A Night Out

Well.

Yesterday we had a guided walking tour of the city with the Low Countries Studies class, focussing mainly on the historic parts of the city. There are buildings from as far back as the 12th century here. A highlight was seeing a copy of the painting that Gent is famous for - the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, by the Eyck brothers. We got a full explanation of what was happening in the painting too which was neat. My favourite part of the painting is a Bishop who was standing in a corner looking glum, with a long pair of pliers and some kind of pink meat. Our guide told us that he was an Irish man who came to Belgium as a missionary. But he didn't speak Dutch so the people couldn't understand him and got a bit angry because he was always gibbering away in Gaelic. So they removed his tongue with some pliers! Hence the poor guy is standing there holding his own tongue! Now don't tell me that medievel painters didn't have a sense of humour!

Then there was a reception/welcome for us at the city hall, which was special because apparently people aren’t generally allowed in there. There was some media interest in our tour and reception so there was a radio broadcast and photos taken of us at the city hall! So, we will all be in the Flemish newspaper! There was a journalist asking us all sorts of questions about where we were from, why we chose Belgium etc. So that was interesting! By the way, the flag in the photo above is the Flemish flag of Gent :)

Then of course, Wednesday night is the big night out in Gent. On Wednesdays, the ESN pub The Porter House has a drink special (beer here is about the only thing that is actually cheap – for example $2-3NZ for a beer in a pub, or $6NZ for a 6 pack of Leffe in a supermarket!). This week's special was an Estonian beer called Gordons (so initially I thought it was Gin!). I didn't like it very much but the other beers I have tried here are all amazing. Especially the Trappiste ones. Anyway to cut a long story short I ended up having a great night out, spent hardly any money because the beer is so cheap, and got home to bed just before 6am. Nice. Needless to say, today was a bit of a slow day but my Nature Conservation class was really interesting so I didn't have any trouble paying attention! We also found this Chocolate bar called Quetzal (ahh brings back memories of spanish class) which serves the BEST hot chocolate I could even dare to dream of. Seriously. Its like, liquid chocolate. They actually put melted chocolate in the bottom of the cup. Mmmm.

How are you all doing back in NZ?
xxx