And then it was up early on Sunday morning to get the first train to Brussels. I broke down and bought a first class ticket this time. It wound up only being about seven dollars more than the discounted youth fare. I make it to the airport in Brussels with about three hours to spare. Time to buy duty free smoke, chocolates, and postcards. Unfortunately the stamp machine at the terminal was broken, so I'll have to post the cards from the States. I spend my time waiting catchin up on a few newspapers and making an effort to write up some web stuff on the laptop. In about ten hours I'll be a three thousand miles from this place, and hopefully sooon so much closer to my past.

In the meantime, a thousand thoughts run through my head of things to write up for the site...

Building a complete transmission facility: finding the gear, working around NATO, working around the clock; the humble joy of the Provencette...

The press storms in, ignores the buffet, and storms right out again

Rushing to break everything down and get the hell out of dodge (but we'll have a killer meal first. By the way, what was you ordered for me!?!?)

A final lunch in Brussels before heading off to find my past, and a decent hotel; and finding a woman who respects me for my mind and not just my body! But they won't take American Express (or visa, or francs, or dollars!)

Making new friends in the countryside - that African trip comes back in my favor yet again.

Discovering my heritage through that of a Pole. General Marczek and the First Canadian Army, and the real story behind the tank.

And finally, having found a decent hotel, looking for a decent meal, and trying to find the raison d'etre of the journey (does there need to be one?)

And while a lot of it doesn't make it all the way to the site, I hope that the stuff that has entertained you, and helped open another window on the world. Read on, there's another day of my Belgium trip, a postlogue of sorts.

Reflecting back on the past week. I wrote on saturday night that I was finding it hard to come to grand conclusions about the journey; to find a new understanding, an epiphany of light on history like I found so easily in Africa. I don't know if there is one to be found. In fact, I think trying to find one is not important, even on my other travels. The understanding isn't in finding a conclusion, or some sort of rationalization. The import is in having been there. A conclusion exudes finality, and that is something a journey can never have. In being there, I have become a part of the place, of the history; It has become a part of me. The understanding isn't a completenes of thought, but rather a process of experience that comes back at the strangest times and in the oddest ways; like meeting an Afrikaaner in Klundert and then discussing the liberation of Holland with him. What it gathered from the trip is the sublime process of incorperating all these experiences into the whole of who you are.

And maybe this is what I was searching for through the villages and hamlets of southern Holland. I went looking for the places and dates and battles and history that my grandfather was a part of. Instead, prehaps, I have found the things (or a small hint of them) that became a part of him, and a part of my father and a part of me. It is a discovery that in a personal sense isn't the events that have made up history, but the history that was the personal events that I have become. And I am grateful that I have been there, that I have gone and opened myself to take in these places that have, in an unseen way, have played a large role in my life.