Meanwhile in the Capital of Europe

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Its all a bit Dejavu. Or however its spelt. Here I am back at Heathrow, back on a BMI plane, and back to Brussels, although I am not being whisked off to a castle in Holland to try and decipher the conversations of a 30 strong dutch family, I am begining my month long trip around Europe with Tan and Brooke, and what better place to start than the EU capital, even if the Lonley Planet says it has a reputation for being boring. What do they know anyway?!?

To take our minds off whether or not the turbulence in the mini mini plane meant we were going to die, we listened into the conversation of 2 American travellers who were sitting behind us who claimed that although the first and second series of The O.C were good, they did not care much for the third series. These very Americans would then become the "its a small world people" whom we saw everywhere in Belguim - their names were Bailey and Lauren and they ended up on the same train as us to central Brussels, then we ended up getting them a room in the hostel as they had not booked anywhere. The hostel we were staying at was called the Vincent Van Gogh, it was somewhere in central north Brussels and aside from the obvious need for CRC on the doors, bunk beds and floors and its very own team of mad youngsters terrorising the place and waking us up very early in the morning, it was fairly okay - we got breakfast out of it, there is no such thing as a free breakfast.

On our night of arrival we decided to go for a wander so that Tan could find a place to watch the European cup final or what ever the hell it was. I had been to Brussels previously with GJ but only vaugley knew my way around the touristy old parts. So we headed south until we could find some cobbled streets. It was only upon finding a bar called "Drug Opera" that I exclaimed "Drug Opera!!! I know where I am now!" and then lead us forth to the Grand Place, a square of spectacular architecture dating back to the 17th century, and as GJ would put it "Older than the Stone Store." The square features both private and public buildings such as the Museum and the City Hall and was named as one of UNESCO's heritage sites (I worked long and hard for UNESCO and now I finally get to enjoy it!). From there we went down the Saint Hubert Royal Gallery which looks just as beautiful during the night as it does in the day and features a Vaudville theatre, brownie points with Abbie. The Butcher Street was the next stop to be coaxed by Italian speakers into the many restaurants, this street is like the Shambles in York, but I prefer this one, and then all this tour guiding was bought to a halt by Tan's dire need to watch the football. So I tried to lead us to the Celtica, an Irish pub with €2 pints, but we got lost in the Gay district (we could tell by the pride flags and the gay Tin Tin comic strip wall - it had nothing at all to do with the Drag Jazz band) and then found a small bar with a small football playing TV, inhabited only by an Asian man and the friendly Albanian bar tender. We ordered drinks and Tan went about being nervous, which propelled to quite a state that I felt compelled to film it and did, and then another man came into watch and declined to be filmed. He was spanish and spoke a little French and no English. Brooke Tan and I were English and spoke english and minute French between us. The bartender was Albanian and spoke French, Spanish and some English. The Asian man spoke English and probably French. Somehow we managed to converse - albiet JUST. Tan's team lost and the bartender bought him a glass of whiskey and a serviette as he was crying by this point. She then kissed us on the cheek and sent us on our way. After this we ventured back to the Butcher Street to eat resonably priced pizza and it rained as we walked back to our hostel. In the room we found Natalie who was to be out new roommate (She was asleep at the time and had to live through the endless squeaking of the entire building) and it turns out she was in Brussels to do some exams, so some unbroken sleep would of done her some good. Oops.

In the light of day after being woken up by what I think was screaming and someone being thrown into our door, we skulked on down to breakfast in our pyjamas (well I was) to recieve looks of attitude from cool teenage girls - and the most continental of continental breakfasts. As I was once a teenage girl I know it is them I can thank for the cold shower I had that morning (yeah sure, have a laugh at that one Dad) but at least we had an early start I suppose. We went back to the historic area to look at everything again in the daylight this time - but mixed it up with a little trip to Manneken Pis, a small bronze statue of a little boy pissing. Yes, highly underwhelming but this statue is very important to Brussels as it was twice stolen by the French, one of the perpertrators even got life for it. On this day the Manneken Pis was dressed as a navy soldier - they do that sometimes as it was dressed in victory regalia when it was retrieved from the french - and if we had been there on August the third, my dear little brothers birthday, the thing would have been pissing beer. As this is Belguim, an overpriced chocolate store nex door had a to scale chocolate version of the statue, which I am sure would have been more appealing to the tour group children.

