Belgian Gems

... Belgische Juwelen was the name of a bus trip to Flanders. Unfortunately, the ratio was two days on the bus and two days of sightseeing.

Gaius Julius Caesar taught us: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt ... and Red Baron adds: Belgium too consists of three parts - Flanders, Wallonia, and the Brussels Region.

Caesar continues in lingua Anglica: Of all these tribes, the Belgae are the strongest, because they are very far removed from the culture and civilization of the Roman province; merchants rarely visit them and do not bring goods that might soften their spirits; and they are neighbors of the Germans, who live across the Rhine, with whom they are constantly at war.

This might have been true 50 before Christ, but in the Middle Ages Flanders, together with Northern Italy, was one of the richest regions in Europe. The cloth trade, in particular, made cities like Antwerpen and Gent wealthy.

©landgeist.com

To soften their spirits, the Belgians brew beer in 395 breweries and drink 87 liters per year per capita, but in Europe their consumption is clearly beaten by the Czechs with 135 liters.

©Der Spiegl

The other famous Belgian "softening" product is no longer cloth but chocolate. In Brussels, every second shop sells chocolate to tourists, but when it comes to consumption, the Swiss, with 10.5 kg per year, are the frontrunners and the Belgians are way behind.

And finally, the only time we're "at war" these days is with the Belgian voetbalelftal- the Red Devils wearing red jerseys - in soccer.

What splendor!

We arrived in Antwerp after a ten-hour bus ride, had time to visit the famous central station just opposite our hotel, and later had dinner at one of the downtown restaurants called brasseries.

Why is the flag at the top La tricolore?

The following morning, we visited Brussels, and our first stop - where else - was the Atomium, combining the words atom and aluminum, the metal with which the spheres were initially covered. Since its inauguration at the World's Fair EXPO 58, the spheres of the Brussels landmark have become unsightly from corrosion and have been coated with stainless steel.

A close-up taken through the window of our passing bus

The nine spheres represent one elementary cell of an iron crystal, enlarged 165 billion times. Eight iron atoms are at the corners of a cube, and one is in the center.

Staying on the grounds of the Brussels World's Fairs, we drove toward the Palais 5 of EXPO 1935. Built in the Art Deco style, it has a stepped, almost pyramid-like silhouette and an austere, monumental facade. Verdigris-colored bronze statues top the vertical pillars.

In the background, the Palais de Justice dome rises.

As we entered Brussels's Manhattan district, the bus had to stop at a traffic light. We got a glimpse of a triangular steel form from which an arc has been removed and displaced. The black satin-painted object stands in the center of a shallow reflecting basin. The artist, Maria Wierusz-Kowalski, created the sculpture in 1997 and called it Esprit ouvert - Perspectives et Réflexions.

To the right, you enter the "bilingual" Galerie des Princes / Prinsen Galerij.

Eventually, we stepped off the bus and walked through the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert. This shopping mall was modeled after Milan's famous shopping gallery, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

We passed the chocolaterie, Neuhaus. Jean Neuhaus, a Swiss immigrant, founded his company in 1857 in Brussels and opened the first chocolate store in the Galeries Royales. In 1912, his grandson, Jean Neuhaus II, invented the chocolate praline, a decadent chocolate cream ganache center inside a chocolate shell. 

On our way to the other landmark every visitor must see, we noted La Friterie. Looking inside made our mouths water. 

Eventually, we reached another Brussels landmark: the Manneken Pis. His origin is rooted in a legend. In the 14th century, foreign troops besieged Brussels. When the city stubbornly held ground, the attackers secretly placed explosive charges at the city walls. A little boy named Julianske, observing the preparations, urinated on the burning fuse and thus saved the city.

The earliest mention of Manneken Pis in a document dates to the mid-15th century. At that time, the pissing boy wasn't a tourist attraction, as Jacobus Harrewijn's 1697 gravure shows.

The water jet must have been stronger back then (©Jijuc/Wikipedia)

The Fontaine de Manneken-Pis was part of Brussels' water supply!

In 1695, during the Nine Years' War, Louis XIV's troops bombarded Brussels, heavily damaging the city's water supply. For some time the Manneken could not deliver his water. When the pipes were repaired, the little pisser was triumphantly returned to its pedestal. Above his head, the grateful citizens placed the text of Psalm 27:5-6: In petra exaltavit me, et nunc exaltavi caput meum super inimicos meos (He hath set me high upon a rock (pedestal). And now he hath lifted up my head above my enemies.)

On our way back, we passed La Frieterie again, and this time we stopped and stepped in. Without exaggeration, I had the most expensive, but best, French fries of my life. How do the Belgians make them ...

