The next day we were bound for Ghent, so we had the last meal of croissants and cornflakes (hoorah for free breakfasts), and then we were off to Gard du Nord. Negotiating the ticketing system wasn’t too bad, and then we were on a train, and couldn’t do anything for a while.
I quite like train travel. Once you’re on, you’re on; it doesn’t feel as claustrophobic as plane travel, and if you don’t feel like reading, you can just look at the scenery. Instead of being good and writing the blog or postcard, I vegged out and read – that was the first time I’d had the opportunity to do that in a while.
Soon enough, we were in Ghent. I’d looked up how to get to our hotel, and we negotiated the tram system fairly successfully; unfortunately, it varied between being clear, lightly drizzly, and seriously raining. We were a bit damp by the time we arrived… only to find that we couldn’t check in quite yet. So we left our bags, and headed out into the changeable weather to find somewhere to eat.
It’s quite intimidating to choose somewhere when none of you speak the language. We ended up going to Ekxi, which appeared to be the equivalent of Pret/Wishbone, where I had a very nice lasagne and juice, and an adequate lemon meringue pie. We then wandered around the stalls of the Ghent Festival until we could check in.
While wandering, I bought some sweets that are apparently a Belgian speciality, dark purple cones called something like “noejes”. They were actually too sweet for C to handle! They were meant to be raspberry flavour, but they were mostly sugar-flavoured; there were non-traditional coloured ones as well. They have an outer coating like Pascall’s wine-gums or jet-planes, but the inside is much more runny. You can get a similar syrup for desert topping as well, but I didn’t.
After lolling around in the luxuriously big room, enjoying the comfort of not having to climb up into a bunk-bed (on my part, at least), we decided that we should have some dinner, and ventured back out into the rain. After much wandering and appreciation of the free live music (and purchases of vital chocolate supplies), we ended up in what I think was the Grossemarkt, a big barnlike room with what I sincerely hope were fake hams hanging from the ceiling. I got around the difficulty of understanding what the different signs on the food stall meant by simply asking the person behind the counter what they’d recommend, and going with that. (It was a burger-like thing with a nice cheese, lettuce, tomato, and bacon chunks, with a mustard/mayo sauce; it was very tasty.) C & Margie had cherry beers, and they helped me try vanilla, citroen and apple jenever (which is a kind of gin), and then we made our way home.
The next day we slept in. Quite a bit, in fact; we didn’t start stirring until around half-past ten, and didn’t get out the door until sometime close to midday. While we were getting ready, Margie received some sad news from her family via text– an uncle in Thailand, who has been ill for some time, had died that morning, so we decided that we needed some connectivity, to see (among other things) if there was a Buddhist temple nearby.
We strolled down to McDonald’s to get something cheap and use their free wifi. Did you know that they have different flavour McFlurries in Belgium? There was a fruit one, a speculaas one, and one flavoured like the traditional Belgian sweet I mentioned earlier.
We went to look for some shoes to give the others more non-wet options, and then a weird thing happened. In the middle of Ghent, taking pictures, was a group of Thai monks and their driver/interpreter (who spoke German, French, Dutch, English and Thai, and may have spoken more). Marige was a little overcome by the coincidence, but managed to ask whether she could make them an offering for her uncle. So we went to a cafe, she served them drinks (putting them on the table in front of them) and made her offering, after which they chanted some prayers. And then got some photos with us, and gave Margie a card with their website so we could swap photos. (Talking to one of the monks, it turns out that a friend of his was sent to the temple in Wellington, so he might well have been at my brother’s wedding!)
(This also meant that I couldn’t be annoyed at how late we were getting away to see Bruge, since it was obvious that what happened was simply meant to be.)
We got to Bruge around 4pm, which meant that our visits to the Chocolate and Frite museums were limited to their respective giftshops, and we didn’t manage to find the Tintin museum at all; we did have dinner at a nice riverside restaurant, where I had a half-chicken “in a Belgian style” (with mushrooms, beans and bacon sauce). And we got to wander around the town of Bruges, looking at the lace, the swans with cygnets riding on their backs, and the lovely old buildings.
And then it was back to Ghent and their festival; we just had time to go to the specialist jenever pub (we tried lychee, pineapple, mango, passionfruit, and their version of vanilla), buy some doughnut-pods in a cone (where I also bought a bright blue “tropical” slushy, against Celeste’s strong advice), and grab something for breakfast before going back to the hotel to pack and get a relatively early night.
The next day it was up early, and off to the train station to catch a train to Brussels, and then a two-hour train to Colonge, and then a five-hour train to Berlin; hopefully, it will all go smoothly.
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