And so we continued our journey through the marshes, swamps, will-o'the-whisps and other troublesome natural features… No, it wasn't as bad as I describe it. I've already told you about the Tuesday evening and the Wednesday. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photograph on that Thursday, and I can't precisely remember what we did… I know that we walked a lot, under the rain (fortunately, our sleeping bags were now useless), from Nivezé to Banneux, where we were rather well accomodated by sisters and we got single rooms (!!!) with a shower, a toilet, a tap (with hot water) and a desk, etc.!!! (The picture sums it up.)
We left round 10 o'clock, after breakfast and a cheap montage about the creation of Banneux, and the story of the so-called apparitions to Mariette Beco — who's by the way now an old lady who can't talk to the media. We walked towards the next village of Tancrémont, where you can, as they said, find the best pies around. (When I was a kid, we used to go there to eat something with my grand-parents. I didn't like the pies that much: I prefered playing in the huge sandbox.) On the picture, you can see that I walk really faster than the others… They were 100 metres away…
Later on, we had to cross a river, and the only way to succeed was to use a rusted bridge… What a kerfuffle! I thought somebody was going to fall in the water, but no.
Later in the day, after another 10 kilometres in the woods and using crappy, muddy paths, we arrived at the border of our destination: Verviers, as you can see on the picture, we were cheerful to see that board!
OK, we still had 5 kilometres to walk, and we did. I had enough energy left, and I arrive 10 minutes sooner than the others… I had achieved my goal: seeing that beautiful chip-shop in front of the Railway Station! When my mother came to pick me up, I ate a lot of chips with a "cervelas" (imagine a saussage with unidentified stuff in it). I was exhausted. I came back, I had a shower and I slept.
After having slept for two hours, we had to get up at 7 o'clock. At last, I was going to warm up… And annihilate that f*****g metalic tap! The others seemed to have slept rather well, actually. I wanted to get out of this crappy place. But before doing anything else, we had to clean that big room up… What a kerfuffle! We first packed our bags and stuffs, then we took a broom and brushed the thick layer of dust on the ground (a wooden one…) while girls were trying to have a wash with the frozen water.
We continued and finally arrived to our destination (of the day): a kind of hotel held by sisters in Nivezée, on the highs of Spa. There, we were absolutely thrilled that we had rooms (!) for 3 (!) with three radiators (!) with hot water (!) and a bath (!) and plenty of food was waiting for us. In the evening, our two teachers prepared a barbecue for us, as you can see on the picture. I think I ate 2 kilos of meat—no kidding. And I was still starved.
For sure, back in that time, I had never spent such a horrible night! It was afwul, terrible, exhausting!
Our trip started in Herve (town where my college lies) and we took the bus to Verviers, then to a remote place called Wavreumont, not far away from Stavelot, in the Belgian Ardennes. Instead of staying at a hotel kept by monks, we had to stay in a wooden cabin—it was actually that—that the owners dared to call a hotel… Inside this crappy place, where mushrooms and moss and other disgusting organisms were copulating and feeding each other (you got the picture, I think), humidity was at its highest (it nearly rained), and we had to warm this cabin with a fuel radiator (see the picture, on which you can see that thing warming up the taps which were nearly frozen). I suddenly remembered that M. Delrée told us two weeks before we go, concerning Wavreumont: "Si vous comptez prendre une douche… n'y comptez pas.". I got his point.
It was soooo cold, sooo chilly that the toilets were frozen!!! I had never seen that before, and I haven't seen that ever since.Phone numbers, names and places are authentic. Spelling mistakes too (e.g. "rapuidement" instead of "rapidement").Retraite itinérante (mardi 07/03 au vendredi 10/03/06)
Cher(e) …………………………………….,
Il est grand temps de te communiquer les dernières indications concernant ces trois jours.
Départ
Nous quitterons Herve, tous ensemble, le mardi 7, avec le bus 38B. Rendez-vous à l’arrêt de bus devant l’IPH, à 16 H 00. A Verviers nous prendrons le bus 395 jusqu’en bas de la côte de Wavreumont. Nous serons au gîte du monastère peu avant le souper.
Programme
• mardi soir : souper, rencontre avec un moine. [1]
• mercredi : messe à 8 H 00 suivie du petit déjeuner, remise en ordre des lieux, puis parche vers le Foyer de Charité de Nivezé (+/- 25 km). [2] Installation, puis barbecue [3] et animation sur le “”commerce équitable” par une personne de l’association“ Miel Maya”.
