Winter descendeth upon western Europe again: overnight, there will be 10cm of snow in areas of the Netherlands north of here. Translating to American, that is about four paperclips or one credit card (the long way).
Spring break: we could have gone somewhere warmer but went here instead because there are less people and I got a great deal on airfare. You take what you can get.
On Thursday, we visited Haller forest (Hallerbos), south of Brussels – just over an hour drive. By now, we have lovingly named our electric Kona “Ol’ Smoky” since someone smoked in it and we can all smell it every time we enter the car.
Ol’ Smoky bore us to Hallerbos – an old forest and is famous for its carpets of flowers in the spring. I know like six flowers so please know that all this knowledge has been ganked from the Hallerbos website: daffodils, wood anemone, wild hyacinth, and bluebells all bloom in turn in the spring. Also – it is supposed to be a lovely, peaceful walk, and home to some of Europe’s few sequoias.
The cold front is creeping in on us as the day wears on and as we drive out: it’s getting increasingly windy as we drive towards Brussels. I am glad Rhett made me take my winter coat because I would be very sad without it, or I would have purchased another winter coat, which would have made my wallet sad.
It was really warm before we came (as all the shopkeepers tell us when we make small talk about the weather), so I’m sure the blame for the weather is because we are here. Due to the previous warmth which won’t return until we leave, a bunch of the flowers of Hallerbos have at least peeked up. Cold weather is stalling their blooming activity now, but there are still many anemone and some bluebells peeking up from the forest floor.
We parked next two a few other cars and were immediately assaulted by a blast of cold wind when we got out of the car. It should be better in the forest itself – I hope – or I am going to declare how cold I am every ten feet and my companions would do well to abandon me here with the bluebells.
Important to note, I took a picture of the map, but cannot actually functionally use it because I am very bad at maps. I eventually stopped making incorrect turn suggestions at the many branches of the path and went along for the ride. Fortunately, it did get a lot more pleasant as we walked in the forest, the trees sheltering us from the wind.
The paths were flat and easy, winding up and down the hills of the little forest. There was a lot of horse doody – it would be so nice to take a horseback ride in here (maybe on a warmer day).
There were tiny flowers in bloom everywhere, and the leafy signs of bluebells with some early blooming bluebells. Neat! The small white flowers in bloom were the wood anemone.
Because there were basically no people, we also saw a few deer! They are really skittish, unlike our bold urban deer at home who let you get very close to them. They are Roe deer and they have very fluffy, white butts. They’re also a pretty small variety. I thought this one was a baby but it turns out that it’s fully-grown.
After a hurried lunch at a nearby cafe (as a vegetarian, my diet is becoming croquettes), we booked it to the Delirium brewery on the outskirts of Ghent. They normally don’t do tours on Thursday, but we emailed ahead and they said they’d do a tour for us. Joining us were six Chinese college students studying architecture in Brussels.
Delirium brews and bottles all the beer it sells worldwide from its small facility outside of Ghent. They’ve invested in a lot of automation and energy efficiencies in the last ten years, and are proudly entirely Belgian-made, including the robots.
On our tour, we learned that most of their beer goes to China – and they produce a lot of special fruit flavors for that market, like passionfruit and lychee. They had labeled pallets full of beer all around their factory floor and the Chinese students were really excited about all the pallets going back to their home country.
Delirium gets a lot of their bottles from Russia, as well as some of their hops, so they are going to have to figure out some alternatives pretty quickly unless Russia changes its mind about Ukraine.
In the end, I tried their red cherry beer, and the Chinese lychee fruli beer. So good!
As I was leaving, I was chatting with one of the girls – she said she was from Shanghai and I told her I really liked the city when I visited it in 2013. (Hey, I think I even have some blog posts about that in my China category!)
