za trip to Bruzzelz

On friday morning my alarm went off at 6.15 and I must say I wasn't very happy with that. It's bank holiday for crying out loud. Yet my backpack was already prepared and Roberto was already on his way to Waterloo where we were supposed to meet up at 7. Living so close to Waterloo is so convenient, I could wake up just 45 minutes before the meeting time.

I jumped in a bus and in 10 minutes I was in Waterloo. Once there I realised I've printed a lot of pages about Brussels, Bruges, the confirmation email, all except the Eurostar booking number which was vital in getting the tickets from the automatic ticket machine. So we had to find a phone, connect to the internet, pay 1 pound for 15 minutes of browsing, access gmail (I was afraid the BT phone-browsers wouldn't handle the gmail ajax very well, but they did). That was stupidly well spent 1 pound.

With the code, we got our tickets, we got through the barrier, with the British "officers" that x-ray the luggage for automatic weapons speaking a dodgy English. Well, they are cheap workers from Poland. Globalisation is a fantastic opportunity for polish workers to learn English!

The trip to Brussels was un-eventful, except for some 4 English "beauties" next to us speaking incessantly "Oh, she got married? I didn't even know she had a boyfriend! Oh, have you seen Brad Pitt's armpits?" And shit like that, at 8 in the morning. Unfortunately the X-ray polish workers took all our scissors, nail cutters, knives and automatic guns ... so we could only visualise mentally different ways of killing the bitches.

The hotel was very nice, a 4-star hotel with twin beds (did I mention twin?) not double bed (twin folks) ... so don't you think that me and Roberto slept in the same bed. It also had a tv with a lot of channels, the room was big. It also had a sauna which we used one evening after walking all day.

It was also located right next to the European Commission and the European Parliament - which by the way were empty as it was Easter, and for Easter, european politicians dose off at their own homes.

We walked all the way from the railway station, Bruxelles-Midi, to the hotel, a long walk. We had our first laugh after we checked in the hotel and we went to a local restaurant near by to have something to eat. We said ... ah, we don't want to eat, just a coffee and a croissant. "Impossible, it's too late" said the guy speaking "like zis!". "Impossible, it's too late for breakfast. 2pm is already too late for breakfast". It was cracking to see this religious approach to breakfast. If it's 2, it's too late for breakfast and it would be sacrilegious to eat a croissant at any other time except breakfast.

We had to accept the ruling as it came from Brussels, and everything that comes from Brussels is good and quickly implemented into law! For a split of a second we thought of taking our case to the Human Rights Court which happens to be in Brussels ... but nah. We ditched the croissant. I bet it wasn't that good anyway! :-)

The weather in Brussels was crap though. It's not just the weather in London that proudly deserves this epithet. It even rained, and we had to buy 5 euro umbrellas and sightsee Brussels with umbrellas. But otherwise Brussels is nice, an interesting, sometimes "out-of-place" combination of new and old, with cobble-stone squares and medieval churches staying next to modern building hanging the european flag. If you were to describe Brussels (and maybe Belgium?!) in couple of keywords, they would be:

1. Waffles - geez, so many waffles, everywhere, at every street corner, everyone selling them to armies of wafflo-maniacs

2. Chocolate - Belgium is the choco-land, no doubt about that. Every street has at least one chocolate shop, each of them boasting of drawing their roots from the early years of 1500 or something similar. And the chocolate is very good and cheap. Yeah yeah, i ate some, kill me now! :P

3. Cobble-stone - phew, this is nice, but if you have a car, or high heels, it's a nightmare. And I remember when driving through Belgium some years back, they have cobble stone motorways too. Well, not many, but still. Phew, get a grip Belgium!

4. Beer & chips - yeap, it's not just Britain and Germany. I expected Stela Artois to rule though, but I found they had a more popular local option called Jupiler which I haven't seen before in the UK or anywhere else.

Eating out in Brussels is very easy, there are some nice narrow streets full of restaurants, one next to another - I confess I can't remember the name of the street, but it's close to the Grand Market (or whatever it's called :-). And they have competitive deals. For instance ... we had a 3 course meal for 12 euros and 12.50 euros. That included a "Soup of the Day", which was very nice soup by the way; then the main dish, Chicken with some mushroom sauce and chips or Roast beef and chips - quite nice. In the end we had dessert too. For 12 euros, it's a bargain.

We also visited the landmark of Brussels (as I consider it) - it's the Atomium, a large scale representation of an iron atom, with electrons as big steel balls in the sky. We got into it, used the escalators - it's not much to see really. It costs 7 euros, something like that.

But what's nicer is the Little Europe, which is very close to Atomium. It's an open air 'museum' showing miniature version of famous cities and buildings in Europe. Big Ben and the UK parliament is there, the Eiffel tower is there, the greek Pantheon is there and many many other stuff. It's a nice overview of nice places in Europe, places you can add to your "to do" list. Don't miss it if you go there. Well, except if it rains, as it's in open air.

In Brussels they speak mainly french, although the official languages in Belgium are flemish (a sort of Dutch) and french. But Brussels is mainly french speaking. That's not the case for Bruges, which is less than an hour away from Brussels by train, going west. In Bruges they mainly speak flemish. But worry not ... most people in Belgium seem to be speaking both languages, flemish and french, they might study both in school. And they also speak English, which is a nice surprise, because not many french speak english, so it's interesting to see french speakers speak english. If you speak english, you won't have any problems in Belgium.

Bruges is very nice, much nicer than Brussels, although it's unfair to compare them as Bruges is a small, laid back town, although vibrant and full of tourists. But the tourists mostly invade the town centre, which is specially designed for tourists. But the other parts of the town are really quiet. The contrast is very nice, because you can have the best of both worlds. We also saw a very very nice photography exhibition in a church. Portraits of people around the world, mainly from developing countries. Very nice, I even left a testimonial in their guest book, that's how much I liked it.

But Bruges is lovely, well worth a visit, and it's full of tourists as everyone seems to agree on this one.

We had a nice late lunch outside as the sun was out too. It was more expensive than in Brussels, due to the army of tourists that compete for seats, but it was nice.

The meals out are very very long in Brussels, in a latin tradition. You go there and spend 2 hours, so be ready to have a bag full of topics to talk over lunch. It's all very relaxed, you don't feel pressured to eat as quickly as you can and free the seat for the next customer as some places in London sometimes make you feel. Don't be surprised if lunch becomes dinner before you know it and you're still in the same place.

We left Brussels early in the morning too, had a baguette in the railway station and then just dozed off, on and off on the Eurostar. All in all, a very good escape, I wish the weather was a bit better though. Ciao!