• jeudi : petit déjeuner, remise en ordre des lieux, puis marche vers Banneux (+/- 20 km). Arrivée au Foyer Notre Dame de la Fagne, souper et animation avec les sœurs.
• vendredi : petit déjeuner, remise en ordre des lieux. Passage au sanctuaire de Banneux, puis marche vers Verviers (+/- 15 km). [4]
Retour
Nous serons à Verviers vers 15 H 00 ; les parents qui le souhaitent peuvent reprendre leur fils/leur fille à la gare, les autres reprennent le bus jusque Herve ; arrivée prévue vers 16 H 00.
L’accompagnement
Est assuré par Didier Schyns et Jacques Delrée.
A emporter
Un sac à dos confortable, un sac de couchage, de quoi se changer et se laver pendant trois jours, des chaussures ou des pantoufles pour l’intérieur, un petit nécessaire de pharmacie (prévoyez de quoi soigner les ampoules), de bonnes chaussures de marche (pas neuves si possible) et une gourde. Prévois la pluie, la boue, les températures fraîches…(à titre facultatif: un chansonnier, une lampe de poche, un instrument de musique, …). Prends aussi un peu d’argent de poche pour les trajets en bus (10 euros suffiront amplement). [5]
Ne pas emporter
Une radio, un baladeur (MP3 ou autre), des boissons alcoolisées ou toute autre chose susceptible d’être confisquée ou de “casser” l’esprit de cette retraite. L’utilisation des GSM sera interdite durant la marche et les autres activités de groupe Les fumeurs éventuels recevront des règles strictes à respecter.
Remarque importante
Mardi 7 au matin, tu déposeras, dans le frigo de la salle des profs (avec une étiquette “retraite itinérante”) un morceau de viande (emballé dans un sachet plastique) pour le barbecue de mercredi. Demande à un prof de lee placer dans le sac qui sera prévu à cet effet dans le frigo.
Pour que cette retraite soit un bon moment pour tous, nous comptons sur chacun d’entre-vous pour respecter les consignes, respecter les endroits qui nous accueillent (propreté, ordre, calme, …) et les personnes que nous rencontrerons.
Si tu as une question spécifique, n’hésite pas à nous contacter le plus rapuidement possible.
Jacques Delrée (087/661427) et Didier Schyns.
En cas d’urgence uniquement : J.Delrée 0494/171835, Wavreumont 080/862318, Nivezé 087/793090 et Notre Dame de la Fagne 04/3608408. [6]
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NOTES:
[1] “Vous pourrez lui poser des questions, comme pourquoi est-ce qu’il n’aime pas les femmes…” (…) “On ne loge pas au monastère, mais au gîte.” (…) “Si vous comptez prendre une douche, n’y comptez pas”. Puis il a dit qu’il y aurait assez d’eau chaude seulement pour eux, les profs…
[2] “C’est l’étape la plus belle.”
[3] “(…) un barbecue avec un petit homme de Nivezé, un ex des Village People…”
[4] “(On passera par Tancrémont), vous connaissez les tartes de Tancrémont… très chères…”
[5] “(Pour payer quand on s’arrêtera, vous prendrez) un chocolat chaud, une bière pour nous…”
[6] (À un élève qui mâchait un chewing-gum) “Dis, vieille méduse malade, tu ne vas pas jeter ton chewing-gum par terre…?”
OK, the title of this post is not great, but this is what I thought when I saw this picture in my album. This is the Rancor, a creature that we see in Star Wars – Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, which wants to eat Luke Skywalker, sent to death by the sluggy-shaped Jabba the Hutt (Tatooine's greatest gangsta). In fact, this is the puppet which was used to shoot the seen: it's only 30 cm high!
I see that the time goes by pretty fast: we are, with this picture, in January 2006, in Brussels. We were on another school trip (don't assume that we were always doing it: it was only once in a blue moon, but I talk about that here because it was special) whose goal was to see the exhibition "Made in Belgium" for the 175th anniversary of the independence of Belgium.
