Belgium Break

After five months of unemployment, I managed to get a job – and because of this good fortune, and the fact that it didn’t start for a week I decided to get out of London and see one of the smaller countries of Europe that as yet I still hadn’t visited. It was time to explore the land of beer and chocolate..

Wednesday 10th April

I got out of bed in Swiss Cottage at an entirely unreasonable hour, having managed to get a cheap train to Brussels which required me to do so. The train ride went amazingly quickly due to the fact that I slept though most of it. Upon arrival at Brussels midi, I got a map from the tourist office in the station and went out to explore the capital of Europe.

The first thing on my agenda was to find a place to stay for the night – and despite the first place being fully booked, I managed to get a bed in the nearby Van Gogh hostel where I left my bag and continued the exploration. The most famous tourist spot in Brussels is the Grand Palace which contains the very impressive Hotel de Ville and this is was my first destination, getting there after a walk through the botanical gardens that seemed to be surrounded by new high-rise buildings, and down the hill into the centre of town.

After checking out the impressive guild houses around the main square I had a look at the Mannekin Pis a famous statue of a small boy having a leak, with the water feature in the appropriate place. After this I allowed myself to get lost in the maze of streets around the old town, in no particular order wandering past the courts of justice and panoramic views over the city to the Parc de Brussels and back to the hostel. On the way I saw many of the 18 commissioned murals that appear on walls around the city.

After getting my bed sorted, I repaired to the bar which despite being only a small hostel, in typical Belgium fashion had a selection of 15 beers to choose from. The hostel seemed to be full of school children on their holidays and very large German blokes who towered over me as I was checking in. I imagine that these guys would have all been in excess of 6’3. Most of the laguauge spoken around the bar was not English and consequently the usual idea of getting a posse together and hitting the town was blown to pieces. Luckily however, bottles of Jupiler were only €1 and they were playing Blur on the sound system.

After Id had a few drinks, the school children moved on and the bar quietened down – leaving me to sit writing in my notebook and drawing comparisons with stories from Bill Bryson books. I guessed from the accent of the casual greeting of another patron that a New Zealander had come into the bar, but such was the emptiness of the bar immediately a guy appeared from nowhere to chat to her, and a potential drinking partner was lost.

The bottles of beer, although very cheap were not very volumous and I found myself getting much better at pronouncing Jupiler rather than the Jupiter than I had first thought. Also I started to remember to say ‘Oui’ rather than ‘Si’ when responding in the positive which meant that habits from the trip to Mexico the previous month were beginning to disappear.

It had been apparent over the day that most of the people that Id run into could speak at least three languages, even those who are not native to the country. Street signs are in both the national languages (French and Flemish) but everyone I seemed to meet spoke English also.

The beers continued to disappear at an usually high velocity and I turned my thoughts to other reports of Brussels that had been delivered to me over the years. Most of them had been unfavourable but I decided that I quite liked the place, it has lots of old and a lot more new than most European cities, a diverse range of inhabitants and easy access to the rest of Europe.

Thursday 7th April

The drinking last night continued well into the evening and after a while, I joined the kiwi girl ‘Elaine’ who was taking a break from working in a London pub and with the help of one of the staff of the hostel we tried the entire range of beers at the bar.

This morning I got up and recovered my notebook from my new friend behind the serving counter and after getting the food into me, walked to the train station where I caught a train to Brugge/Bruges. I had some interesting Italian co-passengers, who after initially confounding my stereotypes with a polite and quiet beginning to the journey, soon lived up to their reputation.

After arriving in Bruges, and finding accommodation at a hostel, I once again set out on foot to discover what the city had to offer. I started at the Markt – the centre of town, where I climbed up the 300+ stairs to the top of the Belfry that looks over the town then continued to the Burg and around the streets next to canals around the old town.

In the afternoon, I read the tres interesting ‘Cloud Garden’ by Paul Winder and Tom Hart-Dyke and went downstairs to the bar where I had dinner and met a guy from my room who joined me at a pub in Kemmal Straat where there was a menu containing over 300 beers and we attempted to try at least one from each of the local regions before finishing the night with a very nice champagne beer, getting in at around 2:30.

Friday 8th April

This morning was a slow start as a result of the previous nights efforts and after getting moving, I booked a tour around Flanders fields then checked the train times for my return to London. In the afternoon of a very, very rainy day I decided to rent a bike and ride alongside the canal to Damme and then on to Knokke- but the weather, my lack of fitness and time contraints meant that I turned back to Bruges about 7km short of my destination. After that there was nothing more to do than have a few beers at the hostel bar. I met an Australian girl who worked there and we briefly chatted about travelling and the like before I turned in early in preparation for a reasonably early start the next morning.

Saturday 9th April

I got up and out of the hostel and via a local supermarket where I managed to find some breakfast which kept me warm whilst I waited in between snow flurries for my tour van to pick me up. After we had collected all the punters for the day, we headed towards the Flanders fields surrounding Pacssendale and Ypres. The guide was very well informed and inbetween visiting a selection of the various memorials and mass graves from WWI we learned of the history of the area from 1914-1918. We visited memorials to the New Zealand contingent and the Canadians who braved the first German gas attacks of the war. We was the preserved hill 60 near Messines where there are the remains of the 24 (19 actually exploded) mines that caused (apparently) the largest man-made earthquake ever. We found out that there are still 3-4 deaths a year as a result of all the unexploded shells and witnessed all the shells that farmers discover all over the countryside. It was very enjoyable, if cold day and we finished at the Essex Farm memorial where the famous ‘Flanders Fields’ poem was written. I got back to Bruges late afternoon and settled into the bar at the hostel, meeting some other travellers with whom I went out to dinner with, followed by a few more beers at a bar on the way home.

Sunday 10th April

I dragged myself out of bed, said my goodbyes at the hostel and made my way back to the station where I caught a train back to Brussels and then after procuring some chocolates went on to board the Eurostar back home to London.