HAH-hah!

I could tell you tell you that we got to the theater the day after it opened and only 10 minutes before the start time and still got good seats, but I won't, because I'm nice.

Okay, lets wrap up this France trip so we can get on to more current events shall we? Driving back up north we stopped in Nancy and were blinded by what was either the glaring white stone of the main square, or perhaps the surface of the sun. We probably ate lunch somewhere--I forget.

Anyhow, our last night was in Sedan which is near the Belgian border. We stayed in a castle--the Chateau Fort. It was a bargain we found on the internet probably because Sedan is kind of a crappy town. The woman at the front desk gave us our key and told us we were on the top floor. We were surprised when we got off the elevator and we immediately greeted by a flight of steps. We joked how it was a good thing we were able bodied and not lugging a bunch of bags. Then we opened the door to our room only to see...more steps. These went up to the, ahem, first floor of our room then up another level to the actual bedroom. After going back down to the courtyard we realized that our room was actually like a tiny house perched on the very top of the castle. Not too shabby for under €100.

On the way back to Brussels we made one last stop in Dinant, Belgium which is home of the Leffe abbey and this cool onion-domed church.

-Jack

The next morning we went south to Riquewihr. Depending on which guidebook you looked at, either Riquewihr or Ribeauville held the title for most touristy, but I think Riquewihr wins (Jack disagrees, however). It was smaller, so the same amount of tourists were crammed into tighter quarters. And there didn't seem to be any activities not associated with tourism. And there were more purveyors of macaroons, wafting their magically delicious aromas to tempt passersby.

Riquewihr was about 2.5 miles away because the road wasn't very direct. Shortly before we left Hunawihr and got into the vineyards, a black lab came out to greet us. He was friendly and accompanied us for a time. We named him "Chouette" (pronounced "schwet"), which means "female owl" and "cool" or "awesome" in French. Once we got about halfway there, the vineyards stopped and forest began, and we decided it was time for Chouette to go home. Only he wouldn't agree to those terms. The only thing that made him pause, momentarily, was when Jack said "Arrete!" But it didn't last. Finally we lost track of him at the city gate, merrily acquainting himself with a Jack Russel terrier.

By this point, all the towns started blending together in my brain. I believe there were homes built directly in the city wall, there were barn swallows flitting from their mud nests under the eaves and pooping all over the place, some charm I would guess, and tarte flambees for lunch at a place called La Dime in an old tithing house--get it, tithing, dimes, 10%?? Riquewihr had the neatest coat of arms of all the ones we saw, primarily because it looked more homemade than most.

The guidebook suggested a nearby restaurant called St. Alexis as hard to find, but worth the trip. Given that there was only one road exiting town to the west, which was the one we had walked on, we thought our chances of getting there were nil without help. We asked at the tourist office, and they gave us some vague directions that didn't exactly inspire confidence.

After lunch we returned to Hunawihr to pick up the car and go on another driving tour. Had Jack and I learned anything from our last drive? Not much more than trying not to carp when things didn't go as planned. We set off from Ribeauville and stopped at the summit of a mountain for a short hike to a view spot. I'll be danged if there weren't five trails originating from the starting point. The book said "to the right of the gravestone"--there were two! So we picked one.

Right off the bat things started to get weird when we encountered a partially buried bunker facing inwards towards France. The book didn't say nothin' about no bunkers. Raggedy trenches, larger bunkers and manmade caverns followed. At the top of the mountain was a picnic table with a view, although not the one we were supposed to see, and some I-beams sticking up out of a semicircle of masonry. It was all very strange. What we wouldn't have given for a flashlight to explore the dark recesses more thoroughly!

We meandered through more charming little towns on the way back to home base. As we were passing Riquewihr we decided to see if we could find the way to the hidden restaurant. We found a narrow, rain-slicked road that we hadn't seen by the route we took on foot. It climbed steeply up the mountainside. There was no room for error and really no room for a car coming the other direction--would we have to back down the hill if we encountered another vehicle? Finally the road opened up a bit and a sign directed us onto a muddy track descending into the woods. We questioned whether we'd be able to get back up if we went down. We paused on the verge of the road for a bit, weighing the pros and cons, and decided to go for it.

At the bottom the trees opened up to a clearing consisting of a church, the ivy-clad restaurant, and another building in the back. They were connected by a lovely large kitchen garden growing a variety of colorful herbs. The terrace looked inviting, or it would have been if it hadn't been damp and cool. A hiking trail ran through the clearing, and it looked like a fabulous place to rest one's feet in the midst of a strenuous excursion.

Although it was billed as a popular place, we discovered only one other table full on that Thursday evening. There was one cozy room complete with a tiled fireplace and kitchy items on the walls. There were a variety of set menus available ranging in price and number of courses. Jack and I each picked one, and got some wine to share. The first course arrived: a tureen of soup for us to each ladle into our bowls. Very comforting. Jack's next course was a meat pie surrounded by lightly pickled shredded vegetables, followed by a plate of hams. I got the choucroute garni, sausages and hams on a bed of sauerkraut. One of them was The. Most. Delicious. Sausage. Ever. I don't know what was up with it--I kept thinking at the time that it tasted caramelized, but that's not exactly right. It had a crispy skin, a medium-coarse texture, and a well-balanced flavor. Thinking back, perhaps it was slathered in butter or some other flavorful fat and then baked or something. I don't know. It was danged near perfect, though.

Then, dessert of two tarts each: one bearing a passing resemblance to a cheescake, and the other consisting of green rhubarb in a custard. That rhubarb pie just topped things off perfectly . While we were there, the one couple left and another entered. A slow night, surely brought on by the bad weather. If I lived in the area, I'd eat there all the time. Did I mention that all this food was for under €20 per person? I didn't think I'd ever eat again.

Another rainy day presented itself to us on Friday. Fortunately, we had anticipated this and come up with a list of small museums in the area we'd like to visit. Our first stop was to Selestat for the Bread Museum. The concept was interesting: the local breadmakers funded the museum, housed in the building that formerly held the guildhall. It didn't seem to be that old, and we enjoyed the informative displays that showed us how 4" tall women in sexy cavemen bikinis ground grain to make bread thousands of years ago (they used stones and stuck their butts out). We learned how much bread people in various countries ate, how bread is actually healthier than most other foods, and so on. A lot of it was propaganda, but it was interesting (as much as we could glean from the French, anyway). Did you know a loaf of bread painted the Mona Lisa? Or that the talking bread on the Muppet Show was originally wild, but was broken and taught to speak by wranglers out West? The original post and beam from one of the larger rooms was still in place, and it featured carved scenes from bakers' work. Their symbol was the bretzel. With all that knowledge packed in our brains, we went back down to the starting point and sampled some breads and then purchased various starched-based goods (including a bretzel, naturally) to get us through the next 1.5 days. I don't think the cookie lasted more than about five minutes, just long enough for the "window to deliciousness", as Jack called it, to develop on the paper bag. The woman who rang us up complimented my French. I don't know what kind of crack she was smoking.

We killed some time in Kaysersburg before heading to our next destination, the Museum of Wine and Winemaking in Kientzheim. The highlight of Kaysersburg was a small graveyard that looked like a neglected sculpture park and the adjacent ossuary in the basement of a chapel. The pastry-wrapped sausage we bought nearby was too cold to be tasty, although the truffles we got at the same place were amazing. Perhaps the store owner should have specialized in one or the other, but not both.

