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To Bouillon, Durbuy at night

It has been raining all night and also in the morning when we wake up. So we turn around in our beds and sleep on. It is quite late when we are finally ready to face the world and drive away in our car. We had other plans today but since it is so late we have changed them. We drive directly to Bouillon, a town close to the French border, deep in the south of the Belgian province of Luxembourg. And all the way it keeps raining.

We are surprised that there is so little traffic on the roads. In fact, only near really bigger cities like Luik, it is much busier. But maybe we still have the busy roads in Great Britain in our memory, from our last holiday. But we like this better, now we can pay better attention to the roads and that is necessary since they are in a bad shape now and then, with very big holes.

Near the tourist information we find a parking place and have a look at the castle that stands on a rock on a peninsula in the river Semois. After a cup of coffee we visit the Archeoscope, a multimedia tour about the live of Godfried de Bouillon who lived here in the castle but sold it to lead the fist crusade. He was pronounced King of Jerusalem in 1099 after taking the city from the Muslims but he refused the job. He died in Jerusalem within a year.

We have no opinion about religion in general but we do know, and everybody can see that from the tales about the crusades in the archeoscope here or from the news in the world nowadays, that religion can lead to excesses, fundamentalism (maybe that is a wrong word for it, we don't know). We can't imagine that anyone can even think that God wants you to kill other people or harm them to impose your will on others. If anybody is egoistic or has less knowledge of any God, it must be these people! For us, war is unhuman, since humanity consists of all people, whatever their race, colour or beliefs. The crusades were certainly a dark age for mankind, even though it may have helped unite the western world. Which isn't united by the way... These day there is a conference about the budget of the European Union for 2007 - 2013, but no country wants to give up its national rights to help unite the west as a real union. So, what has changed in a thousand years, we ask!

After our visit to Bouillon we drive to Chassepierre, a village that has been declared a monument as a whole. But the sky is grey and the colours in the vllage also. We don't think it really special compared to the other villages we have seen here, but we are amateurs, so what can we say about it?

At night we visit Durbuy again, not far from our holiday park. Around the central square restaurants and hotels are lighted and the city is clearly in a christmas atmosphere. It is nice to walk through the (small) old town with this decoration and illumination.

But it is cold and after an hour we go into a restaurant to have a meal, the one on the picture. The waiter is quite rude and the prices are very high. The soup tastes like nothing, so we put a lot of salt and pepper into it; the glass of beer is only half full (always better than half empty). After half an hour we ask for the bill and the waiter doesn't say anything about the dessert we ordered but never got. We don't care, we want to go out of here.

But still it was good to be in a dry and warm place. When we drive to our cottage it starts raining again but it will turn into snow tonight, since it will be much colder the next few days. It is cozy inside and we spend our evening reading books and watching tv. Let's see how the world looks tomorrow...

Travel through Europe and Africa

with Elisabeth and Teije