Seen in Gent

I asked ChatGPT, and here is the answer:

1. The potato
They traditionally use floury, high-starch potatoes, such as Bintje. The high starch and relatively low moisture are important for the fluffy interior.
2. Cut thick
Belgian frites are generally cut considerably thicker than fast-food fries - roughly 10- 13 mm. This gives enough potato inside to remain soft and creamy.
3. First frying - relatively cool
The raw fries are fried at around 140-160°C for several minutes. They cook through without becoming brown. The inside becomes soft and fluffy while the outside develops the beginnings of a crust.
4. Resting
This is an important part. The fries are taken out and allowed to drain and cool for a while.
5. Second frying - very hot
Just before serving, they go back into the fat at about 175-190°C. The remaining surface moisture rapidly turns into steam, producing a dry, crisp exterior.

Spectacular Gustav Klimt for sale.

Little of the traditional Belgian broderie remains. I didn't ask for the price.

Then our guide led us to Brussels' Grand-Place, devastated by the French bombardment in 1695 but, like the Manneken Pis, it rose from its ashes. The place is surrounded by the Hôtel de Ville, guildhouses, and La Maison du Roi. Many buildings around the Grote Markt were rebuilt and date to the late 17th century.

The Stadhuis, from the 15th century and built in Brabant Gothic, has a 96-meter-high tower crowned by a statue of the Archangel Michael. It largely survived the 1695 bombardment. But our guide didn't rant at the French but at the Spaniards.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Flanders, along with Brussels, was part of the Spanish Netherlands. La Maison du Roi, the Broodhuis, bears witness to this. Originally, bakers sold their bread there. The Dukes of Brabant kept the original name when they converted the house into an administrative building. Later, the building became the Habsburg governor's residence. 

Karl Marx, expelled from Paris, arrived in the Belgian capital in February 1845, and Friedrich Engels joined him that spring. La Maison du Cygne was a meeting place for the Democratic Association of Brussels where the pair often gathered. Marx was active in the group and gave lectures. 

In the aftermath of the February 1848 revolution in France, Belgian authorities moved against foreign radicals. Marx was arrested, expelled in March, and returned to Paris.

Horses pollute; electric vehicles don't.

Another historic building on the Grand-Place is La Maison du Pigeon. After Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's coup d'état in 1851, in which he established an anti-parliamentary constitution, Victor Hugo, a staunch Republican, openly declared Napoléon III a traitor to France. Hugo fled to Brussels in December and stayed in the house decorated with a pigeon until the Belgian authorities pushed him out in 1852. He moved on to the Channel Islands, first to Jersey, from which he was expelled, then to Guernsey, where he stayed until 1870.

Stay tuned for more Flanders.

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The Great Drought of 1540

Hot and dry summers like the one we're experiencing now have occurred time and again, which is why the article "The Year-Long Unprecedented European Heat and Drought of 1540 - A Worst-Case Scenario," published in the journal Climatic Change, caught Red Baron's attention.

I tried to read the original article - especially since my late friend Iso is a co-author - but Springer Publishing has a paywall that can only be passed for €39.90.

In the article, 32 climate historians have painstakingly compiled, analyzed, and evaluated data from more than 300 chronicles, i.e., records kept by farmers, churches, and lock keepers, revealing Europe's great natural disaster.

It's a shame, but the price was too high. However, the European heat and drought wave of 1540 is well documented elsewhere, so I've compiled the information from those freely available sources.

The weather disaster of 1540 had already begun in 1539 in southern Europe but went unnoticed north of the Alps. In Spain, people had been holding processions to pray for rain since October. 

In Italy, the winter of 1539/40 was dry and warm "like July." Although the 16th century fell right in the middle of Europe's Little Ice Age, not a single drop of rain fell from October 1539 to early 1540, while people were rather sensitive to wet and cold summers.

North of the Alps, the millennium drought of 1540 began in the winter. As early as February, a high-pressure system formed over Europe, blocking the influence of the Atlantic and, in turn, the supply of moisture. Although a few storms still moved in, by April the continent was largely shielded from rain clouds.

For 26 weeks, no precipitation fell from France to Poland and from the Po Valley to northern Germany. From late June to early August, not a single drop cooled the brutal heat. An unprecedented 11-month-long Megadrought swept across Europe, including the British Isles.

The dried-up earth reflected even more heat into the atmosphere, feeding an unbearable heatwave. Temperatures were five to seven degrees above the high 20th-century levels. Reformer Martin Luther interpreted this as a sign of the end times. Officials ordered clergy in Germany, Italy, and England to beg God for forgiveness and pray for rain.

