Category: Belgium

Pairi Daiza

Macsen turned 16 last month and we wanted to do something special to mark the occasion. What we came up with was a two-day trip to Pairi Daiza, a zoo and botanical garden located in Wallonia. For the first day, we signed Macsen up for the Keeper for a day experience, which allowed him to get a lot closer to the animals than the rest of us.

That said, the park is huge, so there were plenty of animals for the rest of us to see. Pairi Daiza is home to 7,000 animals, spread across 65 hectares of, often stunning, landscape. It’s big, and I’m glad we were all equipped with decent walking shoes.

The park itself is located on the grounds of the former Cistercian Cambron Abbey, and is divided into several Worlds, each emphasising a different environment. What makes the overnight stay so special is that the accommodation is in these worlds. In our case, we booked a room in The Land of the Cold, overlooking the Siberian Tigers, the biggest cat on earth.

As with many modern zoos, Pairi Daiza also serves environmental and educational functions, seeing to preserve threatened habitats, protect endangered species and introduce them into the wild if possible. It also seeks to educate visitors about the wider culture of the lands the animals originate from, and why this matters.

With the experience and the accommodation, it’s not cheap. But it did provide a fantastic couple of days, and I was surprised at just how difficulty it was, on the second day, to bring ourselves to leave. I would certainly recommend it and would very happily go again.

Pakawi Park

I have mentioned the Olmense Zoo a couple of times in the past but in the years since we last visited, the ownership, the name and the purpose have all changed. It’s still at the same location, though.

Back in 2017, the zoo was found to be in violation of several animal welfare rules. They were unable to sufficiently rectify these and the zoo lost it’s licence in 2017. In 2019 it reopened as Pakawi Park, now specialising on big cats and with more of a focus on conservation and education. Reflecting that specialisation is the fact that the park is named after Paka and Awi, a pair of Siberian tigers.

We visited the Park shortly after it reopened in 2019 and, last week, we went for another look. The improvements are still ongoing and looking impressive. The enclosures have been reorganised to provide more space for the animals and further renovations are clearly in progress, most notably is that a new monkey house is on the way. Overall, the transition from a traditional zoo to a more modern experience does appear to be working well.

This being Belgium, the weather wasn’t great, but we did have an enjoyable day out and will certainly be back. If only to see if the persistent peacock finally managed to get into the restaurant.

A peacock trying to find his way into the restaurant at Pakawi Park

Transport issues and dealing with failure

I was intending to post a lengthy rant about the state of the Belgian trains today. There is a bit of track that keeps on having problems: over the last few weeks, we have had signalling problems, a broken down train, and a failure at a level crossing. Inevitably enough, these types of issues always to train cancellations and delays.

When this happens on the way to work this isn’t that big of a deal. I am able to work from home and will do so if there is any problem at all with getting to the office.

It’s more of an issue when I have finished work for the day and walk into the station to find a stream of delays and cancellations being announced. Alternative routes need to be sought and I have to start rethinking at what time I will be home.

It was at this point that I was going to start complaining but, if I’m honest, it isn’t that bad.

Nothing is perfect, of course, and problems will always arise. What really matters is how effectively these problems are dealt with, and in this respect the Belgian train operator, NMBS, does a pretty good job.

While at the station, there are plenty of announcements and electronic displays to tell me which train I need to be catching and, once on the train, there are further announcements telling me not only at which station I need to change, but also which platform I need to be heading towards. Furthermore, the NMBS app provides a good overview of the state of the route, expected and actual
delays, and estimated arrival times.

All of this means that it remains very easy to know what is going on, where I need to be and how much of a delay I can expect. And the final delay was only half an hour, which really didn’t make much difference to anyone.

Failures happen. How an organisation deals with these is important. It’s nice to see this being taken seriously.

Options

This is good. With hybrid working becoming increasingly established, the Belgian trains are introducing new (and, hopefully cheaper) season tickets to reflect this reality.

I am one of the 60% of season ticket holders commuting fewer than five days a week and, although the season ticket is (just) worth it, I am paying for journeys I don’t take. One of the proposed options is for 120 days travel a year, and this is more than enough for me, and I will certainly look into this when renewal time comes around.

