A Few Days in Brussels

Three days I spent in Brussels. It is both the capital of Belgium, and also the capital of Europe, well, the European Union anyway. The people here speak French rather than Dutch as they do in Bruges so it is a little easier for me to read signs and such, but I still can’t speak to people!

As well as being my first proper city that I have visited on the continent, it is also the first time that I have spend couchsurfing. For those of you who don’t know, couchsurfing is about networking with people all around the world and staying with them instead of staying in a hostel when you are travelling (www.couchsurfing.com). Being my first time I was a little aprehensive, but Alex, the guy who I stayed with, was absolutely awesome. He was extra hospitable, and it turned out that we had a very similar music taste, so we spent a lot of time listening to and talking about music. He also loved the Belgian beers as much as I do!

Unfortunately Alex had to work during the week days so was unable to show me around, but that was ok. I was able to navigate Brussels fairly easily. It is small enough to travel around to most of the interesting sites without having to use public transport, which is good, because that is fairly complex.

In Brussels they have bus, metro and trams. This may sound good, but it is not linked very well. For example, to get from Alex’s place to the central bus station, which is probably about 3km as the crow flies, and on the same side of town as him, we had to take a bus, two trains, and a tram! Ridiculous. Luckily they are all run by the some company so you can buy a day pass and use all of them as many times as you like within the city.

The first night Alex and I just hung out at his place. He cooked a pizza with soggy dough which was pretty funny, him apologising profusely. The next morning I began my wandering. The first site which I stumbled across was the Palace.

Royal Palace in Brussels

From outside, this building is definitely grand, although no more grand than other buildings I have seen. After 10:30 in the morning, you are able to go inside. Now it is very unfortunate that you are not able to take photos inside this building as I’m not sure I can fully explain it in words. The first thing which I noticed was the scale of the interior, it was much much bigger than it appeared from the outside. And the marble, almost the entire interiour was marble. Arches, columns, floors, ceilings, and when there was not marble, there was gold, and plenty of it. Gold adorned everything! The curtains were red velvet, the walls were covered in paintings of former in kings, princes, princesses and queens. Frescos could be seen all over the ceilings, and even one of the ceilings was covered in actaual scarab beetle wings – an amazing thing to see. All I can say more about this building is “wow”. It is more than impressive.

From the palace I moved one to one place that I did know about and had planned to see, the Museum of Musical Instruments. This houses the largest collection of musical instruments in the world. This was very cool, you could walk around displays of hundreds of instruments from all over the world and listen to music from that particular instrument through headphones you were given. The music automatically played when you stood in front of the display. I was particularly hoping that I would find what I now know is called a Hanghang as I thought it was a very old instrument, but it was not there as you can probably deduce from the previous post about Bruges. Of everything in the museum, I think that the pianos were definitely the top display for me. Never have I seen so many shapes and sizes, nor such beautiful decoration. Check this out.

Fancy Piano!

Just wandering around Brussels, a few things I noticed were the large amound of beggars in the streets. Different streets seems to have different types, some for young men, some for women wearing burquas, older men, and those playing the accordian. Well, maybe not the accordian, but as a fan of the accordian I am happy to say that every single busker or busking group which I encountered had some form of accordian player, how fantastic! For some odd reason there are also a lot of hat shops, I have no idea why. Oh, and I found a bunch of record shops that sold so much old stuff you wouldn’t know where to begin. It was excellent.

Old Man Busking with Accordian

Later on in the day on I managed to find someething I didn’t know existed. This was the main square in Brussels, and the more touristific spot in the city. All it was was tourist groups, waffle and chocolate shops, and not much else. Oh, and also some terrifically old buildings, one of which was the town hall. I was unable to get a decent shot of the square as they were setting up for some free summer event and there was scafholding everywhere, but take a look at Flickr for some pictures of some of the buildings found there, the architecture is amazing!

Brussels Town Hall

My last tourist stop for the day was probably Brussels most popular icon, the Maniequine Pis. Luckily I had not known about this little fountain before I came to Brussels, or I would most probably be incredibly disappointed like most of the tourists there. It is the statue that Brussels is most known for, and in a town of amazing sculptures, it stands little over two feet high! People are loving it ‘though.

