what happened in malmedy

on march 8th, we wanted to go to Rocher de Falize, a spot not far from malmedy where you had a great view. but as we were walking towards malmedy, the weather started to get a lot worse, so we decided to get some groceries instead. i only had a little backpack on my shoulders, but i still managed to knock over the chocolate eggs by the register while waiting in line in front of everyone. it was embarrassing for sure, but it didn't haunt me for days like it would have in the past. 

so we took our groceries and started walking back home. we didn't feel like walking along the busy roads, and my sister had her eye on this little chapel up the hill, and so we landed in the woods. then everything just went wrong. because the chapel was uphill and everything was slippery from the snow, we were afraid we'd fall. even though we weren't sure there'd be a road up ahead, we figured if we keep going up we'd eventually reach our destination. 

after a little while of going uphill and me falling face first in the snow, we saw the houses. at first we were excited because we thought it were the houses of our street. but then we started seeing fences, barbed wire and heard dogs barking. at that point we realized we walked into someone's backyard. we quickly crawled under the barbed wire before anyone could see us. it broke my shoe in half. i can still remember how cold the snow was, but we had to keep moving quickly since we were losing daylight. 

when we got higher, the trees turned into bushes with thorns. the hill was too steep to walk, so we had to crawl through the thorns. at some point, my sister kept losing her grip, sliding down the icy ground and frozen thorns, and she started to panic. i'd never seen her like that before. it made me so scared, but i pushed it aside to help her. i told her we just needed to reach the hill, and then we'd be safe and home. 

but at the top, the only thing we saw were more fences and more wire. i couldn't feel my foot at this point, so all we could do was just keep walking and hoping we'd find an opening. and luckily we found a man standing by his window. my sister tried to get his attention by waving, but he just waved back. i think his wife told him to look for what we wanted, and so we begged him to let us pass his backyard so we could go home. 

and so with the last barbed wire crossed, we made it to the public road. writing about it now, it doesn't seem so bad. but at the time, with the cold, my foot turning blue, the thorns, the rain, and our groceries being crushed and smushed, while being in a foreign country, it was quite the adventure. 

my body was already showing signs of hypothermia, since i didn't feel the cold anymore and there was blood in my pee. 

this is one of my favorite memories of the entire trip, if i'm honest. it just was something i had never expected to happen to me. 

i guess that's it for today. tomorrow we will go to saint baume so i should get enough sleep.