I’m staying at the Best Western Belfort Hotel in downtown Kortrijk, Belgium. It’s red-brick buildings on the right of the picture with the sidewalk cafe in front. The hotel has high-speed wireless, but until tonight it has been very sporadic and not very useful. Something seems to be a little different tonight. The connection is staying up and is reasonably responsive. The hotel is nearly full as well. For the first time I can hear people above me and to the right of me. Tomorrow is a holiday in Belgium — called National Day — celebrating the 175th year of Belgian independence. I’ll finish up some work in the morning and then will take a drive in the afternoon.

But, tonight I’ll take some advantage of the internet connection and make an entry in my weblog. The hotel is nice and the location is very nice. I’m right in the heart of the city. Kortrijk is about 20 miles due west of Oudenaarde where our plant is located. It takes about a half-hour to drive from Kortrijk to Oudenaarde. The drive is quite picturesque and goes by a couple of windmills and a nuclear power plant.

There is no hotel parking. When I arrived on Saturday, there was no parking anywhere around the hotel. So I drove to a municipal parking garage to find that this place was going to be closed from late Saturday night until early Monday morning. After some negotiations, the attendants told me there was a way to park. I had to pay in advance and they would give me a code I could use to go in and out of the underground garage. That worked quite well. The alternative was finding a street-level parking place somewhere and then feeding the parking meter every 2 hours. That also wasn’t what I wanted to do. The parking on the street is free, however, from 7:00 p.m. through 8:30 a.m. the next morning. Since Sunday I’ve been parking on the street.

That yielded one of the most expensive parking places I’ve ever used. I parked my car last night outside the hotel feeling pretty lucky at the parking space I was able to get. I went out this morning to find my car was missing. It had been towed! It hadn’t really been a parking spot because it was a driveway entrance! It doesn’t look much like a driveway and the sidewalk is all torn up, so I just didn’t see it. The markers are there, however, if one knows where to look. The result was a trip to the police station where I filled out a bunch of paperwork (they even wanted the name of my boss) and payed 50 euros fine (about $70). After all that was completed, a couple of policewomen in a van drove me to the impound place which was some significant distance south of Kortrijk. That place didn’t open until 9, so I had to wait about 20 minutes. The owner first brought coffee to the policewomen before he would pay any attention to me. I’m sure he knew who needed to have the attention! His fee for towing the car was 110 euros, making the whole escapade about $190. Mighty expensive parking! Tonight I was much more careful about were I parked my car. I’m not interested in doing this again tomorrow.

Before coming over to Belgium, I called Church Headquarters to get the address of the church in Kortrijk. They told me there was a branch here, gave me the address of the meeting house and the telephone number of the Branch President. After I arrived on Saturday, I called the Branch President’s house and spoke to a teenager in the house. The Branch President was not available, but the son told me that church started at 10 a.m. I didn’t verify the address which, of course, was a mistake.

I walked to the church building on Saturday morning, leaving plenty of time to get lost. There was no one there. I eventually walked back to the hotel room and called some other folks from work to see what they were up to. We met up in Oudenaarde and took the train into Gent. There is a huge festival going on this week in Gent, so the trains and streetcars were packed. We spent the afternoon going around to the various venues to see what was going on. It was quite a show. The festival is primarily about music, with about seven different stages set up in different places in downtown Gent. All of the performances are free — food and drink, however, has a charge associated with them. I took a lot of pictures and some of them will eventually be uploaded on the web.

So, that’s generally been the past couple of days. Hopefully this connection will last through the rest of the trip! We’ll see…..

I’m at a restaurant on the marketplace. I may get dinner…. The waitress has
brought me two different drink menus so far. I’m sitting out under the awning and it’s quite protected from the wind gusts. She just showed me where the menu
was in the middle of the binder of all the things to drink. Silly me. It’s
hard to get anything besides a Fanta unless one drinks a coke.

The carillon in the bell tower on the square started up at 8:00 pm. It’s
quite pretty. The book says it has only 32 bells, but it sounds like more
than that. I picked the restaurant by how many people were in it. I may
have to modify the criteria as most seem to be drinking beer rather than
eating. The couple at the table next to me just ordered mussels. They are,
according to the guy, “in season now.”. I also didn’t know that mussels
had a “season!”.

It is fairly cool out. Probably about 60 degrees with a light wind and
occasional gusts. Most of the restaurants are closed — either they’re on
vacation or the place is closed on Mondays. This place closes on Tuesdays,
except for this week the waitress said, because they close for three weeks
starting on Friday. She’s going with her boyfriend and their two-year-old
daughter and her other four-year-old son to Spain, that is, if “he doesn’t
spend too much money drinking.” Way too much info to give a foreign
stranger, me thinks.

The scampi’s have arrived. Time to eat!

I’m in the World Club at the Minneapolis Airport waiting for my next flight. Of course, waiting means getting on the computer and connecting to the internet. The flight from Idaho Falls was on a small regional jet seating 48 people and every seat was taken. There is one flight from Idaho Falls to Minneapolis in the morning leaving from Idaho Falls at 8:15 a.m. There is one flight each day from Minneapolis to Idaho Falls which leaves about 9:30 p.m. The two flights line up reasonably well with a trip to Europe, so here I am. The airport terminal in Minneapolis is huge but also a very nice place. There are lots of places to eat and a number of nice shops. The Northwest World Club is also a good convenience. There is (pay for) wireless in the club making being on the net a reasonable experience.

Before I left Idaho Falls, I sent a post to the blog by way of e-mail. I would have expected that entry would already be on the weblog, but no such luck! If it doesn’t appear before I leave here, there’s not much I can do until Monday. The hotel I’m where I’m staying in Kortrijk, Belgium, has dial-up access, but no high-speed wireless. There doesn’t seem to be very much high-speed available in hotels in Belgium yet, which I don’t understand. It seems like every hotel and motel in the US has high-speed and most of them offer it as a free service for their guests. This capability is common even in Asia. What’s up with Europe??

I’m staying in Kortrijk this time rather than in Gent. There is some kind of huge festival in Gent and the city center is shut down for the week. Since the hotels are in the city center, this becomes quite inconvenient for the business traveller. Kortrijk is about as far southwest of Oudenaarde as Gent is northeast. It’s not a huge city, but much larger than Oudenaarde. Even at that, finding a hotel was not easy. Late July and the whole month of August is vacation time in Belgium. It turns out that many hotels close down during this period for a couple of weeks so that the hotel owners and staff can take a vacation. Since everyone else is supposed to be on vacation, this isn’t considered to be an inconvenience. I’ve often wondered where people who go on vacation stay if all the hotels close during the same period?? It’s a mystery to me.