Visiting Friends in Lübeck

After loading our entire luggage in the car, we started our trip in Grimbergen at 10 a.m. We still had to go to the Abdijstraat and after saying goodbye to Frank’s parents we left without any traffic jams. The trip itself was fine, of course we had to stop several times to change and feed Caitlin. Today was probably the most problematic (traffic-wise) since we had to cover the long distance between Belgium and the North of Germany in one day.

At around 6:30 we arrived at our hotel, an Etap hotel with the typical practical Etap design. This means it is one star more than a Formule 1 hotel (a little bit more comfort, an acceptable breakfast buffet and free internet in the rooms). The toilets and bathroom (separate) reminded me a bit about those in a train wagon, and cleaning them will probably take 30 seconds with a high-pressure water gun and some disinfectant.

We unpacked, rested a bit and left for my friend Tinchen and her mother Anni, a friendship that dates back to the times when young kids had pen pals and sent them real letters… We were welcomed with warmth and first of all exchanged some news about what had happened in our lives. Old memories were revived too and on top of all the nice conversation we were served a delicious gratin with meat, peppers and tomatoes.

Caitlin was her usual friendly and curious self, only quite late did she get tired and a bit cranky, so we decided to go back to our hotel room and went straight to bed. Having Caitlin sleep between us proved very comfortable. Maybe we shouldn't bring our travel bed anymore next time.

Tomorrow we will test www.bewelcome.org in Rostock :)

Our friends are leaving Brussels

This article was first published on 24/4/07
Quite a lot of people that we know through BeWelcome.org left Belgium this year. Katherine, Laura, Danah, Dylan, Patrick…. I hope we can stay in touch and meet up again soon. But also some new people came to Brussels, like Asia W. and Tadeusz and Asia H. And we helped Olga move to her new house near Vilvoorde, and visited Wokzter and Karamia who spent Easter in Brussels at Mart_o-clock’s place.

Update:

many more have left since then. Beyhan to Romania, Bartek back to Poland, Krista to Finland, Joeri to Scandinavia (surprise, surprise...)