Farewell to Belgium and France

If you have been reading recent posts regularly, it may surprise you that we didn't visit Paris or Brussels (or another large city like Antwerp).  We did that on an earlier trip.  I enjoyed Brussels thoroughly.  It is very walkable and intimate for a large city.  I liked Paris, but it is expensive.  And on this trip, we had a checklist of things we wanted to see in the countryside.

Chateau Bouillon on the Semois River.  Geoffrey of Bouillon sold it to the Bishop of Liege (!) in 1082 to finance his share of the cost of the First Crusade.  It was a strong point on the French-Belgian border from the 900's to the late 1600's, when Sebastien Vauban, Louis XIV's great military engineer, installed cannons.  It was garrisoned until the invention of breach-loading artillery.  

La Roche en Ardenne, on the Ourthe River.  Today it is a popular tourist destination for kayaking, canoeing, mountain-biking, and other outdoor sports.  But it goes back to the Neolithic Period, circa 700 B.C.E.  There's a castle here too, used from the 800's to the 1700's,  but I chose to enjoy the pretty little town rather than hike up another steep hill to another ruin.

World War Two Memorial in La Roche en Ardenne (above and below).  This picture shows what lousy tank country the Ardennes are.  This Sherman didn't make it.  Although it was fitted with the "new" (1944) 76 m.m. high-velocity cannon, Shermans were still outgunned by the 88 m.m. cannons on German Tigers and King Tigers.  This one took an 88 round through the glacis.  La Roche en Ardenne was heavily bombed by American tactical air in December, 1944.  116 civilians were killed.  Nevertheless, as the plaque shows, Belgians remain grateful for liberation by the Allies generations later.  Europe reminds me of the William Faulkner quote: "The past isn't history-- it isn't even past."

The Butte de Lion Memorial at Waterloo.  As battlefields go, Waterloo is dead flat.  So we can guess from the size of this man-made hill that Napoleon's opponents were relieved to send him off to exile on St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Not all medieval structures in France and Belgium have been in continuous use, or restored.  This is the ruin of the church at the Abbaye de Villers in Belgium (near the Waterloo battlefield).  The Abbey was started by Cistercian Monks in 1146.  The church was completed around 1300.  At its height, the Abbey controlled a considerable amount of farm land and was the economic engine that drove a large regional economy.  But as Europe modernized and urbanized, it fell on hard times.  it was abandoned in 1796 after the French Revolution.  Since the 1970's, it has been gradually restored as a tourist attraction.

Another example: the unrestored ruins of the Cathedral of Soissons (France).  This picture shows how Europeans don't go to a park to visit their history.  They live next door to it.  In the main traffic circle in the center of town is yet another memorial, to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  Its base is pock-marked where bullets and cannon shells hit it in World War Two.  One way to look at the postwar European Union is as an attempt to put 2000 years of warfare behind.  As Kurt Vonnegut put it: "World War One and World War Two: Western Civilization trying to commit suicide.  Twice."

Our Renault Modus in La Roche en Ardenne.  A short essay on renting cars in Europe follows.

When we landed at Charles de Gaulle, I asked about renting a Honda Civic Type R, the European equivalent to the Si in the States.  The guy at the EuropCar counter laughed and laughed.  On our previous trip, we'd asked about a performance upgrade and were offered a Peugeot V-6 convertible at an outrageous price.  If you want to rent a hot car, make your arrangements before you leave the States.  And expect to pay through the nose.

The standard rental is a 1.5 liter diesel four-door.  It's Europe's basic transportation, equivalent to a mid-sized American car in their minds.  Think "VW Golf diesel."  A Jetta is an upgrade.  These cars are perfectly OK, especially with fuel cost at $7.00 per gallon.  They easily handle two large suitcases and the rest of your "stuff."  If you drive them foot-to-floor you will pass sensible Europeans; they cruise comfortably at 120 k.p.h. (75 m.p.h.).  We cruised one Autoroute at 85.  Driven hard this way, they get about 30 m.p.g.  Fuel is sold by the liter, which is about 25% of a gallon.  So the price at the pump looks familiar and reasonable until you remember you're pumping 4 times as many units.

And they are fun enough. They have plenty of torque up to 3000-4000 r.p.m.  Then it's time to shift up and bury the throttle again.  They are quiet, and smoke and hassle-free: not your father's Oldsmobile diesel.  Five-speed boxes; an automatic rental costs extra.  On a previous trip, we exchanged a diesel for a 1.8 liter gasoline Peugeot.  I would not do it again: the fuel consumption increased far more steeply than the fun factor.

Our Citroen was broken into in the public underground parking garage in Charleroi.  It was a smash-and-grab and, fortunately, anything worth grabbing was already in our hotel.  In retrospect, we could have seen it coming: a Paris Metro plate on a car left unused for two overnights in a Belgian city.  Petty thieves in larger towns "case" public parking spaces and strike in the wee hours of the morning.  But the experience was painless.  We phoned EuropCar at the Charleroi airport and they said "bring it out and we'll exchange it."  Their insurance paid for the glass.