Sometimes playgrounds for kids are hidden just behind your house
Some days come with nice surprises. And so it was last Sunday. At first there was the clear blue sky which came unexpectedly after lunch time. The day before we had taken the kids along on a shopping trip at the supermarket just to get them out of the house. This Sunday was offering us enough sun to get out to the park.
And why not try a new park? I remembered reading something about a new playground the commune opened a couple of weeks before. So why not check it out? Turned out the playground was not that interesting for us. But there I was on the youth site of Hoeilaart, having a list of all the playgrounds. And that’s where the second surprise kicked in. There had been all along a nice, quite big, playground, right behind our house. A mere 400 meters to walk and right there, hidden in a quiet residential area was a superb playground. Happiness all around; for our kids because they finally got to play outside and for us because we found a playground which doesn’t require taking any busy and dangerous roads!
Our kids had almost the entire playground for themselves, except for another father with his two kids playing outside. And that’s where the 3rd surprise hit us. The usual parent-kid-playground talking quickly showed that we were next to a Romanian family. This is such a rare occasion that it took a while for our kids to get used to it. Having mostly Dutch or French speaking kids around, they wouldn’t acknowledge that these kids were speaking Romanian and it took them about half an hour to make the switch and start conversation in mommy’s language. And so we ended up spending quite more time on a playground we didn’t know of, on an unexpected sunny day in unexpected company.
This made us realize that small surprises can be amazing and make your day and that it’s worth checking online what the commune has to offer in the neighborhood.
