You can't go home

Day 5 – Wednesday – Lake Overmere-Donk

Woke up late at the Diamond Hotel. The noise of trains and traffic below no problem evidentally. Across at the Belgie-Lei apartment buildings, a window washer sits in a swing, a bucket and squeegees hanging from his belt, gently swaying to and fro with a dancer’s steady rhythm and fluidity. No movement wasted as he massaged and caressed each little windowpane. Like he’d washed those windows a million times before and could do it in his sleep. Checked out and left Antwerp for our next destination: Vinkt.

Enroute we passed several houses where prostitutes ply their trade morning, noon and night. Like big spiders in a web, each girl presents herself in the big front picture window with special costumes and lights and a chair maybe, waiting for a passing motorist to slow down and check her out, stop, come in, yessir!

Stopped for lunch at Lake Overmere-Donk, which is in East Flanders, where my companion lived until he was about 9.

Before going to the restaurant, we drive the one block (remember, I’m ‘walking’ with crutches) to where his old home still stands. Up a gently sloping hillside, past a manicured privet hedge and behind a glass and wood monstrosity that is now a restaurant, the tip-top of an old house can be seen. It’s hard to tell what style architecture it is, but it's striking because it doesn't seem to be made of brick. There’s a small broad roof and a sharply peaked front façade just visible, and an old whitewashed garage up a long driveway behind the house.

As we sit in the car, he tells me of his boyhood adventures and how things used to be: an orchard in the back yard, ice-skating on the lake. Just across Donklaan Straat – as scenic as it gets - is the longest lake in Belgium, Overmere-Donk. Roses, rush and manicured hedges fringe the visible shoreline. Boats sit waiting to be rented. Close by, a small island, home to a miniature forest, contrasts with a round manmade fountain further out, shooting plumes into the wind, sprays of moisture heading south in the gray day.

As unsightly as the old family house has become as a restaurant, right next door, however, takes the cake for bad – the Wok Palace. A picture worth a thousand words.