We had heard from our friend Tizio, aka Bob Corn, that he would be voyaging north from Italy on another tour. It happened that he had a show booked in Kortrijk on wednesday the 15th, and we happened to have this day off, and also had planned to come back to the town to visit Nathalie and Tjalle, and to pick up the rest of our cd's that we had sent ahead. We had asked Tizio the week before if we could open for him, and Brecht, the owner of the De Dingen Cafe, said yes. It worked out perfectly.
It was really great to see Tizio again, and have some more time to talk; he had been so busy at the festival.
We had been dropped off by Sam in downtown Brussels. It was neat to drive into the core of the city from the outskirts; jumping briefly onto busy highways, hearing stories about all the traffic, using the Ipad GPS, slipping through narrower and narrower streets. As the streets get older they get more twisted, like a tree trunk they seem to twist around themselves; at one point we were right near to his work but had to drive 10 more minutes around just to get to something that was 100 feet away.
We found a cafe to have some lunch and begin writing the blogs of the past week; we seem to get behind around 8 days, and by the time we write everything it is around two weeks late. So thank you to everyone who keeps tuning in :)
After a couple hours of writing, we still had some time to kill before our train west. We found a nice sidewalk bar near the train station and had some Hoegardeen. One big, one small.
I suppose the reader must think we are serious boozies by now. I assure you this is not the case; we are just enjoying being on “vacation” after a long year at school, and although we are having the 3pm beer instead of the 3pm tea, we really don't drink that much after that, and have yet to be drunk on this trip. I think both Aliza and I just appreciate the flavours and the social aspect of all these types of wine and beers, and we are enjoying it.
Again we found ourselves on the train from Brussels to Kortrijk. The train seats were very dusty and we sneezed.
Nathalie met us at the train station. It was great to see her again. We walked towards Brecht's bar, but Tjalle found us on the way, and so we got a ride.
At the bar we had a good reunion with Tizio, and it turned out we knew one of the guys in the band he was touring with, “Maybe Happy.” He had been the fellow who drove us from the festival into Mirandola.
After serious good local beer and some Belgian fries and mayo, we relaxed and talked for a couple of hours before the show.
It was nice to play again in Kortrijk and see some familiar faces again. It was really nice to hear Tizio sing in person, he has a great stage presence and sings so honestly and writes really sweet songs.