Place de Jeu de Balle

We can't really say that we saw the daily flea market at this square in the Marolles - but we definitely witnessed the aftermath.
It's a really huge square, with a couple of restaurants and bars on the edges. It's quiet after five o'clock or so, a lot of the places shut after lunch is finished. One bar, even, is only open during the day. We came here a few nights ago and realized that the bustle we had witnessed earlier in the day had dissipated almost entirely.
When we got there, vendors were scurrying around, picking things up and cramming them into boxes to put away. There were still some people picking through the mess, but most were definitely not the antique-hunters that are supposedly here early in the morning.
It's a big production - setting this thing up every day. There are mountains of stuff to put out. I'm not sure where it all comes from. When we got there, most articles of clothing were being sold for fifty centimes or one euro.
A suitcase full of matchboxes. This is one of two such suitcases we saw.

Books, of course, were everywhere. That man in black was going through old National Geographics.

One thing we wondered: how do the vendors keep everything separate? It just looked like a pile to us. Are these ski goggles for skiing or for dressing up?

Castle Hunting: Kasteel van Horst

Here is Kasteel van Horst, which I know next to nothing about. I know that it takes three and half hours to bike there from Mechelen, that there is a nice cafe attached, that they have their own beer (Horst Beer), and that it's very pretty.
It took us a long time to get there on our bikes (see above), and we were hungry. We ate at the cafe and had some bottles of Horst Beer, which was decent and was served with great seriousness. It was, according to our waiter, "an excellent choice."
When we got around to taking pictures of the castle, we were half asleep. It was sunny, we were a little drunk, the biking had taken a lot of energy and we wanted to take a nap. We took pictures instead.

It was a very pretty place, and it was pleasant to be out in the countryside. The "moat" was full of enormous carp - or some fish that looked like carp. We saw a few that were easily two and a half feet long.
As a bonus, we spotted this little tower on our way to Kasteel van Horst. There was a sign by the road, in Flemish, which I was not able to glean much from. I saw 14th century, and that's about it. It seemed to be attached to some later, somewhat industrial looking building, which was curious.

A Prelude to Castle Hunting

Our Lonely Planet said that there was a fine castle a little ways away that you couldn’t really find “without a good map and a set of wheels.” We visited the tourist office to do some research and found that getting to the castle was a) feasible on just two wheels each and b) would take not one, but two maps. Ever since our Dutch bicycle exploring, we’ve been excited to get back on the saddle and left the office with the two maps and a scrap of paper with bike rental information.

Four days later, we finally got up enough gusto to open the darn things, rent the bikes and get on the road. The bike trail system here in Belgium is pretty amazing and we kept a jotted down list of our route in my pocket for easy reference while we rode: Take 99 to 57 to 64 to 73 to 22 to 24 to 23 to 25 to 71 to 67 to 92 to 10 to 62 to 63 to 65. Simple, right?I managed to take a few pictures while I pedaled. Which is really impressive being as I also managed to fall and flatten some corn stalks and roll down a hill full of thistle, both from a complete stand still. If you don't know what thistle is, it's a green plant that looks really soft but feels like a thousand tiny little needles that itch.

It was amazing how throughout the trip we seemed to be right in people’s backyards, gardens and farmland. Sometimes we’d see people working in the distance and sometimes we were literally a few inches and a wire fence away from someone watering their tomato patch.
Here’s Merlin riding next to a huge pile of harvested turnips.
And here he is riding in a cornfield.
When we started off, the bike route was mainly a wide, paved road like this:
But on our journey it took different shapes.
Sometimes it was two dirt lines in the grass, sometimes all gravel, sometimes cobblestone lanes next to cars. All the while, we would be looking out for tiny green signs with the bike path number on it.
For a little while, we found ourselves biking through some serious mud ditches. We kept looking for a number sign, but there had been long stretched without them before, so we figured this was just another one of them. It was really narrow and steep and I finally had to walk my bike for a little bit to get through.

At our hungriest and muddiest, Merlin found some wild blackberries in the shrubs beside the road, which raised our spirits quite a bit. Then, we biked a little further and found ourselves right alongside an apple orchard! We stole two apples and put them in our backpack in case the hunger situation got dire. Speeding away, delinquents, we got a second wind and we made it through – discovering at the end that we were riding parallel to an actual, paved bike path the whole time.

About three and a half hours after we left Mechelen, we reached the castle. Then, it was time to stalk our prey.

A Day at the Derby

Sunday afternoon, we ran into a large crowd gathering around something going on in Mechelen. Naturally, we nudged our way in to see what all the fuss was about. There was a soap box race going on. Sometimes, Merlin feels strange pointing his camera at little kids, so he convinced me to get right up front to take pics of the action. Oh, the action I caught.

This young racer had on a helmet that was, cleverly, made out of a soccer ball.
At least I thought it was clever, until he got a little closer and I realized it rendered him completely unable to see anything in front of him.
This little girl was a winner. I’m not sure if she actually won anything, but she sure had that look of determination.Then, there was this little boy. He had such a cool shark car! He looked so excited! Off he went!
And then he hit a haystack.

