Our stay in Ostend ends rather abruptly. We have a nice room on the top floor. Above our bed is a life-size reproduction of James Ensor’s cheerful Ostend beach scene. Looking out, we see the boulevard and the Kursaal on the left. A little further to the right is the art-deco façade of Hotel-Brasserie Du Parc. In the 1930s, visual artists, writers and other intellectuals met there.
Right in front of us is Marie-José Square, named after the Belgian princess who didn’t put all her eggs in one basket: in 1930 she married Italian Crown Prince Umberto and at the same time she had an affair with Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Every 10 minutes, the coastal tram passes the square.
After a walk – thanks to a clever health app, I know we have 12.7 km in our legs – we’d like to take a breather in our room. Arriving on the top floor, we can barely understand each other because of the overpowering noise that seems to be produced by two drills operating in parallel. I try to cut myself off from the noise using two ear plugs with music. My travelling companion kneads two balls of wax and stuffs them deep into her ear canal. We communicate in writing: “It will stop at 4pm, won’t it?” my fellow traveller asks. I know too little about Belgian working conditions to answer meaningfully.
Sometimes there is a moment of silence and we breathe a sigh of relief. At 4.15pm, when the machines drill into the concrete with renewed vigour, my travelling companion splutters upright. “I’m going to the reception,” she says as she stompingly leaves the room.
Ten minutes later, she returns shaking her head. “It might last until seven o’clock, possibly even till eight.” We decide to grab a bite to eat somewhere. Indignant, my travelling companion describes the hotel employee’s reply: “She shrugged her shoulders and said: allée, that’s how things go in Ostend. Buildings are constantly undergoing unannounced maintenance here.”
Around the corner from the hotel we notice a tower waggon and a large bin of concrete waste. The jackhammers, each operating in their own frequency range, are doing their work on the roof directly above our room.
When we return in the evening, it is quiet. However, the noisemakers’ gear is ready and waiting for another round. The next morning, we are not kept in suspense for long. At 6.48 am, drills start bellowing above our heads and the furniture in the room vibrates. It is so absurd that we can only laugh about it. We had planned to stay another day, but now we are sure: we are going home.
