Karen gave me a free train ticket to get from Ghent to Bruges, where I got stuck in the mass tourism here… Stayed with Annick and Jurgen the night.
In the little 4 square metres room Karen woke me up around 9.30 am. She actually wanted to wake up earlier to do some more studying, but the pillow-fight from last night had tired her down too.
After taking a shower in this student-home Karen settled Kellogs’ Rice Crispies for me as breakfast, together with a cup of coffee. She read her emails on her computer while I packed my backpack, before us both leaving to the city train station.
Karen had to go back to her parents’ place in Beveren, while I would be on my way to the next city on my journey: Bruges.
She insisted that I accepted her ‘Go Pas’, a discount card for students using the train, which had two free rides left on it. I thanked her for all her hospitality and hugged her goodbye. She got on the train to the east and I got on the train to Bruges, to the west.
Bruges is Europe’s best-preserved medieval city and Belgium’s most visited town, this 13th-century ‘living museum’ was suspended in time five centuries ago by the silting of its river.
Only 25 minutes later I arrived in the tourist village Bruges, where the only language I heard for the first fifteen minutes was English.
It’s too crowded with tourists here! As being one myself, I shouldn’t complain about that too much, but most of those big elderly groups just walk step by step and only one mile per hour and only looking up, taking photographs of everything and not caring about people wanting to pass them by…
Most of the tourists and from the UK and came here by boat from English Dover to Oostende, near the Belgian coast.
I made a mistake in trying to reach the center of the city by walking through little 1 meter-wide little streets until I got surrounded by a group of Russian tourists. Not even walking!
Fortunately the weather is great again. The Brussel days where dry, but cloudy and very windy in the city. In Bruges it seems full summer now…
My next host Annick picked me up on the big market square in the centre of Bruges. She was walking with her boyfriend Jurgen and his family over the May Fair, an all month festival in town.
We took a wide walk on the fortification surrounding this ancient city to get to the home of Annick and Jurgen, where the whole family was drinking lemonade and coffee.
As Annick and Jurgen already had a big family gourmet, Annick made me a cordon bleu with a lot of salads and vegetables for dinner!
Jurgen had to go to a meeting of his snooker club and also Annick was expected there. They told me it would be boring, so they offered me to stay at their home and watch some videos from their collection, if I wantend.
I watched Murder at 1600 which I remembered I had seen before, but it is a good entertaining movie after all. My feet did hurt a bit from the long walk on the fair grounds and my backpack was on all the time.
Their little house is over 100 years old and has no actual doors in it; for exampe: the two bedrooms are divided by a curtain.
The old lady that used to live here before Annick and Jurgen raised her 6 children here and lived her ’till she got 90 years old and got placed into a care house for elderly. But she used to bath herself in a rain barrel outside in her back garden, everyday!