In the morning, we took the train in Verviers (the nearest station): we were 150 students and a dozen of teachers. An hour later, we arrived in Brussels Central and we walked to the Grand-Place, where a man (a retired one) took care of us: he was going to show us the most famous places of Brussels—strange that some of us had never ever come to Brussels… We went in front of the Manneken Pis (hence the photo) and walk towards the Royal Palace (how original), then the Royal Library, and back to the Grand-Place. Pretty boring when you have already seen that 100 times.
Later, we arrived in the Hall of Inventions, where we found this splendid ancient engine in front of which M. Kuta stands on the picture. We were kidding by saying that it was his first car's engine. At school, he was talking of his car being a Kutamobile or Fardier de Kuta (after the name of the first steam engine), and we tought it had to be precesely that. We also found his first wheels, as you can see.
Each year, my parents, my brother and I go to Brussels just to have a walk. Our tour starts with a cup of coffie on the Place des Palais, just in front of the Royal Palace, where there's a huge Christmas tree coming from Norway or something like that—it's sad to think that these trees are 60 or 80 years old, had overlived the War and end up to be cut and (what a glorious end) be shown to thousands of indifferent citizens.
There again, you find a giant Christmas tree and also a living barn with real sheep. We walk along the famous statue of de T'serclaes (you'll get to see a picture of it with several of my English teachers in a later post) and we continue up to Brussel's most famous statue(tte): the Manneken pis. Usually, the statue is bare, but sometimes it wears specially designed costumes (e.g. Santa Claus). And everytime I go in front of the Mannekenpis, I have to take a picture of it, just like that. So, you'll get to see other pictures that look exactly the same. By the way, a couple of weeks ago, Mr Bean came to Brussel for the advertising campaing of his new film (where he makes fun of those frog-eaters Frenchies), and of course photographers were there to immortalize this moment.
We used to have a week of holiday on the first week of November. It's no more, because the "great" university wits think that we don't need these those days off. Enough criticism for now. As I was just saying, we used to go spending one day or two at the seaside in a really small flat of Middelkerke that my uncle (the minigolf freak) had rented from a guy that he knows, M. Haverlant. This time, I think I was with my parents and my brother, and we got up so early that we managed to watch the sun going up on West Vlaanderen. Nice, isn't it? Normally I should go back to the seaside one day during the Easter (so-called)break, just the time to take a deep breath of the coastal air, eat a half chicken, walk and go back to where I live, a village where it never snows and where Dutch farmers throw their manure… (Poetic).
I know I already said that I went to Paris in April 2005 with the school, but I went there again in August. Apart from being a special trip during the holiday, this would give the opportunity for me to show to my family a shop not so far away from Notre-Dame, a real "Cave of Ali-Baba" (if this rings a bell, because I don't know if this idiom is correct) in which you find all sorts of collectibles over Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, comics, mini-figures, books, cards, etc.
As of 2004, we decided to go to Brussels every 21 July. And so, in 2005, we were back. The day usually starts with the going to Brussels with the car (about 75 minutes), then we stop not far away from the Atomium in order to buy fries at the well-known chip-shop (or as we say in Belgium "fritkot"). The fact is that you've got to be there at 11.30, otherwise there's a queue of 30 people (quite often Chinese or Italians) waiting for their "authentic Belgian fries". The best part of it is that we eat in the car, while seeing ravens which come, hoping that we give them something—if not, they eat trash from the chip-shop.
While we were in the North-West of France, we decided to go to La Rochelle, and more particularily the little town of Fourras, where a company organises trips to go round the well-known Fort Boyard. It was really interesting to see for real something that you saw about 100 times on TV. When you are close to it, you recognize those places where the candidates dive in the water, etc., or you can figure out the size of this peculiar building on the sea, which was meant to be a marine defensive point in the time of Napoléon's.
In July 2005, my parents, my brother and I went to the North-West side of France, just to see how it looked like. So we went to see the beaches of Omaha, etc., then to the West. We arrived at this well-known place, the Mont-Saint-Michel, an island (sort of) on which a monastry is set, in addition to thousands of shops for tourists coming from all over the world in order to see this curious city which gave the inspiration for the visual look of Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
Oh no! A skydiver is hanged on a church… But… Wait! He's got an old American uniform… A G.I.? In France, in Sainte-Mère-l'Eglise?
