Free in the forest

I had just missed my flight to Brazil, when I opened my eyes in the pitch dark bedroom in Raeren. I had come to Astrid’s parents place for the weekend.  It’s  a tiny village close to Eupen, a German speaking area of Belgium and also my favorite part of the country.  It is surrounded by woods and biofarms, a big bright blue lake and beautiful houses.

After 15 minutes cycling, I was out of breath as the breaks of the bikes were constantly on. Astrid’s brother was a good sport and suggested he will take that bike, so we can continue. And off we went further in the forest.

There was one long steady uphill kilometer where all of a sudden one by one pensioners started to overtake me. With smiling faces and grey hair flowing in the summer breeze they seemed to effortlessly pedal their way pass me as I was trying to breathe more silently and not to wiggle so much with the handlebar and respond with the same bright smile.

After the third oldie passed me, I was paying more attention to this mystery and I saw a suspicious box attached either at the back of their bike or below the frame in the middle. They were on e-bikes!  Cheeky J

We got to this huge grassland for cows. Looking behind the fence we saw many of them far away. White with black patches, white with brown patches, some light brown ones. They also noticed the three of us and came the whole way over to check us out. When you have 15 cows marching towards you and you are a city dweller then it gets a bit scary! But I decided to make friends with them and Moo’d happily as they had taken their position in the big bushes just close to the fence.  It seemed completely odd thing to do as the rest of the field was open grass. But maybe they wanted to first monitor us from this hideout.

From the bushes they saw one of these three creatures mooing in a very untalented way, but with persistence, while the other two supported with silence. Clearly they intend no harm. They also heard “Don’t worry, I’m vegetarian, I will not eat you…. Mooo, Mooo”

Soon enough the first one slowly made it’s way to the fence looking at me what I considered a curiosity. She even let me touch her nose. Her followers restricted themselves with a sniff of my hand. Have you ever had a cow sniffing you? Well now I have. When I Mooed they looked at me. They did not Moo back. After some time though the cows no longer found us interesting and they turned back to the bushes and every single one had their ass towards us. We took a hint and left.

Everything so green, birds singing, smell of forest. I thought I would like to stay in a forest hut for a week or so. I had just recently listened to an Estonian radio show, where 22 year old girl, who was a playboy cover girl, but now lives in the forest and recently finished 5 months long juice diet, explained how she practically never goes to supermarket. She went on explaining all the different things you can find in the forest to eat. One of them was suggestion to eat the light colored ends of the fir trees (Christmas trees). These are the new-growth tips that come in springtime. So now in this forest I had an opportunity to test it out. Wow, I really liked them! Astrid was a bit ambivalent and her brother refused to try and started offering me every now anything else that was growing on the ground. Once though he offered young leaves of a Dandylion and to his surprise Astrid and I both gave him a big smile and happily started to munch on them.  

What a healthy day.