Day 43: The Hunt for the Canada Bridge

Pretty eventful day today in the end, so I'm not going to go over the rest of yesterday in detail. Other points of interest yesterday included visiting the Chocolate Museum (which included lots of free chocolate, and a lifesize chocobama) and a very colourful group of British rugby fans dressed up as super heroes as a form of self-hazing and who spent the day in the pub below my hostel, causing all sort of ruckus.

Today I did a walking tour of Bruges with people from the hostel led by a very flamboyant young guide from New York that has been living in Bruges for 5 years or so. He swore constantly, lied/embellished regularily, and had us play games that used trigger words to make us all gasp in awe at nothing in the sky and take pictures, or duck down in terror when we were around other groups of tourists to freak them all out. He even managed to slip some history and interesting information about the city in, but it was really about the entertainment value.

After the tour I went out for dinner with some other Canadians staying in the hostel that had been on the tour. Dinner included a massive bowl of spaghetti, a few beer, and of course, another waffle. After dinner the others told me how they'd heard about this Canada Bridge in Bruges, and wanted to go find it. We had rough directions from the walking tour guide, which led to a decent hike. Once we got to the bridge we thought he'd told us, we discovered it was the wrong bridge, and were considering giving up when we came across a local with good English out walking his dog (Eragon, after the dragon, he told us with distaste). He knew where the bridge was, and offered to lead us to it. As we walked along with them the man told us all about the Canadian liberation of Bruges and generally about Belgian history. We also learned that he is the only male master lace-maker in the city. Eventually we got to the bridge and celebrated finding it finally.

Shortly after we lost one of the members of our group, which led to another group of stories, but not going to write all about it here.

Day 42: Bruges

I came to Bruges for a few days to escape the big-city grind for a few days and get a taste of a smaller, historic place. Bruges isn't a backwater village by any stretch, and there's lots to see and do, but there are a lot less tourists and everything is less crowded and just feels a bit more authentic than you get in big cities. Just as a quick example, I haven't seen any shopping malls in the city center, and only a single Subway for fast food chains. Not even McDonalds, and McDonalds is pretty much everywhere.

Also unlike the bigger cities, Bruges has a lot of narrow, twisting streets once you get a few blocks away from the main areas, and there aren't any nice perpendicular intersections like we're so used to in North America. These winding streets and the intersection canals can make it a bit easy to get lost, but the city center is small enough that it shouldn't become a real issue.

Or, for a different perspective:

That's from the top of the belfry, which I had the somewhat painful experience of being in for some very loud bell ringing. It's 336 steps to the top - which isn't too much, but the spiral stairs are very narrow and when you have people going up and down it can be a bit tricky. It certainly is a great view of the city though.

I had more interesting things to talk about for today, but it's getting later and I don't want to write anymore tonight. Tomorrow should be a slower day, so if I don't have too much new to talk about I can finish off todays events. Night.

Day 41: Waffles & Comics

I've never had a very consistent plan for visiting Belgium. At first, I planned to only visit Brussels, as it was the city I was most familiar with. Later, I changed my plans to only visit Bruges because it has a lot of history but isn't quite so metropolitan as Brussels (and with stringing together Dublin, Amsterdam and Paris having something a bit smaller in the middle might be nice). Ultimately I decided to do one day in Brussels (today) and two in Bruges. I'm really glad I decided to stop over in Brussels, as despite all the travelling and more rainy weather I had a really fun day.

My hostel is a good walk outside the city center in an area that's a little shady. I took the subway to get here the first time when I had all my things with me, but can walk down to the city center in maybe 35 minutes. The windows have bars on them and you need to buzz reception to open the door to even check in (that plus the "This establishments carries no cash on premises" sign on the door are part of the shady feeling), but it seems homey enough on the inside. My first trip using the Eurail pass went smoothly, so I got into Brussels around 12:30 and was ready to go check out the city by 1:30 or so. The very small amount of research I'd done told me that the two areas with the most to do were down in the commercial city center or further northwest at Heysel Park where they have the Atomium and some touristy things. I only felt I had time for one or the other and the city center was the obvious choice.

