Death in the Afternoon

Day 6 – Thursday – Vinkt

Finally a sunny day after five days of gray skies. Everything looks different. Warm streams of sunshine slant through the open wood-framed window and dance dust particles to the floor. Waking up, I swear I hear chickens from the other side of the wall. Below, cows moo in the pasture across the lane, and a wind rattles the tree leaves that are just starting to turn and fall. Further off, a dog barks now and then, the swish of a passing car, a small airplane in the sky.

Bed & Breakfast Deinze seems like way out in the country, but is actually just five minutes outside the town of Vinkt. You turn at the café ‘De Haring,’ where it’s not unusual to see John Deere tractors parked alongside the sedans. This is farmland. One-lane roads lined with cows and cornfields and modern commercial greenhouses.

Martine Haerens, our hostess, explains the B&B used to be a dove or pigeon barn (duivekot). A dark wooden barn door opens to an inner glass door, and a white tile entryway. And then I see them. “Stairs?!?” I think, leaning on my crutches. In one corner, the white tiles lead up steep and winding stairs. Hardly-adequate handrailettes are mounted on the red wall in a couple places. The corner turning stair steps are barely wide enough for my entire foot near the wall side, and like vertigo, the outside ends of the steps narrow away to nothing but the floor below.

The accommodations at the top of the stairs are so pleasant I decide it’s worth the effort to deal with these stairs. Up on my hands and knees, down on my butt. Not pretty, but it works.

A superb breakfast including coffee or tea, sugar cubes and cream, orange juice, milk, assorted croissants and brioche with chocolate, gouda and laughing cow cheese, little jars of local jams, cereal, yogurt, mini chocolate bars, small cookies, butter, and a fleece snuggie covered eggcup keeping one very local hardboiled egg warm. All artfully laid out at the hour of our choosing, with lots of cups and saucers, bowls and plates, silverware and napkins. Fortified, we’re off to visit the mother, brother and sister-in-law.

Dirk and Vera are literally just back from the south of France as we arrive. Unloading the travel trailer and doing laundry quickly segs into sitting around in the sun drinking Pastis - licorice-tasting booze mixed with water. Pictured are Dirk, Vera, Jonn and Clarissa. It’s a good thing we had a substantial breakfast, otherwise, it could have been like drinking Death in the Afternoon - an absinthe drink invented by Ernest Hemingway, consisting of Pastis mixed with champagne.

Later the same day: Belgian pancakes and coffee in the afternoon, served with ice cream AND whip cream. A lovely fish dinner at Leie Zicht (which means “the view of the river Leie”) where they served garlicky artichoke taupinaude for which I want the recipe. And the climax bar of cigarette smoke, the Bachtenaarke, a typical Belgium neighborhood bar, I’m told.