Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
All in travel
We sipped our meals to their frothy conclusion and returned to the present, outside the gates of Weyermann. Looking back at the towering brick buildings, a sense of fantasy and mystery cropped up in my imagination, and I felt the only thing missing was a golden ticket.
As perfect as a day can be was underway. In periphery, I could see countryside blur: lime-green grass and spring vegetables cracking dirt mounds; shadowy hardwoods budding and tall conifers starting to yellow with pollen; clouds lightly wisping otherwise vacant sky. The Kloster Michelsberg first signaled our approach towards Bamberg.
The steep valley walls approached the beetling of a gorge at times and trapped the sun’s heat creating a unique microclimate ideal for viticulture. The Ardennes and Hohes Venn to the west shielded the valley from rain providing the southern facing slopes with over 1300 hours of sunshine a year. Slate rock lined the ground at the base of the vines, retaining the sun’s heat and insulating the grapes’ root structure.
In a beechwood forest the cups rose up and carpeted the ground in perennial blues. Those fortunate enough can walk the dirt paths between this colored fleece alongside the highway. Listening to the passing cars and semis, we crossed a bridge towards the columned rows of hardwoods, barren at ground level for their broad and domineering root structure. Like the roots, trails etched lines in the forest floor and laid their own empty paths among the rare blanket of color. It was almost a shame to waste the ground with space to walk.
We took off from Brussels mid morning - just after ten - through the Flanders countryside. The terrain flattened; without obstruction, the scope of view extended until the morning haze drowned everything out. Canals joined patches of hardwood forests as the only delineation between the tilled and sprouting fields. The scene fit comfortably onto canvas, colors seeming to carry the texture of brush strokes and signature of a Flemish painter. Just outside the frame, we approached the nexus of beer mystery: Westvleteren Brewery at St. Sixtus Abbey.
It's Sunday morning during our beloved July 4th weekend, and we are in Sweden wearing sweatshirts while a minestrone soup simmers on the stovetop. We couldn't feel further from the annual rituals happening right now in the USA. So far away and dreaming about BBQ, I wanted to share a day that enlightened our grilling game: a skill and process we share around the world. We plan to bust out the grill this afternoon, blow some Swedish minds, and feel the warmth of home.
Our second stop, Brasserie C, brought us south for the day in the first place. At the base of the Montagne de Bueren, next to the stairs running up towards the old citadel, we saw a sign to the left and up a narrow alley for the brewpub. All the buildings looked and felt very old in this section of town, aptly referred to as Old Town. We eventually found the entrance after circumnavigating the building and breached a doorway requiring a slight duck to avoid a bruise and headache. We walked indoors to a dark, empty bar and met with Kerian, their Public Relations & Beer Tour representative. The building, a nunnery in 1611 and an architectural museum in the 1960’s, began with solid ecclesiastical bones and consolidated much of Liege’s iconic furniture, paneling, doors, and fireplaces under one roof.
Only 45 minutes from from the youngest Trappist brewery in Belgium - and with the cleaning lady entertaining the dog as she chased around the house with vacuums and feathered dusters - we packed the car, opened the gate, and drove east towards the Dutch border. Achelse Kluis straddled Holland and Belgium: a place built long before present borders existed (if you want to call the line on the ground between Belgium and Holland a border). Wispy and remaining stubbornly sunny, the weather held out, but along with the rush of passing tractor-trailers, the gusts blew our tiny Opel hatchback. The open, Low Country fields laid no barrier for the wind, evidenced by the countless windmills dotting the landscape. We frequently crossed veins of canals redirecting water to the ocean, making the champaign habitable and above seasonal floods. Between corrugated brown fields the road ran east: the bricked Abbey of Achelse Kluis rising before the fields of Holland picketed with barren trees.
Comparing our arrival in Belgium to that in Mexico six months ago paints the canvas in black and white.
