Lune

On Monday 12 April 2010 the generations in my family were shifted up by one: grandparents became great-grandparents; parents became grandparents; my brother became a dad and I became an uncle. Since my sister's wedding in Spain had only really finished less than 24 hours before the birth, our family was spread over at least four countries (five if you count the in-laws) so the couple had to cope on their own initially.

By the end of the week, though, cars had been driven through France, trains had been brought in from Germany and after yet another week, when the Icelandic volcano finally abated, planes were flown in from Lithuania. Being part of a geographically challenged family if oddly fun and somehow amusing: you know there will always be someone anywhere, but you can never tell who will be where when. During the second half of April, though, we were all down at the University hospital of Leuven at one point or another. (Save my sister who'll be getting there next week.)

Let this be a good time to update you on the marvellous trip from Bonn to Leuven, which is all but the most easily reached Belgian city from Germany. Normally I book these tickets well in advance, so I can get fast, direct trains without too much time going to waste waiting around for transfers. But because babies come regardless of our planning and because Europe became covered under a Nordic ash cloud only days after the birth, this time I bought tickets that were in high demand - and bought them last-minute. Surprisingly this didn't affect the price too much, but it did affect the time. If I had been a pessimist I would have been dismayed at having to travel twice as long. As it turned out, I was rather upbeat about the prospect of finally getting to see more than just a platform and a traintrack of some of the cities that lie along my route.

Commencing the trip in Bonn, I'll start with a nice - and appropriate from my point of view - building that I had omitted on my previous foto-shoot: the Sterntor or Star gate:


Depending on your source, the city in question may vary between Chicago, New York and Berlin, but the saying that Bonn is half the size of the central cemetery of city X and twice as dead, stays the same. I mostly disagree with that, of course, but there is no denying that John LeCarré's book A Small Town in Germany was appropriately titled for Bonn. Ergo: wherever you go from Bonn, you first go to Köln (Cologne) because in contrast to Bonn, Köln really is an important city with connections to the world. The most obvious landmark in Köln stands conveniently right next to the central train station: the Dom (or Cathedral).


Next stop is a lovely little city the likes of which you cannot find in North America or Oceania: Aachen lies right on the border of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The trouble with my stopover was that I only had about half an hour and the walk from the station to the city centre turned out to be at least 20 minutes, so this is the closest I could get:

The white building you see is the theater of Aachen - and behind it on the right, you can just see a spire of the Dom in the centre of the city - which must have been another 5 to 10 minutes away.

It's been a month now since I went there and took these pictures and I suddenly remember running on the way back to the station in order to make sure I'd catch my train. Ah. Running. How nice that would be... (I must be looking forward to late June almost as much as a high school student.)

Anyway. We'll get back to Aachen one day, but presently the train has departed for Liege, the first Belgian (Walloon) city on our trip. The station we stop at (Liege-Guillemins) is as new as can be and an architectural spectacle designed by Calatrava, who coincidentally designed about half the city where my sister now lives (Valencia, that would be). Sadly, it isn't anywhere near any interesting or beautiful part of the city so really the station is the only point of interest. Here's a view from the inside:

and Wikipedia has a really nice view from the outside.

Finally, I arrived in Leuven (which probably has the most beautiful city centre of all the cities I'd visited that day, but I forgot to take pictures and went straight to the hospital) and met my godchild, Lune:


Cute, isn't she?