Hans Stolz, a winemaker from Guebwiller, Alsace, provided a detailed month-by-month account of the drought of 1540:

©Wikimedia

The year 1540. Although January of that year was unusually cold, February began warm and dry throughout; in March, it rained for three days, and on the first morning after that, there was frost; once the morning passed, the day became quite warm until the end of March; April was completely dry and arid, with no rain or snow falling until the end; May was completely dry and nice until the end; a quarter pound of grain was worth a pound of wine. June was completely dry at the beginning, but toward the end it rained occasionally, though not much, and there was plenty of hay; the month of June began to become terribly dry, and remained so until the end, so that such a dreadful water shortage began in this country that the people suffered great hunger due to the lack of grain, and the crops ...

Streams dried up and grew narrower and narrower. Even major rivers like the Elbe, Rhine, and Seine were so small that one could wade across without getting one's feet wet.

No water powered the mills to grind grain into flour: flour and bread prices skyrocketed.

The harvest withered, and most food was in short supply. With nowhere to pasture, cattle died of heat stroke and hunger, decimating Europe's dairy supply.

As early as the beginning of August, the trees were shedding their bone-dry leaves, as if it were already fall.

As if famine wasn't enough, Europeans were also chased from their homes by forest and structural fires. The dry ground caught fire, and forest and brush fires blazed across the countryside, creeping into the towns densely packed with half-timbered houses. There wasn't any water to put out the fire.

In Germany alone, 33 towns burned. The blaze of Einbeck reduced the entire town to ashes in a matter of hours, causing as many as 500 deaths. For weeks, gray smoke shrouded the continent, behind which the sun and moon nearly vanished as pale red glimmers.

Instead of water, God delivered wine - some of the best ever "created." The extreme heat meant that by the usual harvest time, grapes in Germany and France had dried almost to raisins. The resulting "late harvest" or Spätlese wine was deliciously sweet.

A "Kaiserwein" was harvested in Würzburg from a grape crop that had largely withered away and was pressed into specially crafted Prunkfässer (ceremonial barrels).

It was a stroke of luck; the 1540 Würzburg Stein is considered the oldest known single-vineyard wine and the invention of the Spätlese style.

The Millennium Wine of 1540 is in the middle bottle.

The last known bottle of this wine is kept at the Bürgerspital zum Heiligen Geist in Würzburg.

Most wells and springs lay barren. Those that still gave a little water were strictly guarded. In some regions, drinking wine was cheaper and safer than drinking water, since peasants were charged for well water, which was often contaminated by human waste.

Several hundred thousand people lost their lives because of dysentery, an intestinal infection that causes bloody diarrhea. It is thought that the death toll from disease had the greatest impact of all the miseries wrought by the 1540 drought. Estimates are that half a million Europeans succumbed to diseases, most after drinking tainted water.

With tens of thousands left unhoused, unemployed, and often diseased, local leaders quickly gave in to paranoia to explain the calamities. Authorities searched for scapegoats. At the time of the Reformation, they were found in religious opponents and climate refugees wandering around Germany.

Temperature anomaly in Freiburg for July and August 2026 (©BZ)

What about 2026? For weeks now, Red Baron has watched nature wither from exceptional dryness: the grass is yellow, the Dreisam is nearly dry, and the soil has turned to dust. More and more trees are dropping their leaves. Rivers like the Rhine have turned into trickles.

         In Freiburg, 2026 holds the longest streak of temperatures above 30 °C, and the summer is not over yet (©BZ)

Spring 2026 and the first half of summer rank among the driest ever recorded. The drought is comparable to the historic dry spells of 1976, 2003, and 2018. 

©Hadi/Wikipedia

Are we facing the threat of a millennium drought like in 1540? 

©Copernicus

The 2026 drought will probably not end in the summer. It will extend well into the fall, and rivers are likely to reach even lower levels in early fall than they are now.

Burning of witches (©Wikimedia)

The 16th-century drought and today's drought are similar in many ways, but back then, the blame wasn't placed on climate change - it was on witches. Hungry migrants were rounded up and tortured in hopes of eliciting confessions.

In 1540, for city fires, Martin Luther gave credence to fake news of a papal plot to incinerate Protestant towns.

In 2026, forest fires raging across Europe are being blamed on paranoid arsonists.

On Monday morning, I witnessed a rare weather phenomenon. I think they call it rain. People were dancing bareheaded, and dogs were sticking out their tongues to catch the precious drops.

It was too little, too late.

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Europe's Summer of 2026

There hasn't been any significant rainfall in southwestern Germany since mid-June, while one heat wave has followed another. The fifth one is on its way and will peak this Friday at 38°C (100°F).

 
Here is a photo gallery showing the full extent of the heat and drought damage in the Old World.

