Gent

I woke around 0700. It was a typical Flemish spring morning, i.e. drippy. I decided that there was no rush to go touring the city of Gent (Ghent in English), so I had a leisurely breakfast with müsli and some milk from the fridge close to going off.

On the way out, I saw a cute cat behind a window, warm inside, but looking wistful. I should have taken a picture. There was another cat on the street, skinnier but a bit shy. Starting from the railway station Gent Sint Pieters, which had a large traffic island in front, the first destination was Citadelpark via a walk up Koningin Astridlaan.

The park was pleasant, and at one corner of the park stands SMAK (Flemish for Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art). (See, I'm even starting to use Dutch sentence construction: stands, when writing about Belgium.) Lots of oldies and schoolchildren were visiting. Modern art however leaves me a bit cold, as opposed to classical art, which leaves me lukewarm. I however liked the exhibition of film loops of Marijke van Warmerdam. The idea of Hic et Nunc (Here and Now); the loop recognises no time outside itself, no past or future, just the moment.


I walked around the old fort searching in vain for the entrance to the second museum I wanted to visit, the Fine Arts Museum, then gave up as I wasn't that keen. I had a cafeteria lunch in the student quarter of the city, Overpoort. I had to be a bit frugal with spending; I was running short of the Euros that I had started with, from a previous trip. I expected to get some more soon from my niece in a complicated 3-way international currency exchange. She would give me Euros from the bank account of her sister, who had gone home after not liking working in the Netherlands, and my sister, who owed me money, would reimburse her sister with local currency. Don't worry about it if it makes your head spin.

I walked down to the centre of the city. The pedestrian precinct was lined with elegant shops displaying beautiful merchandise.


This public space with a period bandstand has a car park underground. It's fairly standard, at least in Belgium and France, to locate car parks beneath public spaces.

This is the heart of the city, the old post office.

And close by is Saint Nicholas' Church.

I walked back to Sint Pieters via the opposite bank of the river. The path was attractive enough, if not memorable. I would have enjoyed the walk more if it had not been blowing hard.


At the station cafe I had an afternoon break of apple pie and coffee. No sign of P when I got back to the flat. At about 1500 his mother turned up. She explained the previous night: P was working in Luxembourg and would be back in the evening. I gave her the bottle of Australian wine I had been planning to give P. She deserved it for extraordinary motherly duties.


I passed the rest of the afternoon reading P's large collection of Kuifje (Tintin in Dutch) cartoon books and listening to my walkman.

In the evening the niece arrived from London, with C, a girlfriend, in tow. The three of us caught a tram to the city centre and found a nice restaurant where I took the dagschotel (special of the day), a nice steak with sides. It went down well with a Westmalle Dubbel (one of the hundreds of excellent Belgian beers). P joined us in the middle of our meal, having rushed back from the last piece of work before the Easter long weekend.

After dinner we walked around the old city, admiring the floodlit buildings. We found a bar where we sipped flavoured genever for a nightcap. And then we called it a night.