Tuesday, June 24: Ypres, Belgium

We woke this morning to a chuch bell that rang for about 15 minutes straight. Jack said it tolled 169 times. Maybe in memory of folks who died in WWI on this day 100 years ago?

We needed to resolve the issue with the internet, so headed to McDonald's for lunch and free wifi. I found that the initial information I received was wrong and that I cannot use my phone to connect my computer to the internet. We still have basic email on the phone, but I cannot update the blog with photos from my camera, so we will have to rely on free wifi for blog updates.

After doing as much as I could on McDonald's wifi, we headed to a different named grocery store. This was a much better store than Aldi's, a bit upscale with good selection but jeeze, they are still labeling everything in Flemish – imagine that.

We are finally getting more familiar with road signage and are more comfortable observing roadsides instead of just reading signs. We have begun to notice that they have mostly lazy cows here – most are laying down all the time! Also lots of two-story greenhouses that we finally figured out were for growing produce in the off-season.

Here is one of the unique European road situations we have been encountering...driving down a nice, wide two-lane road, they arbitrarily narrow it to one lane, forcing you to either play chicken or stop and let the oncoming car go through first.

We returned to the same campground at the sports complex after a day of humdrum errands. It also gave us a chance to find out what happened to the man who fell ill yesterday. He is still alive, but in a coma. No one knows how long he was in the field before the man found him, so they do not know if he will have serious brain damage. He was 51 years old and a regular at the sports complex. Very sad.

I did some laundry by hand since laundromats are hard to find and harder to find parking for and campgrounds supposedly will have one small washing machine and maybe a dryer.

 We had a light dinner of appetizers – some wonderful Belgian cheese and crackers and some stuffed mushrooms. We are still struggling with the 6 hour time difference, but are slowly adjusting. We are tired and hungry at unexpected times. It will work itself out, but I wish it would hurry.

Monday, June 23: Ypres, Belgium

Birds!!! They have these mourning doves/pigeons that are incredibly noisy. They sound something like our cooing mourning doves, but with a couple of extra notes plus a megaphone. They were in Brugge and also here in Flanders.

Very flat countryside

We are getting a lot of attention in the campgrounds. A favorite activity is to walk around the campground and check license plates to see where folks are from. They have huge license plates both front and rear, and we are sitting here with nothing on the front at all and a skimpy little plate that no one can figure out on the back. Lots of consternation as they walk by and try to find a license plate since we typically back into a campsite and only the front is visible.

 We are in World War I Flanders Field area. We stopped in the little town of Kimmel at the tourist office to get tickets to a recently discovered German trench area from World War I. The trench site was in the middle of a farm and the roads to the area were 1 ½ lanes wide at their widest.

Two way country road only 1 1/2 lanes wide.

Meeting an oncoming car meant pulling into the weeds on the side to let each other by. We found the site, but had to back up ¼ mile to the last pullover to park and walked into the trenches area.

 We walked down into the trenches and followed them around. Hard to believe the death and destruction from that time period when looking out at the peaceful farmland spread out below us from our slight ridge.

Underground bunker

Photo from WWI

Central Ypres Square

After leaving the trenches, we headed to Ypres (or Ieper) to visit the World War I Museum – In Flanders Fields Museum in the rebuilt Cloth Hall.

  The Cloth Hall building, originally built in 1304 to sell and store cloth (Ypres, along with Ghent and Brugge were major textile cities). The building was mostly destroyed in WWI and reconstructed faithful to the original plan. The Museum was excellent filling in the gaps of our memory of WWI history and providing an idea of what it was like to live in the area that saw much of the most brutal fighting in WWI.  

Legally parked on a Ypres side street

 Oh, did I mention that this museum is in the town center square of Ypres, a small city? Yup, narrow roads, little parking and lots of one-ways, do-not-enters- and other signage that we weren't sure what was being prohibited. Jack did manage to find on-street Legal parking!

 After visiting the museum we walked down to the British Memorial Menin Gate where they play Last Post every evening.

We decided to call it a day and go to the nearest campground. Our GPS took us to a gated road with no one in sight and no way to get through the gate. We eventually figured out I needed to walk in, but the office was closed from 12-4 and it was 3:45. Next door was an automated machine to get a reservation and pass for the gate. By the time I figured it all out and received a technical error message, the office was open. I walked next door where she told me they were full. On to the next campground about 8 miles away. The drive there was on decent roads through small towns. We turned into a sports complex with huge soccer fields outside and indoor tennis and gymnastic rooms. I went inside and asked where the campground was and he said, right here. They had eight spots behind the building, very close together, but grassy with electric and water and dump nearby – for the grand total of 12 Euro or about $16. We had the place to ourselves with everything we need. Perfect.

After finishing up with the paperwork, a man came and knocked on the manager's door saying someone was down on the track on the far side of the field. I watched as he headed out with an EMT kit and calling an ambulance. He gave him CPR along with some other runners who had stopped by until the ambulance arrived. They took him away in the ambulance with the sirens going.......