Belgium.
Wow, that was a long time ago. Back in May before any of us were train connoisseurs and before we even knew about Alligator Sky and all the other great things that would make this summer one to remember.
Belgium. A country nestled right between Germany, France, and the Netherlands. And Luxembourg, but that ruins my next point. People there speak French and Flemish, because hell, they’re jealous that their neighbors each have their own language, so they wanted one, too. Brussels, the capital of Belgium, is considered de facto capital of the EU, which is pretty funny considering the country’s been having internal problems and is on the verge of splitting. But I digress.
On our first weekend as newly minted world travellers, coming off the high of arriving in Europe and ready to expand our worldview, we decided on this little country as a starting point. Long before getting burned out and long before realizing it actually takes time to travel between places, we set our itinerary to three cities in two days--Antwerp, Brussels, and quaint ass Brugge. Honestly, I don’t remember why we chose those cities, except that Brussels was the capital, and had this famed bar called Delirium, Antwerp happened to be on the way, and Brugge had this giant clock tower which was worth seeing.
Before we begin, a warning: these events are possibly out of order, could be slightly incomplete, probably contain factual errors (especially with numbers), and might not sound quite as awesome as they actually were. Except for the people that witnessed them. For them, hopefully it’s a reminder of great times.
So let’s start at Antwerp. There were two options for Belgium--leave late Friday, or leave early Saturday morning. Already money conscious, we decided that we would pay in loss of sleep what we would’ve paid in cash for a hostel, and went for the morning plan. With a 6:00 wake up on Saturday, May 21, we all headed off for the Metz train station for a 7:00 departure to Luxembourg. We didn’t quite understand that trains actually leave on time and don’t have ridiculously stupid airport security, so we probably actually woke up at 5:30 and arrived at 6:30 to complain for half an hour that we could have slept more. Actually, we probably spent that half hour excited that we were about to embark on our first trip. From Luxembourg we left at 8:20 towards Brussels. And from there at 11:42 to Antwerp. Okay, I lied, Antwerp wasn’t on the way to Brussels, and clearly had another claim to fame. If I’d actually taken the time to participate in planning that first trip, I’d probably know.
So it turns out that 5:30 is pretty early. And having been the first week, I didn’t realize that ‘8AM classes’ means ‘get to sleep earlier than 3AM’. To make a long story short, to the amusement of apparently a whole car full of Belgians heading for their morning trips, as well as a group of friends too busy laughing to wake me, I spent one of the legs of this trip chicken pecking my way through a nap. If you’re having a hard time imagining this, worry not!! There was video evidence! Which you’ll find here:
[video evidence temporarily misplaced, but trust me, it was hilarious]
Anyway, we finally got to Antwerp and, loaded with our backpacks, decided to start investigating this foreign city. Right as we get out of the train, we see one of the most beautiful train stations in all our travels. A clean, gothic look with lots of waffle stands (they’re known for their waffles, what can I say?). The first order of business was food (nope, didn’t get the waffles, we saved that for later), but, despite our determination to get something different in our second new country, we still ended up getting some random hamburger meal with fries (okay, Belgium is known for its fries, too, so we can forgive that) from a fast food joint called Bicky (at least it was foreign).
The Bicky was so real, Bethany and Katy may have needed a shot to down it.
Stomachs filled, we started our explorations by heading towards a well known cathedral in Antwerp. Not too memorable a walk there, except for this one guy that was playing a rolling piano which was pretty cool. Also an H&M (Hugo and Martha, true story), and a really cool semicircular loop around some building whose identity I can’t really remember.
The cathedral was super awesome, but alas we only got to see it from the outside for some reason. Not that we weren’t about to get our fill of cathedrals over the summer. The true memory from this cathedral was not the building itself, but a one man show known only as Jack Jaxx that happened to be around right when we passed by. This guy was the first street performer that we had seen in Europe, and to his credit, he gave us a show like no other. A show that included at least five different languages (mostly in the context of him asking a poor audience member what language he actually fucking spoke [his words]), juggling fire on a unicycle, and a bicycle balanced on a forehead. Hilarious man, good first impression of Belgium, and a good substitute for actually going into the cathedral.
