The story goes a little something like this...let us call the young lady: "J".
J had to be enrolled in a dutch class. Being a Filipina who only knew English, some tagalog w/ a visayan accent and ofcourse, Visayan, her native language, living in a country like Belgium requires a mastery of a couple of things, apart from layering. One of these things is the mastery of Dutch. Hence her trip to the House of Dutch.
Our tale begins with J being dropped off by her partner at the school. K, the partner, needed to get back to his workplace after lunch thus could no longer accompany J to the school to process the admin stuff. The independent J didn't mind. She was even able to make friends with the belgian registrar, who was ehem...quite impressed by her mastery of the English language and high test scores (NOTE: The day before, J took what she thought was a cognitive test for dummies at the same location (Google: Covaar Test). The registrar, not having had an inkling as to what a Philippine Peso looked like, was promised by J to be shown such the next time they met. He was most certainly pleased. No marks for extra belgian points were gained from this exchange though.
So, after asking the registrar to google for her what a bus stop looked like (as J knew for a fact that there were bus stops in Belgium, however, did not know how to detect one YET), J left the building took a right, then a right in search for the elusive bus stop. She finally arrived at the same bus stop her friend oriented her on the day before. (NOTE: Her friend, A, had to take her to the same building the day before, by the bus route, so J can be oriented as to how to get there should she need to do it more often in the future).
It is to be noted that the following instructions were noted / remembered:
1. From the house go straight to the city center and get on bus number 5 ONLY.
2. Swipe your bus card with the front facing you and don't hold on to it. Just insert it and wait for the machine to spit it back out.
3. Put the card back in your pocket. There is no need to punch out. As long as you don't exceed an hour, you can get on as many buses as you can. Additional note: Don't lose the card.
4. Ring the bell on the first bridge you pass and get off on the next bus stop. Additional note: NOT THE RED BELL. Ring the BLUE bell.
5. After getting off at the bus stop, just go straight and in the next intersection that forms a Y go left to Congostraat (Congo Street).
6. Destination reached: Inbergering / House of Dutch.
7. On going back: Just retrace your steps and take the same number 5 bus or any bus as these will pass by the city circle.
Easy, noh?
Yeah, it should have been a piece of cake and it really seemed like it except for one minor thing. I missed the part about having to get on the bus in the bus stop AT THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ROAD. So poor, provincial J whose common sense had most likely been greatly affected by the cold, took some bus at the same side where she initially got off and ended up in the outskirts of Ghent that could not even be found in the main map and could barely be identifiable in Google Maps.
Confession: She doesn't even know if she got on bus number 5.
But after a couple of phone calls, some walking, waiting, and more freezing...after battling the fear of dying from hypothermia and getting frostbite, an hour and 45 minutes later she was back at the City Circle and had never been happier to see civilization, more so a familiar location.
8 hours later she is writing this note.
Her only consolation from this whole dummyscapade was that she thought she saw Gavin Rossdale get off the bus she was first on...
But then again...that could still have been the effect of the cold.
---The End---
Editor's Note: Crying has been censored from this essay.
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