Brussels, Belgium - 13/12/07 - 15/12/07

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The first thing we did when our train got to Brussels Midi station was to find the Eurostar ticket desk and ask for a refund on the unused set of tickets. Unfortunately, they couldn't do it for us - we had to take a card and write to Eurostar to ask them to refund it. How irritating! But we were assured they would do it for us, so that at least put our minds at ease (eventually, when I did contact them, they did indeed refund the money). She even managed to give us our next set of tickets, from Brussels to Paris. If only they'd had this little maching in Amsterdam we could have avoided all the issues!! We had a map and went in search of our hostel, only to get lost. We ended up having to ask in a little kebab type shop where to go - the guy was so friendly and helpful we went back there for food once we'd dumped our bags. 2GO4 Quality Hostel, by the way, was wonderful. It had some weird curfews and bags could easily get locked in during their lunch lock out (12-5), but the rooms were stunning, beautiful high ceilings, clean, great showers. Very nice.

Anyway, that night we randomly bumped into one of the guys from our Ireland tour - evidently he was staying in the same hostel as us at the same time. Very weird!! Anyway, with promises to catch up another time we went out to explore the city at night. We found some gorgeous things too - a cathedral that was light up with red lights, a skate rink with a huge white Christmas tree made out of lights in the middle, and a street of (closed) Christmas market stalls with a London Eye type ferris wheel and light show at the end. Absolutely beautiful and a good start to our stay in Brussels. However, we were a bit tired and although we tried again to find a place to have a drink it didn't seem to be happening - we're not very good at finding pubs it seems. So we went home to bed.

The next morning, job number one was finding some Belgian waffles. Traditional Belgian waffles are not covered in chocolate or strawberries or anything fun, but happily they cater to tourists and we managed to order some chocolate Belgian waffles and hot chocolates. Yum-my. Then it was in search of some cool stuff to look at. Number one on the list was the Grand Place, which, with a very cool map in hand that said NOT to go there, we went and it was magnificent. Honestly I think it's the first time this whole trip that my breath was taken away. The buildlings were... indescribable really, huge Gothic mansions with ornate decorations, statues, spires, the whole works. The pictures (when added in a couple of weeks) will have to speak for themselves despite never doing them justice. We wandered around here for ages, following a guide to what each building was (guide found in a conveniently open tourist information place conveniently located within the square) and taking about a hundred million photos. We even made it inside the Brussles museum for an extortionate price and read our English cards about some of the pottery and religious artwork hanging on the walls. It was not overly interesting, as most of the pieces were not in English and we had no idea what we were looking at most of the time, but some of the stuff was amazing to look at. We even found a whole room dedicated to the next thing we went to see: Brussels' most famous statue, the Manneken Pis, aka the Pissing Boy. Which is exactly what it sounds like - a surprisingly tiny statue of a little boy with his penis out peeing and creating a fountain. The room in the museum had thousands of them in different dress, apparantly he gets changed every month or so. The actual statue is much much tinier than I was expecting!

We then went in search of the Royal Palace, and thought we found it at one stage - turned out to not be it and was most likely a policital building of some sort. But eventually we did find the Palace with its maze of hedges in the front garden. It was actually quite spectacular and had guards patrolling the outside of it every so often in formal march. We then went through a wander in the gardens across from the Palace, taking it nice and slow to wander through, visiting water fountains that were turned off (due to pipes freezing) and not bumping into anyone much given how cold it was. We then made our way through to what's actually known as the ugliest street in the city - the business district, which I would not have called ugly, just more modern than the rest of Brussels, with sky high glass towers and metal everywhere. For some reason, the road we were going to keep walking up was blocked off by police barriers - we suspect it was a press conference or filiming of some sort, so we were turned around and jumped on the tube back to nearer the hostel. We were told in our very cool map that if we wanted some nice views over the city, rather than paying a fortune to get in some tall buildling, we could go to the top of one of the carparks there for free and that offered some great views. So that was exactly what we did. It was a bit bizarre, wandering around a carpark taking photos over the edge of it for the scenery, and at one stage we thought we might have been doing something wrong when a bunch of police joined us on the roof and started talking to some people that were standing nearby, but it was totally worth it - mostly coz it was free! And very pretty!

