Thicker Cloth

I just spent a quick week in the 'Low Countries' of Europe, namely the Netherlands and Belgium.

I stayed in private home in the South of Belgium 5 kilometers from the French border.

Belgium does not have it's own language, per se. Folks in the South speak French and in the North, Dutch is on the menu.

The thing that caught my attention is the craftsmanship evidenced in the home where I stayed. All the woodwork is solid oak. All the doors are raised panel, (and three panels per door!) again solid oak. The hardware is all heavy duty. Even the garage floor is finished with ceramic tile! In the basement, every surface was plastered or sheet rocked, and if pipes pierced the walls or ceilings, they were carefully sealed around. Most of the sidewalks and many of the streets were cobblestone construction, as were the driveways and front walkways. All the homes were constructed with brick; all had tile roofs. Very different attitude towards quality and permanence than I am used to here. By comparison, our homes, buildings and indeed most of our infrastructure seems to have been designed to just barely do the job. We are more willing to do it over than to do it right.

The tapestry of life seems to be woven of a much stouter cloth, richer and more substantial there.

For all you Francophiles out there, rest assured that there remains a deep appreciation for the actions of we Americans, the Canadians and the Brits. The area I was in was heavily damaged during both wars, and seriously occupied by the Germans. There exist many plaques, obelisks and memorials to us, the liberators of this land, and there are still people who remember.

As an aside, I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Stood in the very rooms where she and her family hid from the Germans. Then, last night I watched 'The Anne Frank Story' on Masterpiece Theater. As near as I could tell the sets were an exact duplicate of the rooms I saw.