A day in Ghent

Summer of 2016

Ghent is an easy-peasy day trip from Brussels. So after seeing a little more of Brussels, I hopped on a train to Ghent. In Germany, I am used to people not understanding me, which is not the case here since most people speak good English. To show a round-trip ticket, I motioned with my hand to show going-coming, and made the mistake of pointing two fingers to signify the two legs of the trip. He gave me two round trip tickets for two people! 

This, I did not realize until I boarded the train and looked at my ticket. Being a Christian holiday, the train fares were half-price, which is great (10€ round trip/person). When I showed it to the person checking tickets on the train and explained what happened, she gave me a refund stub that I could show at the Ghent station and get my 10 € back.. The amicable, well-dressed and quite good-looking lady clearly showed her disapproval at being issued two tickets. 

"What was he? Drunk? Who does that?"

"It must have been a misunderstanding. I showed him two fingers." I said.

"That's not done. Anyway, I am really happy you are going to Ghent. Everyone goes to Bruges. Ghent is relatively lesser known. Actually I am from Ghent."

That explained why she got so upset that I was charged twice. I did not tell her that I am going to Bruges the next day.

I got off at Ghent, got my refund, got hold of a city map, took the tram number 1, and ended up at the Historic Central. The area was extremely crowded for a city this small. The touristy area is a little far from the train station (about 4-5 kms), and needs a tram ride (3€). The trams are quite frequent though. 

So I spent the next few hours walking around, going atop the belfry to get panoramic views of the city (8 €), and soaking in some sun myself before taking a train back to the Gare Centrale in Brussels and another metro back to my hostel. 

There are plenty of good things about Brussels and Ghent. Everyone understands English, which is a huge relief. I do not end up exhausted trying to ask for something as simple as directions. English, and then, food. This place perpetually smells of waffles and frites all the time. There is something very nice about watching people sit outside in promenades and enjoying their food and drinks. Summer in Europe is a lovely place that reminds me that there is more to life than work and more to one's wardrobe than jeans. Everyone is so well dressed here all the time. 

These cities are also very well-connected. Brussels alone has three train stations (more than a thousand trains pass by these stations daily to other parts of Belgium and other countries like France, Netherlands, and the UK) and an intricate mesh of the metro (2.10 € for a single ride or about 7 € for a daily ticket). There is art, architecture, panoramic views, murals, churches, museums, and some very nice food. 

However, and this can be wrongly interpreted as travel-snobbery, I have gotten a little tired of pretty European cities. Traveling as frequently as I do, everything is slowly starting to look the same. A friend's mom who was visiting from India, on being shown the Grand Canyon from the different vista points, got bored soon and remarked, "सब गड्ढा ही है, अब वापस चलो" (It's all one big ditch, looks the same from everywhere. Let's go home.) As sacrilegious as this sounds, most European cities have started to look the same to me. Ornate buildings. Museums. Churches. Good food in nice restaurants. Good chocolate. Nice cafes. You know what I mean? 

sunshine

A Day in Bruges, Belgium

I see so many people older than me running marathons, biking competitively and what not (power to you guys!) and wonder, "Why? Why would you not sleep extra on a weekend and do this to yourself?" Enduring this level of physical stress will never be my thing. You can find me sitting in a corner drinking coffee and doing reading marathons, and that's about it. However, the only physically stressful thing I challenge myself to do is climb churches. I know that a few years down the line, the knee will go bad, the breath will become shorter, and I will not be able to do it anymore.

So in Bruges this morning, I found myself waiting in a long line to climb the Belfort. The interesting thing, and this I have seen nowhere else, is that they only allow a constant number of people to be up at the church at any given point of time. So when a person finishes climbing and viewing and comes down and goes out of the automated door, the other automated door opens, allowing one person in. One person goes out, one person gets in. Five people get out, five people get in.

Standing in line for an hour and half gave me a lot of time to think about things. The people in front of me spoke Korean and the ones behind me, Spanish. So I had no one to talk to. I wondered, why are they charging 10 € if there is no elevator and I have to do the climbing myself? 81 meters. 366 steps. Our home in Calcutta has about 80 steps that I am used to climbing in one go since childhood. This is more than 4.5 times of that. Usually when there are rest areas, I stop and pretend to take pictures, asking people behind me to go ahead while I catch my breath. This church looked bad ass. What if there are no rest areas?

Climbing 366 steps squeezed the life out of me. When they say getting on top of a church feels like a step closer to heaven, I exactly know what they mean. I was wondering whether my friends will laugh at me if I died climbing a church. This was made worse by a spiral staircase. The higher I rose, the narrower the staircase got. A steady stream of people were getting down and at one point, I was literally holding tight to a rope, my feet biggerr than the stairs.

I made it. Huffing and puffing, panting, cursing and feeling like Aunty Acid, I made it with one 30-second break in between. All of 366 steps. What I did not realize is climbing down a narrow stairway is way harder than climbing up. You don't need as much lung power, but you need balance and concentration. The good news is, I made it up and down in one piece without a ruptured lung or a herniated uterus.

All this labor made me crave sugar. I was having the best pineapple gelato at The Markt when a young man came running towards me, very politely asking if he can take a picture with me (which I misunderstood and thought that he wanted me to take a picture of him). Was I suddenly looking rock star material that a young man wanted a picture with me? Apparently, these four guys who are close friends are out in Bruges celebrating someone's bachelor party (although I swear, the guy didn't look one day older than eighteen). They were playing a competitive game. Four friends dispersed in the busy square trying to take pictures with as many girls of different nationalities as they could. The person who comes back with the most number of pictures of different nationalities wins. So I was his Indian girl. He was so well-mannered and he asked me so nicely that it was kinda endearing.

So that was it, a day well-spent in Bruges.

sunshine