Monday 23-11
It is very cold. In fact, snow is lying on the roof and in the garden, and if it weren’t for the heating I would probably be unable to write this, as my fingers would be too busy freezing to bother about typing blog entries. In fact, the snow on the rooves behind and above me has been lying there for well over 48 hours, as it’s been nearly that long since I returned and it must have been lying there for some time then.
On Friday I went to Liège with Eva, which was really nice, if also (though slightly less) cold. Liège is a rather sad city but with some beautiful buildings commemorating the days of the city’s prosperity. The centre is quite small compared to the overall size of the city, and doesn’t actually appear to have too much to offer to tourists – there’s few shops and the large tourist streams in cities like Bruges or Maastricht are pretty much lacking. Also, the only language you hear in the centre is French, as opposed to Maastricht where you can pretty much bank on hearing at least five different languages while walking through the high streets. Even worse was the fact that it was terribly difficult to find Liège waffles – we found only two shops selling them home-made and both offered them only for take-away, not eat inside. One chap we asked about waffle shops even had the audacity to ask what kind of waffles we wanted! It’s actually easier to buy them in Maastricht, and so I propose renaming them to Maastricht waffles. Nobody in Liège will notice anyway.
Although the nice spots are not always easy to find, there were still some more than impressive locations, like the view from the mountain over the entire city and far beyond, which was spectacular. There are also, as has been mentioned, many very nice buildings, though quite a few are in need of repairs or are simply very grey. The city has an incredibly large number of churches, which makes it hard to know which ones are worth visiting (especially as the originally most important one, the cathedral of saint Lambert, was destroyed during the French Revolution). Even in the centre itself many houses and shop fronts had ‘to lend’ or ‘to buy’ signs in the windows, which probably says something about the state of the economy there.
So, altogether, a nice city, but it probably requires rather intense planning to know what places to visit.
Up soon: review of Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex.
