What a sunny day in Mechelen

Last weekend, I paid a visit to my friends Saskia and Peter, and their twins, the cutest babies on Earth. They were born in December 2008 and they are really, really cute; believe me, I am not saying it with the passion of an uncle, je, je, je. The only problem I am starting to have with them is that their Dutch is by now much better than mine (reduced probably to no more than ten words).

As usual, I took the train to go there. Generally, it takes less than three hours to go from Frankfurt to Brussels and it is much more comfortable than going to the airport. From Brussels, I need an additional 20 minutes to reach Mechelen. The trip between Frankfurt and Cologne is probably one of my favourites, I think I could spend a whole day doing it: the train goes parallel to a highway and it goes so fast (around 300 km/h) that cars are overtaken without difficulty.

Once in Mechelen, I tried to cook Spanish tortillas for Saskia and Peter. They came this time with strange requirements: they wanted to put tomatoes, salt and pepper on it and I did my best to preserve this Spanish "delicatessen" but I was their guest so I had to give up in some points... Anyway, the final result was really a success and I felt very proud of my skills as tortilla-cook. I must admit that the previous try was such a disaster that it was very easy to improve.

On Sunday morning, it was sunny so we decided to go for a ride with the bycicles. First thing to note is that Belgium (Flanders to be more accurate) is extremely flat, not like Guadalajara. It was a real pleasure to cycle close to a canal for 10 kilometres without going up- or downhill for more than 5 metres (see picture below). On the other hand, that may be the reason by Belgium has not win a single Tour de France in the last 30 years. Anyway, it was absolutely delicious, probably one of my best experiences in the last year.
Lastly, I think I must partially explain myself. In my previous post, I stated that Belgium seemed to be a country in decadence, especially in towns, such as in Brussels. This time, though, I visited the nice part of it: the small villages full of peace and quality of life (for example, Boortmeerbeek). So, probably big towns are not so pleasant for the visitor, but definitively Belgium seems a nice place to live (when it is not raining, of course, je, je, je). I will seriously consider whether to buy a piece of land in Boortmeerbeek and build a house there...