The wine making museum was pretty interesting as well, but not as hands-on as I would have liked (no samples). The museum was run by the organization that tastes the Alsatian wines and determines their quality. They get together periodically and wear outfits like they're old-school academics: black and red robes and giant hats. A few years ago they met for an anniversary and opened some wine that had been in their cellar for more than a century. Does wine that old even taste good? Or is it just the prestige of owning it, like any other antique? And if it was bad, would I have the guts to speak up? They had old-school grape processing equipment; a letter from an 18th century wine manager, noting what a horrible winter it had been, causing cellars to get cold enough to freeze the wine and resulting in numerous deaths of wealthy people who had been on route to buy wine in their horse-drawn carriages when a storm came up and trapped them; and photos of happy young women with huge cans of poison on their backs, ready to start another day of pesticide spraying. But still--the museum was a bit dry. Not as lively as the bread place.

Our last stop of the day was to Lapoutroie to visit the Eau de Vie museum. It was free, and as you entered, they made a brief attempt to show how liquor is made. That was quickly abandoned, and the rest of the place was packed to the gills with tiny bottles. Virtually anything that wasn't beer and wine qualified as eau de vie, if the displays were any indication. It was kind of fun, as it was clearly an attempt to get you in there to buy the house brand, but there was a lot to look at before they gave you the soft sell. We eventually made our way into the tasting room and marveled at the varieties on offer. One thing we had seen before in the grocery store in Wissembourg and been intrigued with was a liquor made of hops. It was nas-tay! We tried a couple of other things and settled on a bottle of ginger liqueur, sweet but with bite, and a bottle of absinthe.

It was our last night in Hunawihr and we felt an obligation to do what we came here to do before we left: taste and buy some wine in a rigorous fashion. So we parked the car at our place and walked up the hill to the wine cooperative. The woman manning the counter looked seriously displeased to see us at 15 minutes to closing time, and really wasn't very interested in helping us select anything, since we clearly didn't look like we were going to buy a gross of Grand Cru. But we tasted a handful of varieties and picked out a few to take back.

We had dinner at the local winstub, Suzel. Another good, hearty, Alsatian-charm-y, pork-filled meal at a place with friendly staff. After we ordered a large pack of Germans entered and proceeded to put tables together to accommodate their multitude. They pretty much walled us off from the rest of the restaurant. They joked to us (in English--how did they know?) that they hoped were weren't planning to leave. They were having a good time though--lots of toasts were made--and generally created a convivial atmosphere. We took the long way back to our place and Jack captured this lovely photo.

Ribeauville was our charming neighbor about 1.5 miles to the north. We visited the town briefly and then left to go visit the castle ruins visible from our bedroom.

The first point of interest on the route was life-sized stations of the cross, colorfully painted and in high relief, nearly leaping out of their backgrounds. We kept encountering groups of young kids as we climbed the mountainside, and we discovered at the top that they were on a pilgrimage to the Notre Dame de Dusenbach church there. We had to squeeze around groups of singing schoolchildren to check out what that they were venerating: a statue of Mary and Jesus where Mary actually looks her matronly age.

We continued further up, now completely alone on the way to the first castle, Haut-Ribeaupierre (named, like the town of Ribeauville, after the founding family; on the top of the mountain in the photo from the previous entry). It was mostly rubble, but rubble you could climb around on if you ignored the no trespassing signs posted around. We cut across the earthworks that rippled the landscape in front of the castle to exit the area. We had to do some bushwhacking through an area full of rocks that formerly belonged to the castle walls hidden in the underbrush. About when we were ready to despair, and I was testing out the blueberries (or whatever they were) to see if they were ripe enough to survive on until we were rescued, we found a short, steep drop that lead back to the trail.

Chateau St. Ulrich (to the left in the photo in the previous post) was not far off, and was in much better condition. Although there were signs saying something to the effect of "enter at your own risk", it was clearly well kept up. The high tower at the top afforded great views of the surrounding countryside. This castle I could see being defensible, at least from the southeastern direction towards the Alsatian plain. There were some architectural elements remaining such as decorative stone window frames that gave it a more castle-y appearance than the other ones we had visited.

We returned to Ribeauville, toured around the town for a bit, came across a place that specialized in beers and stopped in for a drink. The nice thing about living in Belgium is that we've tried all the Belgian beers that restaurants and bars typically offer, which allows us to concentrate on other brews that would normally be overshadowed by the Belgians.

Eventually we made our way towards the other end of town in the direction of the restaurants. We had overheard some English folk earlier talking about a restaurant that their hotel had recommended, so we went there. I got a salad with 3 kinds of baked cheese: chevre, real Munster and one named after the first family, Ribeaupierre. The Munster was so different from the Muenster which is served in the US that I didn't know which one it was. (NB: It turns out they're not the same cheese.)

We each got a glass of local wine selected by our waiter to accompany our main course: trout almandine for me and beef cheeks for Jack. But wait--don't fish have cheeks, too? Why yes, they do, and they're reputed to be the tastiest bit of the fish. I scooped mine out to test them, and my verdict was that they tasted exactly like the rest of the fish. It was an all-cheek meal, and quite tasty to boot. Thanks, English dudes!

Our bellies full, we headed back towards Hunawihr, passing a stork lovingly tending to its brood as dusk fell. Jack took this awesome shot that also shows the two castles we visited earlier in the day.

We checked out of our hotel Tuesday morning for the drive south. The staff didn't seem to like us for some reason (perhaps because of the communication barrier), but it was an interesting place to stay nonetheless because it seemed to be a gathering point for the community, so there was always something going on. During the breakfast hour, citizens would be sipping a coffee at the bar. At dinner, the outside tables would fill with locals and passersby would stop to converse. We felt like we were in the midst of a vibrant small town, somehow defying the odds in that it was neither dying or completely relying on tourism. Good ol' Wissey.

Because the German border was right there, we decided to take the long way round to our next destination via Baden-Baden. Jack and I had both gotten the mistaken impression that this was an industrial center, but in reality its history going back to Roman times was as a resort town, even taking its name from the baths located there. We drove east from Alsatian charm to Black Forest charm.

We gave up on a driving tour of the principal sights of the city due to bad signage (and possibly a short stint through a pedestrian thoroughfare). It had been raining off and on, and I was frustrated with the demands of navigating, so we parked and went to find someplace to have lunch. We entered a car-free zone of high-end shops near the baths, and we despaired finding any quality cheap eats. It was then that we encountered the Löwenbräu lion.

What could me more German than a beergarden? It looked a little fakey, like it was going to be the equivalent of a Cracker Barrel, but we couldn't resist. The food was very tasty, the staff pleasant, and the beers not at all resembling that crappy brew in the States. These were full-bodied and flavorful, and hit the spot after a morning of driving in the rain. They were also enormous. Jack got beef kidney meatballs with sauerkraut for lunch. The meatballs didn't really disguise the fact that one was eating beef kidney, so they didn't do the trick for me. I had beer soup with fried garlic croutons on top and some cheese spaetzel. We also split a bretzel. Healthy!

