And so it begins...

After two and a half days riding, we have arrived in the Citadel Antwerpen. ´Twas a rather fatiguing journey, to say the least, and even as I write this Tovio sleeps soundly nearby. We guided our ungainly steeds out of Villa´s boreen in the chill pre-dawn hours of early morn, and began to make our way to Rotterdam, a city we knew of which we knew naught.

The ride along winding country roads under the pleasant heat of the Dutch sun was enough to lift our spirits as we rattled ever closer to our day´s destination. However our contentedness was promptly put into check when, upon arriving at the local Bibliotheek, I observed some rather discouraging responses to the eloquent plea I had bestowed via CouchSurfing to several of the locals. One woman quite rudely stated that she did not have a couch for us, while another said she preferred guests "a little more her age." After some frantic attempts at searching for any nearby squats proved fruitless, we decided to bypass this ville and set up camp somewhere to the south.

We stopped at a local Texaco on the outskirts of the city to satisfy our need for stroopwafels, and met a few friendly locals who seemed rather nonplussed at seeing us upon our monstrous velocipedes. Soon after we continued riding, I shouted to a local pleibean child as to the direction of Belgium, in response to which he silently shook his head and continued on his way. Nevertheless, we rode on in a direction bearing south, confident that we would have to reach the more civilised Flemish-speaking regions at some point.

And we did, after anoither day of riding through the strangely apocalyptic windswept plains of Zuid-Holland, passing what seemed to be the same flock of sheep again, and again, and again, until the fietspad which had cushioned us thus far suddenly disappeared and we were left to ride on a narrow shoulder along a highway, whence we realized we were in Belgium. We were truly in Jacques Brel's country now.