It's Beglam out there

Belgium has a higher density of battle sites than most other unfortunate nations in the world. It's not that the Belgians are particularly bellicose... they are just rather unlucky with their neighbours, who throughout the centuries have had the discourtesy to fight many of their wars on Belgian soil. No surprise then, that the seat of the medieval Flemish kings, the austere but impressive Gravensteen castle towers over the centre of Gent, just outside my B&B.

The castle formed the centre piece of Aurelie's directions to me - stay on the tram until you see it. You can't miss it... but after little sleep on the flights from Oz, a dash around Landan and then the whizz of Eurostar to Brussels, I was starting to have my doubts (being a Doubting Thomas and all that). It was dark and dank, and every second building in Gent looked like it was twice as old as (European) Oz, if not more. Churches, monasteries, covered markets, towers, city halls... they all had a rather fortified look to my jetlagged eyes. But I was too tired to leap off impetuously, and the tram staff were insistence on directing me to the youth hostel which fortuitously is also located close to the Gravensteen.

I'm staying in The Karawanserai, which is kind of appropriate. It's a quirky mash-up of oriental furnishings rather than an eastern themed hostel, run by a friendly, if somewhat absent-minded single dad. He looked appalled when I asked for brekkers at 8:30... would 9am be ok, he asked. He has to take his daughter to school in the mornings. My line-in is thus enforced... it's tough in Euroland.

Gent itself is a delightful, picturesque, sleepy town. I've spent most of my time wandering around the historic centre, ducking into the occasional church and monastery when the cold gets too piercing. My woolly hat and gloves qualified as the best things I've packed within 5 min of stepping out the front door. Gluhwein in the Xmas market also helps keep out the chill, but I'm sticking to the soup today, at least until I've given my 90 min talk (and then 30 min of questions) this evening. That's the normal teaching slot over here... I can hear most of you academics wilting at thought, apart from Birq, of course, who has only just warmed up when he passes the hour mark!).

Window shopping has been a pleasure - I could spend a serious amount of Euros here, but fortunately I haven't been given my speaker's fee yet (yup, people are actually paying me to rabbit on about what I do for 'fun'!). Art and design are taken seriously here, jewellery and chic clothes shops abound, as do shops of crafts and festive decorations. A quirky take on traditions, however, lifts these beyond the banal - particular favourites include the rotating scene of a girl kissing a frog, and turning into one herself, the rabbits holding carrots behind their backs about to give each other pressies with the caption 'Can you guess what it is yet'? and the nativity scene with presents of gruyere, edam and brie from Three Wise Mice. The cow-shaped clock, with ticking udders swaying back and forth, on the other hand, was hilarious, but just plain wrong!

Amidst all these are the traditional local delicacies - the crusty bread (the rye bread with raisins and walnuts for my brie sandwich yesterday lunch-time was delicious), monastery-brewed beers (the monks knew their flock oh so well), cocoa-dusted chocolates by the kilo, waffles dripping in syrup, whole shops dedicated to cheeses, olive oils and vinegars, and amazingly, even an Australian shop offering didgeridoos, for those kids who have just about everything (I also passed a snack bar called The Australian Bite this morning, but they didn't seem to be offering 'roo sarnies or widgety grubs on a skewer).

I'll sign off by recounting an overheard conversation in the bierhuis on Tues night as I watched Liverpool demolish Marseilles. So often, we cringe at our fellow countrymen abroad, be they Aussies chanting Oi Oi Oi (there is a second verse, of course, extolling the balletic grace of great sporting clashes and the pathos of being a long suffering fan, but like the national anthem, few people seem aware of it), Germans commandeering the beaches, or Brits... well, shall we just say, some English NATO (?) guy was 'jokingly' telling his Danish and German counterparts that black footballers are cheap... you just have to pay them bananas. Stony silence followed. I guess it lost something in translation, and we all know how lacking 'Old Europeans' are in humour.