Bruges

Happy Easter!

We got a head start on the morning and got on a train to Bruges around 10:30. The trip took around an hour, and the Belgian countryside is really beautiful. It's very green here and the rural towns are so different from those of the US. All the houses look really neat.



We got into Bruges and were surprised to find it was kind of cold and windy at the train station, but once we got into the town itself the wind pretty much got cut off due to all the houses being connected everywhere you go, and the streets are very narrow and winding like a large labyrinth. All that we knew about Bruges came from the Colin Farrel movie. It was totally different than in the movie (which isn't that surprising). There were a ton of people in the main square next to the famous clock tower, so we wandered pretty much everywhere else but there. We would take a random street and make random turns over and over but somehow would end up right back at the central square over and over.





While walking around we stumbled on a little shop called "Le Bier Tempel" that had hundreds upon hundreds of bottled Belgian beers as well as pint glasses, snifters, and other collectible items. While I was walking around the shop I realized that being in Belgium meant that I had the rare opportunity to find the #1 rated beer on the planet (by beeradvocate.com) which is Westvleteren 12. This beer is very rare because it is brewed by trappist monks and they make no effort to distribute it, so the only way you can buy it is by finding a bar or beer seller that makes the effort to get on a waiting list, then drive to the monastery to pick it up. The quantities are very limited, so it is considered somewhat the holy grail of beers. I was able to get two bottles, so I will drink one when I get home and save the other for a long time.





After walking around for a little while we stopped for some coffee and the much anticipated Belgian waffles at a cafe and people watched. Despite being really crowded everywhere we went, Bruge's crowds were much easier to be around than the crowds in Paris.



We wandered all around for a few hours and found a really cool flea market that had all kinds of old paintings, brass fixtures, swords, glassware. There were so many things that I wanted to buy but have absolutely no need for.



Another things I really wanted to see was the inside of a cathedral, but most of them either charged to go in or were locked up but we eventually stumbled on one and it was really beautiful. I thought it was interesting to see firsthand how churches still use holy relics in day to day prayer.





One of the many times we ended up running back into the center square we found a free art gallery showing photographs taken of bicycle races in Belgium. They were all very interesting.

Towards the end of the day we stumbled on a random "beer wall" that supposedly had every Belgian beer in it. I highly doubt that it had every Belgian beer in it, but it was very cool to see it all in a glass case.



On our way back to the train station we found a park that ran along one of the canals and followed it all the way back to the train station. The weather was really great so we took our time getting out of town.



When we got back to Brussels we realized that since it was Easter pretty much all the affordable restaurants were closed but we found a little grocery store that had microwave meals so we ate dinner in our hotel room and watched TV.



The day was very enjoyable and I really like Belgium a lot more than I thought I would.

Brussels

We started the morning in Paris somewhat lazily hanging out in our hotel room watching boring BBC on tv and eating some yogurts and apples and pre-packaged chocolate mousses in weird glass containers.

We originally had planned on taking a train to Versailles to see the palace and gardens, but we quickly realized that if we decided to spend the amount of time needed to do anything else we hadn't seen already, we would risk not being able to get on a train to Brussels (and i didn't really do any research on what to do for that leg of the trip for some reason) so we decided to check out of the hotel and make our way to the train station in north Paris. It's a good thing we did because the train station was huge and confusing. To make matters worse, when we finally did figure out what train went to Brussels we found out that it was going to cost us 160 euro for two tickets. That was a pretty big let down since we were planning on it being not even half that, but we totally took some time and rationalized how it was ok since we had saved so much money on all the other trips we had taken so far and saved so much money thanks to our friends who've let us stay with them on the trip.



After eating lunch in the train station we checked in for our trip and climbed onto the train and discovered our seat numbers for our last minute ticket purchase put us in a small awkward 8 seat compartment close to the entry of the car so we had a lot of bathroom traffic and the noise of the very close sets of hydraulic doors opening and closing over and over. After we got rolling we noticed that the train was going fast. VERY fast. 330 KPH fast! I had never experience anything like it in my life. It felt like we were flying 5 feet off the ground. It all made sense then why the train was so expensive. It was a bullet train and got us to Brussels in an hour instead of 2 or more. The man sitting next to us was from Holland and was making his way home from Libya. He was very friendly and chatted with us about what to do in Brussels, where we are from, among other things. Once we got into Brussels we discovered that a country who's primary two spoken languages are french and dutch is not very english speaker friendly. They have some signs in english but it is very random, and the main things we needed to know were not easy to understand. We figured out that they had an underground so we took the train to where we thought we needed to be but we realized that even though our hotel name had "City Center" in it's name it was actually south of the actual city center.
After nearly two hours of wandering around trying to find the hotel we got checked in and napped for a bit before taking the train (which we finally figured out how it worked) into the city center where Delirium Bar is.

Delirium is a belgian brewery in Brussels who's two main beers "tremens" and "nocturn" are available all over the world and is very well known for its interesting grey bottles with labels covered in pink elephants.









