Out and About in Limburg

Limburg is a province and Hasselt is the capital.  Sort of equivalent to Louisiana and Baton Rouge.

A couple of weekends ago, the weather was really nice, so we got out and explored several places around Limburg.

This is a sale held annually to buy all sorts of mostly fowl - mostly chickens and ducks.

The quintessential chicken.

This tree had several of these huge mushrooms growing on it and they were emitting dust - you can see it piled up on the ground below.  I think they're called bracket fungi.

Next we visited Domein Kiewit.  We've taken Frazier and Norma Grace here before to see the animals - sheep, goats, rabbits.

Future project?

They have this nice little cafe and we couldn't resist having a drink on the sunny terrace.

We could hear planes so we followed the noise . . .

and found an open house going on at the Kiewit airfield - oldest in Belgium.

Hasselt held an arts fair along the "green boulevard" so we checked it out.  The green boulevard is the walking/biking ring that completely circles the city.

We also visited the C-mine in Genk.  It's an old coal mine that the city of Genk has restored as a tourist attraction.  They offer an underground tour.  We decided to wait for a chilly, rainy day for that and not waste this pretty day underground!

Ross had read about this labyrinth at the C-mine.

It is really huge - all the walls are steel.  Pretty elaborate undertaking.

Inside the mine-turned-tourist attraction was a photo exhibit of the team members of the Belgian soccer team - The Red Devils.

Fantastic pictures in sepia.

Last, we visited another open house.

It's the home and garden of a local landscape architect.

This pergola is made from sycamore trees trained to run on top of this grid.

I took a lot of pictures of this garden . . . because this garden is amazing and beautiful and for inspiration.  I would love to have one similar to this one day!

Dina Deferme - of course we bought her book.

Little Update

This past weekend we picked blackberries.

Jim made a cobbler from scratch with no recipe.

And of course it was delicious!

Ross spent this past weekend in Paris with his friend Laurel.

Before all that . . . Frazier started his first day of kindergarten!

Randi and Josh had birthdays.  Happy birthday!

We got the exciting news that Norma Grace is going to be a big sister!  

Plus, this big sister and yellow rose of Texas turned 3 years old.  Happy birthday, Norma Grace!

Refugites

First, I have to explain my blog post title to those who don't already know.  A few years ago, Trinity Methodist Church, where we attended at the time, started a new contemporary service called the Refuge. They put up a sign to direct people to the service and it read "Refugites".  It apparently never occurred to them that the correct term was refugee.  Since then we refer to refugees as refugites.  

It's headline news here.  Sudden mass migration - 350,000 to date - into the EU. It's important when you know where they're coming from and why they want to leave.

Some are migrants wanting a new life somewhere better than their economically impoverished country - which is generally not considered a reason for asylum.

The bulk of them are actually not migrants, but "refugites" fleeing violence and war in their own country which IS a reason for asylum. There's a difference, but it's all the same - people are people.  And by international law, countries are responsible for helping refugees.

Once you're in the European Union, travel from country to country is easy. Borders are open and passport checks are rare.  You hardly even notice you've passed into another country.  It's as easy as moving from state to state in the U.S.

The Schengen Treaty, signed back in 1985, requires passport checks only at the EU external border countries.  

So just where are the external borders?

Here's a fun map to give some perspective on the size of Europe.  It's not that big.

So most of those people trying to get into the European Union are coming from places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the Middle East and we all know why that is.

There's a big meeting scheduled for September 14 in Brussels to decide just how to handle what has, no doubt, become a crisis, but perhaps not to epic proportions just yet.

If you'd like to read more, here is a good article from a couple of weeks ago in a British newspaper, The Guardian, that may help put it all into perspective.  

10 Truths About Europe's Migrant Crisis