We made it...

Glons, Liège, Belgium. 9:12 pm, August 22

The boys are giggling away in their darkened bedroom upstairs, and we've tidied up from dinner now. After more than twenty-four hours here, we're making a chicken stock; that more than anything indicates that we've established ourselves for the time being here in the Cloes barn in Glons. Yesterday was pretty surreal, involving a two hour car ride, a seven hour flight, a twenty minute walk, a forty minute flight and then a one hour drive before we arrived. Top it off with some emergency grocery shopping at the village magasin from a checkout clerk who looked suspiciously like Avril Lavigne, and you'll understand why we're finally taking a deep breath and starting to relax...

As I wrote earlier, we're staying in a beautiful loft stye apartment, made from a converted 17th-century brick barn, in the village of Glons (pronounced "Glaw" with a nasal sound on the "aw"), maybe 20 minutes from Liège. Michel Cloes is a friend originally introduced to me through Bruce Kelly, my mentor, and he maintains the barn here as an apartment, mainly as a summer home for his children when they visit their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who also live in the village.

The flight from Toronto was really quite easy despite a delay of nearly one hour, caused by the late arrival of the plane, and some complications in loading baggages. Nevertheless we made our connection in Amsterdam without incident. The boys were both quite well behaved for the most part; Duncan only getting difficult late in the flight when he needed to sleep and was ordered to surrender his iPod. They slept perhaps two or three hours, and Maggie and I very little. The flights were uneventful, and we were able to get to the baggage pickup and get all of our bags very quickly.

Our friend Jean-Remy Cloes, the elder brother of Michel, manages a travel agency in Liège. He arranged for a driver to pick us up at the Brussels airport in a very large Volkswagen van, with enough room for four of us, and our mountain of baggage. We drove to Glons, and I introduced Maggie and the boys to Jean-Remy and Michel's parents, where we were welcomed with great enthusiasm and I had a chance to rediscover my French, which is rusty. We also met more of the extended family, including Tristan (11) Anaïs (9), and François (8). There are other grandchildren in the village; we'll meet the rest of the family tomorrow evening. This evening around dinner time we had a visit from Diana (Michel's wife) and Tristan and Anaïs.

The village of Glons is very picturesque, nestled on the flat bottom of a protected valley, surrounded by farms and forests. I have travelled here twice before, in 2005 and this past February, so the surroundings are familiar to me, and the Cloes family old friends.

I travelled into Liège this morning with Jean-Remy and picked up the car, a generously proportioned Renault Espace. I rented through AVIS, which was the most reasonable rate, better than Europcar, which my sister had found was quite reasonable the last time she was in Europe.

Driving here is a bit intimidating. The speed limits are higher, for one thing, 120 Km/h on divided highways, and 90 Km/h on non-divided. Even on narrow highways that run through villages, the limit is 75 Km/h, with some exceptions where it is 50 Km/h. The signs are different and there are traffic circles, instead of traffic lights on the regional roads. This pales in significance compared to the famous priorité-à-droite. This means that where in effect, cars from side roads to the right of the main road can drive directly onto the main road without yielding or even looking. All Belgians I've spoken to about this rule agree that it is an aberration, yet it persists.

Maggie and I have been vying for the computer so we can check email, and update our blogs (hers is at www.maggiesexcellentadventure.blogspot.com). I must say that we have come to value skype video and the robustness of the Belgacom data network; within ten minutes we were in a video conference with my sister Heather and brother in law Tim, showing her the loft, from inside and out, and pictures of the cow across the road. My parents also appreciate the possibility of seeing and hearing their grandsons, although I have the feeling that it's more significant for them than for the kids, who are more interested in seeing themselves making silly faces than actually looking at the pictures of their grandparents... maybe that will change as they get used to talking over video conference.

That's it for now, we'll post some more photos and another entry when we have some time. I'm also trying to figure out how to send out notification emails when the blog is updated, but you can subscribe to the blog in a newsreader, which might do the same thing. Also, please feel free to add a comment to the end, if you wish, or send me an email at matthew.zadow@sympatico.ca.