it used to be ten days ... but i cant even afford the train this month without lending from the mother or the father, id LOVE to go back today but i can barely walk after last nights walk and even if i had another €13, THERE ARE NO TRAINS ON WEEK-ENDS IN VAN DRUKKERLAND

edit :

allright

I left the house at 1pm ... decided to get out for at least once this summer to the only thing in belgium that's really worth noting (if you're a tourist) imo ... Gentse Feesten 10 days street-festival ...

out the door i went down the road to Mordor

the license plate really says it all

so i go ... and i go ... i get to the station (whats left of it), see, there are NO trains here on week-ends , they re-constructed the whole quai a few years ago, with all pretty anti-slip concrete and new booths (shelterhouses? pardon my ... dont know the exact word), must have cost millions, you can probably fit 2000 people on there but

in reality theres never anyone there except on the morning and afternoon rush 5-6 am and 4-6 pm

there's no counter anymore where you can buy tickets , there's a vending machine, and if you dont buy one on the vending machine, THEY CHARGE YOU DOUBLE (is what the lady told me last time) ... so i go to the cigarette store (i thought you could use bills ... NOT!) ask them to spare change a bank note , back to the machine ...

IT WONT TAKE MY COINS , the sleuth (slot ?) SLOT is blocked ... its f*king blocked ... and there i stand 1:45pm ...
so ... BACK home, luckily the folks are home, ask the old man to wire me €10 (yes, its €12,80 from here to gent) so i can use the bank card (only option left), which he does (as a loan ofcourse, i dont know how it goes in the rest of the world)
thats 13 euros for about 25km

is that expensive ? my guess is it is, a typical belgium price (just lke the millions of taxmoney on a quai where no one comes, BUT IT LOOKS GOOD)

i get back to the station (about 20-30min walk from here) only to see THAT I LEFT MY CARD AT HOME

so i go back, get my card, and go back (by now ive been trotting around for an hour already, switched t-shirts once since i was sweaty from the hurry and in general had totally lost my apathy, not for the better though but at least that was gone)
i actually didnt feel like going , but i felt even less like staying at home and since its about the last day (since THERE ARE NO TRAINS ON WEEK-ENDS HERE) about the only chance to get out of van drukkerland for maybe the rest of the year ... so i just went

i get back to the machine

like :

30 minutes, the money isnt wired ??!? okay ... stay frosty, its belgium after all which means its belgian banks , they obviously didnt hear the speech of king Filip for the national holiday on "teamwork" and stuff (due to the reddevils i suppose) , so i get to waiting, cigarette store ... a beer, walk around, record videos (got about 40 ranting videos which i will spare you lol)
go back to the maching ... SAME THING ... back to the store ... a beer, REALLY charming pretty young blonde girl with a killer white pepsodent smile happy to help me ofcourse ... rinse & repeat ... every 15 minutes ... every 20 minutes

still no money ... 3 pm, 4pm , ... i'm starting to think i would have been better off paying with bitcoin i mean even at its slowest i havent know a tx last for three hours without confirmation

by now i've been "waiting" so long i'm starting to feel like Tom the fucking Waits if you know what i mean, between the vending machine, the girl at the cigarette store and the street up and down

and i just keep repeating ... i mean its today or its NOT AT ALL , right ?

then finally when i decide its the last try, at exactly five PM, the machine start whirring and wizzing and OUT COMES THE TICKET

5 pm ... another 20 minutes wait ... up to Zottegem, switch trains ... by the time i get to squatcity its probably almost seven (i planned to be back home by seven, see i was just going for a photoshoot of the street theatre and the street artists, the mimes and the musicians and the .... "odd" acts that dont fit in categories ... i once saw a guy juggling chainsaws ... live ones .. for instance)

right out of the station a fresh pack of spring-kittens making a holiday buck giving away free energy drinks ... with a smile

JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR PRESCRIBED

get me one and make my way down to where it matters, the epi-center of the city

got there finally , looking for @thetroublenotes i found the most amazing favella-music band, something to make the reverend Peyton proud :p
That's REALLY the heart of the city, if you go by day there's street theatre and artists everwhere but once the curtains fall there's only one place to be really ... food , booze everywhere, free concerts ... very colourful mix of people, the heart and epi-center, even on the other 354 days .

These guys just come up from nowhere (theres a park not too far away where there used to be lots of happy campers, dont know if thats still allowed i didnt really have time or money to go trotting)

Band on stage, i think was from colombia, dancing people everywhere, all fun, no trouble, few undercover cops trying to look very inconspicuous with sheppards that dont bounce an inch in the middle of all that crowd and ruckus ... a typical gentse feesten day :-)

the jacob's ladder

squatcity has a bit of a culture fetish (its where i did my last attempt at school socio-cultural work and lived for almost three years with miss psychokitty) art EVERYWHERE, homeless people too, but in general its a pretty harmonic place ... i think at one time they tried to get out of the socialist-working class ghetto-zone SO BAD they totally forgot where they came from , but the socialist party is still in charge (and please : do not take an american approach to socialism, just like "liberals" it means something COMPLETELY different here) the result used to be one of the , if not THE most progressive city in the country, it lives on students, really, there's a very high concentration of pretty hipster girls per square metre and probably the cheapest restaurants too (heavy competition and students dont really have all the money) ... all in all one of the better places to spend a night or week-end going out imo

So i stand there looking up this jacob's ladder ... 15 -30-45 minutes ... totally not getting it and then it strikes me : the bottom step are missing : you have to JUMP high or someone has to push you up to even be able to reach the bottom-most and start climbing it

those mexican kids REALLY make plastic buckets work ... that was truly amazing, thats people you want on Steemit, right?

(500mb video it might be processing for a few minutes)

then after all that lost track of time

took one train too late

stuck in Zottegem .. had to walk home, i'll put the maps here

thats a lot of kilometres, took off my shoes right off the bat since i been running around all day, the concrete and the asphalt biting my feet remind me that every step i take is one step closer all the time thinking of my grandpa on the rare occasions when he talked about that nazi labour camp : "giving up was not an option, if i quit i was dead" ...

A police van passes me by i say out loud yo i wont mind if you drop me off home, just as long as its home and not your hotel

guess what, they see a guy walking with his shoes in his hands at 2am ...

ofcourse they stop and guess what

after the usual "you are registered offender" (from 15 years ago)

they drop me off almost at my door, saving me about 15km of blisters ...

i never thought id thank a cop in my life but i did today

i will fix up the post with the other vids and pictures when i wake up, im guessing that would be about 12 hours from now im literally broken
i just have to share this, those guys were awesome, the band on stage was great, but doing THAT with waste and trash obviously gets extra credit ... and the cops made me say thank you without forcing me :p

a day to remember

i'll mold the post when my muscles move in the right direction i feel they're gonna start lactating like daddies name was Giger

actually by the time its uploaded and im about to click post i can barely walk anymore lol, im SO getting old

itadakimasu

oyasumi

chuc ngu ngon

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its now noon the next day, i hope i wont need to revise it anymore, i left about 40 videos out because they're just me ranting on the train company and hellgium

me : https://steemit.com/introduction/@rudyardcatling/rudyardcatling-signature-post-20180719