Gent

I realised yesterday that I never showed you anything of my trip to Belgium apart from a beer glass, so here is a panorama I shot from one of Gent's many bridges in the centre of the old town.

As you can see it wasn't exactly the ideal time of year for really appreciating the architecture as a lot of it was hidden behind the stages set up for the music festival. On the plus side there was plenty for me to do in the evenings, besides drinking Belgium beer.

And The Missing Letters Were....

So the missing letters from the last post were v and l which should allow you to spell the name of a well known Belgian beer; Duvel. I was assuming that at least one of my readers would drink enough Belgian beer to recognise the distinctive font used on Duvel bottels and glasses but I was guessing I was a little over optimistic.

I was trying to spell Duvel as I'm currently in Gent, Belgium (I've been giving a GATE training course to a great bunch of people at CrossLang) and happened to arrive in the middle of their yearly arts/music festival. The hotel I'm staying at has a Duvel sponsored bar, and for each Duvel you buy you get two tokens which represent bottle tops with a letter on them. If you manage to spell out Duvel then you get a free commemorative Duvel beer glass.

It took me two nights and some trading of tokens but I now have my glass and lasting proof that I was here. Of course now I have to hope that I can take the glass on the plane home within my hand luggage, a) so that it will survive and b) as I don't have any checked luggage with me (after my trip to Marrakech I try and avoid checking luggage unless I really need to).