Belgium

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The graffiti seen along the sides of walls is endless when traveling by train in Belgium. I hope to God there's no project underway to get rid of all it; it colors the country too well to get rid of. Its great seeing purples, greens, pinks, and yellows in places where you'd least expect it.

I saw very little graffiti in London and Paris and even less while traveling through the countryside. But Belgium has really sparked my interest in graffiti with its ridiculous prevalence throughout the country. It also helped that every bookstore I've walked into carries Banksy's Wall and Piece. I've gone through that book about 5 or 6 times without buying it - if I see it in a bookstore I just decide to spend as much time as I can lounging around the bookstore with that book in hand. I can feel graffiti becoming the seeds of the anti-consumerism, advertisement-jamming, culture-backlash, grassroots-agenda within me. I've spent alot of time in art museums wondering why I spend about 4 seconds infront of the Venus de Milo but spend half an hour infront of Dali's Lady with Drawers. I haven't come to any concisive answer just yet.

Brussels

Brussels was fantastic to me. It is such a well preserved city and really gave me the feeling that I was lurking some ancient medieval metropolitan. The entire city's architecture is impressive enough to make you stop at every street intersection and just gaze upward at the buildings. Every street has something cool to stare at, and the city is scattered with little easter eggs like the Manneken Pis and small elegant churches that have to be stumbled upon. The streets were always flooded with people, surprisingly not by American tourists which gave me a bit of comfort.

I got my first taste of Belgian chocolate after entering this beautiful mall near the main city center. I don't think I'll ever encounter the brilliant taste of that chocolate ever again unless they're Belgian. I'm trying to figure out how to describe the experience but words simply can not do justice to taste. Think of orgasming through your mouth, and its a bit similar.

One of my favorite things I think I'll remember from Brussels are these mussels I had at this restaurant in the Grand Place. The service was horrible, but the setting was perfect - overlooking all these fantastic buildings, sitting right infront of the Brussels City Hall. A large pot of about 40 mussels in this fantastic vegetable broth still boiling, the mussels steaming into the air, aching to be eaten gets set right infront of you and all time seems to stop as you just, systematically, devour every single goddamn mussel in that pot. Aided by a glass of the cheapest red-wine, and life is bliss. I almost missed my train out of Belgium because I insisted on enjoying this meal for so long.

Brugge

I have a hard time trying to decide which city is more aesthetically pleasing, Brussels or Brugge. Even though (I think) Brussels is more popular and known than Brugge, I saw a lot more (American) tourists in Brugge which was sort of a dissapointment - but it could just be because Brugge is far smaller than Brussels. Brugge would be the perfect place to retire if not for the tourists.

As with Brussels, Brugge gave me the sense of living in the pefect European village. Canals cut through the city where people could ride in their boats to get to one part of the city to another. Everything was so beautifully kept it and preserved; the only modernisms were the few cars that would pass through the roads. Brugge discourages drivers; cyclists, pedestrians, and horse-carriages are the main means of transportation - which is not really a problem since Brugge is so small. And besides, I'd rather walk around a city more than anything.

Antwerp

I'm a bit pissed that I didn't get to see more of Antwerp. I only stopped there for a few hours and what I saw wasn't very attractive - I'm almost sure I was just in the wrong places, though. Whenever I walked around though the city seemed so dead. Very few people, and the people I did see weren't doing much, just lounging about in open-air cafes. I was hoping for comotion, for some chaos, some movement. I didn't see any. Just lazy Belgians. It also didn't help that I didn't get a map of Antwerp so I had absolutely no fucking idea where the hell I was in the city and didn't stray far from the train station so I didn't miss my train. Usually, though, the cool parts of the city are near or around the central station. Another thing that felt odd about Antwerp was that it felt really modernized. I was still in this renaissance mood coming from Brussels and Brugge, and what I saw from Antwerp just gave me the impression that I could be in any American city-suburb and feel exactly the same.

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