2nd night here in Anzegem and it has been really nice. Belgium i have found quite peculiar, it feels a bit ghost town-ish. There are lots of shops and local business’s but non of them seem to be open. Whether it is an extension of the bank holiday that there was the other day “Assumption of Mary”. Or whether Belgium takes August off for summer, i’m not quite sure what is going on. Not even all of the bars seem to be open. In terms of looks it is one of the more prettier places i have ever visited. I would very much like to come back but maybe earlier in the year when everything is open and i can get a real sense of the place. There is so much history here, we have not even scraped the tiniest part of the surface yet.
What feels the most odd is that driving round feels a bit like being on the set of a 2nd world war film. There are a few places that make you feel like your about to see Tom Hanks and Private Ryan. We managed to get to the supermarket today and wow Belgium is quite expensive, probably on par with the UK i would say, apart from Diesel, Belgium must be the only place on the planet where diesel is more than the UK. It is about £1.60 a litre. Not sure how much different the further east we go the diesel gets. But the Lidl we found to be quite expensive as well we spent about £95 quid in what we thought was 3 days worth of meals. I thought we were being thrifty but apparently not.
Im not sure how geared up for tourism the more rural parts of Belgium are we have not found particularly brilliant service and a few times we have struggled to use cards. Not obscure ones but normal ones like Visa and Mastercard the shops have just turned around and said we don’t take them. In one shop we had to pay and £1.50 to use card and the total came to £13.50? I understand if it had been a low value transaction below £5 but this was over £10. Like i say though when we were in Hooge Crater we loved it and i think it is because that is more touristy orientated rather than real rural farmland Belgium. I suppose if you work in a little pharmacy and all of a sudden Lisa (Scottish) and the Beef (who is going through a phase of just screeching at everything at the moment) it must be a lot to take in.
