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I wanna scream!
Entry 42 of 89 | show all | print this entry |
Oh boy oh boy I just wanna kill somebody right about now. I've been having all sorts of problems trying to book accomodations for the next few days. As it was I had somewhere to stay tomorrow night and then I was homeless. So I was running out of time.
My plans had been to travel into France and head to Normandy to see the D-Day beaches and Mont St Michel before heading into Portugal and Spain but the Normandy youth hostels are still in the dark ages - they don't have internet and refuse to speak on the phone unless you try to speak in French (I don't have a calling card for Europe anyhow). Of course I have no problmem with people speaking French in France but if I ask in French 'Do you speak English?' and you do, don't ignore me, please. So I've spent several hours over the past 2 days trying to organise accomodation through email, even considered skipping that part of France (maybe coming back at the end of my trip) and going straight to Spain - but for some reason the only hostels available in Barcelona are trying to charge E90 per night. Yep, you read that right - E90 for a night in a 16 bed dorm - and there ain't no way I'm paying that.
But I finally, near the end of my patience heard back from a hotel near the D-Day beaches that has a vacancy at a reasonable price. So Friday night is taken care of. Saturday night will hopefully be an overnight train to Barcelona but I can't book that until tomorrow. This is so frustrating. I really wish I was able to book my Eurail tickets online.
But back to what I've been up to for the past 2 days.
May 23 - Brussels
We arrived in Brussels and found everything had changed. Antwerp and Bruge all had Dutch streets called 'welconmelkonsplaat' or something similar and everybody spoke perfect English, whereas Brussels is in the French part of Belgium and has 'Rue de la Nouve' and people have a real aversion to English. Mind you this can sometimes work in your favour: we bought some food at the supermarket and sat down in the food court to eat it when the nasty old lady at the fruit juice stand dobbed us in to the security guard. I guess you can't use the food court unless you bought food from the court (the supermarket is 10m from the food court but probably doesn't count). The guard came over and asked us if we spoke French and we said no, only English. He shrugged his shoulders and went 'Cei la vie' and let us keep eating there.
But still it is fairly easy to get around, provided the 'you are here' stickers are in the right spot on the map. We got off the metro at the stop near our hostel, checked the map and headed off - except instead of our hostel we found the next metro station. We double checked the map and it was different to the first one we had looked at and we had walked in the wrong direction (no Dad, we didn't read the map incorrectly!)
We then found the hostel (it's called the Van Gogh Centre which is rather aptly named as apparently Vinvent Van Gogh used to work in the building). I don't know what it is with European hostels but this one also has the toilets/showers in strange places. The toilet (singular - for 32 people) is under the stairs and the shower is through the games room and downstairs: but it's clean and it has a kitchen so I can deal.
We spent the day just wandering around orientating ourselves. We walked into town and saw signs for Mannekin Pis and figured that would be a good place to start. I've heard that this statue is highly overrated but I didn't realise just how much. We knew we were there because of the crowd of people hanging around but it took us a while to find the little guy... he's only about 30cm tall! I knew he was small but I was expecting at least 60cm.
So there are various lengends about how he came to be, including:
1. Once upon a time a nobleman called a priest to town to try and cure his barren wife. 9 months later a little boy was born and promptly peed onto the priest's beard. They called a priestess in to do the baptism and the nobleman ran off with her, so the priest cursed the man and said 'Your son will never grow any taller and will never stop peeing.'
2. A nobleman (a different one) lost his son in a parade. When the son was found 5 days later he was peeing on the street corner and the nobleman had the statue made to thank the people of Brussels for taking care of his son.
3. There used to be a witch's house on the corner and one day she caught a little boy relieving himself on the side of her house. She cursed him to stand there forever peeing, but a local wizard managed to break the curse by putting a statue of the boy there instead.
Chose whichever one takes your fancy.
Then we walked down 'Chocolate Street' (it's not actually called this - but it's filled with chocolate shops and everyone knows what street you're talking about anyway) to the Grand Place, home of some amazing buildings. They used to be guildhouses (money and law houses to monitor quality) of the local industries so there is a house of bakers with statues signifying the 6 essential ingredients of making bread (ok so I don't know what they are but that's what my guidebook says). We saw some other stuff but we didn't know what it was... wandered around a bit more and then got bored.
Since we both needed to look for accomodation we hit the internet cafe - but that was all rather useless as you can tell from the tale above. So we went back to the supermarket and found some food for dinner (garlic bread, quiche, Fanta & 6 apples for E4 each) which we took back to the hostel and heated up = it was so nice.
May 24 - Brussels
Breakfast in the hostel is from 7.30 - 9.00 so we set the alarm for 8.30 and then went back to bed because we didn't feel like getting up. I love holidays! We got out of bed at 10am and walked into town again. Brussels is a nice wandcering town. There's not that much to do but it's nice to just meander and see what you can find. We took a tour of the Town Hall which is very ornate and full of paintings of the royals. I knew Belgium was controlled by almost every European country at some stage in it's history but I never realised they were so powerful.
At one stage the King of Belgium had 4 sisters, the Queen of Spain, Queen of France, Queen of Sweeden, Norway & Finland and the Queen of Hungary. Can you imagine the entourage required for a family gathering?
We found the park and the palace - but the park wasn't very pretty and the palace wasn't very palacial... at least not after the ones I've seen in other countries. We found out what the things we saw yesterday were - a statue that you rub for good luck (lots of countries have those), a swan which is only decoration and not much else.
I wanted to get some night shots because I've seen some postcards of lthe guildhouses all lit up and pretty - but it doesn't get dark until almost 10pm and I couldn't be bothered going back out at that time of night. I'm settling down by then, ready to play some cards, have a shower and then go to bed.
The weather here in Belgium hasn't been kind to us. It hasn't been cold but it's been raining on and off a lot. Wheneverf we head outside it starts to rain so I get my umbrella out or we start doing something inside (lunch, internet, shopping) and the rain stops. We head out again and it within the hour it's raining again. Oh well, at least we're not still in tents!
I didn't think it was possible. I beleive I am waffled and chocolated out. We haven't been eating them everyday but we must walk past 40 waffle places and 60 chocolate shops everyday. OVERLOAD. Oh well it was a once in a lifetime experience - when I leave Belgium it will be back to vegemite sandwiches.
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