Goodbye Brugse Zot!

And so ends the Bauhaus Hostel and Brugge for the young man from Perth. It was a great stay, but it is definitely time to move on to bigger and better things: under the radar for too long. In total, I worked there for just over two months and I think that hostel work is the way to go from now on.

A walkthrough of the Bauhaus

In regards to the title of this entry: Brugse Zot is a beer made in Brugge and it is called that because at one time the king of Austria went to visit West-Flanders and they put on a massive parade. When the king arrived, the parade was so extensive and overwhelming that he said "all I have seen today is fools". Zot is Flemish for crazy/fool. Therefore it is the city of fools.

On my last night there in the hostel, I did what any self-respecting Australian backpacker would do: I got drunk. It was a big night of party and I was bought a present from the best ice cream store in town by the assistant manager - it was quite the surprise. The tub was so plentiful that eight of us only managed to plough through about half before it all became a bit too much.

Some of the people at the Bauhaus have been a bit crazy and some have been very cool. There are people in the town of Brugge who have amazed me with their ability to speak multiple languages and others who I wish would just shut their mouths for good. Most of the people in Brugge could speak three languages FLUENTLY and a handful could speak more. It is really a labour of love for the Belgians to speak another language, but that doesn't give you the chance to learn theirs, so that's a little sucky. In the time that I spent in Brugge, I managed to pick up some Flemish and I surprised myself how much I could read the newspapers because of my German skills. Some of the things I can say in Flemish include "one beer please", "one coffee", "can you speak English", and a few other random phrases. Like everyone does with a new language, I learned the insults and swear words first.

Some of the best times I had in the Bauhaus were with the customers. I would often mingle with the customers and take them around the city for drinks or food or whatever. It was something different and it gave me a chance to get away from work and home (the same thing). A few times we rode our bikes over the border to the Netherlands to a town called Sluis and other times we would just cruise round the city aimlessly.

I managed to meet a few cool people by working at the Bauhaus and I am hopefully going to see them in the future before we all leave Europe. Something that is definitely on my list of things to do is to go to this music festival in Hungary. There is an island in the Danube river and on this sandy outpost, there is a week-long music extravaganza with heaps of bands that I like. Everyone reading this who is in Europe has to email me and tell me that you will come. Everyone reading this in other places (ie USA, Australia) has to buy a plane ticket and join me too haha. It is in August and I really want to go, so we will see.

I have lined up an interview in Berlin at the Circus hostel, which is a sister hostel from the Bauhaus. The managers of the hostels are chummy and it would be a fairy tale if I could get work there - it would be my well-poised gateway to Eastern Europe. Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Slovenia will be at my mercy and with the cheap flights you can get out of Germany, it will be a sinch.

Included in the photo album for this entry are most of my workmates and a video walk-through of the Bauhaus from the front door, to the bar, through the kitchen and then down the back where the intimate couch setting is. It is a really cool bar and now you can get some sort of feeling for the way it went and how it looked. Although all that is changing as you read this: the whole hostel is undergoing a makeover because an English company bought it and it seems like they enjoy spending money. The new reception opened the day I left, so now I am one of those old-school staff that will reminisce about the good ol' days when beer was cheap and the food was good.

On my last day in Brugge, I did what had to be done: I got some Belgian fries in the town square with Andolouse sauce (sweet and spicy, mayonnaise based sauce: very yummy). It was a fitting and unhealthy send off to a city that I thoroughly enjoyed living in for two months.