 

The Rhine River at Cologne (©AP)

The fire fronts of wildfires in Spain, Portugal, France, and Greece (©AP)

Beachgoers on France's Atlantic coast are contemplating wildfires near Bordeaux  (©AP)

Burnt-out forests ... (©AP)

... and charred cars (©AP)

Heat protests in Zurich, Switzerland (©AP)

A lorry is crossing the Tejo River in Spain (©AP)

At temperatures above 30 C, Leipzig's streetcars squeeze the insulating bitumen out of their track bed (©AP)

A swimming dock on Lake Constance leads to dry land (©AP)

A whirlwind over Lake Constance is an extremely rare phenomenon (©AP)

Swimmers in Romania next to a World War II shipwreck in what remains of the Danube River (©AP)

The dry bed of the Haslacher Dorfbach in Freiburg (©Kathrin Blum/BZ)

Freiburg's Park on the Lake (©Kathrin Blum/BZ)

How similar the landscapes look: New York's Central Park (©AP)

It follows a horror scenario for the Americas.

      

(©NYT)

Will the 2026 El Niño affect Europe's climate?

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Schicksalspegel Kaub

Today, Red Baron read an NYT article about a water plan for America's once-mighty Colorado River.

"Across the region, two decades of drought have reduced winter snowpack, which creates the majority of the river's flow. At the same time, warming temperatures caused by climate change have increased water losses from evaporation."

The reduced flow has forced Federal Authorities to regulate how much water neighboring states can draw from the river in the future, with major impacts on agriculture and industries along the Colorado.

The growing scarcity of resources is a dramatic turning point for the US, where continuous growth is still a leitmotif.

In Europe, the ongoing heat wave and lack of rain have caused several rivers to reach historically low water levels.

The Dreisam through Freiburg (©BZ)

The lack of water immediately catches your eye when you look at Freiburg's river, the Dreisam. Yesterday, at the measuring station upstream in Ebnet, the water level was 17 cm, while the average water level for the Dreisam at this point is 52 cm.

The Dreisam has disappeared completely a few kilometers downstream (©SWR)

No water to spare! Even Freiburg's tourist attraction, the Bächle, are currently dry.

The situation is more dramatic on the Rhine. In "normal" years, 285 million metric tons of cargo pass through Europe's busiest inland waterway. The prolonged drought is steadily lowering the Rhine's water level. The proud and much-praised river is now nothing more than a trickle.

The critical situation at Kaub (©Die Zeit)

The levels near the historical site of Kaub are critical for Rhine shipping. Yesterday the key gauge at the Kaub measuring station reached an all-time low of 24 cm, i.e., below the lowest level of 25 cm recorded in October 2018. The Federal Institute of Hydrology forecasts 9 cm for August 13!

©Wikipedia

Marion Halft took this historical photo of the low water level at Kaub in 2018. It was just under 30 cm on October 20 and dropped to 25 cm on October 22. Pfalzgrafenstein Castle, a former toll station, is visible in the background.

For comparison: The so-called Equivalent Water Level (EWL), where shipping around Kaub is unlimited, is a water level gauge of 77 cm. This translates into a depth in the Kaub "navigation channel" of 190 cm. In the past, average water depths in this "Wilder Gefähr (Wild Ferrying)" were at 208 cm.

 

©SWR

At a water level gauge of 24 cm, the navigation channel is only 137 cm deep. Therefore, normal cargo ships can only pass the Gefähr at Kaub when loaded to a maximum of 30%.

According to the Rhineland-Palatinate Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK), "Below a water level gauge of 40 cm (i.e. 153 cm depth) at Kaub, inland navigation is not feasible." Because ships can operate only with significantly reduced cargo volumes, transport costs rise.

©Financial Times

The IHK should not forget about international shipping of goods between Basel, Switzerland, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

The water level at the Kaub measuring station becomes Europe's Schicksalspegel.


Red Baron is a history freak. So he relates Kaub to Field Marshal Forward, Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher's crossing of the Rhine River on New Year's Day 1814 in the pursuit of Napoleon.

While people celebrated New Year's Eve across Europe, preparations began near Kaub for one of the era's largest military river crossings (Read more).

Russian engineers of the First Silesian Army built a pontoon bridge in the cold and fog, and in secret, because the French were to find out as late as possible where Blücher intended to cross the Rhine on his way to Waterloo. Pfalzgrafenstein Castle served as an important base and bridgehead.

Over the next five days, an entire army crossed the Rhine, comprising about 50,000 soldiers, around 15,000 horses, and 182 artillery pieces.

It was a logistical feat.

©T-Online

In case the Rhine runs dry, future river cruises will be handled by a substitute bus service.

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