Heidelberg to Brussels
Started the day with a nice breakfast at the hotel and planned our movements for the morning. Since there is a laundromat a few doors down the street, we thought there may be time to do some laundry. At the same time we could use the nearby intermet café to check on messages and move photo files from the memory cards to the travel drive.
Turned out the laundromat is not what we understand a laundromat to be. The woman there - who speaks no English - takes your laundry, does the washing and ironing, and you come back to pick up the finished product. That would be fine, but we just didn't have enough time. She already had all the machines full, and we had a train to catch at 11:30.
We didn't fare a whole lot better at the internet café. We managed to get files from one card moved by transferring only a few at a time. There were frequent error messages ('invalid parameter' - don't you just love how Microsoft uses such terms that mean absolutely nothing to the average user). We must be getting travel weary because we're developing a conspiracy theory that Internet City here in Heidelberg and Microsoft have arranged this clever way of keeping customers at the computers longer. They're not sucking us in, however. We left after half an hour.
We went back to the hotel, picked up our stuff and walked to University Square to wait for the bus. We then realized we'd left some food (leftovers from yesterday) sitting in the window sill behind the curtain to keep cool. I went back to get it and returned just before our bus showed up.
We dutifully paid our fare and got off at the train station. Had we stayed another week, I'm sure we'd have the local bus/tram system figured out.
Our first leg of today's journey was to Frankfurt. This will be the third time we've been there without actually seeing the place - only the airport and train station. We had a nice lunch along the way with bread and smoked meat and cheese, from yesterday.
On to Brussels!
On arrival, we checked at the tourism info booth, and learned there was not one room available in all of Brussels because of some huge conference. Their suggestion was to take a train to Ghent, one half hour down the line. It has an interesting historic city centre - we would love it, and there wouldn't be any problem getting a room.
So, being the intrepid European backpackers that we’re rapidly becoming, we walked briskly over to platform 16 and hopped on a crowded double-decker train car for Ghent.
While the tourist info lady at the Brussels station was checking for hotel room availability, the woman behind me in line asked where I was from. I recognized her as being a passenger in our train ride from Frankfurt to Brussels. When I said we were from Canada, she asked what part. I said, Yukon. She is the sister-in-law of an RCMP member I worked with in Whitehorse – small world, indeed.
On our arrival in Ghent, we learned there is no tourism information booth at the train station - just downtown. However a nice man let us in to his (already closed) office for assisting handicapped travelers, and gave us brochures for accommodation and a city map.
Over dinner (and a nice Belgian beer) at the train station we picked a couple of potential places to stay. We decided to find a taxi to take us there so as to avoid having to learn another city transportation system.
There was one single cab sitting outside, but without a driver in sight. The lady at a nearby stand said he had gone to get something to eat. While waiting for him to finish his dinner, another cab came by who could take us downtown.
On the way he got on his cell phone to let the hotel know we were coming. He found out they were booked full. So were four other hotels he called. He finally found a room for us in the neighouring village of Drongen.
And a lovely hotel, too!It has a beautiful raised terrace as an extension of the dining room (where we enjoyed a sumptuous dessert), a nice big room, with sliding glass doors to an outside sitting area, and wireless internet access - all for 85 Euro.
A dutch couple from Eindhoven were in the room next to us and we had a nice visit outside our rooms in the sitting area.
Wireless internet access in the room allowed us to keep up on email messages.
We packed it in early, anxious to see what the next day would bring.
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