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Published: December 13th 2009
Bruges Tower
Bruges, BelgiumMy Battle With Sean & The A-Z of Beer
We need to have a talk about Sean. And no, I don't mean that American guy that's married to our friend Tegan 😉
Sean is my Irish GPS. Sean and I started out getting along fine, and he always sent me in the right direction while I laughed at the funny way he said “Left”, and “Right”, and “Congestion Charge”.
But one day there was the little matter of sending me (with an empty fuel tank) to a fuel station that turned out to be a EuroSPAR, which is NOT a fuel station. That was fine, we found one and all was okay, and I smiled and forgave him. Then a couple days later we wanted to go to a McDonalds because I was busting for a pee. Sean took up the challenge... and completely fucked it up. There was a McDonalds, but it was over the other side of a dual carriageway with not an exit in sight. Sean stayed quiet, sure I was standing on top of it. That was also forgiven, albeit with a little teeth-grinding on my behalf. The third incident involved a castle
that LOOKED like a castle in the distance, with a big tower and flags and all that. Except when we set Sean to navigate to it, he sent us to a pile of bricks with some graffiti on it over the other side of the fecking river. I laughed that one off as a silly mistake, but it was a slightly strained, anxious laugh. Kind of like when your wife gets drunk and says something stupid at dinner with friends.
The straw that broke the camel's back came a few days later when Sean decided it was a good idea for us to NOT find a Tourist Information centre, right in the middle of a major town, and I ended up in a paid underground car park with five honking cars up my ass. Well, that was it. After one last bleat of “You have reached your destination!”, Sean and I had a tussle before Aleks pulled us apart, with me swearing and Sean abusing me in the only way he knew possible, saying “Take The Motorway” over and over. He then dropped his power cable, and I backed off.
My point? Sean has pulled me out of
Chocolate Mecca
Bruges, Belgium many a missed turn on my part. But we have a love/hate relationship right now. If he tells me to “Turn Left” one more time in that fecking Belfast accent, I'm going to throw him in the glove box for good and break out the pink Garmin Nüvi we have spare.
Anyway, our first sighting of Bruges (or Brugge as they spell it in Belgi-land) was fleeting, to say the least. We drove in at around 5 in the afternoon after legging it South from Windmill-land, bypassing Antwerp, and through a beautiful arched front gate to the town. We found a spot to park and then made a mad dash in the pissing rain into what was supposed to be the closest tourist information centre. It turned out to be NOT a tourist information centre, and this resulted in us powerwalking through the middle of town, still in rain, to the other one. We did manage to see the famous tower, and it was truly a sight to behold all lit up at night. Reaching the info centre, we were told there were bugger all places to park the camper in town, but the train station had 24 hour
parking for 6 euro. We sure weren't going to sleep there, but it would be a cheap day's parking. We bailed outta town and camped out at, you guessed it, a truck stop up the road.
Oh and I forgot to mention that we saw some Wallabies on the way into Bruges. Yes, Wallabies. In someone's yard. As pets. Go figure.
The next day we made use of the Park & Ride at the train station car park, although it was more park and not so much ride as our promised bus to town didn't show up - so we walked. It was a beautiful stroll across the river and down the cobbled road to the centre of town, and we spied the many towers of the central area and got a little excited. Feckin Bruges! Just like the movie! How awesome. We trundled into the main square and were instantly sold. Aside from the big ice skating rink in the centre and the four million Christmas market stalls, it was just like we'd imagined. The sun even came out for a little while, and helped us get some great photos. We saw the first promise of real
Belgian hot chocolate, and bought two at €1.75 each. What a spend, it was like drinking a block of cadbury melted down only waaay better. The chocolate store we bought it from had a giant chocolate koala and also penis-shaped chocolates in the front window. Aww, innit cute?
We wandered around town, before arriving at the Basilica of the Sacred Blood, where apparently (and forgive me if I sound skeptical) they have some of Christ's ancient congealed blood in a silver phial which gets brought out for people to touch three times a day, while some burnt out old priest nods reverently and solemnly. Oh, and for a small donation, say €1?
Christ? Blood? Congealed? IT'S 2000 YEARS OLD! It would be fecking dust by now! What a scam! Nonetheless, little Aleks decided it was her time to be converted, so she wandered up to see it and I egged her on, as neither of us is exactly knew what the blood of Christ looked like and why it costs money to touch it. But she said it was all dark and goopy, so I say good for her. It's very rare that Aleks gets a bee in
Grand Place
Bruges, Belgium her bonnet about something like that. The place itself was beautiful though, a really small but intricately decorated place. Must have been built with all the blood-touching proceeds. Ha!
We toyed with the idea of ice skating but gave it a miss, as it was expensive (€10 for an hour each) and loaded with crap skaters falling over. Have you ever seen that YouTube clip where the ice hockey guy cops a skate-blade across his jugular vein? Think red ice, and understand why I changed my mind. We instead thought our money would be far better spent snarfing one of those big Belgian Waffles that I've heard about but never had. Aleks covered hers in icing sugar that went EVERYWHERE, including all over her jacket, in my camera lens, and all over her face, while I covered mine in more melted Belgian chocolate. I believe mine rocked way harder than hers.