We had some walking around to do to work some of the beer out of our systems before we could start our driving again. We strolled around the shopping area, checked out the steep streets connected to each other by staircases running up the hillside, took in the views of the River Oos that flowed through town (Jack commented that it looked like a foamy beer as it passed over a small dam--the water was an unappealing brown). Nearby was a loggia called the Trinkhalle filled with murals depicting various allegorical scenes, one of which was being repaired by a couple of painters. It really was an attractive little town.

We went back to the shopping district and decided to buy some cake for the road. They wrapped the slices (one of which was Black Forest cake) carefully for our trip. I took advantage of a nearby piece of scenery to get my groove on, then we headed out.

The plain spreading out below the Black Forest had the advantage of facing west, so whereas things were just starting to come to fruition in Alsace, it was the height of cherry season in the state of Baden. There were numerous stands selling them as we made our way south and then west back towards France.

We got to Hunawihr in the late afternoon and checked into our place. It was owned by a vintner, as were many of the lodgings in the area. For future reference: I can't imagine a time of year when you wouldn't be able to find a place to stay here. This town of around 600 souls had numerous establishments listed on signs throughout town, and I'm sure there were more available if you knew who to ask. Being the people that we are, though, we like to make reservations. And the place we ended up with was nice, although not quite what we expected.

Hunawihr is one of the many towns on the Route des Vins, which winds through the foothills of the Vosges south of Strasbourg. It's not very long from end to end, but if you visit each town en route you could spend days or weeks there. We didn't have much of a plan for the route aside from knowing we liked wine. I picked a locale about halfway along so we could do some touring up and down the road, but as so often happens, reality intervened. At any rate, Hunawihr was a sleepy little town, a better option than the more touristy ones directly north and south of us.

We got to our room and found it to be enormous, with a bed area, toilet room, separate sink/showering room, couch, dining room table, microwave, fridge, private patio and a panoramic view to the north with vineyards covering the hills in the foreground and three castle ruins providing the backdrop on the mountainside. It was very lovely.

After getting settled, we puttered around the small town a bit. It was mostly residential, sprinkled with a more than a few vintners, but other than a couple restaurants there was no commerce. A well-fortified church sat on a hillside overlooking the town, and we went up there and took in the view (the church is on the left in the photo below). The church was used for Catholic and Protestant services and was therefore fairly plain compared with some of the ones we'd seen, but Jack did manage to gain entrance to the pulpit and do some speechifying.

We then got it in our minds that we should get some wine, as that's just kind of what you do there. Most places were already closed since it was almost 7 p.m., but one place was still open. We walked into the courtyard and then through the doorway on the other side, and there was a guy putting the plastic sleeves on the necks of bottles using a machine. He went off to get the proprietor/salesperson, who was able to communicate with us a little bit and gave us a taste of some of their wines. We got a Gewurtzraminer and a Cremant d'Alsace, the former being a sweet and fruity white and the latter a dry sparkling white. For dinner we had Cremant and cake. We watched a little CNN (Jack was disappointed about the TV options...he thought the German stations would not dub like the French ones do) and then hit the sack.

-Intermission-

Admit it: you're danged tired of hearing about our fantastic travels.

If Doug McKelway doesn't look like the spawn of satan in this picture, I don't know who does. My mom sent this to me--I think it was from the DC Examiner. I couldn't figure out if it was this photo or the article on the reverse that she wanted me to look at, and finally decided the photo was the more compelling of the two. The crease running from his eye was added at a later date, and although it does add to his creepiness, it isn't a hideously disfiguring scar (or a retro monocle) as it appears. Mostly the photo frightens me because the man has no pupils. The scan doesn't really do justice to his icy-blue, soulless peepers, but c'est la vie.

The real question is how in the heck can his co-anchor be so placid? Fox News needs to investigate.

Where was I? Oh yes, the bretzel. Buttery, knot-shaped, remarkably similar to the American "pretzel", but more Alsatian-y. Most bakeries seemed to carry them, so we took advantage multiple times on the trip with varying amounts of success.

Monday, the Pentecost, we went to Strasbourg, which houses a number of the European government buildings. Every so often, the whole Parliament moves from Brussels 4 hours to the southeast, an incredible waste of time, energy, and money. Almost everyone objects to this process, aside from possibly the French. We carefully scheduled our trip to France so as to miss this migration, because traffic expands, prices shoot skyward, and Strasbourg generally becomes much more uptight.

We had only two things to tick off our list: the cathedral and the Petite-France, which is the name of the historic district. Having seen pink sandstone churches and Alsatian charm over the past several days, I can confidently say that there's no real reason to go there. But it was another gloomy day and we wanted plenty of ducking in options, and cities are good for that.

After parking and getting to the touristy area of town, we found a lunch spot and got out of the drizzle. It was unremarkable restaurant aside from the fact that they brewed their own beer. Jack got a tarte flambee. Thus fortified, Jack was hell-bent on getting a rain jacket, having forgotten his at home and never having liked it in the first place, although it served him well on past trips. Remarkably, the first store we went in was a camping store having a sale, and he managed to find a jacket that was reasonably-priced and nice-looking (as much as rain jackets can be). The brand name was "fusalp", and there was a small tag on the exterior with rubbery raised letters. By the end of the day the border and three of the letters fell off, and only "usa" remained. Coincidence???

The church was quite nice, though, and it contained a lot of fancy stuff, such as this elaborately-carved base of the pulpit. They had this amazing clock in the cathedral that knows the date, time, position of the sun and moon in real time, which week on the ecclesiastical calendar it was, when the next Easter will be, and much, much more. Besides this, there's all kinds of moving figures. We got to see some of them wheel around and death strike a hammer to a drum-shaped bell to mark the hour. But don't set your watch by it; for some reason it's 15 minutes slow. I believe there is some kind of technical explanation for this discrepancy, but probably what really happened some young priest was trying to set it for daylight savings time and saner heads prevailed upon him to stop, and they've never adjusted it back for fear of breaking the thing. Naturally they had the friar excommunicated for his offense.

Vauban, that genius of military engineering whose handiwork we encountered in Luxembourg, decided that what Strasbourg really needed in order to be protected was the ability to quickly shut off the Ill River's flow through the city thereby flooding the surrounding lowlands to, presumably, drown attackers. How could this have possibly worked? At any rate, because of this there were a number of interesting bridges built over the four channels that the river flowed through to enter town, and buildings on the thin strips of land between them. And there was a quaint old town area. We had hoped to go to the Alsatian Museum to look at some traditional items and get out of the weather, but much to our surprise there was a line out the door. Apparently we weren't the only ones who had the idea of checking out a sleepy museum on a rainy day.

We stepped into a tiny tea shop to enjoy a warm-up. The place had no more than a dozen seats on two floors, so we were lucky to get a spot. We took our time sipping our tea: mine a Russian caravan, and Jack's gunpowder.

Eventually it was time to head back to Wissembourg. When we arrived around dinnertime, we found that most restaurants were closed for the holiday, and those that were open were full. The one place I had wanted to check out was shuttered, so it was looking like we were going to stuck eating gyros at the carnival. On the way there I saw a place that looked friendly and generally unoccupied, so we stopped in. It ended up being a bad choice, and everyone else in the world (the three happy beer drinkers excepted) seemed to know not to go there. My tarte flambee crust came out of a cellophane packet. We should have just called it off right then, but we bravely held on. Eventually we got out of there, full but not satisfied, and grumbled our way over to the big finale of the festival: the son et lumiere.

