We love traveling, we love exploring, we love outdoor activities. But we barely have (or: had) the time for them! So, here's an upside to the COVID-19 restrictions of not seeing anyone, of not going to bars, restaurants, and clubs, of not traveling: we have more time for each other and more time for outdoor activities! (We do not want to downplay the pain, loss, and death this pandemic is causing — we just got lucky enough to enjoy some extra time.) These last few weeks, we have been hiking and exploring the nearby woods. It's incredible how beautiful they are in spring! Lush, green, the sun shining through the green treetops, rustling from last fall's brown leaves with every step. And most of the time, the woods are surprisingly quiet, with only a few people taking walks or hiking. The only thing missing these days, particularly for Ilse: ending the trip with a cool beer (or two) and maybe a snack at a beer garden. She wants her reward! Also, after years without ev...
As a birthday gift for Else last year, Ilse planned and booked a trip to Belgium. So, mid-January, we got on our train (Else's first Thalys train ride!) to Brussels. Before our trip, Else, as a dedicated dinosaur lover, found out that the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels has an impressive dinosaur collection. So: off we were to meet our friends, the dinosaurs! The collection indeed was formidable, we probably killed a photo machine (we didn't do anything wrong!), and Else tentatively tried her French skills learned on Duolingo (unintentionally rude, but well ...).
Another quick train ride away, we reached Bruges a few hours later. Ilse had booked us a fantastic hotel (even with an outside swimming pool—we hope to be back there in summer!) in the city center. During that time, we both were quite tired and exhausted and Bruges was the perfect place to relax—the city center is rather small and we could reach everything within half an hour from our hotel. Although the city is beautiful, it didn't have too many sights we had to see so that we didn't even feel the pressure of a tight sight-seeing schedule. We visited the few sights we wanted to see, but we mostly roamed Bruges without an exact destination and lazed around at cafés, bars, and restaurants, drinking wine and beer, eating fantastic meals and Belgian waffles.
We already knew that Belgium is one of the LGBTQ+ friendliest countries in the world before we started our trip: many queer people went to Belgium to get married long before Germany legalized same-sex marriages. In contrast to our trip to Portugal last year, we didn't even think about traveling as a lesbian couple. And that was perfectly okay! Not once did we feel judged, not accepted, or—and that happens almost everywhere at some point—sexualized (that might have been luck, though).
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