"THE SMALLEST CITY IN THE WORLD" a Durbuy Travel Page by titabell

The month of July this year is so far one of the wettest and gloomiest July that I experienced so far, so I thought, what a better way to perk up the season but by facing up the enemy of rain and cold,...and wind, strong enough to make you feel even colder.

"I am one of those who never knows the direction of my journey until I have almost arrived". I guess Anna Louise Strong was thinking of me when she wrote that quote because I really am that sort of traveller. Nothing planned until the last minute. I love spontaneity---my excuse for evading the stress of planning. Whoever invented the bagpacks---I think he is amazing...whoever invented the bagpacks with wheels---I think he is a GENIUS!

I was kinda stressed out the day before the trip and couldn't sleep. I thought,........... if I could only go somewhere the following day and just de-stress out....... a walk in the park, a night at the movies........or hey! why not a mountain hiking, kayakking, horseback riding and other more adventures to release all those midlife tensions that I have been hiding in my closet since a few years back! It was time to prove that I still got it........the ambition to join the "survival weekend" or at least,.......watch other people do it! The more I thought about it, the more my plan materialized...and the more it materialized, the more I couldn't sleep. So, at 3:30 am (after just a nap of an hour and a half...), I dragged my son out from his sleep and bribed him with a great weekend adventure in the mountains. I loaded our bagpacks with water, sandwiches and some clothes for the weekend trip. Of course, extra pain relievers and anti inflammatory medicines for my aching joints and band-aids were among the most important thing in my tiny tupperware box of emergency medicines.

We took the 6:02 train to Barvaux, as there were no straight trains that goes to our final destination of DURBUY...THE SMALLEST CITY IN THE WORLD! We arrived at the Barvaux train station a little too early. I called the tourist info to ask if Durbuy was walkable from the city center. The voice on the other line said...it was just 5 km (from where he was, i guess). The passenger bus to Durbuy was not an option since we had to wait for two hours for it to arrive. So, we went to another tourist info and asked for a map to Durbuy. I will tell you something...looking at the map, Durbuy was just a step away from where I was, so, we (my son and I) bravely took THE WALK to Durbuy centrum from the city of Barvaux. The funny thing was, after walking for about an hour, the roads seemed to be smaller and darker, and with the rain and wind on top, on the sides and at the back of us, hiking didn't make it any easier nor Durbuy, a little bit closer. The roads were steep, narrow and had no walking paths. We had been barked-at by some dogs who seemed as if they never saw a human being walk on their streets before, and we have also been moooood-at by some cows who were not happy about me, staring at them as some sort of sizzling steaks on a platter. ( I am so sorry, but walking makes me hungry!).

I lost count of the hours of lost hope and despair...ah well, that's an exagerration...I was just trying to catch my son's attention whose priority was more on taking pictures of fauna and flora that we passed along the way. Anyway...arriving at the center of Durbuy...made my day. What a beautiful city! Stunning! It's a pearl! A gem! An oasis...a paradise! I suddenly forgot my previous ordeal...a great place to go.

Get Lost in the Forest
After being so greatly overwhelmed by the beauty of nature, I decided to explore the town a little bit more. The shady wet forest was a great place to start. We are not really die-hard fans of nature in remote places (please excuse my plain ignorance and paranoid nature), but I, almost reaching the fullness of a scary thing called "maturity", thought it was about time that I get more acquanted with bare nature. Afterall, when I was a teenager, I used to go to some remote provinces in the Philippines to do some soul-searching alone with nature. I always loved forests and trees and wild plants and flowers.......but growing up, time seemed to be on a speed-dial and the great walls of malls and the meadows of busy parking lots became my only everyday sanctuary.
So, here's the tip: DON'T GO TO THE FOREST WITHOUT A COMPASS........' Learrrrrrrrned my lesson! I could not even sniff my way home... my nose was stuffed! But you know what? Nature is beautiful in itself. It doesn't need to wear signatures to look pretty. It is pretty enough in its plain nakedness.

Our visit to Radhadesh, the Krishna Temple is one of the best trip that I ever did...it was a combination of everything really. It was like living in a castle of kings and queens, a place of worship and serenity and a trip to the East. I will tell you more on my SEPTON page. I thought I'd make a separate page for it to give more tribute to this wonderful place/worship castle in the heart of the Belgian Ardens.