At this point we’re wondering what to do next when one of us (probably Shashank and his receipt list) reminds the others that there’s a cool printing museum in Antwerp--a museum that apparently houses the oldest functional printing press. Come on, who wouldn’t want to see that? This museum is in an actual house (well, a mansion), which was at one point owned by one of the better known printing families in the region (yes, printing family, this was the 1700s after all). Their hobby? Collect books. Lots of them. Lots of cool books. New books, old books, printed books, handwritten books. They even had a book from the 9th century. Yeah, they made books back then. No, it wasn’t in the best condition. But it was from the NINTH CENTURY. I didn’t even know things existed back then, let alone books. And they were beautiful. Yes, beautiful. I would not want to have their job, but whoever had painted in these manuscripts were first class artists. Brilliant work.
And then came the printing press. Actually, it wasn’t in such good condition either, but give it some slack--you wouldn’t be in the best condition after four centuries of storage either. Yeah, that was anticlimactic. But, trust me, it was really cool standing in the midst of that much history. Not as cool as the Gutenberg Bible on the second floor, though. Yeah, that bible. The one that was the first thing ever printed. Yes, that cool. First. Thing. Ever. Okay, I lied, this was a second edition or something. But right there in front of us was this piece of history that changed everything. That made Harry Potter possible. Yeah, a lot cooler now, isn’t it?
Now, you’re reading this story and probably thinking, “This guy is traveling in Europe with a group of college kids interested in museums? Sounds fake.” Yeah, kind of. We all really enjoyed the first floor. And then the second floor for Pranav, Shashank, and I was a game of hide-and-go-seek to avoid the complaining rest of the group. But it had the Gutenberg Bible, so it was totally worth it. And even among those three, I was the one that got the reputation for not being able to leave museums. It was the Gutenberg Bible, though!! How often do you get a chance to see that?!
Enough of that, though, because our 17:03 train for Brussels was barreling towards the Antwerp station, and we had to leave in a rush so as not to miss it (yeah, yeah, my group had good reason to want me out of the museum). With a few last impressions of Antwerp as we arrived at the station, we jumped on the train and made our way to the capital.
And this is the city where it all started. Where Timmy started to slowly emerge as leader of our group by taking out any and all competition. It all began with a slight misread of a map in a book by a certain Katy on our way to the hostel, which took us down the path shown below.
Yeah, talk about the completely wrong direction. It wasn’t made any better by the fact that when we started going in the right direction we slowly went from nice parts of town to sketchier and sketchier parts of town. Right up until our hostel, where we saw (what we can only hope was) a bar called Rape. Yes, someone had decided that was the best name they could come up with. In creepy letters made of wooden stakes, no less. After finally arriving, and despite having to carry our bags all this distance, we were ready to go to this Delirium everyone had talked about, so we locked our stuff up and left towards our destination--that little blue pin in the middle of the triangle of fail on the map. On our way, we even found this awesome (and by 'awesome', I mean slightly sketchy, but sketchy places make for the best stories), cheap, pizza place, where we started our tradition of getting pizza just about everywhere (we are college students, after all).
I’m gonna give away the ending, but we never made it to Delirium. What we did instead was interesting, to say the least, because this was the second time our map failed us. It was also the last time we’d leave for a city without a good map at hand. It turns out that in that region of Brussels, which I can only assume was the same one we went to, nighttime is not the right time. While traveling through small alleys with no lights, we found ourselves realizing that being in a foreign country, without a good map, with quickly approaching night, and surrounded by suspicious looking individuals is not the place you want to be. The realization that we were going, yet again, exactly opposite of where wanted to took a while to dawn on us, because we refused to believe our map would lead us wrong again. Fool us once, map, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. And so away we went from the catcalling locals to a brighter part of town. Delirium was a no go, but we’d survived the ghetto of Brussels--you don’t get stories like that every day.
Once we’d given up on Delirium, there weren’t many options left, so we decided to go visit the Peeing Boy and the Grand Plaza of Brussels. There is one word to describe the Peeing Boy--overrated. I mean, seriously, if people are gonna make so much fuss about it, it’d be nice if it weren’t actually life sized. The little sculpture in a nook next to the road wasn’t quite what everyone had played it up to be, so we cut our losses and chilled at a bar nearby. The owner wasn’t quite the most amicable man, probably because most of us got the cheapest beer on the menu: a cherry flavored one, if I remember correctly (yes, this included some of us guys; no, this wasn’t the last time we went for the sweet beer; yes, we are awesome). Next, it was off to the plaza, but not without a break for some Belgian waffles! We stopped at a waffle shop to grab some of the tastiest ones I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, the little plastic forks they gave us were useless, so eating them became a study in how to cause the biggest mess. Afterward, the plaza itself was really grandiose, with lots of nice buildings surrounding it and a lot of people just sitting around. We decided to join, and at some point proceeded to have a conversation about clouds. Something funny happened with that, but I unfortunately don’t remember what it was.
