If you find yourself on the road to Doornik ...

Posted by TheYank at 8/27/2009 5:24 PM EDT

Yes, as you know if you've been reading my twitter posts, I'm back in Flanders again. Two more days. I didn't feel like I'd finished touring the WWI sites back in July so when I saw Ryanair flights were going for very, very little I decided to come again. It amazes me how cheaply I can fly to, travel around & stay (for a night) here.

Late August is not, apparently, an ideal time to visit Flanders. Why? Because it stinks. It's as if every farmer in the region is spreading slurry at this time. Farm smells are one thing, but slurry's another.

Driving in Belgium is an experience. I may have mentioned this after my last visit - can't remember now - but Belgians are nuts behind the wheel. There seem to be no rules of the road. There are speed signs, etc., but everyone ignores them. I'm pretty sure - never 100% certain of anything where all the signs are in Flemish - but I think I drove down a closed road yesterday.

I followed a dozen or more other cars doing the same thing - swinging out around a sign that seemed to me to be saying "local access only." Seeing as the detour signs were so infrequent, I was just as happy to ignore the signs so I could follow my map.

Also, I learned one hard lesson on this trip: when you pass into Flanders the names of cities change. Yup. I was driving south on the highway looking for the road to Tournai, which is how it was spelled on my map and on the signs coming up from the airport. However, in Flanders there were no signs for Tournai. Nor Mons. Fortunately they provide the French spelling for Rijsel (Lille).

It was only after I went wrong a few times and was driving around in circles and finally took the last road that was available to me that I saw a sign that helped: Tournai is Doornik and Mons is Bergen (as in the NJ county) in Flemish. All the signs in the Ieper (Ypres) region use only the Flemish spellings Doornik & Bergen. I saw many, many signs for Doornik, but had no idea that was the same city as Tournai. Other than a local, who would?.

That debacle cost me about 20 minutes when I was trying to find my way back to the airport, which was about 90 miles away. Those 20 minutes weren't crucial, but they were enough to cause me agita. And there's a lesson for Ireland in that.

A couple of years ago the Irish government decided that the town of Dingle should no longer be known as Dingle, but as An Daingean. An Daingean is the old, Irish name for the town; Dingle was a later development.

Some (most, I think) of the locals objected, claiming that tourists would have trouble finding the town because they're looking for Dingle. (I'm sure there were other objections too, but I can't remember them now.) And they have a point based on what I experienced in Flanders. It's one thing to change a town's name, but you'd better be sure to change all the road signs and maps otherwise, yes, tourists are going to get lost. And annoyed.