Looking for Honda dealers in Brugge

Talked to Frederick at business-bikes.com this morning and he found a Honda repair shop for me here in Brugge. He's emailing the address to me. Frederick thinks it may not be the gear box but the shifter that got jammed when the bike fell.

Meanwhile, the bartender at the Bauhaus hostel told me that the hostel's weekend chef is a gifted motorcycle mechanic, so he's supposed to be meeting me at the hostel bar at 2 pm and go have a look at the bike and give me an opinion.

I still haven't heard from Erwin at the Honda shop in Belsele about whether he's contacted his friend near Brugge.

This morning I checked out Transport Canada's rules and fees for importing vehicles into Canada that weren't made in Canada or the USA and the cost of bringing this bike to Canada may be prohibitive. Transport Canada fees for importing the vehicle may be as much as the shipping.

It's starting to look like I may have to just do the best I can to get Citronnade healthy again and then kiss her goodbye in Paris. Sigh. But I am keeping my options open. Erwin (at the motorcycle shop in Belsele) said he could still help me ship her if I need to do that.

Meanwhile, I finally managed to figure out how to connect my iPAQ to the WiFi connection here at the hostel so I can use it to make Skype calls. The signal sometimes drops and the WiFi connection drains the battery at an alarming rate, but at least it's an alternative to walking to the Call Shop. Twenty minutes of Skype calls drained the battery from a 100 per cent charge to 67 per cent, though, which means that for almost every hour of Skype calls I'll have to charge the battery again.

Calling from Skype also requires dropping the international code you normally use before the phone number, it seems.

One of the most confusing parts of travelling in Europe is trying to figure out which numbers to use when calling people. When I use the phone's roaming function I have to start calls with the international code followed by the country code and drop the 0 before the first two numbers of a European number. You use that zero when calling locally, however.

And when using Skype I have to dial 00 then the country code instead of the 011 international code and the country code. It's a lot to remember and I'm constantly dialling the wrong intial sequence of numbers.

I'm going to try to call the garage that was kind enough to store the bike over the weekend now to tell them I have someone coming to look at it this afternoon. That means I need to find someone here at the hostel who speaks Flemish who can translate for me.