The National Art Gallery, among other works housed the David painting "The Death of Marat", a peice that I had studied intensely in 6th form Art History and was very excited to see. It was quite amazing to see something famous you had only previously seen in books in the flesh and get an idea of the scale of it and I imagine this will happen to me many more times.

The sampling of national cuisine gave us the excuse to eat waffles and fries for lunch. I can absolutely without a doubt say that yes, the Belgians do make fries better than any of you, and so they should, they did invent them after all (the waffles are pretty good too.)

by this time we were extremely tired and had a nap at the hostel via a trip to the Tin Tin store - yes we are sucker tourists, but Belguim is famous for its cartoonists and there are comic strip walls all over Brussels city - if I go back sometime it would be an excellent walking tour to go on. Our dinner that night was Thai that was almost as good as Thailand but no where near as cheap, and was followed up by a trip to the Delirium Cafe, a unique beer house in the sense that it holds the world record for stocking the most different types of beer than any other pub in the world. If you want to know how many that is, its over 2000 at any given time. The menu is the size of a small encyclopedia and has beer from all over the world. Imagine our dismay however, when we open to New Zealand to find that the stock 3 of our beers - Speights Gold, Speights Wellington and Steinlager. Shocking - none of us have ever even heard of Speights Wellington and it costs €7 - Unbelievable. Brooke and Tan ordered a cherry flavoured beer and I an apple one and then we were joined by our American friends, who werent so keen on the topic of American global perspective and like us where planning to go to Brugge tomorrow so we disscussed this instead.

Brugge is a neighbouring city of Brussels that we visited by train on a day that was unfortunately not at its best. There are canals that run through the city but due to the weather we feared the boat ride may have resembled the wind chill factor of the Shotover Jet. Brugge like a lot of European cities has many historical religious sites and as most of them were indoors they appeared to be a better option. Our Lady's Church (which called for silence upon entrance) had incredibly beautiful painted depictions of the Virgin mother and some rather impressive statues of the 12 diciples. As all of them were holding something different I stood for a while trying to figure out which was Judas Iscariot, as we are all faily non religious people nobody could tell. We almost ended up catholic however when we visited the Church of the Holy Blood (It claimed to house the blood of Jesus, we were curious) and were ushered into the communion line. When we figured out we were in the line headed for the alter we panicked and left. So we didnt get to see wherethe blood was. I suppose this we be quite a cool place for catholics to recieve communion though - considering the blood of Christ is in the room and all.

Later that night we caught the train to Diest to have a meal with GJ's family - as Tan and Brooke did not accompany me last time Benjamins driving was a shock to their systems but we assured them that if Krijn had driven it would be worse which was of no great comfort! It was really nice to meet GJ's Mum and Dad finally, we were greeted with kisses and champange and told lots of stories about Belgian bueracracy, family stories mainly about GJ, and their trip to Indonesia. We were served a dutch specialty of a rare white asparagus that is only available for six weeks of the year and that Brigette spent a long time skining! potatoes, egg and butter sauce and cold meats for those who were not vegetarian. I forgot to mention that this was started with a cucumber soup which was really good after our diets of late. Ed had made the dessert which was a small rich chocolate coffee cake with a berry sauce - all followed by coffee. Needless to say we missed the last train back to Brussels, but Benjamin who lives there took us back with the warning of his mother to drive more sensibly! I will be seeing more of GJ as he starts at Oxford in a week in a half at the flight school there and Benjamin has requested we return the favour of a bed after going out in London sometime.

Once again tired and grumpy we head to the train station to begin the first of our Eurail excursions. Next stop Bonn.

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Photos

The Butcher Street
Tan and Brooke survey the choice

Manneken Pis
Brooke with the underwhelming - but important - navy officer themed statue

Our New Friends
Lauren and Bailey from Colorado

Tan once again dismayed by choice
In the Delirium which has made him delerious