Mmm Delirium and Belgian Waffles

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And then my friends, we arrive in Brussels, Belgium. Capitol of Europe; home of fries and the waffle....
One of my favorite cities in Europe!

April 13
Well I actually fell asleep sitting up on the plane ride over from Madrid, for the first time in my life. I normally have a horrible time falling asleep on public transportation, but I was so tired; I only remember take off and landing. We took a bus and a couple metros and found our hostel with little trouble. I was happy to see that the hostel was a little more suited for "youthful needs". It had a great big common room, a nice kitchen with an oven (a rarety in Europe), several computers with free internet access, a television, multiple showers and clean big dorm rooms. I suppose it lived up to its vote of best hostel in Belgium. We weren't able to check in right away, but they let us leave our baggage there and we went out to hunt for some food. We had planned on grabbing a waffle somewhere, but ended up in a Bennigan's like restaurant. Now normally, in the U.S., I really detest restaurant chains like Bennigan's and the ever so evil Applebee's, but this place was a gift from the restaurant gods. It had been forever since I had been in a place like that. I ordered a big pita sandwich plate that was full and a fresh Belgian wheat beer made in Brugges, a touristic city north of Brussels I think. I was in 7th heaven, and I think Dan and April were too. Now you might be thinking, "Now Cara, why would you want to eat American style food in Belgium?" And the best way I can explain it is this: for those of us who have sworn that they are never drinking again after a long night out, we end up going out once again the next weekend because we just need it. We need to release from the norm around us, makes us feel good. I don't know, that might be a bad comparison, but you get the gyst of it. So continuing... after lunch we decided to peruse the streets and ended up finding a street that was very similar to Little Athens in Paris, in the Latin Quarter district, yet Italian style and not Greek. Full of little restaurants and maitre d's enticing you to come and enjoy some pasta or the Belgian specialty of Moules Frites (mussels and fries). After making our way through this busy area, we found the creme of the crop of European squares, the Grande Place of Brussels. This square is gorgeous, the buildings are big and old and just beautiful. You must go some time and see it, the pictures don't do it justice. After gawking all around and taking picture after picture, we found a differet cream on a differet crop: a dessert Belgian waffle stand.....Incredible. Now according to a map I got at the hostel, the type of waffle I bought was too touristy, not like a local. But screw those people because they don't know what they were missing out on. I got a fresh warm waffle with pecans and caramel and whipped cream mounted on top. The Belgian waffles that we know in America are too big and are like a meal, but in Belgium their eaten kinda like an ice cream cone, a snack on the side of the road or one that you put in a child's lunch for school, like a bag of chips. Traditionally, you get a plain waffle that has sugar "encrusted" all around to give it a little sweetness. Very simple. I had plenty of those too at the hostel where they were only 70 cents. But anyways, back to the touristy waffle. I couldn't finish it all, so I had Dan finish it, but all the same it was delicious! I was stuffed after that needless to say. So once we finished those, we waltzed back to the hostel to take a nap, as we were still running on very little sleep. Now I am not sure if it was that day or another day when we saw a girl juggling, but I'll tell you about it now anyhow. After our nap, we went out to wander some more and came across yet another street full of street artists. There were plenty painters selling their work, people dressed up oddly and posing very still, and then there was this juggling girl, well attempting. She was so lazy with her arm movements and had no strength in her movements and just kept dropping her bowling pin things. It was so funny... she was very flighty and just throwing the things around as if she had no care whatsoever in their flight direction... You might have had to have been there, but Dan and I got a real kick out of it. Oh well, at least she's courageous enough to get out there and do it....We continued to wander and went through the cute gay district and found the famous peeing fountain. It's the most bizarre thing. It's this statue of a little boy and he pees out water as a functioning fountain. It's called Mannekin Pis. That's right Mannekin Pis, and it's really famous! It was crowded, everyone was taking pictures of this little peeing metal boy.... Apparently there are others in the city, but we only saw the one. It was fun nonetheless.

That night we went to something I personally was quite excited for. The Delirium Cafe, winner of the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records award for the most variety of beers in one bar, which just happens to be 2004 beers. Now I don't consider myself to be a big beer drinker, but I LOVE Delirium and most Belgian beers, so this was a real treat for me. Plus, a Belgian beer in the U.S. on tap usually costs around 8 to 10 dollars, here it was around 3 euros! That's the same price as a Heinikin in France! (I hate Heinikin fyi) We had a great time and I got to try some excellent rare Belgian beers that the bartenders recommended for me. We met some people from all over, Belgians, Dutch, Canadians, Moroccans, Spanish, etc etc. If you ever make it out to Brussels some day, you MUST go to this bar, plus right across the way is the Absinthe bar....