Stories as to why this exists involve one about two enemies at war, and a little boy runs up and pisses on one of the armies, it is a huge joke the the war is called off. Another tells of a small boy who put out a fire by taking a pee on it. Apparantly there are a huge number more of these stories, none of which anyone believes is true.

Manneken Pis

Not long after I had finished viewing this amazing statue, Alex turned up. We then took a walk through the city towards the outskirts to meet up with one of his friends, Eliza, who was a French language teacher. We sat around at her apartment talking for a while, then headed out to bar for dinner where I had a fantastic lasagne. Yum! And also some more interesting Belgian beer! Out next stop was very interesting. Eliza took both Alex and I, for he had never been there before, to a bar which serves over 300 Belgian beers. The menu was a massive folder with beers separated both by type and alphabetically. At a place like this, the beer really is treated like wine. The waiter approached and the conversation went something like this:

Him: “What kind of beer would you like; blond, brown, ale, trapist, white, dark…?”
Me: “Ummm, I think I’ll try a white.”
Him: “Do you prefer a strong or light beer?”
Me: “I’ll try a strong one please.”
Him: “Fruity or Acidic.”
Me: “Acidic.”
Him: “Then you must try the Blanche Du Hainaut , it is an organic beer made close to here, it ois very good.”

Blanche Du Hainaut Beer

And he can do this for every type of beer he has. He knows them all intimately and can help you choose any type of beer you may desire. Oh how I pine for such an establishment in Auckland. After this, Alex and I headed home to bed as we were both extremely tired.

The following day I began with a walk to an arch. Now this is no regular arch. For a city which everyone knows by a statue of a pissing child and something called the Atomium (I will get to this), this arch is vastly overlooked. Move over Arc de Triumphe, you have to check out the sheer scale of this arch which was built to commerate 50 years of indepence.

Arch Celebrating 50 Years Indepencence

My next plan was to try to check out some contemporary Belgian art, so I firstly headed towards a well known train station and graffiti spot, and this is what I found:

Art From Under a Rail Bridge

Graffiti Inside Train Station

The second picture is actaully the inside of the train station and is a truely amazing sight to behold. My next stop was a small art shop and gallery called A.L.I.C.E. which for some reason stands for Artists Living In Constant Elevation. Very strange. Anyway, this was a shop full of zines and interesting art books and, oh my god, Lomo cameras. If I wasn’t travelling for the next 5 months, I totally would have bought one. How excellent.

That night it rained pretty bad, so Alex and I just hung around in his apartment, listening to music, chatting, and drinking an array of interesting belgian beers, pictures of which you can find in my Flickr galleries.

My last day in Brussels was a Saturday and Alex did not have to work. While I was sleeping, he went to the bakery and bought som croisantes and panne au chocolae which was very nice of him. He then took me to see the Brussel’s famous Atomium, a massive glass and metal sculpture built for the 1958 World Fair. It is based on a Iron atom and the 9 balls represent the 9 parts of Belgium. I decided not to go up because it was pretty expensive, and anyway, there was just a good view at our next stop.

Atomium

After the Atomium, Alex and I headed towards a crazy church I had wanted to see (which I had seen in the distance the day before) but this turned out to be not as exciting as I thought it would. It was also a very commercial church, as you had to pay admission if you wanted to go to certain places in it. I’m not sure that is very right at all. Jesus would not approve. Finally we walked down to the Brussels Court. This was amazing, and too bad it was the weekend because I definately would have wanted to go inside. This building has the 3rd largest floor area of any structure in the world and was apparantly built to show the power of the justice system in Belgium. Absolutly epic building.

Brussels Court

And so that was that. My trip to Brussels had come to an end. Alex and I headed back to his apartment where I packed my things and then headed to the bus station. After thanking Alex and staying good bye, it was onward to Frankfurt!