It began to rain. We hung around with all the other chumps under soggy skies and damp umbrellas for the thing to start. The organizers seemed to be waiting for a break in the weather to begin, so we were tortured with almost an entire album of Phil Collins live. It did let up a bit at one point, so they called in the choir, who were to perform on a stage set up over a branch of the Lauter. Naturally it began coming down again as they got ready, and I thought for sure someone was going to get electrocuted.

And then...the son! The lumiere! There was music flowing from the speakers all around us as lights danced on the buildings and fireworks lit the sky. I didn't even think you could do fireworks in the rain--why on earth do they put it off in the US on account of weather? Perhaps because during the summer it's frequently accompanied by lightning. But no matter...My mood was rapidly improving, although I did manage to fire off a sarcastic comment to Jack instructing him to take some pictures of fireworks. He always does this, and they always turn out terribly. But he dutifully complied, and he got some lovely shots.

And so the Wissembourg portion of our journey came to a close with a bang, if I may be permitted to use the cliche.

Sunday we spent mostly driving around the Vosges mountains in the rain. The Vosges are similar to the Appalachians, in that they are tree-covered and relatively short when compared to the Rockies and Alps and so forth. I think the highest altitude we attained was something like 800 meters.

Before we set out on the Michelin-suggested driving tour, we went to look for the spot where the Gutlouthof used to stand. Driving south for about 2 km, we saw nothing but knee-high corn. Not even a slight depression in the earth that would indicate settling of the soil over time in the spot where a building with a basement once stood. The only features of the area that suggested a different use were a short tree-lined patch of paving off the main road where a smaller road or driveway might have once been, and a small underpass that went under the train tracks, totally unnecessary today because a nearby road goes over the rails.

Once we got on our driving tour we quickly discovered that Michelin, while having fine maps, is not so good at directions. The guidebook will say something like "turn right after you enter town", not specifying the street name, the closest address, whether it's the first turn or the third. I think they're deliberately vague to get you out of your car to ask directions and talk to the local populace, but when you're antisocial you don't do those sorts of things unless you're totally lost beyond redemption. And we always knew where we were, just not how to get where we were going.

Our first stop was a short hike off the road to a spot overlooking Wissembourg. Brimming with confidence as usual, I failed to note which path we were supposed to take when we left the car. So we wound up and up, and it began to sprinkle on us. Then it began to rain. Then pour. We took shelter under a patch of scrubby pines planted in rows. We kept deciding that the tree a few feet away would be an improvement over the current one, but then it turned out to be the same. We kept moving, looking for that illusory dry spot. Eventually the rain let up a bit, and we headed back down, damp and chilled.

Once in the car we cranked up the heat and lit out for our next destination. We missed our turn due to the aforementioned ambiguousness, then I tried to get us back on track at the next town without turning around, and then all the roads looked too narrow to possibly be the way forward. We went from Wingen to Petit Wingen to Wingen and finally back to Petit Wingen. Every town had a helpful map if you bothered to park and look at it, which we eventually did, and the road we were supposed to go on was one of the ones that looked like it would just dead-end in someone's driveway. Eventually we got to where we were going, but ended up skipping a chunk of the tour and one of the stops we were hoping to see: a ruined castle. The place we ended up at turned out not to be a town, but a restaurant/hotel complex on a mountaintop.

As we were cranky and hungry by this point, we decided to stop for lunch. We parked and discovered that the castle we were trying to get to was visible in the distance, seemingly miles away. The restaurant was homey and family-oriented. The waitress warned me against the lasagna, noting that it took a long time to cook, so I ordered what turned out to be an extremely bland pasta with vegetables dish. Jack got trout in cream sauce, one of the Alsatian seasonal specialties, which was heavenly. We ordered a light and refreshing bottle of local hard cider to accompany it.

I was suffering a bit of despondency after lunch, but we decided to brave the intermittent rain squalls to hike in the general direction of the Chateau Fleckenstein ruins. Our path was littered with interpretive displays about how charcoal was made back in the day. The area was actually closer than it appeared, and we got to the base of the promontory on which the ruins were built, paid our admission and were given free rein to clamber about on the site. It was a bit cheesy, as they had added a number of things for the kids, such as spooky sounds and lights in a staircase carved through the rock that was referred to as the "troglodyte passage", but interesting nonetheless. Someday I hope to receive an in-depth explanation of why in the heck people built these huge fortresses high up on rock outcroppings, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Sure, they would be extremely difficult to capture, but what would you be protecting other than the small band of people living inside the walls? You could keep an eye out for troops approaching from any direction, but who would you notify? As far as the eye could see were trees and more trees. Standing on top of the ruins you could see the hotel/restaurant where we ate in one direction and an RV camp in another, but no towns, farms, or other signs of life in the rolling foothills.

After we had gotten our fill of the chateau, we returned to the car. We walked back by a muddy, rutted road that steeply climbed the hillside, and as we walked up it we realized this is the way we would have driven had we followed the directions correctly. No thank you.

Since we were finally going the right way, we continued on with the driving tour. We saw more Alsatian charm, vestiges of the Maginot Line (a dismal failure of French military defenses in WWII), and plenty of roadside memorials to war dead, since heavy fighting occurred in the area a number of times.

We detoured from the tour to visit Keffenach and Drachenbronn, the two towns where the Flicks came from before arriving in Altenstadt. Keffenach was a sleepy town with two churches and absolutely no commerce, and one small boy with enough bravery to taunt the strangers. Since there's no conceivable reason for tourists to stop there, I can only imagine that we were being watched by more than one set of eyes behind curtains.

Drachenbronn, where Jack's earliest-identified ancestor was from, was also home to a legend about a dragon coming down from the mountains and drinking water from the town fountain. We parked and walked from one edge of town to the other, greeted the local populace out for their early evening constitutionals, and talked to a politician from a nearby town who was running in the regional elections and putting up signs. He was a pretty young guy and sported a Donegal beard, so we decided we would vote for him. We visited the graveyard, bordered on one side by curious goats.

We returned to Wissembourg for our evening's repast, and the festival was in full swing. An all-accordion band was entertaining people in the square. After dumping our belongings we were lured back down to the plaza by the smell of grilling meats. We picked ourselves up a large sausage sandwich and a beer to share. Funny thing is, when your French pronunciation is bad, they switch over to German. If you're not French, then naturally you're German, right? So Jack ordered his sausage, and the guy said "mit?" meaning "with". Moutarde, what else? After we sat down to eat, we saw people walking around with these delicious-looking biscuity things with a side of apple sauce. Dampfnudel: some kind of biscuit dough that is shallow-fried in butter to arrive at a browned and crisp crust on both sides. They were 2 for €3, but for some reason the lady gave us 3. We must've looked emaciated to her pleasantly plump self. It came with a side of "compote" made of cooked apples. A satisfying meal indeed.

The next day, Saturday, we went out to explore Jack's heritage in the next town over, Altenstadt, about a mile away from our hotel via the main road. Fortunately for us, we didn't have any of the problems associated with the journey of Dr. Flick.

