Of Hounds and Horses...or Von Hunden und Pferden

This could possibly be my shortest post ever, but I must get this off my mind.  There are many things I have had to adjust to here, and some are things I think are actually good (stores closed on Sundays being an example).  However, I will not EVER be able to accommodate in my mind one thing about their dogs and horses here.  Okay - so they LOVE their dogs and horses here.  I recognized this when we moved here and I had to step aside on the sidewalk for the horses.  Then I read In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen, and he mentioned it as significant in 1930's Germany.  But it goes back further than that.  There is even a Wikipedia entry on all the dog breeds that have originated in Germany.  Really, they LOVE them.  Here's the thing:  they love them so much, they allow them to, ummm, how to say this delicately, basically poo all over the sidewalks and then do not clean it up.  Now, some times, they do clean up the horse stuff, but they never clean up after their dogs.  It is considered natural (which, of course, it is) and part of the environment.  Which makes every step you take on a sidewalk an often perilous journey.  Now consider following a 6 year old who is often so caught up in is own imagination, he has no notion of where his feet are moving.  


Now I know why they remove their shoes upon entering a house.  Super important when you consider where those shoes have likely stepped.  


I have accepted this as something I cannot change, but it does NOT mean I will ever like this.  like, EVER.  


This post will be without pictures for self-explanatory reasons.  ;-)

Finally - ski week at home and in Brugge.

World's. Worst. Blogger.  Sorry.  My kids are better at keeping up with this than I am.  However, I am now filling Spring Break with the valuable pursuit of letting you know what we were up to Ski Week.  We actually spent most of it at home.  Silas had just downloaded the iMovie app.  Here are the results via YouTube.  (By the way, Silas did EVERY BIT of this movie.  I did not help ANY.  For that matter, I hindered their progress - the black portion of the video is when I wouldn't let them listen to the song on my computer because I was using it.  He got impatient and just finished it as is!  He LOVES Apple products.)

The music was obviously not original and thanks to LMFAO and their Party Rock Anthem for two days of entertainment for my boys!

We spent the long weekend in Brugge, Belgium.  Brugge/Bruges ( pronounced Brug-ge by the Dutch, Brujj by the French and Americans) is really a medieval Dutch city in Belgium (who knew they spoke so many languages in that country??).

  Loved the city.  Incredibly cute, fun, good chocolate, and easily walk-able. Sadly, I cannot post the chocolate picture I took because it is very PG-13.  That's right - PG-13 chocolate.  Only in Europe and maybe seedy stores in the States!  

Street musician - quite good.

Candy making - really cool.

Bruges is a cool city surrounded by water and with canals running through it.

SOOOOOO GOOOD!!

Yum.  But I'm a little tired.

SOOOOO good - Belgian waffles on the street.

Good Times!!

Zee's favorite part of EVERYWHERE we've been.  Favorite part of Bruges, favorite part of Rome, Amsterdam, Belgium....

Me and the Man in front of  the Provincial Hof

The boys in the Bruges square

Michaelangelo's Madonna and Child in Church of our Lady

Confessionals in Church of our Lady

Church of our Lady

 Also, we took a great tour out of the city with Quasimoto tours seeing WWI battlefields and the rebuilt city of Ypres - pronounced eepers - (completely destroyed during WWI, under construction during WWII, so some of it was re-destroyed then).  They rebuilt it to look similar to its original walled city look - and the original wall IS actually still there, with a nice moat around the city.  The WWI tour was eye-opening.  I feel like I don't remember much from studying WWI, but feel so much closer to understanding it by walking in those fields.  An 11 km area - literally 1/2 million men died over 4 years battling over this small space.   It was sad to take note of the graves of men buried where they died.  Germans, English, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Belgian, etc. (Side note:  There is going to be a Masterpiece Theatre based on the book Birdsong by Sebastian Faulk about WWI - with a romance thrown in, of course.  I think it starts April 22nd.  And who didn't love Downton Abbey - got me interested in WWI again.)  The area is beautiful again, but scattered over it are graveyards, Hill 60 with its craters and dug out bunkers, and shells, mortar, even bodies still being discovered.  There was so much muck and mud that it was impossible to dig it all up then.  So farmers still turn things up and have to be extra careful when they plow their fields.  The most recent casualties from WWI were 2003 for 2 soldiers attempting to dismantle a WWI shell found in the fields of Ypres and 2007 for  2 treasure seekers who found a similar shell that went off and killed them both.  Mind boggling, war is.  (I did not mean to sound like Yoda there.  But I'm not going back and changing it.)

One of 4 German cemeteries the Belgian government allowed Germany to pay for and maintain in the Ypres region.

Local farmers find old shells like this all the time, not to mention shrapnel, etc.  They actually gave us all shrapnel from WWI.

Remembering the Canadians who served and died here.  This is on the site of the first chemical warfare battle.

MMM...Belgian biscuit.

In front of one of the bunkers left standing in Tyne Cot cemetery.

Tyne Cot - largest cemetery for Commonwealth Forces in the world, for any war.

Yet another cemetery in the area - literally were hundreds of cemeteries post WWI.  They have since been consolidated, but there are still a LOT of them.  On our tour, one family came to locate a family member's grave.

I will leave you with several other random pictures of the place where we stayed.  I am a big fan of Homeaway.com.  With our large family (really, anything beyond 4 is big here - and requires 2 hotel rooms), we find it much more economical - not to mention more kid-friendly - to stay in apartments/homes.  This was a real winner, as you can see from the photos!  :)

I'm sure you know this game.

Smaller rooster in front with the black tail feathers was TOTALLY the boss - BIG TIME.  Ruled the roost!

We stayed on a farm with plenty of bikes and things to ride on, trampoline, playground, swimming pool, not to mention donkeys and horses, sheep, chicken, rabbits, etc!

Do Stuart and I look worn out?  Just a bit?

I must go and book our next trip to Burg Eltz, Heidelberg, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  Nana and Papa will join us for this excursion during the next long weekend (we have a lot of Holy Days off in the next few weeks - shouldn't the time after Easter be filled with celebration?)  They fly over the pond for their very first time into Amsterdam next Wednesday.  We are sooo excited to have our first official visitors from the States!!  :)


One final note: every time we visit somewhere, a place where history is so prevalent, where you can SEE the presence of the past, I get overwhelmed.  By what and who came before us.  By the events that transpired in this spot where we stand.  By the history that envelopes us as we walk the streets.  I feel incredibly blessed to be able to bear witness to these places, these events, these people - to see where they lived, where they worshiped, where they died.  God continues to breathe life into me through these experiences.  At times that means a joyful feeling of wonder.  Other times I weep over what transpired.  And I am so grateful to get to be a part of this.  And even on lonely days, when I miss my dear friends from the States, I still reflect on how blessed I am  - to have a dear husband, and 3 rambunctious boys, a sweet community here, and the opportunity of a life-time.