Mom and Dad Visit

Mom and Dad arrived early Wednesday morning at Brussels Airport. We took the train back to Leuven and took a stroll to the center of town and picked up sandwiches at one of my favorite sandwich shops. We came back to my apartment and they settled down for naps while I headed off for class.

Class was cancelled, so I came back, but didn't disturb their rest. I did some reading for class. When they awoke, we had the sandwiches we had gotten earlier, and visited for a bit. They headed back for naps while I went for my afternoon/evening classes. By the time I got back, they were up again, and we chatted a while more before we all turned in.

Thursday Nov 1 is a national holiday here for All Saints. So we went to Mass at the international parish. There was a light lunch there after Mass, and they met some of my friends there. Herman, one of the choir members offered to take us to Brussels Saturday, since he would be headed there anyway. We took him up on that offer. Later, we saw some of the sights, then headed home for my specialty lunch: rice and bean soup.

Friday we also had Mass at the international parish and stayed for about an hour to chat some more with the folks there. Then went to see the Grote Begijnhof (described in an earlier post).

Today, Herman picked us up at 10:00 and drove us to Brussels right to the museum we wanted to see. It took about 20-25 minutes to get there. We had some trouble finding the right entrance, but after perseverance, managed to find the Military Museum where Dad wanted to see aviation hall. That turned out to be quite a treat. Dad says: It is certainly among the top three air museums I have ever seen, with many unique types and an extraordinary collection of engines." He got lots of photos which he will gladly share. Mom and I also looked at some of the uniforms. She noted the intricate hand stitching on uniforms from the Belgian war of independence in 1830. There were also uniforms from Napoleon's tiff at Waterloo.

After having lunch on a park bench outside the musuem, We took the Tram into the center of Brussels and went to the Musical Instrument Museum.

Now I have to say, finding the museum was a bit of a challenge. The map provided by the museum didn't have street names on it, and it wasn't easy to chart a course even with the maps we had and the 'you are here' (u bent hier) signs. Our trek from the station took us down an alley, past the stage entrance of some theatre and up an steep unpromising concrete stairway. We rounded a bend, passing a closed drug store and a dinosaur museum and Mom and Dad were dispairing of my navigational abilities, and it took some convincing before they believed that the building we arrived at was our destination.

The museum was interesting as well. There were about 4 floors of exhibits. When we entered, we were issued headphones with no explanation about their use. We donned the headphones, and headed for the exhibits. As we walked into the first hall, our headphones came alive with a musical offering. Then, on the floor in front of the exhibits, there were little headphone sybmols. When you stood on or near that spot, you got a musical offering played on the instruments you were viewing. We saw and heard folk instruments from around the world. I think we all enjoyed that, but were pretty tired. We headed back to the station for a bite to eat before catching the train to Leuven.

We have some more events, including the Catholic Worker house in Gent. I have really enjoyed their stay.

Peace,
Amy