After spending all day Saturday in a group, on Sunday I struck out on my own…

…to the laundromat. I had, after all, been in Europe for 2 weeks at this point with one carry-on sized suitcase.

The process was reasonably well documented, and another very nice customer was at pains to make sure I understood how everything worked.  There was a vending machine for soap, and the washing machines were all controlled from a central terminal, although oddly, the dryers were not.

Laundry accomplished, I headed back to the hotel to drop off my clothes and make a plan to do some sightseeing.  I needed to get to the Nivelles train station, and since the next bus wasn’t for a while, I decided to just walk.  This was going to turn out to be a theme for the day.

Just one stop down the train tracks from Nivelles is Brain-L’Alleud, where the historic battle of Waterloo took place.  (Not to be confused with the neighboring town of Waterloo, where the historic battle of Waterloo did not take place.)  Waterloo represented the last decisive defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, and is part of why many of us are stuck using inches and pounds to this very day.

After a long, sweaty walk to the train station, I bought my train ticket to Brain-L’Alleud and boarded my train, which looked suspiciously like a bus.  Just a few weeks prior, I took the Hamilton Street Railway and an Air Canada flight in Hamilton, Ontario, both of which looked a lot like busses.  And now this Belgian train, which also appeared to be a bus.

When the “train” arrived in Brain-L’Alleud, I first got lunch at a really excellent little Syrian place next to the station.  Seriously, if you ever go there, this is where you want to have lunch – some of the best schwarma I’ve ever had.

Then I looked at the bus schedule, realized the next bus to the battlefield wasn’t for a while, and decided to walk.  This MAY have been a poor choice.  It was, after all, about 27 (I mean 80 – THANKS NAPOLEON) degrees out.  After another long, sweaty walk, I arrived at the battlefield.

Only to discover that the once-a-year reenactment of the battle had taken place that morning, and I had missed it.  Then again, I REALLY needed laundry.

There’s a few different things to see at Waterloo.  The most obvious from a distance is the Mound of the Lion.  It is a huge hill that dominates the landscape of the battlefield, and commemorates the wounding of William II of Orange, arguably maybe the fifth most important commander present at the battle. Maybe.

Or maybe it commemorates the battle more generally.  Given its scale, that’s the more charitable reading.  Heck of a view form the top, anyway.

There’s also a very well executed museum that talks at length about the history of the battle, the uniforms, the weapons, the commanders, and very little about why Napoleon was not actually a very nice man.  (Spoiler: he wasn’t.)

There’s also a display of Napoleonic scenes recreated in Lego, which is pretty neat.  Here’s the retreat from Moscow:

Next the Big Hill of the Moderately Important Guy who Lived Thirty Four More Years After The Battle is a panorama, a kind of nineteenth century VR installation where you stand inside a 360 degree painting and see the battle illustrated all around you.  That was actually pretty neat.

But honestly, the most impressive thing was just walking a few hot and sweaty kilometers around the battlefield and appreciating the importance of this particular bit of Belgian farmland to the history of the world.  Counterfactuals are always a bit iffy, but there’s one small gate in the wall of one small farmhouse at one end of the battle line that could potentially have changed the course of everything if it had been successfully breached. (as it almost was.)

It was also a hoot walking around surrounded by all the reenactors, who were largely still there after their morning’s exertions, and also largely still in costume.  Made it even easier to visualize being back in 1815, except for the bit where they were also largely tailgating next to their cars at this point.

At the end of my visit, I was at the other end of the battlefield from the bus stop, so I decided to just go ahead and walk back to the bus station.  I blame heat exhaustion at this point from preventing me from doing something dumb like this much more walking in the sun.

At least I didn’t walk back to my hotel from the train station in Nivelles.  No, instead of that I (checks notes)… oh wait, no, I did do that.  It was a long day.