In Mexico: we landed in Oaxaca at 10 PM, at an abandoned airport where everything and everyone lived in Spanish; Sara and I shared a seat on the bus (a van) burgeoning with bags and humans; we rode down dark dirt roads chasing stray dogs through the maze of wire fences and graffitied buildings; we bumped along for 1.5 hours to move 20 miles; last to leave the bus, we nervously walked with our 50 pound packs along a one light street searching for a red door and our home for the next month.
In Belgium: we landed around noon; the airport, clean and streamlined, seemed designed for efficiency; our rental car was waiting, we purchased a SIM card next to the rental car office, and had the option to do it all in English, Dutch, or French; we drove down the Autobahn to Zutendaal for a week-long house-sit; at the drive-way, the gate opened and our hosts greeted us, showed us around and introduced us to a dog, two cats, and two horses; we walked the dog down narrow paths through the woods in the failing light, sat on the couch with wool socks and radiant heat building, made room for the dog by our feet, and looked out the window at a Whitetail bounding as the evening drizzle pattered on the skylights, sounding like static on a record.
Desert silence at the edge of light's end is both exhilarating and terrifying. Watch the sun disappear in that place and you will know the darkness of death: the black of Day One; the space beyond singularity, outside the light of known Universe; a port-a-john at a combat outpost in the middle of Afghanistan under clouded skies and a New Moon. Two days into a four day bus ride from Puerto Montt, Chile to Lima, Peru - with a cracked throat, perceivable layer of plaque build-up, axel-greasy hair, checked-bags under eyes - and these kinds of Jim Morrison, acid thoughts started to cross my mind as I stared into a grain of sand upon a rock in the Atacama out the bus window, sitting in my sweaty, damp seat and breathing in the stale breath and farts of 50 other people. Most of the time a situation isn't as bad as I picture it in my head; this bus ride fell into that other category. It was in that category of "never again." Having a full bladder while wearing a tight parachute harness in turbulence represents a similar level of agony. Desert occupied in front and on the periphery from Santiago to Lima for three straight days. Needless to say, arriving in Lima provided a literal breath of fresh air, a shower, and a much needed full night's sleep in a completely horizontal position.
The wide open landscapes of Chilean Patagonia beckoned us from Argentina. In the wild but within city limits we looked forward to quieter nights with fewer street lights. Our friend Tony claimed since last July that he planned to meet up in Patagonia; despite his commitment and persistence, his appearance in the flesh at the Bariloche airport still surprised us. The airline losing his bags and not ours came as no surprise: an indoctrination into the chaos and unpredictability rampant south of the border. We thought Murphy, already exhausted with us, had moved onto Tony. That hypothesis proved very wrong. If only the Universe was so logical, life could be more predictable; but alas, it is not; and, instead, we get excitement, confusion, pain, and the promise of discovery. We certainly got more than we bargained for in Patagonia and became increasingly aware of our infinitely small part in it. At some point, coming to this realization, you begin to roll with the punches. I’m always surprised how short term this knowledge proves to be and how quickly you go back to controlling.
Bariloche only served as a basecamp for our Patagonian adventures and introduced us to some of the challenges we would be facing throughout Patagonia - namely, finding cash, finding buses, finding wi-fi. I see it now as an opportunity to practice patience; at the time I was ripping my hair out, and when the Rentalcars.com customer service representative informed me via email that our rental car was no longer available - two hours before pick-up - a frustratingly accurate proverb from Murphy crossed my mind: if it can go wrong, it will. But it eventually worked out and we scored a set of wheels. Getting to San Martin alone could fill the page with blue skies, summer sun, glacial lakes, sandy beaches, unsuccessful hitchhikers, and a soundtrack of suffering transmission and rattling car parts brought to you by General Motors in the form of a mid 90s Chevy Classic - our carriage for the next four days. We arrived to San Martin three hours late, spent two hours gathering provisions from five different stores, and finally drove to the outskirts of town, down a dirt road towards a “rendezvous” with our AirBNB host, Valeria.
