My last night in Belgium :(

As the title says, it's my last night in Belgium. I can't believe it, time just flew by! I was supposed to go visit Emilie tomorrow, but I'm going directly to Chalon instead, because I want to get the ball rolling on my paperwork and getting set up in Chalon.

A weird thing happened today. I was eating dinner (steak and fries, a typical Flemish dish) at a café and just people-watching, as I spent most of today doing. Suddenly, as I was sitting there, this pauvre (homeless guy) just comes up to me and starts staring at me. Now, I've had this happen to me before in Avignon, there were lots of homeless people there, so this type of thing isn't new to me. When this happened in Avignon, I would just ignore the person, and they would realize that either a) a foreigner who didn't speak French (which I do, but they don't know that), or b) I don't want to deal with them, so instead of being a bitch, I'm ignoring them. This guy, however, didn't get what I was doing, so within a couple of seconds, the waiter came up to my table and started telling the guy to go away and leave me alone. At first, he just stood there again staring at the waiter, then about 5 seconds later, he went on his way.

I didn't think much of it at first, to be honest - as I said, I'm used to homeless people from living in Avignon, and I've seen plenty of them in Chicago, too. However - and this where it gets weird - I was waiting for the metro to get back to my hotel, and again I'm sitting there waiting, and the *same* homeless guy comes up to me again, and again, not saying anything; just staring. So I stare back at him, and after about 2 seconds, I had enough of this bullshit, so I said to him "je suis désolée monsieur, mais je n'ai rien à vous donner..." ("I'm sorry sir, but I have nothing to give you"), very respectfully and as firmly as possible. I wanted to add "alors laissez moi tranquille!" (so leave me the heck alone), but since I'm in a foreign country, I held myself back.

In return, he just grunted at me, said "putain de merde" under his breath, and walked away. The whole journey home I was paranoid about this guy - I was looking all around me, to make sure he wasn't following me. I got to my hotel and hurried upstairs, where I'm sitting in my room right now, watching Michel Drucker on Vivement Dimanche...I haven't seen this show in years! I forgot how much I love it!

Otherwise, I went to the Parlament de Bruxelles today, after making the trek to the Parlament Européen only to learn it's closed on the weekends - the Tourist office lied to me. Or maybe misunderstood me. In any case, I did that, then had a sandwich for lunch, then walked around. Around 14h, my feet totally gave out on me, so I came back to my room for a few hours to give them a rest. I guess the traveling and walking around for more than 7 hours per day is starting to take its toll on my feet. After relaxing in my room for about 2 hours, I went back out, and then the whole thing I just wrote about happened to me.

As promised, here are photos of Gent. I'll post Brussels when I can next week.