I had been excited since the beginning of the trip to visit this bar and see their list of over 2000 bottled beers as well as countless taps.

I had a Hercule stout which was billed as the only belgian stout, and Amy had the Tremens. I wasnt a big fan of the stout but it was awesome to get to try something new. The tremens was good as always. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys golden ales.

I wanted to go to a bar called Morte Subite, but we couldn't find it and decided to eat dinner. We found a street close to Delirium that had a ridiculous amount of restaurants who were all trying to coax us in to eat. As much as I wanted muscles and frites, every place we saw was very expensive so we decided on italian, and sat outside at a point where the street was more open and far less crowded.



Amy and I ordered pizza which was great, and then wandered all the narrow streets which were all lined with patios of brasseries. People were all so happy and social everywhere we went.


Amy eating the smallest piece of pizza ever.

One thing I have to mention is that the weather has been really incredible during this entire trip. Paris and Brussels were beautiful and we were very lucky to have such warm weather.



SO, before heading back to the hotel on the train, we cut through the main square which was incredibly ornate and massive. The pictures I took do it no justice. We laid down in the middle of the cobblestone square and stared up at the sky for a while.





Tomorrow we go to Bruges.

Paris

We got to Paris late last night because our good ol' Eurolines bus was piloted by three ridiculous Russians who were somewhat ill prepared and got us boarded by police twice in Germany, the second time which happened because they stopped us at a gas station and left to renew the license plates on foot. Long story short, we got into Paris a good two hours after we were supposed to, around midnight.

Our hotel room was really awesome (all of the hotels on this trip have been actually) and we were happy to sleep in. When we decided to head out we realized that the road into the middle of Paris was one of the main arteries for tourists so as we got closer and closer the foot traffic grew more and more intense. Every few feet as you walk around you see a couple people peddling various sizes of Eiffel tower statues. We wandered around into the park behind the tower and took photos from pretty much every point possible. It is a really interesting place to people watch since pretty much every kind of person in the world goes to see the Eiffel tower and they're all mashed into one big crowd. After a short while we had seen enough and walked over to the area of town that I had visited on tour in 2004 and stopped into a grocery store to pick up a baguette, meat, cheese, and fruit for lunch. It was enjoyable to look around a Parisian grocery store and see all the differences between it and others I've seen on this trip.







After lunch we decided to go up the hill to Montmartre (which is where Amelie lived) so we walked up a lot of hills and stairs, finally making it to the overlook of the city. It was really amazing to see but there were way too many people around there so we went back down the hill to a cafe for some coffee and then back to the hotel for a couple hours.





I looked up some suggestions for dinner and found a place a couple stops down on the Metro called Chex Germaine that was highly rated for it's traditional french food and friendly atmosphere. We found the restaurant tucked away down a small street in a neighborhood that didn't seem to have any reason to attract tourist type visitors to begin with. The place was tiny with only 7 or 8 tables half of which were for two. The fellow that greeted us was a middle aged man dressed very casually. I couldn't tell whether he just worked there or was the owner, but either way he was very friendly and helpful despite our inability to speak french. He said his english was just as bad as our french but he spoke english just fine, and kind of tried to make us say the french names of everything in the way a teacher would make you do it. Not pretentious at all.

The way the Chex Germaine works is you pay a flat 16.50 and get to pick from a list an appetizer, entree, and desert. We didn't really know what any of the names of the dishes meant or what was in them, so it was kind of fun because I asked him to pick for us and he was totally into it. For starters Amy got carrot's rapees and I got leeks in a vinaigrette. I had never tasted leeks before and really enjoyed them a lot. It reminded me a lot of artichoke hearts. Amy really liked the carrots rapees as well.



For Entrees I got salmon and mushrooms in a creamy mustard sauce on rice which was really great and Amy got leg of lamb with beans which was also delicious. We traded half way through so we would get to try everything.



Desert was so good I almost ate it all before I remembered to take a photo. I got a tiramisu with raspberry sauce, and Amy got a chocolate mousse/cake type desert which was very rich. We really enjoyed it all so much and were in a really good mood after for having the courage to go out of our way and experience something off the beaten path.



After dinner we hopped on the metro and made our way to Notre Dame cathedral. Like everywhere else in Paris it was totally crowded but well worth it since is so beautiful and well known. We walked along the river and enjoyed people watching. Everywhere you look on a nice warm night in Paris you can see groups of people sitting on all the bridges and along the river drinking wine and having a great time with each other. It kind of made me sad because we can't do that at home, but the more I thought about it, I have a feeling that americans wouldn't be able to handle public drinking as well as the parisians.







We stumbled on the Louvre which despite being closed still had a thousand people all taking photos of the famous glass pyramids and the ornate buildings and sculptures.







At that point we were too tired to continue walking all the way back to the hotel which was a few kilometers away, so we headed to the metro and got back to the hotel for some much needed rest.

