Weekend in Gent

After getting back to my apartment around midnight on Friday, I wasn't about to wake up early on Saturday and drive some place for the weekend, plus the weather was supposed to be nice and I had made plans with a couple of colleagues for Saturday and Sunday so I thought it would be good to adventure a bit more in Gent.  The first thing I wanted to do, was to go for a run and start training for Ragnar 2010.  After the rain stopped, I made sure to get my first run in and it was a bit difficult to say the least, but it was a start and I was determined to run at least 3 times in the following week.  Next, I wanted to FINALLY solve this magical mystery garbage bag issue.  I still have yet to find real Gent garbage bags and on the way back from my run I found a little super market / convenience store (very small Walgreens in comparison) that I thought would have them.  So, I headed out in no particular direction to see what was going on in the city and see if I could find any other stores - knowing I had the one near by as a back-up.  After walking around a bit I didn't find a store so I ended up going to my back-up plan which of course didn't have garbage bags.  I then found a hardware store, and I asked if they had garbage bags and the man replied 'Nope, but I do have vacuum bags.'  His English was pretty good so I asked where I could get garbage bags and he said any grocery store, but they keep them behind the counter so you have to ask the cashier - good. to. know.  He mentioned a grocery store near the Vridagmarkt (one block from my apartment) which I didn't have any luck finding so I headed back to my place and I noticed the store next door to my apartment was open for once - just looking through the window I noticed they had ironing boards and paints/painting supplies so I thought might as well check.  And of course - they have garbage bags but I at least knew to ask the guy at the counter immediately!  So a long walk around town for nothing...  But - I still need to find the blue recycling bags...

Next trip outside was to find some food.  Since I started running I wanted to keep it a bit healthy (for a day at least) and something fast so I went to Subway.  Ordered a couple wheat 30 CM subs.  The small size was 15 cm so I assumed the large one was 30 cm, and remembering unit conversions back from high school, 1 IN = 2.54 CM so I knew I was roughly close. I wanted two wheat 12 inch subs, but really had to say ''Groot" for large and "brune" for wheat.  So I got 2 large 'wit' or white subs instead.  The girl mentioned she didn't speak English very well and when we got to the vegetables / toppings that's when the fun started.  Since I just came back from Spain I had my languages mixed again, so when she asked me if I wanted cucumbers, I answered 'Si', then she asked me a question and I answered 'No, just mayonnaise please.'  And this is when her colleague, which spoke much better English, started laughing.  Evidently I was asked 'What languages do I speak?' and I answered 'just mayonnaise.'  The subs tasted pretty much the same and were quite delicious.

Later that night I went out with a colleague and one of his futbol teams and it was a lot of fun.  Different party style over here and everything is open very late, so we didn't end up going to the bar / club until almost midnight and left around 4.  I woke up late the next morning only to get around and go straight to a wine tasting with a group of colleagues.  One of the guy's father organizes a wine tasting every year as he knows a lot of the winery owners in most of the French regions.  So, I tasted some very good wines from the different regions of France and found out that if you are a Bourdeaux drinker, that 2005 and 2009 are great years for Bourdeax - they are actually quite good.  I bought a couple sweeter white wines just to make sure I have a couple good bottles of wine in case I ever have visitors again!

When I arrived back in Gent, I went straight for the friejtes stand to get some food.  I went to one of the small stands near the genever bar and it seemed there was a fire behind the genever bar!  I hope nothing happened to it!  Check it out:, if you look close you can see the owner of the genever bar's painting for the back entrance in the alley.