Prelude

So I am now in Kortrijk, Belgium.

The trip over the pond was mostly painless. I got a little bit of sleep on the plane, but I was in a cabin with twenty-six excited Italians returning from holiday together, which kind of inhibited that. On the first jump from San Diego to JFK in New York there were several infants and very young children, but they had almost everyone’s sympathy despite the noise. The plane wasn’t well stocked when we got on- there were no blankets, and they ran out of water. I guess that is what you get when you ban bottled water on flights, though some of the people who needed to mix formula were upset. I don’t blame them.

I arrived in Brussels, to a very large and very clean airport. It took about twenty minutes to get through customs, which is actually longer than it took me to get through airport security in the U.S. There was a driver with a sign waiting for me, and he loaded me up and drove me to Kortrijk. It is actually less than an hour from Brussels to Kortrijk, and about the same from either of those places to Ghent- much less on a train. The driver didn’t speak much English, so it was surprising that I knew more Dutch than he English. Our conversation was punctuated by long pauses as we took turns engineering shaky sentences in each others language. Still, he was very genial and wished me well before he left.

The way Belgium is zoned is one of the first things I noticed. For a country reported to have the second highest population density in Europe, they still do have a lot of farm land between urban areas. It must be offset by the way the cities and towns are designed- the sprawl seems to be different. The smaller cities, Deerlijk, Kortrijk, Zwevegem are all “tighter” than towns in the U.S. The streets are narrower, apartments and houses smaller, and private yards are small to non-existent, replaced by larger communal areas scattered about (de Grote Markt being the center of Kortrijk). Also, all of the towns are hinged around their downtown hubs. The result is a town with a population of 73,000 covering about the same area as Brawley (pop. 22,000). Interestingly, one hardly notices the size difference as everything is to scale. The Belgian countryside also has a very low cow density, with about two cows per acre and no feed lots. (Yes, I noticed the cow density). And they are clean. No wonder they have good cheese.

The driver dropped me off at the Parkhotel in Kortrijk, which is adjacent to the train station there, and at the edge of the downtown area. I checked in, and wandered the neighborhood for a short time to get my bearings. Judi and I will post some photos and tourist type posts next month after our permanent move. For now I’ll be pretty busy with work, as I have a lot to learn during my current stay. This is a two week training and orientation period, and the information I learn now I will have to immediately deploy in San Diego on my return trip, as well as troubleshoot a data collection program there. I have a tome of papers to read, and some new programs to learn.

I dove right in with the language, and try to use Dutch/Vlaamse as much as possible. I feel like every time I say something to someone in Dutch it is like hitting the “execute” command on in-process code. I either get some kind of useful output, or a blank stare: “syntax error”. I guess the only way to debug my language is to practice.

I didn’t explore too much on Sunday, as I slept off my jet lag a lot of the day. I ate a very fine dinner in the hotel, however, courtesy the Bekaert credit card. Shrimp salad with tomatos in crème sauce, with French green beans and pommes frites (chips/French fries). And I tried a Belgian beer which I must say has entirely changed my attitude toward beer, they aren’t joking when they say Belgium has the best beer in the world. I realized that my entire life it isn’t that I haven’t liked beer, it is that I have never really had one. One beer is still quite enough, especially these.

After dinner I headed to bed, so I would be rested for work. As it is I am a day behind on posts, but I’ve been preoccupied. Tomorrow: my first day at work.