The Bakery at the Beginning

(Saturday morning in Ghent. A paper map on Oskar's kitchen table, between two helmets.)

Oskar: Okay so, look. We start here, we go along the canal, and the castle's at kilometre twenty.

Alina: Twenty. On a bicycle.

Oskar: It's flat. The whole route is flat. And then there's the lake at thirty-five. Big trees, nobody there. Really attractive.

Alina: Thirty-five kilometres to look at trees.

Oskar: You said you wanted more exercise.

Alina: I said exercise. I didn't say I wanted to die in the middle of nowhere.

Oskar: Nobody's dying. We'll stop for lunch.

Alina: Where?

(Oskar looks at the map.)

Oskar: There's a village at twenty-eight.

Alina: Is there a café in it?

Oskar: Probably?

Alina: Right. Remember May? You planned forty kilometres, and we stopped at the bakery in Drongen after fifteen minutes.

Oskar: That bakery is very good.

Alina: We were there for two hours. That was the activity. That was the whole day.

Oskar: Okay. Fine. New route.

(Oskar turns the map around and draws a line with his finger.)

Oskar: Bakery. Castle. Lake. Home.

Alina: The bakery at the beginning?

Oskar: The bakery at the beginning.

Alina: Now it's a good route.