After a night of Belgian beer fun, April and I headed back, she just needed to get home, I'll leave it at that...Dan decided to stay, he had made friends with some Canadians I think...Us girls made it back just fine and at the hostel we met some people staying ithere from Australia, China, America, and some other place that I can't remember and April was doing well after a while. Off to bed we went.

April 14

I won't go into too much detail about the majority of my day, other than the fact that I needed to stay in the dorm room until dinner....really great time as you can imagine...Dan and April had some good quality time together exploring the city.

So starting at dinner...
April and I split a pasta dinner, once again, and we reconnected with the Australian that we had met the night before, as well as an American named Hannah and an Israeli named Ohad. We all decided to meet up later at a bar to watch a "football" game and hang out for the night. So we did. It was a little crowded in the bar because I guess a game between Manchester United and Liverpool is a really big deal for Belgians. I was a little taken aback by the smoke in the bar. I've been spoiled in France with smoke free bars, but it seems that Belgium hasn't passed a no smoking law, yet that is. The table of guys next to us literally never stopped smoking. As soon as one of the them finished a cigarette, he would light up another one automatically, it was quite annoying. And I'm fairly used to being in bars with smoke from working in one for three years, but this was just ridiculous. Once the game ended, the bar cleared out rather quickly. Ohad, was quite upset with the outcome of the game, Liverpool lost, and he wouldn't talk for a while. Soccer here is football for Texas. People REALLY get into it....

After staying in that bar for a little while longer we headed back to the Delirium bar because the others had heard about it and hadn't been there yet. April, Dan, and I were a little disappointed but I wasn't drinking so I really didn't mind going back, as long as the company is good. On the way to the bar, we stopped at a fries stand where the 18 year old Australian that apparently has loads of money treated us all to a cone of greasy potatoes. I thought I should try the tradition, which is fries with a big blob of mayo on it. But, I had to get ketchup too because that is just way too much mayo. It still was, I couldn't eat it all and had to give it to someone else. It's quite disgusting the thought of a huge dollop of mayo on fries, but that is what all the locals eat. I still prefer ketchup. So after the fries we made it to the bar where I was having a good time meeting other Anglophones, a Kiwi (New Zealander) and an Australian and dancing to Michael Jackson with April. At one point, this tall man in his upper thirties came up to me and had this massive smile on his face and practically yelled in my ears, "Hello! Do you speak English!" and I told him yes and he asked me if I was Belgian and then I explained that I was American. He explained how he and his friend had been trying so hard to find a Belgian girl, everyone that they met was a tourist. So we ended up talking to him for a while and we found out he was Austrian and there for some work thing. He was so funny and SO Austrian. His accent was like Arnold himself, big gestures, big voice, and I suppose the five or six alcoholic energy drinks he had drank before enhanced these factors too...He asked me what stereotypes Americans had of Austrians and really all I could think of was this, "Well, we think you all stand on mountaintops and sing Do Re Mi in your leoder hosen." Then he boomed a large laugh and talked about Mozart and the governator, two things he was really excited about. It was fun talking to him, a definite highlight. After a while of more chatting with the internationals, I headed back to the hostel with the girls and went to bed.

April 15
As it was our last day in Brussels, we decided to meet up with our new buddies, minus the Israeli who was still asleep, in the morning to do a bunch more touristy things. Our first destination was a big outdoor market that we had heard about. Along the way we came across a big cathedral which I made everyone go into. It was pretty much a standard European cathedral except that this one had a very colorful altar area, painted all around, similar to the walls in the Neushwanstein castle, which I found to be interesting. After the cathedral we headed to the market which ended up be the world's biggest and CRAPIEST garage sale ever, minus the garage part. It was just a bunch of old shit. And it smelled like old shit. I could only manage to walk around it for about 5 minutes before I decided to walk through another church on the same square while the others continued looking at the junk. However, Dan didn't just look. He actually bought something and I to this day have NO idea what the hell he was thinking at the time. He bought the world's ugliest water pitcher thing that looked circa 1930's. It was brown and cream with ugly butterflies and flowers... We asked him what the heck he was doing with it and with all seriousness he said, "Do you like it? I bought it as a present for a coworker." In comes the laughter....Honestly, that poor woman that he's giving it to, she is going to think he's crazy. That pot/pitcher thing was our comedic outlet for the rest of the day. We gave him so much crap for it.

