Gent

February 27, 2024

Tuesday morning, we got up, ate a nice breakfast with Marleen, and said our goodbyes. The plan for today was to drive to Brussels, tour the city and then head to the airport. In my mind Brussels is a boring city and other than the Grote Markt and the Mannikin Piss there isn’t much to see.

Lieve, the girl who came to visit us in Antwerpen, used to be a tour guide in Gent and offered to show us around the city, so we accepted her kind offer and headed to Gent.

We picked Lieve up at her house and then drove into downtown Gent. We parked near the Grote Markt and then walked around the area.

The Grote Markt

A cool building in the Grote Markt

This is the largest medieval canon that has been preserved from anywhere in Europe. It was cast in 1382. In Dutch, the name of this canon means “evil Woman”. Maybe because it has a very large mouth? It isn’t too evil though, because it has never been fired.

These water fountains are spread around the city. The upper fountain is for the people, and they have a lower one for pets.

It may not be the “Venice of Europe”, but Gent does have some beautiful canals.

I think these little girls going pee are someone’s idea of equal rights. If the Manikin Piss can go pee in public so can these girls. Their names are Lena and Luna.

This castle is famous. As much as I love touring castles, it was quite expensive to get in and I would have been there all day. In the interest of time, we passed on the tour.

We were able to peak through a window and get a picture of the foundation.

The gateway to the Old Fish Market, where Neptune keeps watch over the Scheldt (male) and the Lys (female).

More pretty canals

Havenhuis, (Port House) is located on the banks of the river Lys, this area was an important inland port in Gent from the 10th until the 19th century. Afterwards, all port activities were moved to the north of the city .

The North Sea Port company bought the old guildhall in 2011, restored it and opened it to the public. You could say that part of the port returned to its birthplace.

Koornstapelhuis (grain weighers house) dates from around 1200 and is the oldest house in the area. It was originally a public warehouse for storing grain. The Tolhuisje, originally a customs house, dates from 1682. The Gildhuis der Graanmeters was built for the Guildhouse of Grain Weighers in 1698.

This McDonalds is in a very old building in a very expensive area of Gent. They originally rented the space but as prices in the area soared (along with their rent) they bought the building.

We were in Belgium; we needed our daily chocolate fix.

I’m not sure what was in this but it was apparently made by Fred so it must be good.

Built during the sixteen hundreds, this building has been home to some very rich people. Some famous people who have stayed here include the French King Louis XVIII, the Russian Tsar Alexander I and Frederick I, Prince of Orange. The interior has been completely restored.

The building changed hands a few times until 1953 when it became a protected monument. The city of Ghent bought it in 1981.

After spending a few hours in Gent we moved on to Brussels. We dropped Lieve off at her house, thanked her profusely for her time, and then headed to Vilvoorde. Vilvoorde is a suburb of Brussels and was my second area.

When I first arrived in Vilvoorde, we were in this apartment on a very busy street. The strangest thing about the apartment was that it had a shared bathroom. There was also a little girl in the apartment who loved to chat us up every time she saw us.

After taking a couple of pictures of the apartment we moved on to the burial sight of William Tyndale. Tyndale was born in England but was a bit of a rebel and got on the bad side of the Catholic church. He fled to Belgium and hid out in Vilvoorde. One of the many things he did to annoy the Catholic church was to translate the Bible into English. Up until this time, the Catholic church had claimed that only the clergy should read the bible and they wanted to keep it in Latin so no one could argue with them.

Tyndale's translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, the first English translation to take advantage of the printing press, the first of the new English Bibles of the Reformation, and the first English translation to use Jehovah ("Iehouah") as God's name as preferred by English Protestant Reformers.

The Catholics caught up to him in Vilvoorde and burned him at the stake. “Mercifully”, they strangled him before they set the fire.

When our mission president found out that our apartment had a shared bathroom, he instructed us to find more appropriate accommodations. We were teaching a family that had some rental property and we eventually moved into their rental house. I use the word house loosely because I don’t know what to call it.

It was a two-story building that touches on both sides to the adjacent house. Most houses in Belgium do that. We had the bottom floor, but no one lived in the upper floor. We did have access to the attic, however.

I remember one time when I was feeling down, I went up to the attic and said a very sincere, verbal prayer for peace and support. It was one of the more special spiritual experiences of my life. I felt an overwhelming peace overcome my entire body. I knew that God loved me and that I was where he wanted me to be.

