Leaving Dublin with a passport and UK working visa in hand, I made my relitavley short journey to Belgium. Since before coming to Europe, I'd always wanted to come to Belgium, and this seemed like a perfect time as any. My knowledge of the place was that it's bloody small and they make good chocolate and great beer. On the way there I learnt that Belgium is famous for the good old waffle too. In my head, waffles were always a completely Amercian thing and I didn't see what all the fuss was about.
I flew to a small town just outside of the capital, Brussles, where I had to find my way to Brussels train station, then I had to get on a train and make my way to Bruges (Brugge if spelt like a local). Before arriving, I had no clue what language they spoke, and while I was there, my brain suffered severely with some people speaking French, others speaking Dutch and absoultely no-one speaking English. I'm sure everyone could speak all three though.
I made it to the Brussels train station, where the majority of people were speaking what I think was French. I make this assumption due to the fact that everyone was an asshole to me because I was using English. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible so I jumped on the next train to Bruges which took a staggeringly outragous 1 hour (To get from almost on end of the country to the other).
I nearly wet my pants with excitement of my arrival into Bruges. The houses were cute, the people all seemed to be happy and the beauty of the city itself made it's mark in the form of a smile on my face that didn't go away until I reached the hostel (Which took about another hour).
The dumb tourist look must have been smeared all over my face, because two local chaps stopped me in the street and asked if I was lost. I didn't know where my hostel was, or what it was called but somehow they managed to point my in the right direction. I'd never met friendlier locals in my life, and for a second I thought they were going to just drop me off at the front door and check me in to the place.
My hostel was above a bar - The cheapest bar in Bruges mind you. It had almost 40 beers avaialable, each with a special glass of it's own. By my luck, I managed to get a 20 bed dorm to myself.
The closest place for food was next door and it sold...Not much, so I had boiled eggs and some kind of sweet tasting bread for dinner. I found one bottle of milk in the shop, and when I went to buy it, the chap behind the counter asking if I really wanted to buy it. I asked if it was just fresh milk, and when he told me yes, I said that I definitely want to buy it. To complement my sweet bread and boiled eggs for dinner, my milk turned out to be a sour, salty and watery white substance that almost made me cry. It wasn't enjoyable at all.
Before long, I met a couple Aussies, as expected and before long we were all sipping down some beer - or brilliant tasting poison as I'd rather call it. On average, a beer in this bar was about 8.5 bloody percent, and try me, the one's out of the average circle went WELL above that percentage. Because of this, the flavour was also quite different to the standard pilsener or lager. It was such a flavour that you had to drink it at about half the speed, so in theory, you should get drunk any faster fom drinking this as opposed to standard beer. You'd be wrong! After two beers, I could feel the effects and after three, you couldn't shut me up. I wasn't planning for a big night, just a couple to meet some bar flies, but bloody hell, a couple does a good job.
The story behind this beer and the stand (Which makes it look more like a scientific experiment rather than a beer) is that the inn keeper who brewed the stuff, specially made this construction for the men transporting carraiges with horses, and so this could be tied on and they could take the beer with them. Not only does it look cool, it's a lovely beer too!
Waking up feeling not too bad the next day, I found myself walking the streets of the city buying chocolate potatoes, chocolate truffles, chocolate liquer and waffles with hot melted chocolate drizzled over it. You wouldn't believe how messy a waffle with choclate can be. I don't know how it covered so much, I could have sworn there wasn't even that much chocolate on the thing at the start. It was sooooo good though. I took some snaps, bought a few souvenier beers and returned to the hostel, eagerly awaiting the next 30 beers I was yet to try.
Tonight was much the same, just with less people who more more annoying unfortunately. We ended up in a different bar, drinking different beer with a lot more locals. We had an American who fell asleep into his beer, which resulted in it tipping over onto his crotch. Not happy Jan.
Another night sleep in a completely empty dorm allowed me to have a brilliant sleep before I had to start my treacherous journey to Hamburg the next day. Leaving at 3pm and arriving in Amsterdam at 8pm only to leave again at 11pm and arrive in Hamburg at 10am the next morning. The Amsterdam to Hamburg leg of the trip was definitely the more painful one of the two. Buses...
More details of my return to Hamburg to follow.
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