Birthday weekend, Ghent, Tuesday and the monster that never was.

7 april 2010


The rest of the day/night on fri was awesome. Lots of cool people, live band at the pub, elaborate air drum solos from me (drinking may have been involved) and just generally an awesome night. Had to get to Ghent later on though so I left Berts couch relatively early, all things considered, and made my way home to make preparations. Arrived in Ghent early evening and met Monica, Valerie and Aayran there. That night we stayed at Aayran's counselors house which was cool. He took us to this Latina dancing place. Which to be fair had a good atmostphere etc, and I really enjoyed it. Needless to say, my hips didn't feel like partially dislocating themselves every two seconds so I refrained from dancing. (Yeah thats the reason, I was worried about the health of my body...). I mean, my normal dancing is bad enough without bringing actual dance moves into the equation. But I did take lots of pictures of creepy old guys dancing with the girls... hehe.

Later on that night me and Monica went to forage for food. Which proved to be very fruitful. It was a little Kebab place near the dance place. The fact that I used a capitol k for the Kebab should tell you a lot about my feelings for it. It was love at first site. For the first and second Kebab. And the chips. *gazes off into the distance in a reminiscing kind of way* Seriously it was awesome. If you're ever in Ghent centre, find a place called "Thats Kebab" and eat there. Admittedly, it was also the most expensive Kebab I've come across here - €5 for a normal Kebab. Still. Totally worth it. The remainder of the night mostly pales in comparison to the Kebab, although there was an interesting incident of Aaryan jumping inside some guys egg suite that he had made for Easter. While the guy was still in it. Crazy woman. But then hey, is there any other kind????? I can feel the look you females are giving me right now. Its the kind of fear that goes along with knowing that no matter how hard you try, you'll never quite be able to effectively return that look (or even have a manly equivalent other than laughing mischieveously/nervously)

The next day we all had Turkish pizzas. Wow. Very impressed. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the place we got them from so as much as I would like to there'll be no free advertising (to my pulsing hordes of readers) for them. Just go to Ghent and try a bunch of Turkish places and if you like it then you just give me the credit. If you don't like it... then you've obviously just gone to the wrong place and it's entirely your fault.

And then there were three....
That is, Monica, Valerie and myself. The others went off to give the fairies a good talking to. We went and checked into out hotel, which was pretty cool. The usual knobs and goblins etc. We went out and searched for food, possibly traversing every side road in all of bloody Ghent. However, we did eventually find a really nice place that wasn't too pricey. The name of the place, wait for it.... was... Twilight. But to the credit of the staff they didn't try and drink my blood, they were actually good, and most importantly they didn't act like a bunch of stupid hysterical school girls with the intellectual capacity of a limp banana. Which I felt was nice. I had an awesome 300g steak. Easily the best meal I've had at a restaurant here. Nice and bloody...hmmm... (insert twilight reference here). Pancakes for dessert. Need I say more? Probably not. Will that stop me? Unlikely. They gave us these bowls of different sugars to distribute as we saw fit, which is nice because so often people skimp on the sugar and don't give you any extra to lather your pancake in. And boy do I like a good lathering.

The next day we did some touristy meandering (Easter Monday). Things were open; which was good. We went to a castle near the centre. It was like a dream come true. They had a room full of really old weaponary with descriptions of their origins, how they were used etc. Plus suits of armour. I want that stuff so badly. Honestly, if I suddenly had massive amounts of money that armoury would be one of the first things on my agenda. They had some of the old torture devices in another room. It made me strangely happy. They had the thumbscrews and all that kind of stuff (read, James can't remember the names).

Eventually we went home.

Yesterday it was back to work. The day was fairly uneventful - there's a media camp here at the moment so me and most of the interns had to shift over to Stefans room to escape the masses. After work we grabbed some drinks and went down to the river Schelde. Was a really good day - clear skies and 17 degrees C. I was in my T- shirt most of the time. Crazy stuff eh. Anyway so, Stefan invited a few of us to stay the night at his so the night could continue. Which it duly did. We all went and got dinner - also a Turkish place, really good. Most of us made our way to the couch when we got to his place and we watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Liked it even more the second time as I vaguely knew what was happening this time. Most people went to bed or fell asleep on the couch. Gladiator was eventually put on, and it was hard to sleep when a pat of me wanted to rewatch it so much. Made it fairly far into the movie though.

This morning we all staggered into work. The camp is still on today and tomorrow so we are still displaced. So tired. I mean there's a good reason I shower in the mornings. That waking up thing people keep talking about. Even with a shower I'm not sure I ever really accomplish being entirely wakeful. But feeeling particularly dead now. Don't know how I'm going to make it through the 3 hours of Dutch today. Have to leave in 20 mins actually.

No random wonderings today, for better or for worse. My brain simply cannot function well enough. Off to Dutch. See you