As I wrote in part 1 : the first thing we noticed in Ieper were all the broken umbrellas.
Another thing we noticed : it felt like everybody was gone ! Other years, the town is full of people walking and enjoying this special Remembrance Day atmosphere but we had the impression that most of the people who attended the service in the morning were back home or back to their hotels to warm up or to put on dry clothing. We went into a chocolate shop (the best one, where they sell all the local products) and there too they said that they did not see the number of people in the shop they expected on a day like Remembrance Day. (So, we bought an extra bottle of local schnaps… )
At the Menin Gate, there was again the field of cardboard poppies and there it was visible how terrible the Autumnstorm had been… Most of the field was just destroyed by wind and rain. Only where the hedge protected the poppies against most of the wind, they were left. But on most of this field of remembrance, you just saw the wooden sticks and all the poppies were gone… a bit sad to see.
It was not even difficult to make a photo of all the wreaths under the Menin Gate without any people in the image. Other years, there is always somebody in the picture and this year not.
We were lucky as we could place Ozzie and Pudgy pretty close to the Australian wreath (with the green ribbon.)
Last year, there was a temporary RBL shop just outside the Menin Gate, but we noticed that they had looked for a safer and drier place somewhere else (but we could not find them.)
So, we had to go in a shop to buy a little Remembrance Day souvenir for Ozzie and Pudgy and they both got a wrist band (well… a paw band !)
Time to warm up again… and to our surprise, finding place in a tearoom was no problem at all.
Hilde could not resist the apple beignets (her official start of ‘Wintertime in the tearooms’… ) and even Pudgy tried some Belgian icing sugar.
And then we went back home. It was dark, raining, windy… but of course, the shop-window-where-you-MUST-have-a-look had to be inspected before we could finally head for Waregem !
Hm… something for the festive days ???
Well dear friends, this gives you an idea of how Rembrance Day went here in Belgium.
It’s 4.20 pm now and it starts to get dark and… it’s raining !
Best wishes from Flanders !
Johan and Hilde