The free space of the bank of the Meuse has been used for the construction of traffic-arteries, in the 19th century the railway, in the 20th the four-lane motorway Maastricht-Liege. Quite a difference from the situation in the old days.
The Flemish name of Visé is 'Wezet'
The Old Guild of Wezet
Tradition goes back to the 80-year war!
It's not the same, but this poster is the very image of the label of the Rosette de Visé I'm drinking in the next column. In stead of 'Ville' it read 'Rosette', and the goose-girl had been replaced by a beautiful long-haired redhead.
In the animated shopping-street which extends from the Meuse bridge I went looking for a decent hotel. There was one I tried, but it was locked up without any notice. The street gave on a square. On the left corner I entered a pub, the one depicted in the page banner.
- 'Hotel?' The bar-tender returned my question as if I had asked him the way to the moon. There was something unsavoury in one of his eyes, an inflammation of a kind.
- 'No, they didn't know of any hotels in Visé.'
I knew enough. I wasn't even interested any-more. This bloody heat! This hike died here.
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Once seated I dug into a gigantic coupe of ice cream yoghurt with fresh fruit galore and a bottle of water and afterwards I had a Rosette de Visé, a local ale of a maroon hue, which softly tickles the tongue and tastes of fresh lemon.
By then I had noticed the little building opposite the ice cream parlour. Though in dimensions it hardly equalled the Cobra-café in the Amsterdam Museum Square, nevertheless it bore the stout inscription 'Gare de Visé' - the railway station. By then, as well, I had come to conclusions regarding the hotel-accommodations of Visé and my personal tastes, that these two would never meet willingly, and that the idea of another night spent in a stuffy room was quite repulsive, and the more so, as this night would be followed by a day even more tropical, and a walk to a place of such humble stature that my guidebook desisted from mentioning any lodging facility.
So, I had been keen enough to buy a ticket at once, and after an hour's wait I was back in Maastricht Central in a quarter of an hour. Here I bought a 1.5 liter bottle of Spa, Source Marie Henriette - a little bit of the Ardennes after all - to restore my fluids' balance and when my son called me around half nine to inquire, whether I were still alive; whether I were laying somewhere in a ditch, I obliged to inform him casually that I was sitting in line 12 at that very moment, and that I would be home within the next ten minutes.
How overjoyed everyone was! I, myself, I suppose, more than anyone.
> There was held a banquet gay
> Bottles went round in either way.
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