We walked through the markets, which were selling all sorts of Christmas-y stuff like gluhwein and chestnuts and chinese-made trinkets. They were all connected to this one big power box and there were extension leads running everywhere through water and it was all very gypsy-like, see photo.
The Tower
Bruges, Belgium We also toyed with the idea of going up the main tower in the square, just like in the movie, but the mongrels were charging €5. That and the line of fat idiot Texans, trying to prove they CAN actually climb a flight of steps without having a heart attack, was ten miles long. Johann, get the ambulance on standby, if one of them doesn't die, the huffing and panting coming from the stairs will still blow a few small children over in the street. Haha, God I love giving the Yanks hell.
The last stop that we made was a place called 2BeInBruges, which has a an A-Z wall of Belgian Beers. Heaven? Maybe. We went in and ordered ourselves a couple of frosty pints of the local quaffer, called Steen Brugge. I had a blonde and Aleks had a brunette, and both of them went down like liquid gold... I kid you not they were absolutely fantastic. We had them outside underneath a giant crazy umbrella made of shredded garbage bags and watched the silly tourists on the riverboats going past. The sun was gently going down in the west(ish) by this stage and the light was
beautiful.
After we'd finished the pints we started making our way back to the camper, grabbing some Belgian choccies on the way and dodging the puddles as the rain set in. We would have gone to see the biggest Basilica in Bruges, San Giovanni's (which was HUGE) but it was closed, so we decided to call it a day.
That evening we stopped at another truck stop en route to Brussels after 97km, drank beer, and I blogged. That night whilst getting ready to go out for a pee, Aleks noticed a Peugeot 206CC rocking next to the van, and it wasn't because of the gale force winds. We saw a butt moving furiously and a pair of legs, and that's about it. This was 2am in the morning. They must have seen us looking out the window for that split second, because two seconds later they were out, wiped up and racing off down the road. Damn exhibitionist Belgians. HA!
Brussels was a pretty cool place, but a little short of “attractions”. The Mannekin Pis, which is a fountain in the form of a little cherub pissing in a pool, was surrounded by snapping idiot tourists.
It was pretty unimpressive and so we took the obligatory photo and rolled on fast. We basically walked around town for a while, starting off with the centre of the city, the Grand Place - absolutely beautiful of course as are most of the city centres in this part of the world. We noticed that in the Lonely Planet there is a lot of information about Galéries and shopping and all that bollocks, but once again (and I know this is getting a little repetitive) the churches are where it's at for amazing architecture. You gotta hand it to the tykes, they really know how to make a building look huge and spectacular, even if they didn't care at the time that it would cost future generations an arm and a leg just to keep the things from falling down.
By far the most interesting place in Belgium was a place called Delirium. Now here is a beer-drinkers heaven. At time of writing, this place had 43 beers on tap, and a further 2232 beers bottled somewhere in their storage. That, my friends, is staggering, even if you're a reformed alcoholic. We sauntered downstairs into the smoke-filled (yes, plenty
of indoor smoking here) room, the roof of which is lined with beer trays, coasters, barrel tops, and all the other beer paraphernalia you'd expect. I had actually inadvertently had experience with one of Delirium's house beers before - Delirium Tremens aka Delirious Tremors. Paul had fed that stuff to me back in London, and boy was it potent at around 8.5%. This beer has been voted best beer in the world a couple of times since it's induction in 1989, and is named after the tremors you get from alcoholism withdrawals.
Ahh irony, you subtle devil, you.
The beers we had while we were there though were a Bon Voeux DuPont 1an d'Age, a healthy 10% alc. content and the best beer I've had yet to this day. Aleks had one called the Duchesse Borgogne, 6.2% and totally weird, kinda wine-like but really great. I will go back to Belgium one day, just to spend a week drinking beer at Delirium.
So that was Brussels done. Yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said there isn't much to see, but that doesn't detract from the fact that the place is beautiful, both in terms of it's upbeat
old-town vibe and it's architectural grandeur.
That evening we drove into a place called Rocheford (this Roche thing will crop up a LOT in this blog), and had a couple more beers. These were a local trappist monk-made beer, and were also great. Here's a tip, anything with Authentic Trappist on it, buy as much as you can before some other beer snob steals it from out under your nose - it is ALL spectacular beer, doesn't matter what type it is. Chimay is an example. Top stuff. Then it was off to our next truck stop and ravioli for dinner that night! Lovin' the pasta!
The next day (30th Nov) started with a visit to the small, pretty town of La Roche (see!), but the castle was closed until the afternoon, so we consoled ourselves with buying some cheap local brews from a well-stocked bottle-o-type-place and choofing off to our next destination, with Aleks The Driving Machine behind the wheel. And guess what... We were in Luxembourg by 1pm! Don't worry, it was just as much of a surprise for us, because there was no sign! I had the camera ready and everything, but all of a
sudden we were past Bastogne, then in Clervaux. One is in Belgium, the other's in Luxembourg. Awww... no border photo for Fishy.
That's it for Belgium... fleeting, wasn't it? Tell me about it, I don't know how these people would deal with driving across Australia. Every time I blink we're speaking a different language. But that's the way it goes when you're conquering Europe in a van that says DVORSE on the side of it. Filthy, skiving, good for nothing backpackers, and loving it.
See you next blog!
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