As we walked down the road, which had a variety of establishments not typically associated with Alsatian charm, such as gas stations, warehouses, and large grocery stores, our eyes were relieved to light upon a stork sitting on the top of a chimney. For some reason, they have storks here. It's kind of cool, as they build giant nests up on top of precarious spots (admittedly, some with platforms that have been added to attract them), and the ma and pa take turns staying with the young-uns and venturing out for food. You can always see at least one parent in the nest, carefully tending to a batch of hatchlings.

But I digress: Altenstadt. There's not much to it, just a tiny main street with an elementary school, post office, mini grocery store and a restaurant, and many residences in the traditional style, some looking worse for wear. It seems like it hasn't changed too much since the Flicks left for America in 1830. The church that Jack's ancestors got married, St. Ulrich, seemed to be the community center as well (a woman was putting up signs for a cake sale on the gates while we were there). We entered to empty pews and the sounds of the organ rolling around us. The practicing organist seemed to be unperturbed by two people scrutinizing everything and taking a lot of pictures.

In the year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Eight, the tenth day of the month of November, the banns having been proclaimed as is customary in my church, three times, three proximate Sundays having passed and in succession, and no impediments having been found, I the undersigned pastor in Altenstadt, in my church, at ten o'clock in the forenoon interrogated Joseph Flick, twenty-seven years old, son of Joseph Flick, a citizen of Drachenbroon, and the deceased Elizabeth Keller, therefore married, on account of residing in my parish and on account of having been born in the parish of Keffenach from where transmissorial documents have been furnished me and which are in my possession, and Anna Mary Huber, about twenty years old, daughter of Peter Huber Citizen of Altenstadt and Tenant of the community farm (Gutlouten) and of the deceased Magdalen Metzler, heretofore married in my parish: with their mutual consent given and assured on the word of those present...the bride having declared she does not know how to write, makes a sign, after this I have blessed them in accordance with the custom of Holy Mother Church.

--Translated from Latin, St. Ulrich Church records

We didn't find any Flicks in the graveyard, perhaps on account of the soft sandstone used had caused all traces of writing on some of the older markers to be worn away, perhaps because names weren't of a standard spelling back then (there were some names that were close to Flick), or perhaps everyone moved on before passing. Joseph worked at the community farm outside of town called Gutlouthof ("good leper house," we are told, the former site of a hospital) in some respect (perhaps as a maker of textiles), where he lived with his wife Anna. He had a son, Peter George, a stonecutter, who immigrated to the US along with his brother, wife and children. The stone baptismal font in the church dated from 1755, and perhaps this is where Peter had his head dipped on a dismal February day in 1789. We picked out a respectable-looking house where we decided Peter may have plied his trade before he set sail.

We hung around for a bit, daring anyone to come up and ask us why we were loitering so we could press them for information, but no one did. The organist escaped while we were behind the church looking at the graves. We walked down the remainder of the main street out of town. And just like that, we were in Germany. A whole other country! We continued walking a handful of paces and were in Neuhof, a cluster of maybe 3 houses. We crested a small rise covered with vineyards on either side, and took in the view. On our way back down into France, Jack noticed that one of the houses had a sign up for schnapps. With a load of gumption, he went up and rang their doorbell. A large, sweaty man in a white t-shirt and suspenders answered the door, and Jack somehow communicated what he wanted, and the guy indicated we needed to go around the house to the other side. So we did. There were no schnapps in evidence. No one was around. As we were getting ready to give up, a garage door opened, and the same man appeared behind it.

There was a tiny table set up surrounded by crates of liquor. He gestured for us to sit, and began speaking to us in German. Mere steps from the border, and he spoke absolutely no French. I think the only thing we managed to get across was that we were from "USA". We tasted a few of the various flavors such as cherry and plum, and they in no way resembled schnapps I'd had before--these were hard liquor (50% alcohol!) with a little fruity aroma to them, but otherwise no sweetness. This made me a bit nervous--what if we were buying some kind of product adulterated with methanol from an amateur distiller that's going to make us blind? [Turns out this is what legitimate schnapps taste like--the ones available in the US are fake. At any rate, we haven't gone blind yet.] After a couple of minutes, the wife came down. She left again and returned with a young man who spoke some English. Jack told him how he was researching his heritage in Altenstadt, and he dutifully transmitted the information, but they were merely polite rather than interested in sharing any stories. We had settled on a 4-pack of small bottles of different flavors, given that we didn't have the capacity to carry a ton of stuff with us on foot, and yet they urged more samples on us. Having not eaten lunch yet, we had to beg off lest we no longer be able to walk.

We went back into town and stopped in at the only restaurant. It was much too fancy for us, full of people celebrating special days, but it was the only game in town. A local Riesling, nicely chilled on such a warm day, went well with Jack's chicken in mushroom sauce with a side of buttery spaetzel, and my duck breast with potato gratin. The most astonishing thing about the place was the bathroom, which was done up in late-80s or early-90s decor, with lots of chunky colors and sponge-painted walls. A huge contrast to the muted interior of the rest of the place.

As we lingered over coffees and sweets, Jack asked our waitress about the community farm Gutlouthof. Had she heard of it? Yes! She had an uncle who worked there. It was damaged beyond repair in "the war" and then razed. No traces of it remained. It had been about 2 km south of town on the main road, she said. This corresponded well with the information we had from another source about the location. So that was something.

We walked around town a bit more, saw two girls washing a pony in the street like it was a car, and then headed back in the direction of Wissembourg via a bike path that followed the Lauter into town. We went back to our hotel room to digest our food and experiences, and listened while a band played on the traffic island on the street below. When they completed their set, they hopped on the mini-train to take their tunes to the rest of the town.

After our rest we went out exploring again. We visited the interior of the church, which featured a giant painting of a saint on one wall. Having checked that off the list, we re-entered the main square to find traditional dancing occurring. Now, everyone knows that Alsatian traditional costumes feature enormous red or black hair bows for the women. These women were wearing long scarves that covered their heads, so clearly they weren't Alsatian. They were...Romanian? Or Romany? The pamphlet for the Pentecost Fest indicated that it was one or the other, but it was difficult to translate the word accurately from the French. But anyway, it was a lively group of men and women yipping, whistling, and trilling, dancing in a semi-circle. As we watched, it began to rain, and the troupe crowded into our hotel and into a second-floor overflow room with a bar. The rain didn't stop them from carrying on the festivities--a peek in the door later on revealed that they had gotten a number of tourists to join in the dancing.

When the weather cleared up a bit, we went to find our evening meal. We ended up at a lively place that appeared to be mostly locals, as it was somewhat off the tourist track (although that's hard to do in such a small town) and filled with non-charming things such as creepy dolls. We availed ourselves of the tarte flambees, served unceremoniously on a board. The wafer-thin crispy crust was topped with layers of cream, onions and ham bits. Delicious. Frankly, I wish I was eating one right now.

When we eventually wandered back to the hotel, the traditional dancers were still going strong. We mentally wished them godspeed and went to bed.

