Belgium and France

I'm learning alot. Some things are getting much easier, like hauling a giant rucksack around like a pack mule, or sharing a dormroom with eight random vagabonds. Some things are getting more difficult, like tolerating a diet of bread (and occasionally cheese, or meat) or remembering to do laundry. Some other things I keep doing wrong over and over. Like neglecting to plan.

My last post was in Amsterdam. The language barrier has become much more real since then. In Germany and Holland, neither of us spoke a word of the local language, but most of the locals spoke some English. In France, the people have a very strong determination to speak no English at all, dispite the fact that they were very eager to help. So for the first time, we've been forced to bridge the language gap. I´m amazed at how quickly my highschool French flooded back to me.


Leaving Amsterdam, we strove to find a smaller, more out of the way town in Belgium, We´ve been focusing on larger centers thus far and wanted a taste of how the locals live. With this in mind we bypassed Brussels and went straight to Bruges. Only after we arrived did we find out it´s one of the most heavily touristed towns in all of Europe. Apperantly the population more than quadruples over the summer months. Oh well, it was quiet in November. There weren´t nearly as many shoot out as the movie might suggest.


We arrived on November 10, so for Rememberance Day we visited the nearby town of Ypres, which was a famous World War 1 battle ground. There were thousand and thousands of people there from all over the world for the event. We ran into a big Canadian Military delegation and several Canadian school trips. I made sure to put a maple leaf onto my bag that day.

In Ypres, every night at 8:00 since 1927, a lone buggeler has played The Last Post by the city gates. That day he definately wasn´t lone. There were probably close to 10,000 people crammed into that little square. It was moving. Just before the event we ran into a reporter from CBC radio, and gave him a little interview. So if anyone heard Robyn and I on the National News on Rememberance Day, let me know. I´m still trying to find out if my clip made it on air.


We didn´t stay in Belgium long. Our trip south into France was a masterpiece of poor planning. We hadn´t even really decided where we wanted to go next until we arrived at the train station. On top of that, the fact that so few trains ran between Belgium and France. I guess they like having a bottle neck at the border to make security easier. We travelled from Bruges to Brussels, to Lille, to Reims. It took most of the day, and we didn´t really see anything at all. It felt like a wasted day.

An odd thing we discovered about accomodations in France, (possibly everywhere, I haven´t noticed until now) is that a bed in a decent hostel dorm is about 15-20€ each, where as a room for two, in a cheap hotel, is around 30-40€. So in several cities, we opted for the privacy and security of a private hotel room, for less cost than the over crowded, 8 person dorm rooms of the hostels.

Reims didn´t have to much to offer, so we pushed on. We threw a dart at the map and ended up in Dijon. I love these old style towns, it was very nice. I also found the local french much easier on my untrained ear. We did some walking tours, found a museum and bought some mustard. Dijon has been one of my favorite stops so far.

Lyon is a much bigger city, and we arrived in the wrong part of it. The scenary was industrial and depressing, the people were pissy, and the hostels were along way away. In search of the only hostel advertised in Lonely Planet, we hopped on to a commuter bus which took us 45mins unto the slums and dropped us off. We found the hostel, which had been closed and turned into a homeless shelter years ago. Strike one for Lonely Planet. Discouraged and grumpy, we decided to catch the next train to Avignon, and write-off Lyon. After returning to the train station and finding some food, we decided to give the other hostel in town a quick look before leaving. It turned out to be very nice, and we had a room to our selves (bonus). So we stayed.
The hostel was in a student area just outside of old town. A massive Bassilica dominated the cliffs. There were a lot of nice areas to get lost in. I bought a better French-English grammer book to help get back into the language.

Our next stop was Avignon, a legendary tourist town... during the summer. After the tourist season is over they let the whole place go to shit. We happened to arrive during a European Union congress session, so the whole town was swarming with French National Police. The congress was held at the Palace of the Pope, which was impressive but unaccessable due to the hordes of foreign dignitaries. The bridge of Avignon is the subject to a wellknown french children´s song. It´s famous because it was only ever half completed, and stops abruptly halfway across the river, entrance cost: 5€.. so we passed. Overall, I wasn´t too impressed with Avignon.

We bought our tickets the next day for Barcelona, but stopped for a few hours in Montpelier. I really enjoyed this city. I was warm, sunny and very relaxed. About 400,000 residence, half are students. So many hippies. I wish we had passed Avignon by and come straight here for the extra day.

Barcelona tonight and our first Couchsurfing experience.

More to follow.