Once again a photograph taken on holiday, in Westende. This is (again) my uncle posing as a specialist of minigolf. Usually, when my uncle, my brother and I go and have a game of minigolf, my brother wins the first holes, but gets 7 points for the other, so that he always loses—and my uncle wins, of course. This minigolf of the center of Westende is quite good, in comparison with that in Oostende, in the park, where the little houses have burnt or are movable, or the holes are filled with grass, etc. Anyway, it's always great fun to go to a minigolf with my uncle.
My brother is pretty cheap. So, when he finally decides to (generously) buy us a drink after we accomplished a 10-kilometres walk, I decided to immortalize that event. In fact, he had just enough coins to buy a drink to me and to himself, and not my uncle… Hence the ironic comments…
If you walk around in Oostende, when you're on vacation, you're likely to see some expensive cars (don't forget that we're in Flanders, the richest part of Belgium—even though I must admit that rich Walloons do exist) like this red Ferrari. My uncle was fascinated by this car, of which the number plate was VDW-333, for which the owner had paid 620€… Unfortunately, there was a big hole in the body of the car, on the left side: maybe the owner couldn't drive very well, so that it was badly damaged. Unlucky.
As I come from Liège, we've got to take the freeway and ride for two hours and a half to get to the coast. When the freeway ends in Oostende, with the famous John Kennedy roundabout, you still have to ride a few more kilometres to Mariakerke, and then you can see the sea, at last! Usually, on this road which links Mariakerke to Middelkerke, you have wormen that repair the rails for the tramway or anything else. If you take the same way when you are riding your bike, you're likely to be blown away due to the wind coming from the sea or caused by the speeding tramways… So, if you're planning to go to Oostende or Middelkerke, just do it only if the wind is with you; otherwise just stay home.
When you get bored, you can do all sorts of things (like spying on the naked teachers in Paris). This time, during the Easter holiday in 2005, my bro (Robin) and I were outside, for no reason. In the garden comes pretty often Félix, the cat of our German neighbour. This cat likes hunting the birds, but we don't let us killing those creatures. And if Félix disobeys us, we know how to chatise him: you just throw a big stone on him so that he faces reality… Crual, this photograph? No, because my brother never threw a stone on Félix. Even if he had a strong wish for doing so… I think that this time, we was pooing in the sandpit (or sandbox, if in which we used to play when we were young (not so many years ago, I must admit). It made my brother angry… "Something is rotten in the sandbox of Danemark, and Robin is taking up the trash…".
This is (again) a picture taken while watching TV. This is Michel Feys, who sometimes (and rarely, I shoudl say) presents the weather. This man has a peculiar hairstyle, a little in-between the combover and the wig. When he presents, he does it in the old fashion way. Impossible to describe, but still. It's a shame that we don't see him very often. Notice that he's a member of the Belgian Air Force: once, he presented the weather, wearing his uniform.
Meet another monster in my family: Bouboule, my grand-mother's cat. He is evil. I mean it: he is evil. Look in his eyes, and you'll see that he would like to eat your face. Fortunately, this cat is not one of the most vivace in the world: he spends the whole day (and sometimes week, or month) lazying in a box. He only moves a little to get his food, that my grand-mother bought for him. He has nothing of a hunter.
School trips are typically the place to have fun. Even in Notre-Dame de Paris, just in front of the cathedral. Our teachers agreed to take part in a photo shooting in which they pretend to be saints. At the left, my French teacher Mlle Simonis, then M. Simar (aka Rainman) and M. Jacquet. That's one of the best memories I keep from secondary school. In fact, all my good memories from secondary school are linked to a school trip, because you're more likely to have fun when you are not at school. For that matter, the school trip we did one year later for our last year at secondary school, in Greece, was also great fun. I'll talk about that later, trust me. I've got really interesting anecdotes to tell.
As I was too lazy to write a full description of a picture from my collection the last few days, you had to undergo these silly videos from YouTube that I love. I edict a new rule: whenever I want to put a video on this blog, I first have to describe a picture. And as I've got plenty of videos on my account, I've got to write a lot more on this blog. (Don't worry, I've a bunch of photographs. If you don't like that, don't hesitate to react by posting a comment.)
