Life in Weyers Cave

Yesterday the trip was to Leuven. A little over an hour away, this town is primarily a university town. We had a tour, starting with the university which dates to 1420. It is spread out and mostly modern, incorporating an old monastery and small 18th century castle into its buildings. The beautiful old beguinage (where the single women lived in the 15th and 16th centuries) has been totally renovated and, get this, turned into student apartments! The beguinage is so beautiful and peaceful. Upscale women went there because you had to pay an entry fee and yearly maintenance. Beggars were sometimes given food at the front gate, which was locked each night, but not let into the mini-village. The women must have felt very safe. The tour guide then took us downtown and we saw the old market square, which we see in many cities. The old guild halls are there, and many have been turned into bars. The town hall was by far the most ornate one I have seen. David got better pictures of...

Inside the Leuven Town Hall. The table is where you go to get a marriage license.  

The town hall of Leuven - 230 statues on the outside -- every one is known! Late Gothic period and very ornate. 

Fantastic brilliant double rainbow on the way home from Leuven-- all the way across the sky, but I had to take this out the bus window, so this was the best I could do.  

In the brewery at Leuven.  

No, no, Daniel. That is to look at the statues on the town hall. Not Trevor's nose hairs! 

Cathryn loves her new hat and purple jacket. I don't know why, but I really like this picture of her.  

Dianna is mad because she thinks I take too many pctures of her.  

A lovely church in Leuven. Smallish, but well kept up.  

I have been told that Halloween has only recently been "imported" from the US -- just within the last five years. They are enjoying decorating! Young children can get candy from local stores -- they don't go in neighborhoods door to door.  

This in front of the dining hall at the University of Leuven. Are these students escaping (notice how neat their line is) or lunch?

Everything is enough different here that I am painfully aware that I really don't know what is going on half the time. So when I was told the dryer was supposed to take five or six times cycles to dry a load of clothes, sometimes stretching out over two days, I thought I'd just learn to live with it. And when there was constantly water all over the floor near the dryer and humidity in the air so bad the kitchen felt like a sauna, I asked if there was a tray I needed to empty or something, and they said no, this is normal. The dryers don't vent to the outside. They keep the heat in the apartment to save energy. But when a load of towels wasn't dry after two days, and I found David sitting on the floor in front of the dryer at 2 in the morning (actually, it was 11 pm, but 2 sounds better), and there was NO HEAT at all getting on the clothes, I figured it was time to give up and try the old Wassalon (i.e., laundromat). Six loads of laundry cost us nearly $20 to...

Cathryn is so distinguished in her new hat. 

Dianna is still trying to put together a Halloween costume, but we aren't sure what she is! 

Cathryn and Dianna try to decide whether or not they like my Halloween costume.  

Okay, so who woulda thunk there would be an entire section about grocery carts. Well, they are different, and the purpose of this blog is to show the differences, good and bad. First of all, you need to have a coin to use one. It depends on the store. Some take either fifty cents or one euro coins, others take either one or two euro coins. Most also take some denomination of the older Belgian franc coins. You walk up the the carts, put your coin in the little lock on the chain, and then you can remove the cart. When you are finished with the cart, you bring it back to the cart corral, chain your cart to the next one in line, and your original coin pops out. That way, they don't have people leaving their carts all over the parking lot. Bag ladies could still take them home, since one euro for a cart is a good deal, but I haven't seen anything like that here. Just some muslim women huddled on the sidewalk with little kids in their laps and a hat in front of them. . ....

These trenches zigged and zagged and tunneled all over.  

This week we spent the day in Ypres, a tiny city in Belgium. The city today is a world headquarters for cloth. We toured Picanol, a plant that makes the machines to make materials. The tour was wonderful. The place is huge and modern. Robots go through the plant unattended, dropping off and picking up loads as programmed. It is so big, that there are perhaps a hundred bicycles that workers use inside the plant. The machines, which cost $50,000, are 2000 threads across and really can spit out the material quickly. We also went to Flanders Fields, where many there were several battles in World War I. The Germans felt the war would be over within a couple of months. They convinced the young boys they drafted that they would be home by Christmas. One cemetary we saw held 48,000 German soldiers, another 44,000. We went to the muddy trenches where the soldiers camped out for three years. Over 500,000 soldiers from all over died in the battles. It certainly helps you understa...

This week we spent the day in Ypres, a tiny city in Belgium. The city today is a world headquarters for cloth. We toured Picanol, a plant that makes the machines to make materials. The tour was wonderful. The place is huge and modern. Robots go through the plant unattended, dropping off and picking up loads as programmed. It is so big, that there are perhaps a hundred bicycles that workers use inside the plant. The machines, which cost $50,000, are 2000 threads across and really can spit out the material quickly. We also went to Flanders Fields, where many there were several battles in World War I. The Germans felt the war would be over within a couple of months. They convinced the young boys they drafted that they would be home by Christmas. One cemetary we saw held 48,000 German soldiers, another 44,000. We went to the muddy trenches where the soldiers camped out for three years. Over 500,000 soldiers from all over died in the battles. It certainly helps you understa...

In the foreground is a trench from WW I. In the back are huge holes from the bombs.Men lived in these trenches for the three years they were in service. Unbelievable.  

500,000 men died within nine months in 1918 withing 5 miles of this spot in Ypres.  

These guys grinned and smiled at us every time we passed by! They were happy when I pulled out my camera.  

Everyone is very friendly.  

Dianna is quite the fashion statement! 

All fitted out for our tour of the material machine making plant. Hard hats, safety glasses, and wireless headphone units so we can hear the guide.  

Dianna made a milkshake but accidentally dropped the mixer while it was running.  

What a mess -- there is banana milkshake all over! 

David takes a picture of the girls on the main street of Ghent.  

The small black pot on a stick behind the students is the mandatory statue of Charles V. They hated him so much, that his statue is a small baby in a chamber pot shooting the bird.  

The castle is right in the middle of the town -- the town just grew up right there. It has been sold several times, and was a cloth factory for over a hundred years.