That night we went out with the guy from our Ireland trip, Wombat (nice Aussie nickname for ya) and some of his mates that he'd met up with. Plus some randoms that they'd met at this same bar the night before. Along the way we found some very cool Fuck Christmas Shopping statues that I totally wanted to buy for you, Mum. Anyway, we ended up that night in a bar with 2500 beers ON TAP, plus a further 500 or so beers that weren't readily available. Surely, I thought, if I'm going to find a beer I like it's gotta be here!! And it was. Pink Killer was the name of it, a lovely pink beer that tasted kind of musky. Carl bought a beer that actually required him to leave his driver's license at the bar for - it was served in a wooden holder and they needed the license as surety to bring the wooden thing back. Bizarre. Anyway, we stayed there for awhile, chatting away with some newfound friends, including Ashely, who ended up revealing to me he was gay - and slightly interested in Carl. We left briefly in search of other ventures - ended up in McDonald's, buying, what else but BEER. Beer in a Maccer's cup. Very bizarre. Anyway, from then on things went a bit strange. We were going in search of some club that the other guys had heard of, and never actually found it. We did find a Levi's party full of models inside, but unfortunately were not allowed in. Damn exclusivity! We did hang around outside and chat to a few people before being asked to move on, so it was good to meet some randoms there. Anyway then Wombat and his friends left Ashley, Carl and I to our own devices; we ended up back at the bar with 2500 beers chatting until the indoor smoking got to me and I had to leave, wandering myself back to our hotel, leaving the two boys to it.

The next morning we were due to check out and left our bags in the hostel hoping we'd be back in time to collect them. We went for a nice breakfast in a random pub and noticed lots of noise outside when we again ventured out - a protest march was going on in the street and went on for ages! There were people and noise everywhere, and it was actually quite cool, if confusing. We stopped someone on the street, someone handing out flyers, and asked what it was all about, so we found out it was like a worker's rights march to get them better conditions and better pay etc. Nice to be a part of Belgium's political action!! Anyway, then we headed back to our hostel to collect our bags and head to the train station on our way to Bruges! We had a place booked there and all we had to do was make the one hour train journey, which, we were told, was supposedly very easy - rock up at the train station and ask for two tickets and get on the next train.

Things in life are rarely as easy as that. What we didn't realise was the protest march that was going on in the street also meant that the trains were affected, as many of the staff were on strike to protest! We went and asked for tickets and the reply was it coudn't be done, we could not get to Bruges today. Well this did not sit well with us as we had accommodation booked and really wanted to go! After talking to an information lady, we found out that although it was not recommended we go to Bruges as tourist, it WAS possible to get there - we just had to watch the boards and wait for our train to be announced on some kind of ad-hoc schedule they were making up as they went along. Here at the train station we met another travelling couple who were on their way to Antwerp, so we bonded with them while waiting in this freezing cold train station and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The train boards had weird symbols on them, most trains had an abbreviation next to them which, for awhile, thought meant Platform to be announced, but which we found in the end meant the train was cancelled. After figuring out what trains we needed to look for and buying tickets so we could sprint to the platform when it was announced, we settled in, checking with the information lady who was getting ruder and ruder as the day went on. Fair enough, she was stressed, but still. Anyway, after about two and half hours, all of a sudden the boards were wiped clear and the information lady was packing up to go home. We had no idea what was going on - whether this mean that no trains at all were running. We asked her what was happening, and she told us that it was too hard to maintain the boards, so they were just going to do audio announcements and we had to listen to them to find out what to do. That's no good to us, because the announcements were in French or Dutch, which none of our little foursome spoke. What can we do I asked? To which I got the answer that I needed to learn how to speak other languages, and that "these people" who speak English only learn English and do nothing with it. I have ALWAYS wanted to learn other languages, and how did she know what languages I did or did not know? Anyway, this sent me over the edge, and I ended up crying on the station wondering how the hell we were going to get anywhere and just too cold to care anymore. Thankfully, an older couple saw me crying, and asked me what was wrong, and we explained our predicament. They took pity on us and told us they would listen to the announcements for us - they were also trying to get to Bruges, so we could basically just follow them when they moved. It was lifesaving. Not long after this, there was an announcement for a train to Gent, not quite Bruges, but closer than we were and with the possibility of a local train to Bruges once we were in Gent. So we followed them and spent a long arduous slow train ride with them. When we arrived in Gent, it did not look promising, but there was talk on the platform that this couple's children were coming to collect them, and if there was room in the car, we would be welcome to jump in and they would drop us off. That thought alone was enough to make me want to cry again - I could not believe their generosity and helpfulness. We did not have to take them up on the offer - we found the train departures board and found a train to Bruges, which we boarded, thanking the couple profusely for all of their help. They were absolutely amazing and there was no way I could have kept it together without them.

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