Good riddance. Now, as far as this particular picture is concerned, it also comes from this school trip in Paris, in April 2005. That one was taken in the morning, when we were waiting for the teachers to call us. From my bedroom in the Formule 1 Saint-Denis, we had a view on the teacher's room. It was sooo funny because we could spy on them and see them in underwear, and thus make several picture to make fun of them later on. (It's done, now!) Of course, we had to do that seriously—we didn't want to get caught due to the flash or sth. Here, you can see M. Simar (French teacher) wearing a vest (if it's the right word to characterize what we call "marcel" or "singlet" in French); to figure it out, just look Die Hard with Bruce Willis: he only wears this kind of clothing, or see the other picture. I have other views of M. Simar and his colleague M. Jacquet (Latin teacher), but they are not as neat as that one (difficult, I was saying, to take a picture under these conditions), and we were thinking that they had an affair… This is what we do when we're getting bored.
This is the Ark of the Covenant as it appears in Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark. I really like this film. I must say that I'm a big fan of trilogies—all sorts of them—but for the Indiana Jones Trilogy, I think that the second movie has to be forgotten… It's just too much. Difficult to believe that it's a movie by Steven Spielberg… But anyway, the two other Indies are terrific. As to the Ark itself, it was accompanied with a kinda Middle-Eastish, soft music theme by John Williams that gives you a weird feeling. 
While making a reseach of a picture of the Ark of the Covenant in "Indiana Jones", I found this picture, which we can actually see in the last shot of the movie, after the FBI took the Ark to hide it in one of these huge warehouses. Freaking: I'm sure that such things exist—keeping alien spacecraft or maybe Jimmy Hoffa's body… (who knows?).
When you have walked for a whole day in Paris, when your feet are burnt and that you are about to go to the hospital, the best solution is to go to a restaurant. Being (still) on a school trip, the budget for eating was really limited, which almost obliged us to take a steak with French (!) fries two days in a row. On this picture, I'm on the left side, at the back. Next to me, with a surprised expression on his face and about to eat some fries, my good friend Alexandre. At the front, Cyril, who's currently studying law in Liège. In front of him, Mickaël, who now studies veterinary medicine in Namur. Next to him, Marc, also a law student in Liège and finally, in front of me, Nicolas, who's known for drinking a lot on certain occassions…
When you go to Notre-Dame, in Paris, there's a large area in front of the cathedral. There are bushes with hundreds of these little birds, sparrows. If you have a particular kind of sugary bread, the birds fly to your hand to eat it! Pigdeons do it too, but they are less friendly-looking… especially if they leave a trace on you, if you knoiw what I mean. Anyway, it's really exceptional that sparrows get so close to humans.
In Paris, you can find really amazing things, such as this shop, which was full of fake guns, what we call in French "pistolets à billes". You could find all sorts of guns in there, from the little and crappy Colt to the AK-47… Everything was fake, but this was amazing! I'm not for guns, but this kind of stuff just make me laugh because they exist: how did it come that someone, someday, just got the idea of making fake guns that shoot small plastic balls?
I also took this photograph during our visit in the Musée d'Orsay: this is a painting by Van Gogh, "Portrait du Docteur Gachet". I don't know who this man was, so click on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Doctor_Gachet. They say there are two versions of it. Curious. Anyway, I like this picture because we see it (well in fact a copy of it) in Mel Brooks' film "Life Stinks" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Stinks), one of my personal favourites. In French, Goddard Bolt (Mel Brooks) was shouting "Mon Van Gogh !". Obviously, it doesn't appear to be funny when you read it, so just watch it.
"Whistler's Mother" or, as it reads on the picture in the Musée d'Orsay, "Portrait de la mère de l'artiste", by James Whistler. This painting was made famous the catastrophical movie "Bean", where our favourite Brit destroy the painting and tries to replace it… by a poster… (This film is one of my favourites.) In the French version, Bean says: "C'est le portrait d'une vieille peau, d'un débris, qu'il aima par dessus tout"… Brillant!
Again a picture taken while being on a trip in Paris. We were all walking in the streets, going from famous place to famous place. Here, we were in front of the Ritz, on the Place Vendôme, probably the most expensive area in Paris, where the biggest jeweleers must have a shop. On the picture, you can see M. Jacquet (on the left), my tutor and Latin teacher, and M. Simar, French teacher. They look as if, while pointing the Ritz, they think they'd better have chosen this hotel instead of the inexpensive (but comfortable, though) Formule 1 in Saint-Denis.
