We reached the Sleep Well, hostel in Brussels at around 18:15. Although all the sampling sites were near by Ghent, I have to book hotel in Brussels because it is the only one available during our trip and it is very difficult to find cheap ones in Ghent.
Peter, one of our collaborators, has already identified the populations of all the species and he left information on those populations in his office which we have to collect before we start our trip. The distance between Ghent and Brussles is 50 plus kilometres so, we have drive every day more than 100 km. On the first day, we went to Pieter’s office, Laboratory of Forestry, Ghent University at Gontrode. In the office, we met Wisley, roommate of Pieter whom Pieter had described every thing. We received a package with description of all the sites and the route we can use for sampling.
According to Pieter’s suggestion, we went to sample Impatiens parviflora population 4 which was in between Kere and Eeklo. The population was near by the garden. After we found the population, we had lunch as it was already 12:15. After lunch we finished sampling this population and looked for population 3 of I. parviflora. After sampling those populations, we tried to find other populations but we could not and the GPS coordination Pieter provided is also different than what I am using. It is because we were using different coordination system than Pieter used. So, we had problem in finding rest populations. We were roaming round to find population/s with the small sketch which Pieter provided and suddenly saw some locals. They were with map of the local area but they also could not figure out where the populations could be. When I described about what I am doing, they seem so interested in the plant. One lady was very happy say that she has Impatiens glandulifera in her garden. Later when I told her that the plant is highly invasive in Europe and is really a problematic, then she said, she will remove all the plants from her garden when she is back to her home.
After when we were back at hotel, we figured out the location of populations with the help of google map and for rest days it went smoothly for sampling.
We finished sampling by 5th of July 2011. We sampled 4 populations of Impatiens parviflora and 6 populations of Impatines noli-tangere whereas Pieter will sample 6 populations of I. glandulifera.
On the 5th July, we went out for dinner in a restaurant. We decided to meet at Grand Place, Grote Markt at 18:00 and find restaurant for food. Sharmila want to buy some clothes so we went our bit earlier to the city. On the way to Grote Markt, we bought couple of clothes for Sharmila and for me. When we reached Grote Markt, Serina was already there and later Jennifer also joined us. We went to see restaurants and when we followed a small road, we saw many restaurants and many waiters calling for tourists to come to their restaurants. You hear the same statements when you pass one hotel. Finally we decided to sit in one restaurant and had soups, shrimps, chicken and many more.
It was already 20:15 when we finished our dinner. After dinner, we decided to walk to the city to see night life of Brussels. On the way back, I saw one curio shop with the name Everest. I went inn to see the things and see the owner. The owner look mongol face and I thought he also could be the person from Tibet. I did not ask him. Later, I wanted to buy one gift item, I went to the cash counter and asked him, are you from Nepal? Then he said oh dai tapai pani Nepali nai ho? (Oh Brother, are you also from Nepal?) Then we shared our greetings, talked about our homes back in Nepal. He is Lalit Magar who is from Myagdi, which lies in western development region from where I am. He is from the village which I already know because our neighbour back in Pokhara are also from the same village. We were in Brussels since five days and we don’t meet any Nepalese but on very final day we met lalit ji. We tried a lot to see whether there are Nepalese restaurants or not since we were in Brussels because we wanted to taste Nepali food but we could not find. Lalit ji offered us coke and other drinks for free. He seemed so happy after seeing us. Later we knew that there are other Nepalese curio shops along the street and we met them after we followed the street. On the very last day in Brussels, we met many Nepalese.
We left for Bremen, Germany on 6th July 2011 at 9:00 AM.
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