Poetry in Ghent

Sometimes a few hours can mean so much, expecially when there are no walls. No mental bricks, no cultural prejudice. Just a uniting language and the desire to share yourself exactly the way you are. And an invisible fine-tuning to similar radiowaves, which brought about the golden spark. She just about wrote it all, so here is my point of view...



When I met Suzan in a casual restaurant in Sofia, she managed to convince me in just a few hours that I'd fall in love with her city. Everyone loves their cities, but there was more to that obviousness this time. She spoke about belgian musicians, and how they had free shows there before they became famous, about modern artists and the freedom to find funding for artistic ideas. We jumped from plain conversations to sharing very quickly. Somehow I knew that instant I was going to visit her very soon. I was eager to travel this autumn, after my summer vacation to Prague failed due to the horrible summer flu. So when Oceansize announced a date at the VK club in Brussels, I bought tickets straight up. We arrived in Belgium one day before the gig - a perfect opportunity to spend 24 hours in Ghent. The locals claim it's more alive than Bruges, less chaotic than Brussels, and less snobby than Antwerp, lol. And scattered with hundreds of bycicles, as the main means of transportation.



Indeed, poetry is everywhere in Ghent, you just have to look close - on pavements, walls, around the canal that gives the town its remarkable romantic note, in elevators and in the wind that brushes your hair. So when you take leisurely walks, beware, for it can be contagious. When we arrived, it was cloudy. I was prepared to meet the rain. On the way to the center square, the sun came out and suddenly Ghent looked like shiny chocolate wrapping - the kind that really stimulates your appetite on different levels. We had delicious lunch in a huge student cantine, beef steak with belgian fries and brussels sprouts. We passed by Suzan's favorite bookstores and tasted the local alcoholic specialty - liqueur so sweet, you'll never know how and when you got drunk...



We were lucky to have someone show us all the beautiful cafes. We sat in the place Suzan went to read and enjoy some great coffee, near her university. It will sound like a tourist clichee, but I swear I had the most delicious brown chocolate tart there that I've ever tasted anywhere in the world. A moment of true happiness for a chocolate junkie. And while we were discussing life in different aspects, we won ourselves some listeners...



Afterwards we marched into one of the cult music stores, as planned. It was nessesary to leave this ritual for the end of the day, because I knew we'd spend hours inside. Suzan showed me some cd's of successful local pop-rock bands, while I bought two favorite albums at a great price - David Bowie's Heathen (for the amazing artwork) and Radiohead's Ok Computer - finally the orginal album in my cd library. I still preach the theory that if you fall in love with an album, simply downloading it from a pirate blog just isn't cool. Go out and show some respect for the artist by paying for it, even if you do it after some years...



And thus, slowly, the day started coming to an end. Our time had passed in laughter and a serious intake of positive energy. We spent one part of the evening wrapping up the conversations we had in Sofia a month before. The future is looking bright in our separate mindsets. And when our paths meet again, we will have the answers we seek now, and time will have cleared the clouds on the horizon. Miracles happen every day.