Instead of a normal reply like “I really love my city” or “Oh did you get to go to The Bund?” she said “Wow that was almost 10 years ago!” I didn’t expect to be so brutally attacked today! ☠️
After the tour, we decided to go into Ghent to check out Gravensteen (The castle of the counts). We found a nearby ramp and went to park, but google maps did us dirty with its confusing turns, and after missing one critical turn, we had to leave the city-center and re-enter again, taking us an additional 10 minutes to park. For once, my interpretations of the GPS turns were correct – we just had to fail to read the GPS before discovering my one talent of interpreting weird GPS displays.
Critically, this meant that we were too late to get into the castle, which has last entry an hour twenty before it closes instead of an hour before closing like normal places (I refuse to blame my lack of entry on my lack of googling anything about its hours).
I rage-ate a waffle to cope, as one does.
And we walked through Graffiti Alley on our way back, which had some truly impressive pieces buried beneath layers and layers of spray paint. Very colorful.
And then because I sat down to rage-eat that waffle, we ended up being five minutes too late to get into the cathedral.
So this was a cursed excursion to Ghent. But at least it was a neat city to walk around in – like a more modern, more Gothic Bruges. It would be bad to step on, as a giant.
On our way home (I am still salty about this castle), we finally had to stop to charge the car, vs proactively charging it when we have found easy stations (or using Lidl, which is both classy and free). So far, it’s all been free to charge – and the rental itself was cheaper than renting a gas car. Plus, gas is $10 a gallon here so….suck it, gas.
We hit an ultrafast charger on the way home as it started to sleet. Took us just about a half hour or so to get up to 80%. If the weather wasn’t so shitty, we could have walked to dinner or some shops. Instead, we hid in the car and watched the weather attack us. It was about 30 euro for our charge – a bit more expensive, but worth it for the speed!
And then we got home and the snow/sleet started happening with even more wind. And it’s going to be quite chilly or rainy the rest of our trip. Oh well. This part was the Bike Part anyway and we had decent weather for it.
Today, we had the distinct pleasure of ice chunks in our face and lots of wind to drive the ice chunks into our eyes and souls. Even though I didn’t want to bring my winter coat (and did), I freely brought my wind/rain pants that I use for running. They came in handy today because it was windy as heck.
But this cold won’t stop me. It might stop my hands, so I will need gloves now. And if I buy gloves, surely it will warm up outside and I won’t need them.
My first order of business was obtaining a starbucks mug because I enjoy their destination mugs a lot. This also served to test our mettle: could we bike the rest of the way into town if we could make it to starbucks in the station?
Survey says – yes. I got my mug. I froze my lil hands. And we made it to the city center.
There were less people today, and far more cars in the city center that we had to dodge on our bikes.
I acquired gloves, and then was feeling very bold and also stupid and crafty, so I tricked Justin into going up the 366-step belfry to the top. You know, it’s cold, windy, and therefore a really good idea to climb a big ol’ tower.
On the way up, there are a few informational displays on the significance of the belltower and the city’s register. The stairs wind up, up, up – getting exceptionally narrow and even more tightly curled as we ascended to the top. Near the top, you reach the carillon – which is currently under maintenance. They were working on it when we arrived, tuning it up with oil and other things.
The wind was positively howling at the top. The 360 degree panorama view of the city was lovely though. Worth the climb – and there was no crowd because it was the absolute stupidest time to climb the tower. Yes!
After a quick stop for lunch (where I got pot-au-feu but vegetarian, and more croquettes because I only eat potato now), I found…..my first tour group of Italians! My question from one week ago has been answered. They are here. And they are less numerous than in Iceland in August.
We wandered into De Halve Maan (half moon) brewery, which has a beer pipeline from its brewery in city center to its bottling plant. Necessities! Crowdfunded necessities. They apparently were tired of their trucks rattling through the narrow cobblestone streets and crowdfunded the world’s first beer pipeline to their bottling plant two miles away.
After acquiring more chocolate, it was back to our house to grocery shop (aka sponge more electricity off Lidl) and hide from the cold wind.
