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Published: April 2nd 2008
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Gent, so who has heard of it?
It's not really on the radar of most Kiwis that I know. I mean over the last couple of months while Lindo and I have been preparing for our trip not once has anyone come up to us and gone "hey, you guys have GOT to go to Gent", unlike Venice, Rome, Paris, London, Berlin, Prague etcetera... All we knew was that Ross, who is Lindos brother, lives there, and we were going to stay at his house for a few nights.
Anyway, we left Cologne and headed towards Belgium on Tuesday the 1st of April, catching the ICE high speed train. After a short bit of confusion where we thought the carriage we were in was comfortable and suiting our needs, I realised that we weren't in our correct first class seating and that we had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Fortunately we found the First Class carriage just a few doors down and with a sigh of relief we relaxed into the plush leather seating and other familair surroundings befitting our status. That's how we roll.
That journey over, we arrived at the Gent railway station,
which is pretty run down I guess, and began to make our way into the town centre. It's not a big centre so we decided to walk and get a feel for the place. It soon started to become apparent that this was a lot different to the prevoius big cities we had just been in. Apart from the architectural and stylistic differences, it would appear that there had been no prolonged bombing campaign at any stage over the last 100 years... The closer we got to the centre the more overawed we were by the age and the beauty of the buildings, the narrowing streets and the cobblestones. It gets to a point where there are no modern structures, and you can walk around not seeing any for several blocks. I've never seen anything like this before. There's a castle dating from the 12th century, the Catholic Dom and several other magnificent monuments are around 600 years old. Theatres, official buildings and other places, which can only be described as works of art, all proudly displaying their heritage stand beside 3 and 4 story apartments from similar eras. There just aren't any eyesores, the town centre works and it
appears to have done for hundreds of years. Then it gets dark, the lights come on and you're given a whole new perspective.
Then there are the Sky-towers: OK, so in order to be a city nowdays, you have to have a skytower: Auckland has one, Sydney has one, Berlin has one, Paris has one, Tokyo has one, London has one, all the really important cities in the worls have one. Gent not only has three, but they're all over 400 years old! To be fair to Auckland (et all), they're not quite as high, but for the technology of the day, they are massive, imposing structures, compromising many hundreds of tons of stone which you certainly wouldn't want coming down any time soon, especially if you were in the DOM attending Easter Mass or whatever and then the roof decides it's giving up it's fight with gravity and wants to say high to it's mate the earth again...
And the canals. It's such a shame we are here in the early spring, as a wee boat trip could be norse, but it's bloody cold down there on the exposed waterways. On the walk in to town we
saw someone catching a fish even. I'm not sure if I'd eat it though, the water isn't actually moving anywhere, it just seems to sit there...
Another thing which is quite an eye opener, being from a land where not having 4 wheels will subject you to a few funny looks, is the bikes. I think there are more bikes here per capita than Japan, judging by the massive bike park at the railway station, their total rule of the roads and narrow footpaths and just the numbers you see going in all directions. Granted this is a flat place, but so is Christchurch! Cars and pedestrians have to give way to bikes. Quite simple really.
Finally though, the thing which really seals it for me, is the lack of franchises. There are hundreds of little independant shops selling all manner of local and ethnic foods. While I have spotted a couple of the depressingly familiar colours and logos, they are most certainly not on the corner of every block, but tucked away, having to compete with the colourful variety of real local food made by individuals with love in their hearts.
And on that note, au
revoir from Lindo and I (actually they speak flemish here, but I've no idea how that one goes, so I'll just choose one of the other 2 official Belgian languages available to me)
Olza
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Dave (rockshop)
non-member comment
Haha ...
... love the photo under the bridge. Tell Lindo the hood makes him look taller!