Brussels

Tuesday 13 May

The hotel in Luxembourg is in a street which is closed to traffic while they replace the water pipes; consequently we had to drag our cases across gravel to get to the hotel. To compound the problems, a film crew has been working in the street and their portable generator ran till 4:00 am this morning; time to move on to Brussels.

We planned to catch the 9:24 train but we arrived at the station in time to catch the 9:04. We soon crossed over into Belgium as the country of Luxembourg is only 54 km wide and the train was travelling at 100 km/hr+. We noticed the change in farming, other countries we have travelled through appeared to concentrate on cropping and we hardly saw an animal in the fields, this morning every farm had cattle in the fields and there was very little cropping. Hay making has already commenced which seems very early in the season but as their cattle are indoors throughout winter the farmers need to produce a lot of feed for the winter months and they probably are able to harvest the grass several times in a season, unlike Australian farmers who only get one cut.

We arrived in Brussels just on noon and as our hotel is about 300 m from the main station we arrived two hours before check in time but they let us into our room early. After lunch we caught the train back to the central station, which is closer to the old part of town and wandered around for a few house to get our bearings. As we managed to go the whole day in Luxembourg yesterday without entering a church the strain was too much so we just had to visit two churches, an RC and an Orthodox, so we didn’t get religious withdrawals.

We also had a quick look at the Grand Place or town square which is bordered on all sides by magnificent buildings, the town hall building was commenced in 1402 and I think the youngest building was constructed in the 1600s. From what we saw this afternoon I think we will enjoy our walk around Brussels tomorrow, particularly with all the chocolate shops around town.

I have just downloaded a photo sent to us from the hostel we stayed in at Erfurt, so in case you have forgotten what we look like, here it is!