The first thing that struck me is how amazing the architecture is in Brussels. I'm sure I'll be harder to impress when I've seen more of Europe, but in the commercial district it seemed like every building had architectural sculptures, which I'm a sucker for. The buildings surrounding the Grote Markt are especially stunning.

I've been trying to eat healthier the last few days and focus on those food groups I tend to neglect, but the street food was so delicious looking (and tasting!) that I gave myself a bit of a cheat day. They had wonderful fries with a huge selection of sauces, but as expected the true powerhouses in town were the chocolates and waffles. Downtown there seems to be waffle stands everywhere. I didn't get a picture of the one I had, because I had nowhere to set it down and take a picture, and they can be a bit messy - but I did get a picture of the stand, so you'll get the idea. Delicious.

Eating bits and pieces of street food also gave me a good chance to break out the french. Before saying anything, I'd try to reherse it a bit in my head and structure things to avoid the vocabulary I don't remember. That preparation and an accent that's still passable (and the fact that saying you want a waffle with chocolate, cream and strawberries isn't exactly complex) was enough that they generally assumed I knew what I was doing. That all collapsed when they'd fire off some quick unexpected questions I hadn't prepared for, and then my hesitation would give me away and they'd repeat things in english. Ah well, baby steps.

As a lot of you know, Belgium also has a pretty proud history of comics, including things like Tintin and the Smurfs. Tintin especially is a big hit around town, and I checked out a shop dedicated to him. Near the city is an entire Tintin museum (the Museum Herge), but I'm not a big enough fan to go visit. I did find a pretty amazing comic store though. Despite my less than perfect proficiency with the language, I've been a big fan of French comics (bande dessinee) for a few years now. I like the art style far more than most North American comics, and the settings and stories are just so much more creative and interesting to me. I've been trying to get my hands on one particular series at a reasonable price - 'Sillage' by Jean-David Morvan and Philippe Buchet, and its prequel 'Navis' for a few years, and when I found this shop full of hardcover French comics I instantly went looking for it. Not only did they have the complete series, but they also had signed copies of the first three volumes and on the second floor they had signed original artwork for the series. Sadly, I can't carry things with me, and it's not worth the cost of shipping home. Still fun to see these books that have been so illusive for me in the wild though! I also added a few new names to my wishlist by browsing around. I really hope more people take notice of the French stuff in North America and start translating and publishing it there. I think the market would be huge, and manga has been crossing over pretty well.

I know I've brought up street art a few times already, but Brussels seems to have a pretty amazing street art scene too. One of my favourite artists - Roa (I put one of his pictures back in the London post) is Belgian, so I was hoping to find some stuff of his. I really should have looked things up ahead of time but didn't think of it. I did manage to find one nice big wall by him of some pigs. If I didn't mention it back in the London post, he almost exclusively paints figures of animals native to where he's painting. Running out of space for pictures (and I know not everybody loves the graffiti stuff as much as me), but I'm going to be dumping it into Picasa with the rest. I found a few more Invaders as well - that guy gets around.

Finally, since it's one of Brussels most famous monuments, I swung by the 'Manneken Pis' (Little Man Pee). For those not familiar, it's a 400 year old bronze statue of a little boy peeing into a fountain. These days they dress it up in different costumes (and according to wikipedia sometimes hook him up to kegs so that he pees beer - which they serve to people on the street - clever).

Onward to Bruges tomorrow. I have all my trains mapped out and hostels booked until the end of Paris now, which takes off a lot of stress for a few days. Once I get to Paris I'll need to start figuring the part after, but even a few days break from it is nice. The Italy and Greece bits of my plan are still a mess, but I'm sure it'll come together in the end.