Day 2 in Gent, Belgium – a Tuesday – so there was way more life in the streets compared to Monday when most businesses were shut down.  

Is it Gent or Ghent you ask?  It’s Gent here with the H added for the English spelling.  We’ll stick with Gent.  As in “He’s the hairy handed gent who ran amok in Gent, lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair.”  

Rhymes with bent.  

I bought a public transit day pass (a Vervoerbewijs) for 7.5 euros and rode the tram all over the place.  A couple of the lines pass through narrow, congested streets in the city center.  In stretches, there can be just six feet or so of separation between the outer side of the tram and shop storefronts.  It’s visually thrilling when you stick crowds of people in between with the tram moving at a good clip.  

Without an agenda in a city I don’t know, I really like to explore via the take-the-train-and-see-where-it-takes-me method.  It puts you with the real people and produces moments and lasting images way beyond what the guidebook touts.  

As an aside, have you heard about the kid from NYC’s upper west side who has become somewhat of a celebrity because he’s cuckoo about riding the subway?  It started off as a Patch piece and then went viral to the point the MTA is making him a poster child of sorts to counter the public’s fear about the current level of danger down there.  The kid is three years old!  He rides the train with his parents holding his hands.  It’s cool but the coverage of his exploits is overstating the amazingness and uniqueness of what he’s doing given his inability to process all that goes with riding a train in NYC these days. 

Weather was nice here Tuesday.  60 degrees with sun moving in and out of clouds.

I had broccoli soup at Souplounge on Zuivelbrugstraat.  It was excellent.  5.5 euros with a roll and an apple.  Earlier in the day, I had the bolognese sauce on a bowl of penne from a small stand at the Gent-Sint-Pieters train station.

Tomorrow, I go to Paris on a three-segment train trip. 

Arrived Gent, Belgium Monday afternoon.  Here for two nights.  It’s kind of on the way to Paris.  

Last night was the Remember Sports gig at MEZZ in Breda, NL.  No opener.  11 euros to get in.  It was great.  Better even than the night before.  The venue was a two-minute walk from my lodging spot.  The hotel room was nice mainly because it had an electric kettle with an assortment of tea and coffee. 

I met a guy about my age at the Sports show.  He wore a Grandaddy band t-shirt and said he came to the gig after listening to some cuts of the band online.  The guy rode his bike to the show from a town he said was sixty minutes away.  By bike.  “I ride slow,” he said.  

Bikes are everywhere in the Netherlands and here in Gent.  People ride at a leisurely pace mostly.  No helmets.  

Before the Sports show, I found a brewery in Breda serving haze.  It was tucked away in a large industrial complex about a half-hour walk from the gig.  It was called Frontaal.  It’ll probably be the only haze I find on this trip.  My server handed me a can of one of their pale ales on the way out.  I consumed it after the gig.  It was much better than the stale-tasting Jupiter at the venue.     

My bus this morning from Breda to Gent departed at about 11 AM.  It was operated by Flixbus, a big German bus operator which has widespread route coverage in Europe and is making advances in the US.  The ticket cost just 9.99 euros.  I added the assigned seat option for 1.49 euros.  A woman who had previously boarded in Amsterdam was sitting in my seat when I got on.  It didn’t seem worth making a fuss about given it was just a two hour ride, so I just said hello and sat next to her.  The driver exuded competency but I was still nervous largely because he seemed a bit preoccupied with a personal phone conversation for about the first half of the journey.  He held the steering wheel with one hand – and a small device the size of a marble with the other.  The device was some kind of phone accessory that he deemed important to hold close to his mouth.  My fear was he’d drop the device and then become preoccupied with finding it while driving. 

Irrational, I know. 

I walked into Gent’s city center after checking into the hotel.  It’s beautiful.  I’m going to try to recharge while here after going full Frontaal without proper rest since Friday.