This apartment (house?) and the city became my favorite place in my entire mission. We taught a lot, and while we only baptized three people, everyone loved us, and we became rather popular.

The area has changed a lot since I was there. This wooded area and the houses in the background were a huge park when I lived here. We walked on a path through here to get to the communities that lived up on a hill.

One day when we were walking through the park these little paper darts came flying at us. There were some young kids hiding in the bushes and they were shooting at us. We talked to them, and they showed us how they would roll strips of paper into cones and shoot them through plastic tubing.

We promptly went out and got us some plastic tubing and had many battles with those kids. We got so good that we could shoot flies off the walls of our apartment.

Right across the street in front of our apartment was a major canal that always had freight barges running up and down it. One night we were teaching this single lady named Mevrouw Van Campenhout, she confided in us that she had attempted suicide once in the past and that she kept a full bottle of valium in case life got too hard for her. We didn’t leave that place until she gave us the bottle of valium. On our way home we threw the bottle into the canal. I think there were some very calm and peaceful fish in that canal for a while.

We kept visiting Mevrouw Van Campenhout and she soon joined the church. I have since learned that she was strong throughout her life. She received her endowments and attended as often as she could. She died younger than she should have due to a weak kidney from her earlier attempted suicide.

Another family that we taught was the Delange family. They had four girls and a son that ranged from about ten to eighteen. The three younger girls kept hanging out around our house and couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t let them in our apartment.

One night we were sitting on our bikes outside a pub using the light from the signs to look through our area books trying to decide where to go next. This drunk from the pub came out and was harassing us. Suddenly, out of the blue came this kid who punched the drunk out and left him dazed laying on the sidewalk. It was the Delange boy making sure we were OK. He never sat in on our discussions, but he was definitely our protector.

Just south of our house was a huge overpass that crossed over our canal. The airport was just east of this canal and every plane that left the Zaventem airport passed over this canal. We always used to day dream how some day that would be us.

We then drove to that very same airport, which was close to where we were, checked into the hotel and took a train into Brussels. As we walked toward the Grote Markt we passed this big sign in one of the shop windows. For those who didn’t know, Smurfs were created in Brussels in 1928. By the time I arrived in 1977 they were very popular all over Europe.

As I said earlier, while Brussels is a beautiful city, there isn’t much touristy stuff to see. Walking along the streets as the sun set made the place look beautiful.

The Mannikin Pis, “little boy peeing” is only a couple of blocks from the Grote Markt.

Other than the Mannikin Pis, the only other thing you must visit in Brussels is any place that sells Belgian Waffles. These are called Brussels Waffles in Belgium.

There are two kinds of popular waffles in Belgium. The Brusselse Waffels are fluffy and often eaten with whipped cream and other toppings on them and Liegese Waffels which are heavy and filled with large chunks of sugar. They are sold and eaten like chocolate bars are sold and eaten in the states.

And then you have the frituurs that are scattered around Belgium like hamburger joints are scattered around America.

Walking back to the Grand Markt we passed this statue of a dead guy. The sign said that if you rub him it gives you good luck. We figured we could always use some good luck.

The city of Brussels was founded in the year 979 so when I was there in 1979, they were celebrating their millennium. That is weird for me to even say it. A millennium! They had some pretty glorious festivities going on. We wandered around the Grote Markt for a bit admiring the beautiful buildings. On a warmer evening this place would be filled with people.

The Brussels city hall was built in the early 1400’s.

Once we finished admiring the Grote Markt we hopped back on the train and headed back to our Budget Hotel.

When I say, “budget” hotel I mean “budget”. This place was quite cheap. It was very nice, but it was barely big enough for our queen bed. Alex slept on a bunk bed above our bed. I was a bit worried, but he stayed up there.

I’m not sure which was worse, this tiny bathroom that you had to back into or our open-air bathroom in Ieper. If Alex is around, I suppose I would have to choose this bathroom so my backside doesn’t get spread across the internet.

The next morning, we woke up to a very cold day, returned our frozen car and found our plane.

We had an uneventful flight to Chicago where I said goodbye to Mom and Alex, and I flew on to San Diego. Mom had previously booked tickets for Roots Tech.

So that was our trip to Europe. It took me longer to write about it than the trip itself took. It was a great trip, and it was great to visit good people from my past.