New Years Eve at Villa Rustica

Many More Pictures

Day trip to Brugge

Matt and Leah Rozeski visited us from Milwaukee

and we did a day trip to Brugge and the Belgian Coast

Christmas Market in Namur

This is a French dish called Tartiflette, very good and filling on a cold day.

It's made with potatoes, cream cheese, lardons, onions, and reblocon cheese with white wine.

The Packers won Superbowl because of their Belgian heritage

First of all, Randy just about fell from his chair when he had to hear this first from my Mom of all people, who knows nothing about American football. So of course he had to get on the internet and check it out. He couldn't stop laughing that Mom knows who Curly Lambeau is....and then again when he watched the video above from Belgian Television.


Super Bowl is known in Europe for the ads, the cheerleaders, the money spent, and usually not for the football itself. This time, some Belgian newspapers have discovered a story about the Green Bay Packers to explain the "importance" for Belgium to support the Packers... and it's a 19th century story.


In 1871, from Grez Doiceau, Belgium (which is just a few kilometers from where we live now), Victor Lambeau emigrates with his wife to the United States, as do thousands of Belgian farmers, steelers, glassworkers.

Arrived at Green Bay, Victor landed his family and had 8 children. The first of them was Marcel Lambeau, the father of Earl "Curly" Lambeau. I like this difference between European first names and Earl, the real American first name of this family. Earl, with his associates, will create, play for, and coach the Packers and the "Lambeau Field" sings for us like a home town...Some Belgian cities have the same name in the States and Belgium, like Charleroi, Namur, and Waterloo, there is even a Belgium, Wisconsin.


So all of us Belgians are very proud today that our Green Bay Packers have won the Super Bowl. I'm not so sure that Randy is coming along with me on this one.

Floods on La Meuse in Belgium

After battling about half a meter of snow that has built up over the last two weeks we finally had three days in the fifties. The snow (pictured in my previous post) is gone, but it created another problem.
We came home from Luxembourg last night and we are now able to fish right off our veranda! We moved here to live on the river, but this is a bit close.

Their is a good picture in the Washington Post from Olloy-sur-Viroin, which is just down La Meuse from us.

A little excitement in Lustin

We had a little excitement just before the kids left. About 3:30 am we heard tires squealing and a crash outside next to the house along the bridge. After that a lot of screaming and yelling. There were two cars and a few kids there, and then they left. A few minutes later we have about 10 emergency vehicles there and they are spotlighting the river. About five am two tow trucks are finally pulling a car out of the river, and we have to wake the kids up to get to the airport in Cologne.

The picture in the paper next day says the driver fell asleep and then went to a friends house and changed into dry clothes.....We're not buying that, but evidently they did.
The car went in directly across the river in this picture.