Steps into the past

We're now back in Dueren (getting prepared for the Camino) after a few days of visiting places and friends from David's volleyball playing days in Belgium. Rewind one day ...

After being welcomed so warmly into the Moore family home during our stay in Brussels, we bid them farewell on Thursday morning and drove to Puurs, a small town between Brussels and Antwerp, where David played volleyball in 1997-98. We were able to find David's old house and church (below) and walked around the town a bit. Gillian is fitting right in with the locals ... her "Ja, dat is goed" is coming along nicely.

A peaceful walk through the rosary gardens behind David's former church in Puurs.

After Puurs, we drove over to the nearby Fort Breendonk, a former Nazi prison camp that is basically as it was in WWII. It was a sobering experience and gave us a glimpse into the horrible things that happened here in Europe during the war ... so difficult for us North Americans to understand but so good for us to see. As we finished the tour of the Fort, it fittingly started raining.

We then sped off in our borrowed Ford to Antwerp. (Thank you, Steven, for lending us your car!)

Despite the rain, we enjoyed the feeling of Antwerp ... smaller than Brussels, many beautiful buildings, cute shops and restaurants.

A self-portrait in the Grote Markt (main square) in Antwerp on the first rainy day since we arrived in Europe 10 days ago.

We then met up with Steven and Katrien at their house for a typical Belgian dinner ... mussels and Belgian fries (delicious and not to be mistaken with the inferior French fries). Unfortunately, it is near the end of mussel season, and the mussels were not up to par, so we enjoyed another typical Belgian dinner ... steak and fries.

Another former Puurs teammate of David's, Gert, joined us after dinner.

David, Steven, Katrien and Gert and ...

... Gillian, the photographer also made her way into a photo.

During the course of the evening, a lot of old stories were recounted and laughs shared. David thoroughly enjoyed being back with his teammates, and it gave Gillian a chance to see how crazy David was before she met him.

Crazy, indeed.

Friday morning, we parted company with Steven and Katrien with hugs and kisses (thank you for your generosity and kindness!), and hopped on the train back to Dueren. What normally would have been a 3.5 hour trip took over 7 hours because railway workers in Liege, a city we had to go through, were on strike. This made us rip-roaring mad ...

... not really, we just thought it would be fun to take this picture.

We would have had to suffer through a 5 hour bus ride if it weren't for our good friend Georg (David's former landlord in Dueren) who saved the day by coming to pick us up and driving us back to Dueren ... then took us out to dinner with Sylva his wife to Burritos, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Dueren, run by some Morrocan fellows ... a good end to a long day.

Tomorrow, we pack up our backpacks and take the train to Paris, where we will board a sleeper train down to Lourdes. This will be the place we prepare spiritually and get psyched up for our month-long Camino, which will begin from Logrono, Spain on Tuesday, January 29. Updating the blog may not happen as often along the way... we'll see where we can find internet!!