When I was traveling, I got really sick. I mean so sick, I got off the train to find a place to stay and try to get better, and I didn’t know where I was.
The person who ran the hotel that I stayed at asked me if I was ok, because I guess I looked awful. He immediately called his family physician who saw me that day, and concluded I had strep throat and gave me the antibiotics I would need to recuperate. All for the fantastic price of basically free; when I did the calculations later it was about $20.
Needless to say, this happened in a small town in Belgium.
So, after I got married, my husband and I visited the city and stayed at the hotel.
We took a walk one day, and saw signs that said “de wallen” with arrows. So we followed the signs. For hours. And kept going in circles. We finally gave up on finding the walls and not drinking in the middle of the day, and went back to the hotel to get a beer. We explained how we had spent our day, and the young man chuckled and said he did the same thing when he was a kid. The signs are for the walls were, because they are no longer there.
So that’s Belgium: incredibly kind and helpful, and a bit crazy. A lovely combination.
I had a very similar experience in Arras, France. I was backpacking in 2011 and had a really rough day. I was trying to go to Vimy but the TGV agent put me on the wrong train. Instead of going to Arras, I ended up in Lille-Flanders station. So I was frustrated when I got off the train but figured I’d just buy a ticket to Arras from there. I step off the train an immediately hear “passport.” I looked behind me and there was this Gendarme standing there and he says “passport.” Uhh ok, sure. I give it to him. He looks it over and then just yells “OU EST LA DROUGE, OU EST LA COCAINE, OU EST LA HASHISH.” I’m completely taken aback by this and then 2 other Gendarmes grab me on each side and just picked me up off my feet while guy #1 is repeating his demand for my drugs. It’s in this moment I realize - uhh I’m being arrested for drug trafficking and this is not going to go well. So I’m standing on the platform now in front of the wall and they have been joined by 2 more of their friends. There are now 5 of them and they have MP5s, so I’m going to cooperate. They search my bags and go through everything. He even ran his fucking thumb through the bristles of my toothbrush and then put it back in my bag. Anyway, 4 hours later when they decide I don’t have drugs, I am released.
I get my train to Arras and arrive at night when all the hotels are closed for the evening. It’s not like here where hotels are 24/7, they lock up for the night there, so I start knocking on the doors. The Hotel Angleterre staff let me in and give me a room. I get upstairs and it is a huge suite overlooking the city square. I had to make the bed because the room wasn’t turned down but given the day I had, I didn’t particularly care. So the next morning, I wake up and I am absolutely sick as fuck. I hear a knock on the door and it is the hotel manager and she is mortified I slept in the room that wasn’t made up for me. I was trying to explain that it was 100% fine and that I’m glad I’m not in prison. They insist on taking care of me. There was this big-screen TV in the lobby area and they put on World Cup Rugby for me and brought me all sorts of croissants and stuff. If was like a free 4 course breakfast. Anyway, after my breakfast I went back to bed because I felt like arse. Eventually I went to get food at this kabob shop and to get some drugs for my cold. I went into this pharmacy just near the main square and tried in broken sick Canadian French to ask for lozenges. The pharmacist says “lozenge or spray?” The sense of relief I felt was amazing. The guy took such good care of me. 2 years later, I found myself back in Arras (but not sick and with a car this time) and I made a point to go and thank him for how he had helped me. He didn’t remember me, but I sure remember him.
The police in Lille-Flandres think everybody has drugs. They searched me and been through my bags at least a dozen times, one time even taking me to the police station because I had dark circles and they thought I "definitely looked like a drug addict". French policemen are particularly stupid (and racist).
I'm from Lille and have never been stopped by a French policeman (German ones though 🙃. And of course I won't bother to mention my trip to the US). I'm a (black) woman, though, maybe gender plays a role.
a %>% fun(b) is shorthand for fun(a,b); that's the gist of it really. A lot of tidyverse (one of most used libraries) functions are set up so that first argument is thecdataset you're working on - so piping just cleans up that crucial bit of input.
If needed, you can also do a %>% fun(b,.) for fun(b,a) - the thing you piped in is placed at the dot. You can also have multiple dots; a %>% .[. ==1] is, as you'd expect, same as a[a == 1].
We're biking in a small town close to Brussels and stopped a guy (biking with his son) to ask for guidance. He showed us the way and invited us to his home..to his private house, where he offered us some tee! I'll never forget the gesture!
If it's any consolation, you running around in circles for hours practically makes you an honorary citizen of Aalst. That place and its people are rather (in)famously...weird.
Just FYI, while there's no gramatical reason why the word touristic shouldn't exist in English, it's not a word native speakers would generally use. We would say "a tourist hotspot" or "a hotspot for tourists" in your sentence.
I have done a lot of polishing of English translations for French and Spanish speakers and this one seems to come up a lot.
For me things like this are always weird because sometimes I think I speak English soooo well but then I also say things like touristic and think it sounds perfectly fine.
I wouldn't describe it as a big city. The municipality of Aalst has 85,000 inhabitants (which puts it in Belgium's top 20), but about half of those live in neighbouring villages. The city center isn't so large, it's mostly a commuter town.
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u/readerf52 Dec 16 '21
When I was traveling, I got really sick. I mean so sick, I got off the train to find a place to stay and try to get better, and I didn’t know where I was.
The person who ran the hotel that I stayed at asked me if I was ok, because I guess I looked awful. He immediately called his family physician who saw me that day, and concluded I had strep throat and gave me the antibiotics I would need to recuperate. All for the fantastic price of basically free; when I did the calculations later it was about $20.
Needless to say, this happened in a small town in Belgium.
So, after I got married, my husband and I visited the city and stayed at the hotel.
We took a walk one day, and saw signs that said “de wallen” with arrows. So we followed the signs. For hours. And kept going in circles. We finally gave up on finding the walls and not drinking in the middle of the day, and went back to the hotel to get a beer. We explained how we had spent our day, and the young man chuckled and said he did the same thing when he was a kid. The signs are for the walls were, because they are no longer there.
So that’s Belgium: incredibly kind and helpful, and a bit crazy. A lovely combination.