I got to Weissenburg at about 12 o'clock. I inquired where I could get a conveyance to Alstadt from the man who apparently was a porter. He told me that Alstadt was far away and that I would have to take a train. He said it was not called Alstadt now, but Rabistadt. He took me to a man in uniform, who apparently confirmed what had been told me, and I was informed that I could get a train in about an hour. I visited Weissenburg and came back in one hour. I took the train for a place called Sels where I went to get the stage for Alstadt. In the car I got into conversation with a gentleman and told him where I was going. He was from Weissenburg and well acquainted there. He informed me that Alstadt was ten minutes walk from Weissenburg and that I would have to return to Weissenburg. I got out and waited for a train to Weissenburg. It was nearly six o'clock when I got back and it was quite dark. I got a train hand to accompany me with his lantern and visited Fr. Harding Fischer, pastor of Alstadt...I did not get home until after ten o'clock and as I had had no dinner and had tramped about in the mud a great deal I was very tired and hungry.

--Lawrence Flick, November 25, 1902

(excerpted from the book "Beloved Crusader: Lawrence F. Flick, Physician," by Ella M. E. Flick, 1944)

Ah, France. Country of wine, cheese and mystery.

We rented a car to travel to Alsace in May, home of one branch of Jack's ancestors and various white wines. Having personally never learned to drive a manual, Jack had to take this on himself with me navigating. Not exactly a fair division of labor, but navigating is not as easy as you might think, since the route numbers are rarely shown on street signs and you have to guess which upcoming cities they will refer to at each roundabout. Really keeps you on your toes.

So we made our way out of the city using a wonderfully detailed hand-drawn map from one of Jack's coworkers. And then we started flying on the 411. It seems that they only tell you the speed limits (a) when it changes or (b) when you enter a new country, so we were just trying to keep pace with the slower lot of cars. It still seems pretty fast, though, when the speedometer says 120.

After getting the hang of the big road I attempted to take us on some of the smaller byways that paralleled the highway so we could take in some local color. Every single turn was wrong. Every single one. I kept reviewing the map, taking in landmarks such as towns and railroad tracks, and thinking I knew where we were, and then, surprise! We'd end up somewhere else. We drove through the lovely beer town of Ciney, though, so it made it sort of worth it. The second time through the main part of town wasn't nearly as nice, however. A little too reminiscent of "National Lampoon's European Vacation": "Look, Jack, the church from the Ciney label!" So we followed the signs back to the motorway and stuck with that as long as we could.

Everyone told us to buy gas in Luxembourg because it was cheap there, so we did. Keep in mind that we were driving a VW Polo, about the equivalent of a Golf, not a Hummer. The tank was a little less than half full at that point, and it cost us...€33! [That's approximately $44 for those of you watching at home.] These Europeans have no clue what cheap gas is.

When we breezed past the French border, I was able to switch to the higher-quality map I had of the region (shout out to Michelin!), which made getting to Wissembourg an uneventful affair once we left the main road. Our French teacher told us that in France you either had toll roads or speed traps, so they get money out of you one way or another (at least I think that's what she was saying). At one point on the highway we saw two cops pointing a radar gun at traffic while sitting placidly on an overpass.

We cruised into Wissembourg on late Friday afternoon on the first day of their Pentecost festival. We didn't get into our first choice hotel, but it turns out that the place we reserved was right across the street and, unlike the original place, had an unobscured view of the main square in town, perfect for viewing the festivities.

Wissembourg is a small town surrounded by major fortifications in the terms of ramparts, a moat on the north side, and a river to the south. It is adjacent to the German border, and, while tiny, still bigger than most of the towns in the vicinity. The ousted king of Poland, Stanislas, whose daughter would later become the queen of France, spent some time there. Alsace changed hands several times, yielding a distinctive Germanic dialect and a heavy, pork-based cuisine.

We wandered around the streets for a while taking in the Alsatian charm of the half-timbered houses painted in a variety of soothing colors. The River Lauter branches off in several directions as it reaches the town, giving it the appearance of a mini, non-navigable Venice, and offering plenty of pretty views. We stopped for a beer in the shadow of the Maison du Sel, constructed in the 15th century and sporting such a wavy roofline that it's amazing the whole thing hasn't collapsed in on itself. It was there that we first saw a chef, cooking outdoors, slather a flat bread with what appeared to be a creamy white cheese, top it with onions and ham (of course), and pop it in a wood-fired oven for a few minutes. We had discovered the pizza of the region: flammenkuchen or tarte flambee. But it wasn't yet dinner time, so we wandered around some more.

Our ramble took us past the Catholic church in town, featuring sandstone construction in a soft pink. We marveled at the astounding variety of graffiti etched in the walls, dating from the 1700s onwards. Then we were ready to eat. Having earlier perused the menu at our hotel and finding it satisfactory, we decided to eat there. We grabbed a sidewalk table and enjoyed the oncoming coolness of evening. I got the in-season specialty meal of white asparagus. The first course, creamy asparagus soup, was heavenly. Then, a giant plateful of asparagus with three sauces. All the sauces were okay, but not very interesting. I was pretty content just eating the spears plain. Although I would have guessed it would be a vegetarian option, it came with a side of cured meats. Jack had the choucroute garnie, one of the few Alsatian dishes to gain a reputation outside of the area: sauerkraut with assorted meats. There were a few sausages, a few pieces of pork, and a giant heap of sauerkraut. All good. We washed it all down with a local beer (in addition to wine, Alsace makes much of the French beer).

As night fell, the town seemed to become overrun with teens. They were all heading towards the fair, a feast of glowing lights, cheap toys and bored carnies. We checked out the scene, but after a long day of driving and other excitement, it was time to hit the hay. The fact that our only window opened up onto the square didn't always make for ideal sleeping conditions, but the location made up for it in other ways.

Investigating the entire spectrum so you don't have to:

I forgot to mention that when my parents were here and they went to the grocery store, they brought back a 1-liter bottle of Delhaize brown table beer. We tried it one evening before going out to eat somewhere, and the "beer" bore more resemblance to Diet Coke than to other beers I had tasted: artificially colored and sweetened (I forget with what, perhaps sorbitol), fakey-feeling carbonation, and a wimpy 1.5% alcohol. It's amazing to me that in a country like Belgium such a product could get away with that type of trickery.

M&D, Part 2

More beer, as it turns out. We went to the Cantillon brewery and took the tour and sampled the wares. People are always asking me for directions and so on, but nearly always the person is asking in French. I have no idea why this is--maybe the French speakers are more befuddled or more likely to travel without a map, or just have fewer hangups about asking than the rest of the world. Who knows. But with my parents around, Americans felt more comfortable approaching us to ask for advice. Two women had taken a cruise from Amsterdam and had apparently run into the same issue with closed museums, and the tourist information office put them in a cab and sent them over to Cantillon. The neighborhood looks pretty blighted if your eyes aren't open to its charms, and they weren't sure the best way to get back to their accommodations. I showed them where they were and where they were staying, and they decided to take a cab back. Probably for the best.

My dad didn't cotton to the gueuze, unfortunately, but that's probably because his sample wasn't large enough. He had enjoyed the kriek he consumed with his mussels, but the kriek at Cantillon was something else altogether: fruity, but not at all sweet; nothing except a waft of cherry between you and the sour hit of lambic. Delightful, but not to everyone's taste.

