En Belgique

So I made it alive to Bruselas, which is what the Spanish call what the French call Bruxelles and everyone else calls Bussels. I didn't want to actually GO to Brussels, just to Belgium, but the place is so small it was hard to avoid. After an email mixup I had to be rescued by my couchsurfing host, J., who picked me up from Charleroi to avoid sending the poor tourist alone on the trains. And also because he had some kind of train pass. Anyways, we made it back to Bruges okay and went by the pub to meet some his friends in his VW bug (confusingly, the kind with the trunk space in the front and the engine in the trunk). The car is like the love child of an angry motorcycle and a bumper car, with enough noise to scare the pedestrians, the appearance of going twice as fast as it is going, and only half a seatbelt. The first pub we went to was full (it only had about six tables and was located in the smallest street in Bruges) and the second was closed, so we ended up at a third one, and a fourth one... Anyways, my goal in life became to try as much Belgian beer as possible, and we started a list. As the two days in Bruges progressed, I think my hosts were proud of how far I'd gotten. I only have about 340 kinds left. The farther we progress in the evening, the worse the handwriting of the biere du jour.



My tour of Bruges was eclectic and lovely, passing canals, old gates (more on that later), old buildings, more old buildings, and lots of restord guild halls, courthouses, pubs, stores, and everything else. The place is like a living museum, full of picture-perfect buildings and masses of tourists. I can't help but take pictures, but at least I had a local guide to tell me everything and order things in Dutch if we wanted them. We ended up at the brewery in Bruges (Brugse zot beer) where we shared a table with some French tourists from Caen, a young couple, and a Belgian friend of my host. Our conversation was mostly in French for the benefit of our guests, though J., his friend A. and I all spoke english to each other, I spoke German with A., and J. and A. spoke Flemish to each other. Confusee... anyways, we agreed to meet the Frenchies at the main square at 9, and J. and I went home.




I wanted to go for a little run down the street, but J. had a better idea and told me to change and get in the car for a mystery trip. We drove through little hamlets and villages, between fields, left right left right ("where the heck are we going?" "I'm not telling, you will see"). We parked in a little town called De Haan (I think) which has won awards for being the prettiest coastal Flemish village. How you evaluate something like that is beyond me.... in any case, the place was out of a postcard and possessed several kilometers of wide beaches, firm sandbars and little streams running though it, which resulted in the best run I've ever had--absolutely gorgeous scenery (welcome to the North see!), great ground, perfect temperature... several people were riding or driving horses on the beach, and it was absolutely lovely. Makes me want to learn Flemish and move there. Anyways, it was a bit of a run to make it to the market on time, but we found our French friends and went back to the tiny pub of the night before, where you could get a paricular kind of beer only available at this pub and of which you are only allowed to drink three as they are so strong.



After the Frenchies left we went to another place, the Marquee, of the night before, and "on the way home" we landed at Bras, from where we tumbled out several hours and several rounds later. On our bike ride back we passed the old town gate which, miraculously and without explanation was unlocked, so we felt obligated to fully investigate and climbed up the tower (this is not for tourists, so don't get any ideas!) for a good view and some sleeping homeless people. We found a bicycle in the basement, which we liberated before setting off home.




We tried to get out relatively early the next morning, as I wanted to go to Ghent, but as we had gotten home at 5 AM it was a bit hard and we were a bit tired (though not as tired as M., who had been with us, as he got home at 5 and had to work again at 8 AM). We visited him at the supermarket where he worked, and he brought some pastries which we ate at one of the tables of a furniture store, known in the town as being the owners of the wooden monkey statue that someone liberated one night and put in the town roundabout. It was eventually returned but after public outcry the owner himself returned it to the roundabout. And then I went to Ghent.



I had a bit of an issue with the bus system in Ghent and ended up in Zjinwarde or somewhere that wasn't Ghent and was spelled with too many js for its own good. Feeling very lost and out of place I approached the bus driver with my destination "zuid" written on a piece of paper, at which he violently shook his head, told me to get off (in the middle of nowhere) and carefully told me to take bus 5 back to town. But I made it and my host V. picked me up at the bus stop. We spent the evening doing a walking tour of Ghent, visiting the old Nunnery and the old town, the canals and some of the unviersity buildings. We had a drink at a pub on the main square, we walked farther and here and there and took random streets. Ghent has many, many beautiful streets full of old buildings, but also does a fantastic job of combining old buildings with modern or renovated buildings, and the whole place (being a student's city) is full of life and people and cafes. There are almost 300 cafes in Ghent.




We went to an art gallery-cum-restaurant for dinner, where I had a lovely little omelette and salad for the whopping price of 4,50 euros. After dinner we had a drink at V.'s local bar and dodged the rain. Back at her place we played a bit of guitar and collected some warmer clothing before heading out for another stroll through the old town and another drink at a tiny tiny pub which looked like an ecclectic mixture of grandma's pottery and a biker bar--rock music and blue fillegreed tiles. The pubs and the bars here are amazing and each one is practically a work of art. There is one which plays baroque music and has rococco architechture, another with 70s sty;e kitchm and lots of homey, friendly places. I had a beer called Kwak, which is known for its peculiar glass. Some cafes make you give them your shoe as guarantee that you won't steal the glass:



Our walking tour of Ghent the next day commenced early, and I am pretty sure we walked down every street in Ghent at least once, some of them twice or three times. We visited the castle and the cathedral and the churches and the squares, guided by a map for alternative travellers which guided us to such destinations as the "lovliest tree in Ghent" and the place with the "best vintage postcards" and crazy small hole-in-the-wall shops and places. We discovered a statue of one of the noose-bearers (apparently some people were about to be hanged and were paraded about town, and someone liberated them but they were already dead, and then the liberators themselves were executed, or something like that...) with a cast-iron hard-on. We found quiet streets next to the water and watched the preparation for the Ghent festival, which will be the next ten days or so and will make me rearrange my plans to see it for at least one night on my way back from Paris.