… very quiet day today – hardly a surprise bearing in mind my medical treatment yesterday. It does actually take it out of me.

And so I was in bed quite early and I relied on my usual fall-back – watching a film on the laptop – and that sent me off to sleep within minutes.

Plenty of time to go off on my travels too. We started off with this musician giving a concert. It was all about him singing a song. One minute he was on the stage and next minute he wasn’t. It wasn’t until we analysed some kind of sound analysis kind of thing that we realised that he was actually underneath the stage and he’d been digging an escape tunnel out. And it could follow because of the sound the way the escape tunnel bent down towards the centre of the earth to give him a little extra height over his head to get further away and how there had been microphones in there that broadcast the sound to give everyone a false sense of something or other and allowed him to be able to sing his songs while he was busy burrowing his way through. But there were a few joins in what he was doing quite obviously like getting into the hole, all this kind of thing and I couldn’t work out exactly where these joins had taken place. Obviously the tape had been cut to allow him to get into this tunnelway and even though all the microphones were still there he couldn’t actually work out at what point he’d actually got into the tunnel and where he was when he’d said or done certain things and it was all so confusing. I remember waking up in a cold clammy sweat because of course the whole idea of me going into a tunnel like that would be impossible, claustrophobia and all of that.
Some time later on there was something about some small children. I’d been doing something that involved having to look after them and take them somewhere. I remember saying to someone that she was right about them in the car because they were travelling in the car having to go to somewhere. Of course it was a special treat so they never said anything to anyone, to keep it secret so they wouldn’t get told off about it. I’d been doing something around Crewe so someone asked “which pub did you go to?”. I said that I didn’t go to any pub. I had the kids with me. They said “you should always go to a pub”. I said “no, not with the kids with me” and we had a discussion about that.

At that point the alarm went off as usual and I was up and about long before the third alarm went off. There was the medication and breakfast of course, and then for a few hours I didn’t do all that much at all.

Round about 10:30 I went out for a walk and ended up going right the way around town.

But before I’d gone too far, I took a little diversion. At the end of the Tiensestraat near the junction with Muntstraat is the College de Valk. I’ve walked past there on dozens of occasions but somehow I’ve never gone into the grounds for a nosy around.

That kind of thing is something that I ought to be doing, so I took myself in there today.

There’s a path around the side of the building that seems to lead onto the back of the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein and so I went for a look to see what I could see.

What actually came to my attention however were these four busts of who I imagine were at one tim quite important people. And important people of recent date too judging by the clothes that they were wearing.

The names didn’t hold a great deal of significance for me. In fact, although I did look at the notices, I can’t even remember their names now. That’s how much notice I took of them.

Instead of continuing on down the path I turned round and headed for the direction of the Grote Markt.

That’s where everything happens in Leuven, especially at weekends and especially at Christmas too. They set up a creche here and all kinds of christmassy objects and people come from miles around to admire the handiwork of the people who prepare it all.

Even I was there admiring it for a while and then I went off to Flying Tiger and Delhaize for a little shopping

In fact I went on quite an exploration this morning.

Yesterday I was in the Vismarkt doing some shopping in Origin’O – the Health Food and vegan shop – but I hadn’t ever been for a good walk around the square to see what goes on there. The answer is “not a lot” but at least I can now say that with confidence

And you can see the Origin’O in this photo. It’s down in the bottom right of this photo.

There are several little streets that lead off the Vismarkt and while I may have been down one or two of them I certainly hadn’t been down all of them.

This is the Schrijnmakersstraat – the Street of the Carpenters – and if there had been carpenters living in some of these houses in the 16th and 17th Century then carpenters must have been on a good salary, that’s all I can say. I thought that this little photograph take through an archway came out quite well and shows off some of the character of the street.

Mind you, it’s enough to make me wonder how much a room in a place like this might cost to rent.

At least the carpenters who lived in the street wouldn’t have too far to go to wet their whistles.

Around the corner, on the corner of the Augustijnenstraat and the Vaartstraat is the local public house, the “In Den Boule”. It looks very typically Flemish is style and character and I might have eveb neeb tempted to stick my head in the door for a butcher’s had it been open.

That will have to be something for another time I reckon. I’ll be back in four weeks’ time I imagine.

After a while I ended up back in the Diestsestraat, the pedestrianised shopping street.

One thing of which I haven’t done very much is to talk about the linguistic battles in Belgium. That’s a whole exciting topic that I could spin out for weeks … “not with a bayonet through your neck you couldn’t” – ed … but basically after the expulsion of the Dutch in 1830, the French language and culture took the ascendency for quite some considerable time in Flanders.

You can still see signs of this if you look. A jeweller’s shop would be expecting to have as its patrons the upper-class, wealthy citizens rather than the peasants. And so the old carving on the wall above the window of this shop advertising its former occupants is written in French.

But after World War II the writing was on the wall for the French language in Flanders. In fact, given a choice between speaking English or French as a second choice, the Flemish will almost always opt for the English language today.

All in all, I was out for a couple of hours on my little perambulation. I’m quite a big fan of Leuven.

Round about 12:45 I made my way back to my little room, calling in at the Spar supermarket for some bread seeing as I had forgotten. And back here I made myself some butties for lunch.

During the morning I’d had a little shut-eye and this afternoon I was away with the fairies yet again. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s inactivity that’s causing me to crash out like this. It doesn’t seem to bother me when I’m being busy.

Once it went dark I went outside again for another walk.

All of the Christmas lights were illuminated and the Christmas market in the Herbert Hooverplein and the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein looked quite good too. There were an enormous number of stalls and an even greater number of people milling around admiring what was going on.

The University library was looking a little bit sad though. I thought that they might have made a greater effort to do something to show it off.

There was plenty of time for me to have a good walk round the town this evening to inspect the Christmas lights and I made the most of it.

The Oud Markt was looking particularly beautiful this evening. One thing that it shows us here is that there’s no need to go to extravagant lengths with lights in order to make a place look magnificent. This is exactly how a place should be, in my opinion.

My little walk around took me up to about 19:00 when I came back for tea. What with one thing and another, I have walked miles today into almost every crook and nanny of the town and the fitbit is showing over 10 kms and 136% of my daily activity.

My burger, pasta and veg with tomato sauce for tea went down a treat after that little lot.

But talking about walking, up to now there’s a train for Granville going out in the afternoon (although the situation might change at any moment of course), about three hours after my train from Brussels arrives (if it runs and is on time, of course – anything might happen tomorrow!)

Now, if there is no Metro, I was looking for other alternative ways of crossing Paris. With about two and a half hours to play with, I’ve been thinking about walking.

It’s 7kms in pretty much a straight line so seeing as I have the time I’m going to try it on foot. The route is quite level with no climbs and goes past some interesting places so it should be quite exciting if it comes off.

But as I’ve said, anything can happen about the public transport in France while this strike is on, so nothing is taken for granted. You’ll probably find me sleeping underneath the arch of a bridge over the River Seine at this rate.

So on that point, I’m going to bed. I’ll watch a film until I fall asleep, all ready for my exertions tomorrow. And exertions there will be.

And one final word. While I was out on my travels I took about 50 photos of Leuven and its Christmas lights, and I didn’t have much of a clue how to fit them all onto the blog. In the end I created a web page to display them and you’re quite welcome to go and have a look.

december creche grote markt leuven louvain belgium

december rijksarchief vaartstraat leuven louvain belgium