It was like a week-long test drive of a car you were never going to buy. I drove an SUV all over Vancouver, a PT Cruiser in Montreal, a speedy Mazda sedan in Edmonton, and a minivan in Winnipeg – which was fine because that stopover sucked.
I wanted the same experience in Europe, just with my own money, so for a chunk of 2015 I fought with ServiceOntario to get my drivers' license renewed. It took innumerable phone calls, several formal letters – they would have preferred faxes – and an old fashioned cheque.
I finally got my Canadian drivers license in the fall, which allowed me to rent a truck for a film shoot in the UK countryside. This drive gave me the chance to teach myself how to drive on other side of the road in the middle of the night.
Belgium's border is just a hour away from the Dorf, so the country and its waffles and its beer and medieval churches and its old-timey bridges and canals was always on our radar. We had gone to Antwerp last spring and loved the city. This year we were eyeing Ghent and/or Bruges.
Getting to both cities on a long weekend is no easy feat by train, so with my shiny new drivers' license we booked a car rental.
Renting a car in Europe is not without its difficulties for me, a product of the North American suburbs. I can't drive a car with manual transmission, which discounts me from most available models. We lucked out and found an automatisch Mercedes C-class and booked it.
The next obstacle was finding our way to Ghent. This is not so easy when you're driving through Flanders, where all the signs are in Dutch. We opted for the GPS at the last minute at the pick-up desk, which meant no Mercedes for us. We got an Opel. We were going to Belgium like real, fiscally-responsible Germans!
On Zee Road!
The German stereotype of moving about in orderly lines turns out to be a half truth on the autobahn. Everyone keeps to the right lane because the left lane is for screaming past the right-lane slowpokes at 170km/h.
That's just the way it is. You can pop into the left lane to pass someone, but be prepared for a Rhenish soccer mom in a Porsche to approach from behind with high beams flashing and her front bumper inches from your rear bumper. And that's in our Opel with German plates. Who knows what they do when they see foreign plates.
We rode through the orderly craziness of Germany into sedate Netherlands, where people are so easygoing and so courteous on the highway that you feel like an asshole for getting close to the speed limit. From the Netherlands, you get into Flanders, which used to be in the Netherlands and where they drive like they're still in the Netherlands.
We were debating where to stop for lunch. Kata wanted to stop in Brussels. I thought Brussels was too big, too busy, and too Brussels-y for a quick stop on the road. Kata didn't like that, but before she got hangry I took the next exit and said, "We'll just eat here at..." I looked for a sign. ...At Leuven!"
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| Leuven's Town Hall. |
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| What we saw while we ate our lunch. |
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| The detail on Leuven's Town Hall is incredible. |
We never heard of Leuven and never would have thought of visiting. The fast lane in Flanders opened up an incredible destination that we were happy to have visited. We easily parked close to the old town centre, ate a healthy lunch at an outdoor cafe, wandered the streets, and saw all sorts of beautiful things.
We got back onto the road and approached Brussels. It's a bilingual enclave within Dutch-speaking Flanders and the signs were in Dutch and French. The style of driving went from friendly Flemish-style to French Fury Road-style. As we took the ring road around the city, cars jostled and tailgated for position. They cut each other off, swerved onto exits at the last minute, and avoided signalling before changing lanes.
We survived the Brussels Circle Pit and made it to our Ghent Airbnb. Well, it was not that easy. The Airbnb was deep in the countryside, down a narrow road and tucked between a few farms and a nature preserve. Our GPS couldn't compute where it exactly was and, because I began trusting the computer over my own eyes, we drove past the place.
Our accommodation was a lovely renovated loft above a small, physiotherapy clinic. We got our own kitchen, which used to be an army camper trailer, and access to an indoor pool below. We'd go into Ghent and see the sights and walk along the canals and drink the beer out of fancy chalices before getting back into the countryside to relax and sleep.
It was a tranquil way of discovering the city – and it is a beautiful city – and very different than our Antwerp getaway last Spring, where we stayed in the city.
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| The Fish Market, which thankfully did not smell like a fish market. |
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| Kata in a Church. |
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| Guys, just get to Ghent. It's very pretty. |
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| Ghent's Contemporary Art Museum, where else! |
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| The gardens of St. Michael's Abbey in Ghent. |
In – then out of – Bruges
The weekend went by quickly and we hit the road on Sunday for our final destination: Bruges. But before I get into all of that, let me write a bit about the GPS.
Our GPS didn't talk, which surprised me for the first few turns because I thought they all spoke in that... halting... voice. It would often silently tell me to turn after I read the signs and already taken the turn. It was also difficult to read while navigating around traffic circles, which are already a challenge for sheltered North American drivers.
I went to Traffic Circle School on the wrong side of the road in the UK, so I thought I could handle all the traffic circles the roads of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany could throw at me until I encountered a five-lane traffic circle outside of Ghent with stoplights.
This was the traffic circle to end all traffic circles. The GPS didn't help much either. With no sound, I'd look at the little screen, look at the winding road, look at the cars around me changing lanes, check the mirrors, all while trying to find the Dutch road signs that would lead us to Bruges.
I am not ashamed to say that I went around a few times to get the correct exit. A first pass for reconnaissance. A second pass to make sure. Then we exited the circle on the third pass towards Bruges.
A F**king Fairytale Town
We figured Bruges was a tourist trap built around a beautiful well-preserved medieval town and always hesitated about doing an entire weekend there. We planned a brief afternoon stopover to walk along the canals and over the bridges and into a few churches, before driving across Belgium to return to the Dorf. A car made this plan feasible.
It's a beautiful town and for a history nerd and an art geek it had a lot to offer. We made good use of our limited time: We took a boat tour along the town's main canals, devoured a great Flemish lunch (meat stew for me, salmon for Kata), walked the cobblestone streets, and stuck our heads in as many old churches as we could.
There is so much packed into that medieval town that you can get the short version in a few hours, but you feel like you want to linger. One the slow return trip (It was the Sunday on a long weekend) we decided we will likely return – maybe once again with a car.
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| On a boat in Bruges. |
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| There's a Michelangelo in this church. |
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| More beautiful canals *yawn* |
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| Bruges Bros. |