Hybrid working has become the norm for many people and, when it works, it works well. It is nice to see that the national infrastructure is now also adjusting to this reality.

The Joy of Parking

Since the Covid restrictions were lifted, I have been going into Brussels two days a week. This commute involves driving into a nearby town and catching a train. The train station has plenty of parking and, once I’m in Brussels, the walk to the office only takes five minutes, so it’s a pretty easy commute overall.

Although the station parking has long been free, it’s been clear for a while that this is going to change. There has been a lot of construction work going on over the past year or so, this involves converting car park into a lager area for buses, closing off most of the entrances to the car park and putting a payment barrier on the remaining one.

And on Wednesday they activated the barrier.

The barrier was down and there was a man standing next to it to tell me that I needed to take a ticket now and pay when I left, of I could buy a season ticket at the station office which would work out a lot cheaper. So I took the ticket as directed, parked and walked into the station office.

I had four minutes until my train was due, and there was a queue of about eight people, all clutching their parking tickets, and clearly wanting to buy a season ticket. So I decided that I would sort this out once I returned from work.

I’m quite glad that I did this because it meant that I was able to look up the parking prices and options during the day and establish that, not only does the season ticket work out a lot cheaper, but I could also get a discount for being a train user. And having done this meant that I wasn’t particularly flustered when I returned to the station to discover that manned ticket desk had closed for the day.

So, to the ticket machine where I discovered that, because I have a MoBIB card (essentially a credit card type thing on which I can store train and other transport tickets), I was able to buy a three month parking subscription (only three months because that’s when my season ticket for the train expires) which was loaded directly onto the card.

After that, it was just a case of waving my card at the parking barrier and I don’t need to do anything more until April.

People often complain about Belgium being a very bureaucratic country, and it is. It is also a very integrated country in terms of digitally accessing various services. But the thing is, the bureaucracy works. As long as you are willing to take a few minutes to understand the process — and this information is generally very easy to find — things tend move along very smoothly indeed.

Back to School

The school summer holiday in Belgium runs from 1st July to 31st August, regardless of what days those dates fall on. This is why all the kids are going back to school today, even though it’s a Thursday. The first day back is a bit of an easy one: the kids don’t have a full day and will be mainly receiving timetables, directions and other essentials.

There are big changes for us this year. The twins have now graduated from primary school, so all three boys will be cycling into the next town for their schooling. The twins were accompanied by their mum today (just to make sure they have the route correctly memorised), but they will be on their own from tomorrow.

I am still working from home at present and, after having the boys at home with me, the house feels awfully quiet today.

Camp

It’s that time of year when the boys all head off for their annual summer camp. And this year, they are now all old enough to both cycle there and enjoy the full ten days. We saw them off yesterday morning and spent much of the rest of the day getting used to how quiet the house has suddenly become.

Traditionally the younger kids are dropped off on Sunday, which is generally quite a big event including food, drinks and an chance for parents to catch up on how things are going so far. This social part has been cancelled over the last couple of years because of COVID, but this year it’s back. No barbecue, but I am assured that there will be plenty of food and drink for all.

Of course, with an empty house to ourselves, Eve and I will need to figure out what to do with ourselves.

I’m sure we’ll manage.

End of an Era

The schools broke up yesterday and two months of Summer vacation starts today for all three of the boys. And big changes are ahead for us because the twins have now graduated from primary school and will be embarking on their secondary school careers in September.

While attending their graduation ceremony on Tuesday, it struck me that I will never again need to return to the local school, and nor will any of them be able to walk to school. From here on in, all of three boys will be traveling to the next town for their education.

We have much to prepare, but today we shall enjoy the first day of the Summer holiday.

Fully Jabbed

I’m really slacking with this blogging thing at the moment. My last post was five weeks ago and merely mentioned that I’d had my first Pfizer jab. And the most interesting thing that has happened to me since then is that I had my second jab today.

And even that wasn’t very interesting. The process was just as smooth as before and I am not (so far) feeling any side effects. Kudos, though, to the man who brought an eBook with him so that he would have something to do during the fifteen minute post-jab wait. I wish I’d done that.

Tomorrow I can download the CovidSafe app and in a couple of weeks time I will be as CovidSafe as I can be.