Belgium

We finally arrived at Bruno’s house around 6:30 or 7:00. He was there with Romeo and Romeo’s son Bruno. Neither of them spoke English so this was my first test. They could understand what I wanted to say but it was really hard for me to understand what they were saying, which is to be expected I guess. I’m sure if I were to stay there for two weeks I would improve a lot. We sat down and had a few drinks and Bruno showed me pictures of when my mom was living there with him and Irene. For some reason I was overcome with emotion. I think it was because I was in the same place with the same people that my mother was in when she was a few years younger than I am now. It was just a very emotional thing for me I guess. I was sort of embarrassed after. We went down the street to a restaurant and had Les Moules (the mussels) in a Vin Blanc sauce. Tres delicieux. After a few hours around the language I was actually able to understand okay and my speaking was somewhat tolerable. I thought I did pretty well for not practicing since May.

Now we are at Xavier’s house. We arrived last night after stopping in Bastogne to visit the war memorial. Xavier didn’t even know we were coming so he already plans to go to a concert with his girlfriend Stephanie. He set up beds for us and told us to make ourselves at home. They have a kitten named Ziggy that I played with for most of the night. One thing I noticed about Belgium are the slugs! The slugs here are huge, I don’t know what makes them so big or what they do but they’re huge. I couldn’t resist the temptation to pour a little salt on some. Cruel but..they’re just slugs, right? This morning we took a ride to Luxembourg with Xavier because he took the day off from work. We also picked up a GPS because we needed one badly. Having to stop and ask for directions or trying to find directions online and not being able to print them out is just too time consuming. If we are going to be able to complete this implausible trek around Europe we will need a GPS. Xavier is making us pasta for lunch and then I believe we will be on our way. Heading for Normandy.