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Published: November 24th 2007
in regards to my title-- I am a road warrior b/c I 1) went to a brand new country all by myself and 2)biked about 20 miles in one day.
a month or so ago i noticed that i could get roundtrip flights from london to brussels for about $50 during the end of november. Last week I didn't have any classes and last weekend my study abroad program was paying for me to go to London for the weekend, so I decided to take advantage of my free time and free travel to London to finally go back to mainland Europe. I've really wanted to go to Belgium for awhile since seeing pictures of Bruges on a "Europe's Famous Hostels" pamphlet. So, I went.
Getting to where I wanted to go (Bruges) was kind of a hassle. I had to take a two hour train from York to London, and another hour long train from London to Stansted airport. bleh. My plane took off at about 8, putting me into the Chaleroi airport at about ten. From that airport I took an hour long shuttle into Brussels, where I had to spend the night before heading onto Bruges
the next day.
I was not impressed with Brussels, but I'm not sure this is quite fair of me to say since all I saw of it was the main train station, the subway, and area where my hostel was located. Maybe its a really great city, but I don't know. Anyway, I had direction from my hostel about how to get there, but since I didn't get into the city until 11 at night, and can't read French or Dutch (the two languages of Belgium), was a single female traveller, and was really cold, I decided to err on the side of caution and took a taxi to the hostel. I found out the next morning that it would have been really easy to get to the hostel by the subway and that the subway in Brussels is MUCH calmer than the tube in London, but oooh well.
The hostel I stayed in (Van Gogh Youth Hostel) was not impressive. I felt like the staff were seriously annoyed every time they had to help me with anything (even simple stuff like checking in and out), and I had to walk through this really creepy outdoor corridor to
get to my room. and they charged for sheets. i hate it when hostels do that. the rooms were really clean and the beds were fairly comfortable, but I was feeling really high strung that night and only got about an hour's worth of sleep.
next morning I hopped a train to Bruges, which was pretty quick and affordable (one hour, €12), during which I had a nice view of the Belgian countryside. It's pretty flat and they have livestock. that's about all there is to say about that.
Bruges was fantastic. Its a pretty small city and all the major sites and attractions are easily within walking distance. I put off exploring the city till my second day there, though, b/c I'd been hoping for awhile to someday bike to the north sea. I don't know how I got this idea into my head, but it was really important to me, and as it was sunny on the day I got into Bruges (it rains a whole lot in Belgium, apparently), I decided to head to the coast.
The super friendly staff at my hostel (Bauhaus International in Bruges) told me I could make it to
the coast in about an hour, set me up with a really cheap bike rental (€3 for a whole day when you book two nights), and gave me a really good bike map. Despite the bike map, I got really really really lost getting out of town. As in, a trip that should have taken me 2.5 hours total ended up taking about 6. I saw lots of neat stuff around town while biking, but didn't take very many pictures b/c I was trying to hurry up and get to my destination before dark. I ended up having to bike through some pretty heavy traffic, which scared the crap out of me, but Bruges is a very bike-friendly city and my anxiety was unnecessary. Somehow I managed to get on the right road, and from there I pedalled and pedalled and pedalled. When coming up with this scheme, I thought it would be easy as pie. I knew Belgium was super flat, so I thought I would practically coast all the way to the sea. I was basing all this on the fact that I could ride my bike for long expanses of time when I was a kid with
minimal effort. Now, I have realized that much of my biking experiences as a kid involved walking to the top of hills and then coasting down, which is totally cheating and explains why my adult biking experience was so much harder. Oh man, I got pooped out pretty quick. For a lot of the trip, I didn't think I could make it. My legs were sore, my butt was sore, my face was cold. But I really really wanted to take a gander at the ocean, so I kept moving my chubby, stubby little legs up and down, up and down.
Let it also be known that I am a really slow biker. I got passed by 70 year-old men and 8 year-old girls. I was embarassed.
I barely managed to get into the coastal town (Blankenburg) I had been looking for before sunset, and once I got there I was terrified I would get lost. Fortunately, the Flemish word for "pier" is "pier" so i just followed the signs around town. While in Blankenburg, I saw some crazy man and a female companion trying to hitchhike. That didn't work, so the man jumped in front of some
poor old ladying riding a bike and straddled her bike so she couldn't get around him. Then he started screaming at her. I have no idea what he was saying, but boy, he sure was mad at her even though I'm pretty sure he didn't know her. Some kid was standing near me while all this was going down, and he looked over at me smirking, his eyes all big and I just shrugged. Eventually some old guy on a bike helped out the old lady by yelling back at the crazy man. I really wish I had known what was going down.
Eventually I stopped seeing Pier signs and had to ask some random lady where to go. In case you guys didn't know, just about all dutch speakers can speak english, too. its just the way of the world. so random lady spoke decent english, but she forgot the word for hill so instead of telling me that once i went over the hill in front of us I would see the sea she could only say "Once go over zoom, BIG ZOOM, then there!". it was really cute. and it was indeed a big zoom. too
big for me. i got off and walked it.
the coast was really great, and if i hadn't of gotten so lost and if it hadn't of been november, I really would have liked hanging out there. As it was, I knew I couldn't stay long if I didn't want to be biking the 8 miles back in total darkness. And the wind kept blowing over my trusty steed, which was problematic. In fact, trusty steed was injured by all this blowing over and ended up making a "thump" noise with every pedal all the way back. That's a whole bunch of thumps, let me tell you.
