A Christmas in Ghent
This Christmas (2018), I was invited to David and Marta's home in Everghem, a suburb of Ghent, Belgium. David is the brother of a friend (Nina) in Maryland, and I met him when he drove her and our mutual friend Kathie to see me here in France in August. David is an American born in Germany with Australian citizenship, a lifelong street performer, and married to Marta who is Polish, and the mother of four adult children, three of whom live around Ghent, while the fourth -- Helena - lives with her husband and children in Denmark. Yes, it was confusing! The food was mostly Polish, with some Belgian thrown in (that would be primarily the deep-fried potatoes, plus beer and chocolates); the languages were English, Dutch (the lingua franca of this area of Belgium) Polish, Danish (among Helena and her family), and probably some Flemish, German and French thrown in occasionally. Ghent ("Gan" in French, which is closer to the original Flemish for "conflue