Something new in town!

 Our train station has been undergoing renovation for the past three years and today the main building finally opened!  All the containers from the square in front of it are gone!

My husband and I walked down to take a peek - we live very close to the station and were very curious how different it would look.

During renovation of the interior, they removed false ceilings to reveal the beautiful orignal plasterwork and friezes.  Not all the rooms are finished or filled yet (rumor has it we may be getting a Starbucks in the station - in this lovely room?  It almost seems a shame...)

The original floors were also uncovered and restored.  The main hall, where the new ticket booths are located, has a gorgeous black and gray marble floor.  It was apparently quite a challenge for the restoration team, but I would say it was a success!

Finally...I promised Giorgio that I would take a picture of a local street sign and so here you have it:

The top sign is in Dutch (Brussels Street) and the bottom sign is in local dialect and gives the former, more historical name of the street (Stone Street).  The red and white emblem on the left is the city's coat of arms.

If you're interested in learning more about Leuven, here's the Wiki page.  I personally love living here and am really excited our train station is open again!

Magazine Inspiration

I used to be a big magazine reader.  But over the years I gradually cut back on the magazines I bought or subscribed to, mainly because of the expense, all the waste and the feeling I had that they were constantly repeating the same information in their articles.  We still get the major local newspaper every day and on the weekend, both the weekly newspaper from the Flemish organization for families (Gezinsbond) and the Flemish automobile association's monthly magazine because we are members, I get the quarterly magazine of the Flemish vegetarian association, EVA, because I happen to be a member, and we get a monthly science magazine for our kids, but that's about it.  And even that seems like a lot to me!

There is an international press shop in town, and there you can buy just about any magazine from any country on pretty much any topic.  But they are pretty expensive; for most American magazines, they charge 7 to 10 euros for a single magazine.  So I hardly ever go in there.

This week, I had a good reason to go in to look for the latest edition of the American Runner's World - the author of an inspiring running blog I've been following was featured (Runs for Cookies).  Perhaps some of you read the article about Katie and her Ragnar Relay team of 12 people who all lost weight through running?  Very inspirational!

Anyway, it was fun to have a copy of Runner's World to read this past weekend, especially since my running is slowly improving.  I just did my longest interval training yet yesterday, on the treadmill, and it went really well.  Five minute warm-up, then five intervals of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking, for a total of 30 minutes.  It felt good and no hip pain or other aches afterwards.  Plan is to do an outdoor run this Thursday, and see how that goes.

The other nice thing about my copy of Runner's World was a great Quick Hummus Salad recipe that I made yesterday for lunch:

My son and his girlfriend were here and they thought it was really good too!  I think we're going to be fighting about who gets the leftovers for lunch today...  The original recipe for it is here; to make it vegan I subbed a handful of sliced green olives for the feta cheese (which gives it a similar salty flavor).  Yum!

Anyway...I really enjoyed my one-off copy of Runner's World but I think that'll be it for a while now.  I think part of the reason I enjoyed it was the fact that it was a special treat.  Just out of curiosity: what's your magazine buying policy and which ones do you like to read?

Rainbows and running

There was an amazing rainbow right out our front door yesterday evening:

 It's not often you get to see the full bow of a rainbow, but this one was amazing - surely we could have found a pot of gold?

And even so, the pictures don't exactly do justice to how awe inspiring it actually looked, but I thought it was worth sharing anyway.

Just back from my first short outdoor run of the season this morning.  I've been doing intervals 2x week at the gym all winter and it's paid off.  Today I was able to do a 4 km out and back with my son, and it felt good, especially in the beautiful spring sunshine, with the birds singing and the spring flowers popping out.  

Just like the rainbow, it made me feel inspired and hopeful for the coming season!

Bring it on!