Even though Paris is horribly crowded and touristy during the spring, I really enjoyed seeing so much history and beautiful architecture.

Tomorrow we head to Belgium.

Nuremberg/Munich - Day 3

Today Amy, Drew, Carolyn, and I took a train down to Dachau to visit the concentration camp and memorial. We got on the first train and it was completely packed to the point we thought we might not get to sit don let alone all sit together. Drew and I ended up sitting at a table next to a guy that looked like a German Al Pacino. He was being super flirty with his wife to try and make us uncomfortable which was hilarious because she seemed to be really embarrassed and we didn't care. The rest of the train ride was pretty uneventful.



At Dachau, words couldn't describe how intense of an experience it was to go somewhere that so much pain and suffering was deliberately caused to so many innocent people. The whole place took about two hours to cover since it is such a large area and we chose to do the audio tour so we had a lot to listen to. It was a beautiful sunny day which Drew mentioned that all these years he wanted to visit a concentration camp he always envisioned it being rainy and cold, so the opposite weather made it all a little weirder to feel such a sadness somewhere that otherwise looks really beautiful. We also had a hard time wrapping our heads around how it must feel to live in the town of Dachau knowing what terrible things happened so closely.





There was a whole museum inside of one of the main buildings that we were all too emotionally drained to see so we decided to walk to a grocery and pick up some picnic supplies. We decided on ham sandwiches which were delicious, but Drew and Carolyn pointed out that in Germany things like mustard either come in a fancy glass jar, or a tube that is exactly like an oil paint or toothpaste tube. It kind of weirded me out and I wasn't totally sold on the taste either but you take what you get when traveling to strange countries.





After hanging in a park for a while we hopped on a bus and made our way to the train station to head to Munich where we would spend the rest of the day.
We got into Munich in he afternoon and started walking through the main shopping district which was way too crowded for our liking but eventually we got out of the crowds and into an area with many old buildings and parks. One of the parks has a really beautiful river and bridges running all through it. Drew mentioned that if you go into the park far enough that one side of the river has nudists and the other has clothed people, all of which are carrying along with whatever they're doing, We didn't have time for that spectacle so we walked down the road a bit to a section of the park where the river rushes out from underground in a way that creates a perfect rip curl for surfing. It is very weird seeing a bunch of surfer dudes in wet suits carrying surf boards in the very middle of Bavaria.









One thing I was really eager to do while in Bavaria was to visit a genuine german beer garden with pretzels and HUGE beers and lederhosen and music. Drew just so happened to want to do the same and knew that the HofbrauHaus was the place to go. It's one of the most famous beer houses in all of Bavaria and you could tell based on its gigantic proportions. Drew made a comparison last night that Bavaria is to Germany what Texas is to the US and I couldn't agree more. The people here like things big and they have a lot of pride in where they are from.



While we sat enjoying our huge beer, a TV camera crew came into the beer garden and literally set up a camera in our face. They didn't even ask if it was ok or anything, I just looked over and BAM it was in my face. Next thing I know the guy is telling us to cheers, so we all attempted one which came out very half-assed. I wasn't aware of this when it happened but the guy got upset with us because after we did said pathetic cheers, I apparently just sat my beer back down on the table and didn't drink, which is not what you do. The guy told us to do it again with much more enthusiasm so we tried and then then packed up and left. Drew and Carolyn are going to try and find the footage.






As incriminating as this photo seems to be, I actually just happened to catch Amy mid blink. She was not drunk...

Toward the end of our time at Hofbrau we saw an old German dude who was obviously drunk wandering through the garden with a super old beagle dog (who was also kind of drunk looking). As he was heading into the restaurant he passed a tree and the beagle stopped waking with the man and turned around to pee on the tree. This wouldn't have needed any attention drawn to it at all except that one by one we and people all around us stop our conversations as the dog quickly passed the one minute mark of straight peeing. People all around were laughing hysterically while this poor old beagle stood in humiliation for almost 2 whole minutes trying to do his business. I think it has to be a world record or something. I was a little nervous the old man would be annoyed by all the people watching his dog, but it turned out he was rather jolly and in a thick German accent he looks around at everyone and yells "TOO MUCH BEER!!" and everyone laughed even more. Drew said that he didn't doubt the truth of the statement at all.

After the Hofbrau we slowly made our way back to the train station and stopped for gelato and coffee along the way. Munich was an amazing city and I would have loved to have spent a couple of days there since it was so big and surprisingly beautiful.





As we took the train back to Nuremberg I showed Drew the basics of how to use photoshop and illustrator to do basic graphic design which made the trip go by very quickly and when we realized it was almost midnight we all talked about how long and physically and emotionally draining it all was.

All very much worth our time and very interesting. Tonight is the first time of the trip that I was realy sad at the thought of having to leave. I hope to come back and hang out with Drew and Carolyn while they still live in Germany.

Tomorrow morning we head to Paris.

Until then, Cheers!