A summer's day in August 2011.

A day of summer, a sunny day, in Belgium, is not to be ignored.  It is an almost unique occasion, certainly in our summer of 2011.  There have been few summer days this year, apparently less than 20 and, considering that we had such a fabulous early spring I can only conclude that this year's summer has not yet happened, nor is it likely to. 

But yesterday, 15^th August, we did have a summer's day, and we went to celebrate that, plus our public holiday, by having lunch in a not so typical seafood restaurant in Blankenberge. What I forgot to mention though are the incredible traffic jams and a slow-moving line of vehicles crawling to the coast.  The Belgian coast is only about 40 km long and its serves not only the whole Belgian population, but also parts of France, the Netherlands and even a bunch of German day-trippers that regularly stream to the Belgian coast.  Many Belgians also have apartments or houses at the coast and the result of this all is that during holidays and weekends almost every Belgian heads to the coast.  They don't go there, obviously, to swim, no instead they go to ‘flaneer’, a colourful term which is used to describe the promenading, along the promenade obviously, stopping every now and then for an ice cream, a cup of coffee or, more usually, a solid pint of one of Belgian's finest beers (at last count there was close to 600 beers brewed in Belgium!).  Then they slowly proceed again, hand-in-hand, further along the promenade, watching the people on the beach, avoiding seagulls attacking their ice creams, their children, darting in and out on rented karts or bicycles in the masses, pulsating on the promenades.  Interspersed, you always find a number of skateboarders and of course, boys and men flying their kites. 

This reminds me that this past weekend France experienced a record of 793 km of traffic jams and stalled vehicles on its highways, as it was what is called a 'black' weekend, that is, a day or a weekend when one group of people who were on vacation, say, the Dutch, return home and on the same day, another group, for instance, the French, leave for their holidays, resulting in the most frustrating hours on highways, and on small roads, because everyone uses GPS to try and use the back roads and shortcuts.  This misery is repeated on a few occasions during the summer holidays.

Anyway to return to our outing to Blankenberge of yesterday: this restaurant, called 'de Oesterput' (literally, a well of oysters) is in fact, more typical of a South African or Australian large seafood eatery with tables, both inside and outside, and with the emphasis rather on the freshness of the seafood and fish than on the silver cutlery. As you can see in the picture they have a few large "swimming pools" in which the lobsters are kept- and if you select one they will wade in with a net to catch that particular one for you. I selected a chilled Austrian Gruner Veltliner wine, and with that ordered a seafood platter, which consisted partly of lobster, crab, large prawns, cockles and whelks, some whitebait, and one of the local specialities: those tiny grey shrimps that one sees the old-time fishermen net early in the mornings at Ostend Beach- I remember seeing them on their huge work horse, those with the huge hoofs and a large patient hanging head, plodding into the waves, two large hand-woven baskets hanging either side of the horse, the spray of the waves mingling with the early morning mist. 

After lunch we went for a walk along the jetty, in glorious sunshine, and watched various yachts, and men and girls in boats doing their boating things.  I took this picture of a restaurant, which is located right near the jetty, which has handily made use of one the old German bunkers of the Second World War.  These concrete structures are found all over Belgium, and because they are virtually indestructible have been left behind, silent reminders of the terrors that our parents and grandparents had to go through.  This particular bunker formed part of the "Atlantic Wall", fortifications which the Germans set up, and this restaurant cleverly linked itself into the bunker with a new walkway, and I understand that they use the bunker as a perfect climate-controlled wine cellar!  What a wonderful comment on World War II! 
And what a wonderful summer's day, at last - a day to not forget.