Following naps and a trip to the grocery for my parents, at which they agonized over the bread selection because the store was out of the one variety suitable for sandwiches, we went to the Ultieme Hallucinatie, an interesting space with lots of strange Art Nouveau touches. I had a misunderstanding with the waiter about the beer, and he arrived at our table with a Hoegaarden, which I reluctantly pointed out wasn't what I had ordered. Fortunately, it didn't go to waste and was delivered to a woman sitting by herself, already deeply in her cups and very quiet and far away, who finished off several more beers while we ate. I had morels in a cream sauce with pasta, and the morels were meaty and divine.

Tuesday, which was a holiday, I put them on the train to Bruges with some maps and suggestions. At the train station, while buying tickets, I noticed the option to purchase tickets for seniors, and it turns out they were incredibly cheap. Makes me look forward to old age, although they will have probably raised the bar on seniorship by then. We employed the discount throughout the remainder of the trip.

From what I hear, my parents had a lovely time in Bruges complete with hanging out at a bar with a bunch of singing rowdies. I had a quiet day of being crushed to within an inch of my life at a giant annual flea market (I thought it was going to be a secret gem, but since most everything else was closed that day, the entire city showed up) accompanied by a lovely grilled sausage sandwich eaten in a grassy oasis of calm.

Wednesday was the day we were to visit the royal greenhouses, because at my suggestion they had scheduled their trip around the dates it was open. I made the mistake of taking them there the longest possible way, involving a single tram ride that describes a wide arc around the city. It was very pleasant, but better suited to a day with unlimited time. The gardens were lovely, and appropriately astonishing to the visitors, and as different as day and night from the experience a few days prior for me. The fuchsias dripped from the ceiling of the glass passageway while a myriad geraniums climbed the walls. The tropical trees in lush green hues scraped the sky of the central atrium. Hydrangeas billowed out of every corner and orchids gracefully punctuated the scene here and there. We made sure to use the greenhouse's bathrooms, the toilet seats hand-scrubbed after each use by the hardest-working Madame Pipi of all time. And she wasn't even actively shilling for tips!


And then over to the Atomium, where two guys were rappelling down the side to do some cleaning. We had to haul a bit due to all the lost time on the tram, which didn't make my parents terribly happy. But then they got a bit of a break while I did my work, and they subsequently went over to the Horta house for a visit (senior discount) and then to the Wednesday market for strawberries, using a detailed map I had drawn them of the neighborhood since I lost my good visitor's map the day before on the metro. As I had an evening conference call, I supped on ramen while Jack and my parents found a new neighborhood gem.

Jack took Thursday off to make up for the holiday earlier in the week. To break up the monotony of having fantastic coffee and delicious croissants every morning, we went out for breakfast at a nearby spot. Jack and I had coffee and croissants, naturally, while my mom had goat cheese on bread and my dad had an omelet. We saw one of Jack's colleagues walking to work outside the window, which would have proved something, surely, if my parents had seen him as well. I bravely tried the Sirop de Liege on a slice of bread, and it turns out that it's quite tasty--like apple butter but a bit sweeter and finer-textured. Could this be the European condiment I decide I can't live without, purchasing it at outrageous prices at specialty shops in the US? The coffee was good, but naturally not as good as the hotel's.

We spent some time in the art museum (senior discount), the parents and chilluns visiting the old and new sections, respectively. My mom was impressed by the young age of the children being exposed to the art on class field trips, and the earnestness of the docents helping them understand what they were seeing. She was also wowed by the carpeting in the ancient art section, which she referred to as suede-like.

Because Jack felt they hadn't really experienced many of the highlights of the Belgian cuisine to the fullest extent, we stopped by the Chapel Church for frites with mayo. Unfortunately they don't serve them in the paper cone there; creating the cones is a masterful art that is quite mesmerizing to watch, and half the fun of getting fries. My mom snapped some photos of us noshing away with our tiny plastic forks. We then visited the church, which is where one of the Brueghel ("pronounced BROY-gull," my dad says sagely, for he remembers this random fact from an art history class he took in college) clan had a hasty wedding. Subsequently we went to the junk market at Place Jeu de Balle, and then for another break at a sit-down waffle place.

They then bought some chocolates for the folks back home, and we took the metro to the Parc du Cinquantenaire, in a last ditch effort to cram in some culture on their remaining afternoon. We recently discovered that the arch had a viewing platform on the top that was open to the public. Unfortunately the museum through which you access the stairs was closing for the day, so we had to make do with a visit to the park grounds. A walk through some other areas in the European Quarter readied us for dinner, so we made our way back downtown to go to the beer restaurant. We had the same waiter as always, but this time we let him talk us into the aperitif of white beer with kir in it, which was pleasantly refreshing (and, as promised by the French waiter, "it will not give you a 'angover.") The table next to ours was full of Americans as well, and they desperately wanted our opinion on the other restaurants they had made reservations at, none of which we had heard of. I had some really good meatballs. That place might be touristy, but they create out some worthwhile dishes.

We stopped a final time at the Grand Place to sip decaf in the gathering twilight at one of the restaurants there. Et voila! The trip was over. I took them to the train station the next morning for their Parisian extravaganza.

M&D, Part 1

May marked our 1-year anniversary of living in Brussels and brought us our first visitors of the year (well, late April, actually, but who's quibbling?). My parents were doing a London-Brussels-Paris tour, and we met them at the train station after they took the Chunnel across.

Our first order of business was to get them checked in at their hotel. Although it was one of the few reasonably-priced places close to our house, I had looked it up on the web prior to their arrival and some of the comments made me a bit nervous, indicating that the owner was hostile and unaccommodating. We got there, rung the bell and were let in by the proprietor. She showed my parents how to use all the keys and told them not to let anyone in, because gypsies would try to give them a sob story about having lost their keys and then gain entrance and rob the place blind. She then declared that she wouldn't show us up to the room or help us with the bags, on account of the fact that she had just had knee surgery recently. She sat on a bench in the passage, pulled up her hem and showed us an old scar that wormed its way down her knee as evidence. I'm not sure why she thought we needed help, able bodied as we were, so we weren't inconvenienced.

The stairwell was full of stained glass and knickknacks, very quaint. Their room was tiny, with not much space for anything other than the bed, but sleep is sleep. Their window overlooked a tiny garden below. I was heartened to see they had a fan in their room, as the weather had been quite warm and might be unpleasant if you didn't have a cross breeze. Before they had even unlocked the door, the phone was ringing. It was the owner, two flights below, making sure everything was to their liking. Customer service at its best.

After a light lunch we commenced wandering, visiting the Sablon, the in-town palace, and an outdoor exhibit of aerial photos taken around the world. Before we knew it, it was dinnertime so we took them to our favorite moules-frites place. I had mine in diable sauce, which was good but difficult to sop up with just mussels and fries. Jack offered me €5 to drink out of the pot, so I did. I didn't need monetary persuasion, though, so I graciously turned down the cash (which anyone in their right mind should realize is legally mine, anyway).

The next day was Sunday, and they had asked us to take us to an interesting church service. Not being well-versed in the religious offerings of the area, I picked out the Notre Dame du Sablon, definitely one of the favorites for us and visitors, since there's a lot to look at. Much to our chagrin, the entire back of the church was closed for renovation, so everyone was crammed in the front, where a few rows of chairs had been set up. I had been looking forward to sitting in the waaay back, staring at some creepy gravestone entombed in the wall or some such while the priest's sonorous and unintelligible French ricocheted off the ceiling, columns, windows from every angle. After we were seated, the priest asked everyone to move closer, so he probably would've done the same if the whole church was open. The best part was the mini pipe organ they were using, which had these perfectly-formed doors to close over the pipes to muffle the sound. The organist periodically opened and closed them during the service, the hinges whining in protest.

