In which we take a trip down Memory Lane en Belgique (and get a little lost).

A couple weeks ago I found myself with a little free time and took a very quick, very spontaneous hop to Belgium to visit a couple friends. I'd been hankerin' to get on a train and go for a while at that point and was happy to sit for hours and hours as Europe zoomed by out the window. I was also happy to have a short stop in Cologne that was long enough to go sit in the cathedral, evoking the similar stopovers from my first trips between Germany and Belgium seven years ago. Sitting in that huge space, I clearly remember having thought that I would return someday, that my time in Europe was not yet over.

Once in Belgium, I spent some time in Brussels, which was filled with thinkings of, "Oh, yes, I remember this" and, "Oh, um, is that... where am I?".

This scene was shockingly unchanged. Check out the before shot.

A crane situated above the Mont des Arts offered a quirky and dangling dinner in the sky, which is apparently a trendy new thing in many cities around the world. As the website told me, such platforms can also be used for marriaging, lounging, showbizzing, etc..

And now some scenes from some old stopping grounds, some familiar, many not, and somewhat surprisingly for me, many forgotten. Except for a very short visit about four years ago, I'd never really been back to the city that had been my home for a year, not long enough to walk around and see it, and I was very taken aback when I hardly recognized anything. Even the routes I'd walked to school or had been driven around countless times curved in places I didn't anticipate and didn't always end up at the places I'd expected. This city in particular has seen a lot of change in the past few years anyway, but I still thought I would have remembered more. At least my hosts were just as warm and welcoming as before, the same ice cream parlor was still there to support our tradition, and the battle between my French-thinking brain and stubbornly German-speaking mouth worked out in my favor for the most part.

After a couple days great food and even more delicious hospitality (merci merci merci), I slungshot back through Brussels, back through Köln, back north where the summer sun was setting late amidst a splendid puffing of clouds.