After a few hours of good times and good walks, we were ready to return to the hostel, and started our trek back. Nothing too exciting here, but there was this really cool building with a light show on the outside. Not sure why they were wasting their money, but seeing it was worth the late night return. Unfortunately, heading back late also meant seeing that Rape club sign in the dark, which made it even creepier. But we quickly hustled past and got to our hostel rooms for sleep. We’d finished a successful day in Belgium, and we had an 8:55 train to Brugge to catch, after all!
Let me start off the story of Brugge with a clarification that our map reading skills improved immensely by the end of the summer. That being said, our first action when we got there was the embarrassing stunt of once again misreading a map and walking out of the wrong end of the train station (apparently you can fool us three times, map). After a good one or two mile walk, and a solidification of our impression of Brugge as quaint ass with all it’s random little buildings, we realized our mistake, headed back, and entered what can only be called a bustling, old fashioned town. My thoughts were literally that the historic part of this city seemed like it had been pulled out of a movie and plopped into here for all to see. And quite the sight it was--cute little homes, busy stores, waffle stands everywhere (we did end up getting another) and swans swarming the streaming river flowing through the city.
We had one goal in this city: an old clock tower which apparently had a fantastic view from the top, if you were willing to climb it. And we were. We were ready to conquer anything and everything, as we would be in all the cities in which we encountered climbing challenges. The plaza containing this tower reinforced the general impression of the city--it had cobbled streets, old style buildings and a general hearty atmosphere. The tower itself was also impressively imposing, and looked as a guardian would over the city. The climb itself didn’t prove too difficult, and included pit stops to watch the workings of the bells--quite an amazing system that kept the tower ringing away the time. And the view itself was as promised--breathtaking. Not only because of the panorama, but also because of the freezing cold wind that was blowing through the openings in the side--it turns out that when you go above an entire city, the wind is furious, and the skimpy clothing for below just won’t cut it. Needless to say, a quick appreciation of the sights later, we decided to head down.
Our next pit stop was a nearby cathedral that included one work from Michelangelo--the only one of his works purposefully taken out of Italy, or some other similar claim to fame. In the church we got to hear a choir practicing for the public--partly because we wanted to stay and hear, and partly because we lost Dan (the first of many times) and couldn’t leave without him. Next followed a stop to Simon Stevin’s statue. Our Thermo professor had let us know that this guy did something famous, and while I could have sworn it involved inventing the arrow notation for vectors, Wikipedia has thus far refused to cooperate with my quest to prove this. He did apparently come up with the first general solution to a quadratic equation, so that’s pretty awesome.
All the while, we had been hoping to take a tour of the canals in Brugge, but, alas, our time was running low and we had more important things to do. First order of business: lunch. We went to a nice, though slightly empty, restaurant where the waitress called us out for not each wanting a main course. Not the best experience, but there was good food, so no complaints. And then came the most important order of business: chocolate. You readers have probably been wondering how we’ve been in Belgium so long and forgotten to get chocolate. We didn’t. We were just saving the best for last. Fortunately this touristy town was lined with shops for all kinds of sweets, chief among them the beautiful cocoa concoction. So as our time was winding down in this quaintest of places, we went to a chocolaterie and bought chocolate to our hearts’ delight.
And then, as fast as we’d arrived, off we were on the 15:58 train from Brugge to Brussels, from whence we departed at 17:31 for our return to Metz. That last leg of the trip happened to be on an empty car, too, so we got to jump around the seats, do cartwheels, and generally make fools of ourselves.
Cartwheel!!
Cartwheel fail (the first of many)
And that was our first weekend in Europe. Most-boring-city-to-visit Brussels (or so we were told), quaint-ass Brugge (coined by Timmy), and not-cool-enough-to-have-a-description Antwerp (that was me; sorry, Antwerp). Jack Jaxx, losing ourselves in sketchy Brussels, and visiting a renaissance style town; seeing our first cathedral, getting our first cherry beer, and climbing our first tower; visiting awesome museums, chilling in awesome plazas, and buying some awesome chocolate: all great experiences, all in just two days. This may have been pre-Rick Steves, pre-Timmy the leader, and pre-reading maps correctly, but it was a fantastic weekend that set up the stage for one of the greatest summers of our lives.
