Fire and Water
August 22 / 23, 2001

Hiking - part 2 - Lodgings in Kanne
Published: March 24, 2002
Ronald Langereis - Amsterdam
Dead links' cleansing: May 27, 2007

     Links Quilted in Kanne
Refreshed and revived by the beer, I went to find myself a nice hotel.

Waterflow in m³/sec. online graph and photos of measuring equipment in Flemish rivers. Large per day fluctiations.

This Jeker or Geer, to me it seemed a most enigmatic brook. It appears somewhere from Belgium, flows into the Meuse in the city of Maestricht and apparently crosses the Albert Canal near Kanne! How can that be?

The answer I found on the site of:
Michel Maassen - the Jeker
where the course of the Geer / Jeker between Eben-Emael and Maestricht is presented in an interactive map. One of his pictures shows the culvert by which the brook water is pumped under the canal - its shed can also be seen on the right of the aerial photo below.

Riemst Tourist Office - click on 'Tourisme'
GR5 Photo strip - Iwan Oprins

Around the corner I spotted an inn that bore the telling name “The Canne and Pitchers”, a pun on a Dutch saying, which means “it’s in the bag”. Passing by the more bourgeois Hotel Limburgia on an impulse, I headed straight for the inn. And it proved the right choice: Marvellous food, cave mushrooms and lavish, creamy white mussels of a velvety sort, coffee, cigars, and chocolate stars: The Land of Cockaigne.
Not to mention the well-proportioned hostess. Mine eyes wouldn't stop wandering from the dish of mussels. The treat for the palate hardly matched the feast for the eyes, and such politeness, too. Remarkably many elder gentle-men do pass here in posh sportscars - I even noticed a Rolls - with the mandatory younger girlfriend in the passenger's seat. We barely scratched the Belgian border, and already the assured Feeling of Swiss Life is becoming tangible.
I slept badly, though, because due below the roofing-tiles, and therefore - in spite of a wide open terrace door - palpably hot.
The GR5, descending from St. Peter's Mount, is entering the photo on the right side, just below the centre, and follows the curving street. In the village it turns sharply left and crosses the bridge. Turning right it passes by a marl-pit - the Aver cave - and then curving left and climbing the slope it will presently cross the language boundary. In the morning an exquisite continental breakfast,
- 'Oh my, do I almost forget to press an orange juice for you, and here's your boiled egg,'
and my take-away lunch, prepared by the host personally,
- 'I packed four rolls for you with cheese and Parma ham, because you seemed to like it.'
During coffee we had a little chat, my host and I. Yesterday, I tell him, I considered pushing on to Eben-Emael, but I'm so glad I didn't and stopped here in Kanne.
- 'Eben-Emael? But there isn't any hotel overthere,'
   says my host.
- 'Sure,' I tell him, 'there was one listed in the Yellow
   Pages, Hotel Lorraine.'
- 'Lorraine! But that’s a whore shack! They rent rooms
   by the half hour.'
We had a good laugh and I had another cup of coffee.

Sequence

|   Kanne   |   Night   |   Visé   |   Back   |

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