan.

De Haan is the most beautiful village on the coast, utterly charming.  Of course it has a seaside promenade but behind it you discover a delightful maze of green, meandering avenues and a Belle Epoque area, well over a century old, an Anglo-Norman residential area.

 The weather was grey and chilly, more like winter than spring, so I thought it would be fun for you to see what I looked like as I walked the beach, enjoying the sound of the waves and the gulls.  (I told the Flemish lady who took my picture that my friends in Canada would never believe that I was walking on the beach in a winter coat!!)

And the sea...the endless sea with its never-ending waves. And then the beach in all its simplicty, with no frills and no people.

                 Beaches like this are where the Allies landed on D-Day in 1944.

The round park in the centre of the beautiful downtown residential area was coming to life!

                      And there was even a coastal forest I could meander through.

My hotel was quaint, my bed comfortable, the seafood delicious and the peace ...exquisite.  I came home relaxed and ready to pick up my responsibilities again.

                                               Thank-you, little rooster!

SPRING HAS SPRUNG!

Ohhh, but it's been a long, cold winter here in Brussels.  We haven't had the mountains of snow that Quebec has had, but we've had more snow than usual and temperatures have forced people to continue wearing longjohns, thick scarves and fleece coats right to the end of March.  There was a snowstorm on Palm Sunday!  Having an apartment that has relatively little insulation doesn't help.

No sitting basking in the sun on terraces, no snowdrops or crocuses pushing their way up through the soil, no reappearance of short shorts on the long-legged Brussels beauties. (Well, that's not completely true because they have reappeared...but with warm tights!!)

Ahhh, but here comes April and spring and blue sky (well, at least some days) and the promise of warmer days!  And flowers ...

Yesterday, it was beautiful so I took the rattlely old tram to Tervuren, a suburb of Brussels, to visit the Africa Museum.  The tracks followed large boulevards where the grass was turning green on the lawns surrounding mansions housing embassies, ran alongside an expansive park where swans were floating on a little lake, and wound through a woods (Forêt de Soignes) where the soil was pushing up purple and yellow and white crocuses and snowdrops.  Everything is waking up again!

The Africa Museum was built by Leopold II to house his enormous collection of artefacts from Africa, particularly from what was the Belgian Congo, now DRC.  There were many objects that were familiar to me from having lived in Nigeria, but the exhibit that allows the visitor to follow the meandering Congo River from its source in the south to its mouth in Kinshasa was fascinating. 

There were photos and newpaper articles about Stanley meeting Lingstone, and monkeys, elephants, deer, zebras, fish, hippos, lions and birds in their habitat, that the taxidermist had prepared for us to admire.

 I was glad to see that the museum also chose to show the visitor that there was a very dark side to all this: the exploitation of the Congolese people in the ivory and rubber trades.  Much of the beauty of Brussels - its parks, large boulevards and grandiose buildings - was built on their backs, with the money from these trades.  It's a sobering thought for me, as I walk around this city of Brussels and enjoy its beauty....

                                         hands cut off because the quota of rubber
                                      exacted from those men had not been reached

Next week, I'm going to escape for 3 days to the Belgian coast, to a little town called De Haan.  I have never been to the coast so I'm looking forward to the sand, the wind, the coastal vegetation and some "down time".  I'll take you with me ..... :)