Day 13: Time to go home

Today was the last day of my conference and I presented a poster this afternoon, which went pretty well. Sal and Nuri had the job of packing up and checking out of the hotel this morning, whch I later found out was a disaster. Nuri woke up in a bad mood and couldn't be distracted, even with Belgian television. Sal managed to pack up eventually and took Nuri out to play on some grass. We met up for lunch (baguette sandwiches again) and then he took Nuri back to St. Niklaas's Church where they were practicing for a concert tonight, which Nuri thoroughly enjoyed. We finally got a taste of typical Belgian weather in the late afternoon when it rained for the first time since we got to Belgium. Ironically, Sal had become so sick of the hot weather that he had finally broken down and worn shorts that day and left his fleece at the hotel. But the rain let up rather quickly, continuing our weather good-luck streak.

After the conference, all of the MIT people and their significant others met up for dinner. I ended up organizing it, as I often do (because otherwise no one organizes and we end up wandering around looking for a restaurant that can accomodate 18 people). Sal and I had scoped out restaurants the night before and found a yummy-looking Moraccan place with big servings, right on the canal. I made dinner reservations there, but I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. When we first arrived, they said our table was ready for us and it was on the second floor. Forgetting the Belgian convention of the ground floor being zero, we all traipsed up the narrow funky red winding staircase (including stroller) and settled in on what we later realized was the first floor. The staircase was so steep in some places that it had periodically spaced handle bars instead of railing in some locations. The owner informed us that we had to move up another flight and we found ourselves two stories up, in a lovely private room just for our party, where half of the diners were seated on long Moraccan-style couches. We openned the windows and saw that we had a lovely view of the canal below. Everyone seemed very pleased with the food and atmosphere, so I couldn't have wished for a better place. It was definitely a nice change to have "ethnic" food after a week of baguettes and croissants, much as I love them. It was a nice social ending to the conference.

Our time in Belgium has been nice but we are ready to go home and get back to our normal routine. We left dinner a bit early to travel back to Brussels so that we don't have to go as far in the morning. After a train ride from Ghent and a very long wait for the only bus that went out to our hotel, we finally checked in just shy of 11 pm. The hotel was quite empty and they kindly upgraded us to an "executive suite" which really was just an American-sized hotel room with a leather couch. This was our first hotel room that had an actual double bed instead of twin beds. Nuri fell asleep quite late, around 1 am. I think he's trying to get on a good schedule for Boston.

Reflecting on our time in Belgium, it was lovely to see a new country that I used to think of as mini-France. While there are many aspects of the Belgian culture that are similar to France, it's quite a different place and pleasant in many ways. The people are very friendly and willing to speak to you in English. Belgium is divided into two lingual regions: one where French is the predominant landguage and one where Flemish, a derivative of Dutch, is the predominant language. In Brussels you mostly hear French on the street but almost all signs are in two languages. This also means that all of the streets and train stations have two names, which can be confusing. In Ghent, Flemish and/or Dutch are the predominant languages (not that I can tell the difference between the two). But the signs and menus are a complete mixed bag. You see Dutch/Flemish stores and restaurants where we are often guessing at the menu items. At the University of Ghent, they began teaching courses in Dutch several decades ago. On the other hand, you hear a lot of French on the street and find stores that have French names. Most people speak French, if not English, which makes it fairly easy to communicate. There are fantastically yummy waffles being sold by street vendors for cheap in a lot of places and of course, the chocolate is tasty. The parts of the country that we visited were very stereotypically European, with quaint houses, old architecture, cobblestone streets, and outdoor cafés. Unfortunately, while we expected Ghent to be a sleepy little town, it turned out to be a major tourist destination for teenagers, many of them hanging out drunk by the canals at night. It was definitely a bit more crowded we had anticipated, which made it less appealing. At the same time, the whole town seemed to get behind our conference. They seemed very happy to have us there and they welcomed us very warmly.