Belgian Farmhouse Weekend

Ok, so Claire and I just came back from two weeks of traveling with her Bosch program. In order to actually post about these adventures, I'm going to try and do a series of small posts so that I post what I write and do it in a timely manner. We left Berlin April 16th on a sunny Saturday morning and were graciously picked up at the Brussels airport by Claire's stepmom's cousin, Anne, and whisked to her farmhouse in Flobeque. Berlin has had an amazingly warm spring, but Belgium was about 10 days ahead of us in terms of flowers and leafed out trees and we felt transported. Big city bustle to countryside quiet. Here's a picture of our canal in Berlin as we left and our lunch on Anne's farmhouse patio. Wine, cheese, tomatoes, mozzarella, and a fruit tart. Yumm!

Anne lives in northern Wallonia which is the french part of Belgium right on the language border with Flanders. A few times as we explored with her we crossed over the border and back, but it is amazing how each group keeps to their own. After our glorious lunch we wandered through the fields of rapeseed and grazing cows before she took us to this lovely garden restaurant to begin our week of Belgian beer consumption. I've had Belgian beer before, but it must taste better in its country of origination. She had us tasting varieties made in her local area. Claire's favorite has a witch on the bottle and is called Quinine. Personally after months in Germany I was just

happy to have dark beers be the norm. In Brussels I had pommes frites and my requisite Belgian waffle and watched Claire eat a pail of mussels, but if I had to bring one food item back to Berlin, it would the Belgian beer.

For our second day we got to join Anne for a concert of Belgian-French folk songs she was giving as house concert in a nearby village. Our schmoozing abilities were a bit low since neither of us speak French and Wallonian Belgians don't speak German. The concert was fun and a great little window into the life of artists enjoying the European rural lifestyle. Rural in Europe and rural in the American West are completely different concepts. The house concert was right along this canal dotted with people out fishing for the day or strolling along with the families and friends. After the concert we sat around with her musician friends eating crepes, drinking beer and listening to them sing along with accordion and fiddle. The weekend was a perfect bridge between Berlin and Claire's seminar week in Brussels. We felt so relaxed and truly transported to somewhere new, just what the doctor ordered for "spring break."