We headed out for the Grand Place, which was overrun with scouts celebrating some kind of scouting anniversary. Having had enough of that, we took in the Mannekin and then visited a bar across the street. We strongly encouraged my mom to get the Kwak beer, which is something every tourist should be talked into, but somehow it managed to elude us in the past. Jack visited the restroom and reported back that the way there was filled with puppets. And scouts.

After lunch, we went to see some Art Nouveau stuff down by the Ixelles ponds (where I took a great spy photo of an amorous couple on the other side using my dad's huge telephoto lens) and then on to the Abbaye de la Cambre, which has some old buildings and gardens. There were more scouts. I had wandered down there by myself on a warm spring night not too long before, and was astonished to find a jazz band jamming in a courtyard. Jack was somewhat incredulous that I had witnessed this random bit of culture, but the selfsame band (who I suspect are students at the art school housed in one of the Abbaye's buildings) was playing when we went there with my parents. Vindication! We listened for a while, and as it was getting on towards dinnertime, I decided to make a foray into the Bois to visit the cafe there that I had attempted to go to several times previously (initially I couldn't find it, and then it was closed for the season). Happily, we found ourselves a nice table, enjoyed a beer, and then went out for Thai.

Every morning my parents reiterated what wonderful coffee they'd had at the hotel. The great croissants and yogurt and on and on...I was quite impressed by the spread they were offered, given that simple rolls and coffee seem to be the norm. Monday, after failing to send them off to the art museum due to its normal Monday closure, we went to the cathedral, much of which was off-limits as well because a service was starting. We visited the Galeries St. Hubert (like Parkington except nice) and then took in the Grand Place again, this time mercifully free of throngs of kids, and after a look at some of the original city walls and a too long sojourn for food, we lunched in the middle of a dust storm brought on by the drought, complete with little green bugs dropping out of the trees into everything. Monday wasn't getting a lot of popularity points. What was next? A general transit strike??

Late April-early May is when the royal greenhouses are open to the public on the grounds of the residential palace. I had been the previous year by myself, stumbling upon it by accident, but I wanted to make sure that Jack got a chance to experience it and didn't relish the prospect of going during the busy weekend days. On weekends they are open at night, for some reason.

It's strange that a place that's normally so well-guarded would let the public tramp about for a couple weeks, and in particular at night when it would be extremely easy to dash off the path into darkness when a guard's back was turned, and then live off the fat of the land (fishing in the ponds, trapping small mammals, eating fiddleheads and mushrooms and wild strawberries, finding the crop of wacky weed that the black sheep prince surely grows in a hidden spot somewhere) for a couple weeks until an opportunity to escape presented itself. The darkness also lent a hint of intrigue that wouldn't otherwise be there: no streaming sunlight on the happy plants, and the spotlights often emphasized the plants' forms while the colorful flowers receded into the background, a dramatic role reversal. It was very cool.

Afterwards we walked by the church where the royals are buried and snapped some interesting photos. We ended up going back to the church a week later to visit the royal crypt, which turned out to be an extremely plain subterranean room. No pomp or nothin'. The graveyard surrounding the church is much more worthwhile.

Jack and I went to Antwerp last month. The express purpose was to see an exhibit of Flemish religious art from back in the day. We never made it to the museum, deciding instead to wander the streets gawking at stuff, as per usual. It was a really nice day and I just couldn't see us spending the time indoors shuffling from one painting to the next.

We had lunch at a restaurant that had rescued parts of Horta's Art Nouveau building Maison du Peuple, which was located in Brussels and torn down in the '60s to be replaced with an unremarkable office building. Other parts of the building have been incorporated into a tram stop in Brussels, and the rest is probably quietly rusting away somewhere.

Later we spent some time hanging out in the main square, where there's a statue/fountain of a guy who had just slain a giant. This has to do with the legend of the city's founding, as the young feller kills the giant, who has been making like difficult for the citizenry, and cuts off his hand. In the statue, the guy's in mid-toss, about to chuck the hand into the river. There's water spouting from the severed wrist. On the back side of the statue, where we sat, the giant lies dead at the feet of the hero. There is water spitting out of a variety of holes in the giant's body where he had received his mortal wounds. Wouldn't it be great if they took one of those staid statues of an unknown Civil War hero on his horse, bored a few holes in it in historically accurate locations, and hooked it up to the water supply? Instant notoriety.

After visiting some churches and drinking some beer, we were ready for dinner. The place we ended up was decent, but nothing exceptional. I had the eel in green sauce, which was not as good as the eel I had in Bruges. The highlight of the meal was undoubtedly when Jack excused himself to use the bathroom after finishing his dinner. I sat there looking into the middle distance for a moment, quietly enjoying thinking about nothing, when something caught my peripheral vision. Jack's napkin had unfurled from its crumpled position and caught on fire in the candle!

Turns out, nothing hushes a room more quickly than someone waving a flaming object. I whipped the burning napkin around in the space between tables as everyone turned to stare. ("Americans are so gauche, always needing to be the center of attention," I'm sure they were all whispering.) After a couple of flaps it was no longer actively alight but still smoldering, ready to burst back into flame as soon as I stopped, so I then proceeded to pound it on the table (on my paper placemat, naturally) to extinguish the glow. Everyone then turned back to their dining companions and the normal conversational hum resumed. The whole thing didn't last more than a few seconds, but I'm sure it was an evening's worth of entertainment in the repeated retelling for some. Who knew they'd get dinner AND a show?

The waiter came around to clear up the table, and I decided to play it cool thinking that there was a chance he wouldn't immediately toss me out for having allowed such a dangerous thing to occur. He noticed the burnt napkin and the black char marks on the placemat and said, "You had a little accident?" So I fessed up and apologized. He was very understanding and removed the offending articles. There was no evidence that anything amiss occurred by the time Jack returned to the table. I could be making this anecdote up--you'll never know.

On the train ride home, we got an upper berth so we could better watch the countryside fly by under cover of darkness. Jack was keeping an eye on two guys who were clearly plastered a few seats back from us. One of them kept speaking in a low, monotonous voice occasionally punctuated by loud gurgles. The whole thing seemed like an incident waiting to happen.

Sure enough, not long into our ride the more sober of the two came around to our seats hawking Liza Minnelli t-shirts from her 2006 tour (she had a show in Antwerp that evening). I declined to take one, and thankfully he moved on quickly without being insistent. As he went down the aisle, it became clear that he was giving them away for free. One person tried to give him some money and he seemed to indicate that the offer was breaking his heart. He ended up handing out about a dozen, including one to Jack. He was very sincere in his approach, and people began making a sport of it, asking for a second shirt or a different size to get a rise out of him. If I had been able to compose the sentence in French (we only had our Dutch dictionary with us, but everyone on the train was speaking French or, in the case of one elderly couple, Russian) I definitely would have asked everyone to hold up their shirt for a photo.