Where oh Where Wednesday: Herbricht

More than 105 years a cafe has been the place to be in the tiny hamlet of Herbricht just down the road from our house. When we first came to live here we experienced one of the largest floods of the Maas river in 1993. At that time 37 people still lived in the tiny village. The flood returned in 1995. Herbricht is used to the river stretching its banks a bit, showing off for the tourists, it seemed. 

When the river flooded in 2021, the river bed had been widened. This flooding, associated with what they were calling a “water bomb” in the Ardennes was larger than any had ever been. The widening of the river bed meant that the water still reached new heights in the village, but didn’t wipe it out. Herbricht was “saved” from the worst of the floods that had ever come. But this was the last straw for the people living there. 

Now there is only one couple still living there and they will soon move. They started the cafe all those years ago and their family has run it throughout the years. We used to visit with the boys, taking a long walk along the river and stopping at the cafe to play at the playground set there for all the bicycle tourists who stopped. They had a very tall slide which the boys loved. Later we would walk along the road to Herbricht with the dog. He loved seeing all the swans out in the water. 

People will still bike along this road, following the river up into the next city of Maasmechelen. We live on what is called the “Maas side”, a string of villages and small cities gracing the side of the river like a set of pearls strung together. The dialect along this stretch is all similar. You can hear if someone is from this area. And people like biking here. But they will not stop at Herbricht any more. Herbricht will simply be a note in the history books, a place noted in old pictures. 

Where oh Where Wednesday: Doel (ghost town of a different sort)

When we talk of ghost towns we tend to think of Wild West movies, tumbleweeds blowing by in the wind with a reedy music in the background and a shot of spurs on boots jangling as a lone cowboy walks the empty, dusty street. In Belgium they do ghost town in a different way. 

Doel is a town at the edge of the province of East Flanders, set on the left bank of the Schelde. The Schelde is the river flowing to the sea on which the harbor of Antwerp is set. The harbor of Antwerp is one of the largest and busiest harbors in the world with immense amounts of goods passing through on their way to other countries. Goods from online stores everywhere, whether from Asia or America, cross paths at this harbor. 

And that has been part of the struggle for Doel. Although the town first shows up in the 13th century, it struggles throughout history to find its place. It was first a group of islands in the middle of the river, surrounded by fens. To keep things livable polders and dikes were built around the town and area in the following centuries. This could not keep the whole area from being inundated in the 16th century, but the 17th century brought new hope and new polders. 

By the 1960’s, after the Second World War, plans were being made for expansion of the growing harbor in Antwerp. These plans meant that in 1968 no one was allowed to build anymore in Doel. This was also the beginning of the building of 4 nuclear power stations that basically surround the village. These power plants are the oldest in Belgium and started producing power in the 1970’s.

In the meantime the industry zone and expansion of the harbor meant that the little village started dying out. By 1999 people could sell their houses to the industry building the harbor and leave. In the following years the village became a ghost town. The town center still stands. Social media influencers of the urban safari type like to show the abandoned houses and emphasize the strange atmosphere. And still, in 2023 the Flemish government declared that Doel should remain a livable village.

Where oh Where Wednesday: the town where we live

When I put my return address to paper or answer someone as to where we live, I name the town of Lanaken. But Lanaken is actually 7 different towns or villages all combined back in the years just before we moved here. The largest town is Lanaken itself, a town of some 11,000 inhabitants. But we actually live in the small village of Neerharen. 

Neerharen is the opposite village of “Opharen” on the other side of the river which is a short 500 meters from our back door. The river has ever been the border between the Netherlands and Belgium - at least as long as Belgium has existed. “Op” means above and “Neer” means below. So our village was the vial leg below the river. The other one received a castle at some point and so has become “Borgharen” and is a neighborhood of the city of Maastricht now. 

Our village can be found on maps of Napoleon when he was taking parts of Europe over, bringing some semblance of formal administration with him. The house across from us is from the 19th century and the castle to which our street would lead (if the canal did not cut across it) has elements from the 13th century. So this place has been around for some time. 

The village north of us, which is still part of the conglomerate of Lanaken, is called “Rekem”, although it used to be “Reckheim”. It had even been its own little city with city rights. The castle which housed the lord at the time has been a psychiatric hospital and now serves tourists. The village south of us, Smeermaas, is where the border crosses in fromt of the river bringing everyone into the next country. Both of these villages are where the stores are situated that we use in our daily lives. Our village has a butcher and some restaurants, but no real stores. 

Neerharen does have what some call the Gold Coast. As I explained recently to a visitor from Kenya, it is along this Gold Coast, on the other side of the main road splitting the village, that the truly rich people live. Of course, even the houses on our side of the village were more than large enough to count as a Gold Coast for him. 

The canal behind our house, built in the 1920’s, has bunkers from WWII as a reminder of a more terrible time. The canal itself carries boats ferrying goods from the harbor of Antwerpen to the harbor of Rotterdam and everywhere in between. The provincial road which cuts through the village used to be a tramway carrying passengers and goods from Maastricht to Maasmechelen and further. 

We are thankful for the place we have been able to live and bring up our family while also sharing the truth and joy of living with Jesus. We have good neighbors in a quiet neighborhood full of history. It is a small place surrounded by busy life on all sides. 

(The picture is of our boys, when they were boys, playing in our street.)