The man who had been giving a play by play over a loudspeaker ran over right away to see if the little boy was okay.But being a true journalist – he nabbed the post-accident interview, too.
After that excitement died down, we decided to see what was going on behind the scenes.
The kids were, understandably, really into them.
I've never been in a soap box race, but I do remember making my pinewood derby car for the annual Boy Scouts race (they were nice enough to let the sisters join in the fun). I'd pick a theme and then super glue just the right amount of quarters to the top to make sure it would fly down the ramp to a victory. I think I prefer that to this soap box thing. Far less dangerous.

A wedding in Leuven

This couple was getting married at the grand city building in Leuven's main square. There was a small crowd, the bride and groom wore green, everyone was happy. It wouldn't have merited mention here, except that…
…this was their getaway vehicle. I had taken some pictures of it before we saw the bride and groom. Pretty amazing little thing.
It took them too long to finish talking to everyone, so we moved on before they actually got into this thing. Later, when we were sitting outside at a cafe table, we heard a cheer and then we saw them speed by. Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough with my camera.

Carnival in Leuven

As much as Europe is different from the United States - as much as we want to think that it's different - the people in both places share some basic desires. We share a need to mill aimlessly around a dirty, loud space with unnecessary lights. Both peoples love awful food from suspect carts. Everyone loves rides - or at least watching people get off of rides. Games of skill and luck are fascinating.
We got to Leuven on a beautiful Sunday, without realizing that there was some kind of carnival going on. We spent quite a bit of time wandering around before we noticed the ferris wheel. We decided that we really should take a ride - "to get pictures from the top," we told ourselves.

The pictures were great, of course, as was the ride. We were definitely the only people between the ages of twelve and forty, but that was fine.
Notice all of the empty tables at these cafes below us - it was tough to find a place to sit in the rest of the city, but here the noise and commotion limited the appeal of sitting outside. It was nice up high, though, in our little hanging basket.
The interesting thing, for me, was the juxtaposition of the old buildings and the blaring midway. It was very unusual to look up from the booths and rides and see peaceful, pretty Leuven in the background.
I'm used to county fairs, which are somewhat similar, but are held in muddy fields and purpose-built barn buildings. It's a very similar thing though. The smells are the same, the rush of excited children, the barkers holding microphones, the canned noises that create a sense of bodily displacement.
I didn't buy any food or go on any rides other than the ferris wheel. I was really, really tempted by the shooting booths, though. It just looks so simple!
These poor ponies have a pretty awful life. The combination of children, noise and a confined tent-track has got to be a hard thing to take.
Leaving Leuven - after we walked all afternoon, had drinks and dinner and more drinks - we'd almost forgotten about the fair. On the way to the train station, though, we passed by the ferris wheel and almost got on it again.

Hagel Face

We saw this in a gallery window in Leuven, Belgium. That's chocolate hagelslag all over her face. If I had money to spare and/or a home with a wall to hang it on, I would have bought this. I wish I could have gotten a better picture, but the print was about four feet tall and showed the length of this little girl's body. It was amazing.

Mechelen, a Pretty City

Mechelen is a very pretty city, even if nobody here thinks it's anything special. It's bypassed by tourists, for the most part, on the way from Brussels to Bruges. All the postcards appear to have been taken on a single day in 1992. People aren't used to having Americans around.

They have some very nice buildings, though, and it's a nice city to walk around. This is the main square during the day.

And at night. They light up a few things and let the rest of the city stay dark, which is kind of a relief after the excessive architectural spotlighting of Ghent.

Quite a bit of Mechelen was destroyed during WWII, and it's fun to wonder what it would have been like without all of the hastily-built, square, brick buildings filling in the bombed spaces. Like Holland, the people here built a lot of very ornate facades in front of narrow, sharp-angle roofs.

As you can see, the cathedral is massive. The tower dominates the skyline in a city where very few buildings are more than five or six stories tall. It's not particularly remarkable in any way, but it's amazing to look up at.
I'm including this picture, above (of an unknown building), to highlight how beautiful the day was, until...
...this storm came along. It appeared out of nowhere, and we had a half-hour of intense rain. Luckily, Rebecca had been lugging her umbrella around, so we only got half-soaked.

Art in Ghent

Something that struck me about Ghent was how much their art spilled onto the streets. This including graffiti, unique store signage and shop windows with oddities galore (like the squirrels playing poker).
We stumbled upon this alleyway that was pretty impressively covered with tags, more mural than vandalism.
I always love seeing graffiti when traveling, probably because in our own home city it seems to be painted over as quickly as it is put up, unless it was specifically commissioned. As much as I liked the feeling that I got a glimpse of art before it was 'erased,' it's also fun to see a week or month or year or decade's worth of it piled up.

This one's for my mom, whose favorite animal is the penguin, or at least it was back at the age where I asked everyone what their favorite animal was.
I can't vouch for the quality of the fries here at "Best Frit" but I did enjoy their fry sculpture. (My feeling was similar to Don Draper's opinion of Ali... if you have to say you're the best, are you really the best?)
As the day got grayer, we decided to go inside for some 'real' art - our very first museum visit of the trip. The man at the front desk of SMAK (the Contemporary Art Museum) thanked us for "our sense of adventure" and off we went exploring.
This was definitely my favorite. It looks like there's a glare, but when you move around it to see it more clearly, it still looks like there's a glare. From every direction. Merlin hypothesized that the artist took a photo with a glare and then took a photo of that photo - hence, the constant glare effect. It was really frustrating, which I enjoyed.

Here are a few pictures of Merlin 'sploring. I think art looks better with him in it.