Bruges, how romantic…

I left the Gaydon camp ground at around 4:30 in the afternoon on Sunday the 17th of August with a group of Dutch guys who had come over from The Netherlands for the Retro Rides Gathering. We then spent a number of hours driving around the English countryside en route to Dover, looking for a place to camp for the night. This proved harder than originally thought as the first place we tried decided that we didn’t fit the demographic and gave us poor instructions for another campsite ‘down the road’. This down the road was about an hour’s drive.

Soon enough, though, we found the new campsite and set up our tents just as it began to rain. The Dutchmen set up a tarp, cooked a BBQ, and we sat outside but dry, eating dinner, and talking about all sorts of things well into the night.

The next day after packing up and driving for a few more hours we made it to Dover. All I could think of was King Lear’s decent into madness and his blind crawl towards the cliffs at Dover for a pious suicide.

White Cliffs at Dover

The ferry took about two hours, and soon enough I spied France, the country where I have now spent the shortest amount of time in my life – it must have been no more than 20 minutes before we crossed the border to Belgium. We drove on straight as an arrow down monotonous Belgian highway for one more hour before Tomas and Dennis, the two Dutch guys who I was catching a lift with, dropped me at my first (continental) European destination, Bruges (or Brugge, Brugges, Bruge, depending on where you are from and what language you are speaking). This was also my first hostel experience of the trip, Snuffel Hostel.

I had only booked two nights here, so there was no time to waste. I dropped off my bags in the dorm and headed down to the bar for a Hoegaarden Grand Cru. Although that was the end of that, It was to be an early night for me as there was plenty to see the next day.

Just as a side note, the Snufffel showers were ridiculous. To get there, you had to walk out of your dorm, through another door, down a circular staricase, through another door, through the bar, up some stairs, across the dining area, down some stairs, through the kitchen, over a courtyard and up another staircase. If this wasn’t bizaare enough, the showers had no temperature controls and to get the water running you had to hold down a chain, which if you let go… well, the water would stop. Very military-esque.

Bruges itself is considered to be Begium’s romantic capital. It is all medieval buildings, cobbled roads and canals running throughout the expansive, but very walkable city.

A Typical Bruges Street

Bruges Canal

Like other parts of Europe, it is home to some magnificent architecture. Almost every building is historic and well looked after, even the apartments in which people live. From the hostel to the town square was an easy 5 minute walk, and it was this architecture which I first noticed when I entered the square. Absolutely amazing, intricate detailing everywhere.

The first thing which I decided to was check out the town hall. This building was exceptionally old. How old I can’t tell you, but I do remember that it had been expanded century after century. I know that it is older than the 1500s. Maybe you can Wikipedia it! Anyway, Inside the town hall, you are able to climb 315 steep circular stairs to the top of the bell tower, giving views which can not be bettered anywhere in the city. It is red roofs, spires and steeples for mile upon mile. If you are up there at the right time, you also have the opportunity to experience the smaller bells chiming out songs and the large bell being struck on the hour. The musical bells are very cool, as they run like a massive version of an automatic piano, it has a reel with little pins on it lke the piano, except there is nothing little about it. Click here to see it.

The next stop was Basilick van het Heilig Bloed. This is an ancient church, with the most incredible altar I have ever seen. Even as I type this I have seen a few impressive churches, but this takes Jesus’ cake. It was only small, but the fresco painted on the entire back wall was nothing short of amazing. Not only does this church have a particularly good altar, but it also has a small silver vile of Christ’s blood, or so the dedicated believe. At particular times, you are able to walk up onto a little platform, touch the vile, say a prayer and be blessed by a morbidly bored looking priest.

Basilick van het Heilig Bloed

Belgium is well known for a number of things; lace, chocolate, waffles, fries, and beer. There are shops which sell these things everywhere, and I mean maybe one of every five shops does not. Bruges especially is tourist-trap-central for these kind of things. So I decided to steer clear, with the exception of the very belgian fries with mayonaise (which actaully made me feel a tad ill).

