The arrival
The D-Day is finally here. August 26, the day when I finally set out on the trip to a destination more than 1000 km far from my home. This destination is going to be my home for next 5 months. My trip starts at Prague airport (actually in Ostrava, but a pretty boring journey by train is not consider even to be a trip). The first moment I realize that I’m going to Belgium is when we are flying over the Belgian borders and it starts raining. But I should take into account that this weather is typical in Belgium, shouldn’t I? 🙂
Firstly I’m in doubt after I leave the plane. Because of the fact that the airport is in Charleroi, in the Walloon part of Belgium, everything is written in French. They don’t speak English, I don’t know Dutch yet and French is for me the same as it was written in some language which is perhaps of unearthly origin. Anyway, I got to my new home eventually.
I would mention one more situation which I experienced on the way to my final point. The only thing I had known before I found myself in Gent was the name of the stop where I was supposed to get out of the tram number 1, but of course I “forgot” to check which stop it was. With my 30 kg heavy suitcase I took a tram, which was indeed overcrowded, so that I couldn’t move to the driver to ask him, I couldn’t move anywhere, so I decided to try to ask people around me whether they knew which stop the famous Witte Kapr…something was (I already know, it’s Witte Kaproenenplein). Of course, they didn’t know! But….what was fairly pleasant for me was the reaction of the woman I asked at first. She forwarded my question to people of almost the whole tram with such a pleasure and smile that since first minutes I already started to like it here. In fact….. this wouldn’t perhaps be so worth mentioning, but I simply can’t just imagine such a reaction in my home town…..