Dinner in Brussels

Last night we drove over to Brussels to have dinner with two kiwis and their Belgian and French partners.

It was a lovely evening of memory and connections ... New Zealanders do that, we're kind of cute actually. There may some truth in the rumour that we all know each other ... there's surely less than 6 degrees of seperation.

It turned out that the woman from Greymouth had a cousin who had married into the same family as my cousin and that her parents had retired to the same tiny village in Canterbury as my uncle and aunt. But of course ... there's only 3/4's of a million of us in the South Island of New Zealand.

I love the connections, and the familiarity that you find in your own people while you're travelling. Both women have lived in Belgium forever.

Those Belgians are tricky, they pick up New Zealanders in places like Istanbul, Saudi Arabia and on overland trips that begin in Nepal then bring us all home to the wee country in the heart of Europe.

We drank Belgian beer with our roast lamb and potatoes, mashed carrots and parsnips. There was pavlova and whipped cream with oodles of fruit, a cheese board and French wine, conversation flowed easily and I was home again for a while.

I love finding these little pockets of home ...