A Brand New Country! Well, at least for me...

Every place I've been on this trip thus far (Canada, England, Spain), I have been to previously. But from here on out, every place I'm going to is going to be a brand new experience for me. And the first of these is Belgium... woo-hoo!

I got up yesterday morning at the hostel and got my things together yet again. But the beauty of it this time is that, because I'll be returning to Madrid later to meet back up with Sarah, I was able to leave a lot of my stuff behind there to pick up then. So I was able to walk out of the hostel and head off for a week of traveling with only one small schoolbook-sized backpack on me. Aaaaaah. Amazing how much faster the walk from the hostel to the metro station was without having to lug my stupid suitcase with me (my animosity for my suitcase is increasing daily, as is my obsession with what I can start ditching along the way. I have a feeling by the end of the trip I may come home with a toothbrush and a travel size bottle of shampoo in hand).

My flight left a picturesque Madrid (clear blue skies, fluffy white clouds, sunny, warm but not hot, breezy but not windy) behind to land in a grey, rainy Belgium. I had been forewarned about the Belgian weather so I wasn't too surprised, but it was a bit of a shock to the system nonetheless. I was met at the airport by Stephan... always so nice to see a familiar face when you're in a country where you don't speak the language!

I met the Maistriau family (Stephan, Lutgarde, Laurane, and Valentin) last year in Lancaster. Lutgarde was sent on a temporary assignment there with her job and the family followed; Lutgarde is a chemist, Stephan is a physicist and was doing research at Columbia University and Laurane and Valentin attended high school in Lancaster. When I started planning this trip and mentioned to Lutgarde that I thought I might end up in Belgium for a few days, I hoped to perhaps be able to meet up with them at some point for dinner or something. I never anticipated that they would invite me to stay with them. It was SO kind of them! And it is of course always so much nicer to visit a country with someone from that country, as they can show you the REAL way of life. It's a totally different kind of experience and I'm very grateful to get to have this one with them.

They live in Namur, a town in the southern, French-speaking part of Belgium (the northern part speaks Dutch and a small section of the eastern part speaks German). After I arrived, Stephan, Laurane and I went for a drive to a beautiful old monastery that is now used as a school and then to a pub to have my first Belgian beer in Belgium. Since I'm not a big beer drinker, I decided to start off with something 'easy' and ended up with a local, fruity brew. I was told that it was a "girl beer", but I enjoyed it nonetheless! Last night we all went out for dinner and then took a leisurely stroll around the downtown.

The forecast for today was a mix of sun and rain and it seems that the Belgian weathermen are far more accurate than American ones as they were dead on. What surprised me most was how quickly it changed from one to the other. When I woke up, sunny. By the time I showered and got downstairs, grey and dark. And so it went all day. But we soldiered on nevertheless. Lutgarde and I spent the afternoon checking out Namur: the spot where the two rivers meet up, the charming downtown streets and shops, the citadel and a castle. In between rain showers, that is. One minute cold and windy and rainy, the next sunny and delightful.

She explained to me that the people from Namur have a reputation throughout the rest of Belgium as being slow in their way of life, their speech, their pace, etc. so they are called the "Snails of Belgium". What struck me as funny is that they're not offended by it, but rather have embraced it. The snail is now one of their regional symbols and you see it everywhere throughout the town (hence the pic of me by the snail sculpture).

A friend and I once had a discussion about what superpower we would most like to have. His answer was the ability to speak all the languages of the world. I told him that was not a superpower and made him choose again. But now I'm wishing that I had it. Coming off of two weeks of traveling only to countries where I speak the language, it's been a jolt to be somewhere again where I don't. It's been several years since I've traveled to a country that I couldn't get by in either English or Spanish and I had kind of forgotten how dumb it can make you feel. It's comforting when, for example, I'm in Spain and can understand what people are saying both to and about me so I don't have to worry about not being able to speak up for myself, or even just to be able to get what I need, when I need it. When I was downtown today and a waiter came and asked me something and I had NO idea what he was saying (Lutgarde was on a phone call), I had no recourse but to smile and do the old shoulder shrug and point to Lutgarde. It's humbling, to say the least. I'm sure wishing now that speaking all the languages of the world really WAS a superpower!