It did get dark on me during the ride home, but the road was lit the entire way and I think on the whole western Europe is pretty safe for single women. I saw some random guy walking along the road which scared me, but he just waved and left me alone. I also got honked at while on an the only overpass on my route. I waved.
the ride between bruges and blankenburg was pretty. lots of sheep and cute farmhouses. a heavy smell of animal poop filled the
air, which made me happy b/c it reminds me of home (i know that sounds bad, but most of you guys are from arkansas. you should know what i mean). i wish i had taken pictures, but like i mentioned before, I was in a big hurry to get where I was going during daylight and the trip back was all dark.
That night I went to bed really early (like 9) since I hadn't slept the night before and had biked for hours that day, but first I drank some beer b/c Belgium is famous for beer. I got a big bottle of cherry beer with my dinner, and afterwards I tried the complimentary beer sampler my hostel gave me. It included a brown abbey beer (so-so), a wheat beer (fantastic!), and another kind of cherry beer (also fantastic!). I had the second kind of cherry beer the next night, too, and would have had another wheat beer if it weren't for my tight budget. Belgian beer really is great, though.
Even though I was totally worn out from the lack of sleep, intense exercise, and my couple of beers, I woke up after sleeping for two
hours b/c my legs decided to very loudly declare how mad they were at me for using them so ill earlier in the day. It was awful. I felt like my thigh sinews were being marinated in gasoline. Seriously. They burned like hell and kept me awake for a couple hours. Keep in mind that since I live on campus in York and that town is basically too far away to walk to unless I have a whole day to devote to towning-it up, I usually get very little exercise. But I swallowed a whole bunch of ibuprofen and eventually managed to go back to sleep, and thankfully, my legs felt a lot better by morning and didn't keep me from walking around town.
i would like to add that before i left on my biking adventure, i got fries for lunch. belgians are very serious about fries--they claim that they were the ones (not the french) who invented them and fries stands abound across the country. i went up to one in the main square, told the guy working there that i didn't know what any of the stuff on the sign was (it was in dutch), and
asked him to just give me something good. he asked if i was american, and if, like most americans i like spicy stuff. i answered yes to both, and so i ended up with the "spicy special". that was one delicious and indeed, spicy, batch of fries. they made my nose run. there were at least three types of sauce on them, one being like a spicy mayonaisse and the other two i have no idea about, and there were shredded onions on the top. i will enclose a picture of all this.
on thursday I just walked around town, following the multitude of great non-touristy suggestions written on the back of the city map my hostel gave me. I had come to Belgium with Julia's copy of Rick Steve's the Best of Europe b/c it had an extensive Bruges section, but my little map knew everything about town. I went to a thrift store in search of a tshirt with Flemish writing on it (it seems they box up all their tshirts once summer is over--lame), went to a nice chocolate store where I had banana hot chocolate and bought some awesome and cheap chocolates, picked up some
cheap italian food for lunch, and just enjoyed the medieval architecture and sunny weather. speaking of the architecture, i should give some background info on bruges. it was a big deal back in the day, as it was an important city in the hanseatic league, but around 1500 the river silted up, making it no good for trade and basically stopping all its progress. Consequently, it has been preserved the way it was back in its hey-day. Its nice.
I went to the Groeninge Museum, which has a great collection of works by Flemish primitive artists. A few things to know about the Flemish primitives: like most Europeans, they were really into painting Jesus and Mary and the rest of the crew; they were also really great at painting monsters from hell.
Thursday night I went to a small restaurant recommended for its huge selection of crepes by my hostel map. I had a really delicious caramel apple crepe, which was served to me very begrudgingly by a Flemish woman. After I had eaten she wouldn't give me my bill, even though I was just sitting there looking very bored and she was doing nothing at all. I'm
i accidentally took this
while trying to take a proper picture of myself. woops.pretty sure she did this to be rude, so I returned the rudeness by going to the counter to make her wait on me. Also, while i was in this restaurant, I saw some lady put down her plate and let some dog that was randomly running around lick it clean. I WAS REALLY GROSSED OUT.
My plane left on Friday at 8 AM England time. Because I had to take an hour train back to Brussels and an hour shuttle back to Chaleroi, I had to get up at 2:30 in the morning in order to get to the airport in sufficient time. that was lame, but I managed to catch my plane so its all okay.
As soon as my Belgium adventures ended, I was expected in London for my program's London weekend extravaganza. It was funy, and I will write about this in my next entry.
Sorry I haven't written in a while, guys. Things are pretty mundane in York. I go to class, I do homework. Pretty unexciting stuff. We had a really nice fall, though. Contrary to what I expected, it wasn't rainy here at all. Actually, it rained more and more
frequently in Fville than it did here, by far, and while the coloring wasn't as dramatic as i'm sure it was in fville, the foliage here was very colorful for several weeks.
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T REX
Megan H
Hey!
Gasoline-marinated sinews! I LOVE IT!! You're a funny, funny lady.