Step Back in Time: Liege, Belgium

Though my host families remember me as someone who took a lot of pictures, my photo album from that era proves otherwise. I wish this post could be filled with photos from 1987-88 juxtaposed with pictures from 2017, but it is not meant to be. Instead I'll post pictures of how Liege, Belgium looks today.

The biggest and most obvious change is the train station. What used to be a pretty small, provincial train station servicing Brussels, and probably out to Maastricht, Holland and Cologne, Germany, is now a major European train station complete with regular TGV stops. It is space-age looking. I would not have been surprised to see that it had regular trips to the moon out of it. Now renamed Liege Guillemins, it was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It is jaw dropping. The years it took to come to fruition must have been tortuous for the locals. Many buildings were knocked down. The whole area changed.

After that the other changes felt tiny.

L'ecole Benedictine de Pays Notre Dame de Liege is no longer filled with with girls wearing blue bottoms and white tops, it is a co-ed school without uniforms.

The saddest change was L'Aquarelle -- the bar I used to spend many of my lunch hours hanging out in along with other Rotary exchange students and friends. It turns out my second host father, Andre, had a soft spot for that bar, or at least knew more about my activities than he ever let on while I was living under his room. Hmm... 

L'Aquarelle, which means water coloring in English, closed. As a historic building, extra hoops must be jumped through in order to renovate it. Andre tried explaining it to me, but in my mind I equated it to what happens when one tries to renovate a historic building in the States -- everyone gets involved, it becomes super expensive, and becomes prohibitively expensive. Still, it was sad to see its doors shuttered.

Lastly the major bus stop near the Palace du Prince Eveque (court house). A shooting took place there in  December, 2011. A plaque was erected in the memory of the victims. Armed guards now protect the city. Yes, terrorism came to my corner of the world. Not the big kind that makes international headlines, but sometime smaller. More intimate.

Since I was there, columns have been erected representing where the old cathedral was, but that doesn't make sense. Though while hearing French spoken I felt I was understanding it all, my retention skills are pretty dismal. 

I'm sure there were many other changes that took place over the past 29 years, but these few stand out the most.

The university library (at least from the outside) seemed the same.

The landscaping in Place Cathedral is different, too. 

Mostly I took pictures as a way to help me remember this magical day. The day I felt unconditional love from people who just wanted to be with me. No demands were put on me. No future plans or expectations were placed on me. I was simply there to remember and to feel.