After the crap market, we walked around in not the prettiest of neighborhoods and then caught a metro to the Atomium. The Atomium is this massive structure shaped like an atom or molecule or something and it houses a museum in each part of the molecule. While on the metro, we met these two girls that I think were gypsies that talked to us a little bit about where we were from, yada yada yada, but the best part was when one of them leaned in and asked us girls, "What is that pot thing he's carrying around? Is that for peeing?" So funny...

The Atomium was pretty cool, we would have liked to have gone in, but it was six euros and frankly I would have rather spent that on food than on an exhibit about the ice caps melting. So we stood there for a little bit, took some pictures, and then headed back to downtown. Unfortunately when you're travelling on a budget and in a short amount of time, many sites end up being a quick glance and then you have to hurry away to something else. We got some lunch and headed over to the campus of the European Parliament. The EU buildings are really large and modern, probably the most modern things I've seen in Europe.... We waited for a while to get into a free tour that ended up showing us a hallway with a piece of art in the middle and the big room where the parliament representatives meet and have conferences, and then that was it. It was actually quite boring, even with the audioguide that explained all the things that one can figure out on their own about the parliament. I'm glad we did it, but I could have been spared the "tour" idea. After the Parliament, we walked around the royal palace which to my disappointment wasn't open to the public, and then through the park next to it, and then down a big business/EU district street that led to yet again another Arc de Triomphe. This is my favorite one. It has this beautiful park in front of it and two long extensions to each side that make up a museum. April argued with me when I compared it to the Parisian one, she's loyal to that one. The one in Brussels I could enjoy more because there aren't a bunch of cars and things wanting to run me over if I go towards it. I can admire it in a lovely setting. This arch is another favorite of mine in Europe. After hanging around the park for a while, April, Ohad (who met up with us at the EU tour), and I went back to the Grande Place for April's souvenir shopping and grocery shopping, and then went back to the hostel to prepare a big pasta dinner for everyone.

I was feeling anxious for some karaoke, so I passed the idea around to everyone and was happy to get positive answers all around. Little did I know that we would end up meeting the world's rudest bartender at the karaoke bar and ended up staying for the one drink that was forced upon those of us who didn't feel like drinking. Bars in Europe are like that. They watch you like a hawk and if you're not drinking, they want to kick you out and bitch and moan about how you pay, how many people you have, never ending whining. I guess they can do that when they don't work on tips. So that kinda was a bust....we walked around forever trying to think of somewhere else to go. The boys went to the Absinthe bar, while us girls went to the bar where we watched soccer before because Hannah was trying to find this Kiwi that she had met a couple nights prior. It was as awkward as can be, me and April sitting there with the those two holding hands under the table...At one point I told April that if I didn't do something like dance or something I was going to go crazy. So we did, we danced and we were the ONLY people in the entire bar dancing. It was cool. Token weirdo dance guy got up and danced with us. You know that ONE guy that is really weird but passionately loves to dance? Yeah, he got up.

The night ended with us meeting the boys at the Absinthe bar where they were completely sloshed after two shots of Absinthe and ignored us due to the German girls sitting next to them, which upset April and Hannah, but I was more than fine with it, I wanted to go home. I did. Well, I did after I drank a beer. Then, THEN I went home. 😉

One interesting thing about Belgium that I forgot to mention is the split culture between French speakers and Flemmish speakers (Clarification: Flemmish is Dutch, just a different accent. There might be a few different words here and there, but all in all the same). One can walk down the street and pass a family speaking French amongst themselves and then the next block up you'll hear a couple exchanging sweet Dutch nothings. My group was a little worried about offending someone by just speaking to them automatically in French. It's quite stange how the language barrier divides this country. I met several people from Belgium that only speak one language or another and to preserve they culture, they somewhat refuse to learn the other language and so people end up communicating in English. Very different.

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Photos

Beglian Waffle
It was apparently a "tourist" made waffle, whatever it was delicious. I couldn't finish it though... Thanks Dan.

Grand Place
This just might be my favorite "place" or square in all of Europe.

Mannekin Pis
That is its real name and it's really famous. It's just a fountain shaped like a little boy that pees out the water...

Touristy Road
Reminds me of Little Athens in the Latin Quarter of Paris.

In the Delirium Cafe
I was so excited about the Delirium Beer!