Lace Shop

A Typical Belgian Chocolate Shop

After much more wandering around, I decided it would be good to head back to the hostel to see what was going on. There I met an Italian guy, and an American and Australian girl and we decided to have some drinks. If you are ever in Bruge, you must try the Brugge Zot beer, it is locally produced and very very good. After a number of drinks I was pretty tired and decided to head to bed.

The following day I was to leave Bruges but there was still a few things to see. The first being the very famous Madonna and Child. This was housed inside the Church of Our Lady, which also contained some very exceptional art works, altars, and the most amazing pulpit I have ever seen which was about 4 meters high, hand carved, and portraying biblical scenes all held up by the idea of wisdom and knowledge.

Madonna and Child

Outside the Church of Our Lady was a busker named Carl (I think). At first I just heard his music and I was very intreuiged. Upon closer inspection, I had just found the musical instrument which would change my life. The instrument for me. Although I had no idea what it was. It looked like two metal dishes pushed together, each about 60cm in diameter. It was played with the hand like a drum, but depending on where you hit it the tone would be different. It sounded almost like a xylophone but with more body. It was amazing. On further research it turns out the this instrument is called the Hanghang and was invented in Switzerland 8 years ago. The creators are not making them at the moment, and even when they were new they were over £1000, so a second hand one would be even more dear. This is very frustrating.

The last thing I was able to do in Bruges before I had to catch the train was to check out the Hospital Museum. This was an old hospital which had been around for literally 500 plus years which had been turned into a museum dedicated to it’s history and how it haadf changed over the years. It was very interesting to see how religous ideals were such an important part of medicine, the soul being more important to heal than the body.

That afternoon it was goodbye to Bruges for me, and hello to Brussels! Another post will follow soon with my adventures in Brussels.

Retro Rides!

On Thursday last week it was about time to leave London. I had been there for too long and finally the date had come for my departure. I was off to Southend-On-Sea, a trip which I had planned months prior to even leaving New Zealand.

The main reason for the trip to Southend was to catch a lift to Gaydon in Warwickshire for the UK Retro-Rides Gathering, very similar to the yearly national meet we have for oldschool.co.nz. Lots of people, lots of cars. Anyway, I took the train to Southend. Well, I took the second train as the one I had booked was cancelled (which stressed me out a tiny bit, but proved to be nothing to worry about at all). On arrival I was picked up by Mark from Retro-Rides in his wide-rimmed, stretched-tyre’d, slammed VW Polo, and after a bumpy ride we arrived at his house.

I was not there long as he was just picking me up. Soon we drove over to Mark’s friend Ged’s place, where I was to stay for the night. That night we ate dinner together, talked rubbish, and they bought me a selection of “beers I have never had before” to drink. Proper British ales.

England's Gold Ale

The next morning it was time to head to Gaydon, but first Ged decided to show me around Southend while Mark did some last minute work on his cars. We drove down to the sea. The day was amazing, one of the finest days I had experienced in England since I had arrived – this summer is very wet! As the weather was nice, we decided to walk to the end of the Southend Pier, the longest lesiure pier in the world.

Southend Pleasure Pier

The pier stretches 1.3 miles (2.1km) from the shoreline out into the sea, so it took a wee while to walk the distance. It turns out that at the end of the pier there used to be a ball room, until it burnt down. There also used to be a number of pubs and restaurants, but they also burnt down, leaving only the rusted steel foundations behind. After a look around the end of the pier, we took the train back along it towards the shore, it was now time to head to Retro-Rides.

We arrived at Mark’s and almost immediately, it was time to leave. Mark and I headed off in his 500 horsepower MkIII Cortina Van, Ged followed close behind in Mark’s supercharged v6 MkIII Cortina Wagon, and bringing up the rear was Mark and Ged’s wives in Ged’s son’s Chevette hatch.

Mark's MKIII Cortinas

Around 3 hours later, we arrived at the Gaydon Heritage Motor Museum, the  spot where the Retro-Rides show was to happen. Camping was the accommodation of the time, but I had no tent! Luckily a member of the gm-t.co.nz forum, Euan, had brought one for me, and amazingly it was brand new and better than any other tent I’ve ever used (he even gave it to me at the end, amazing generousity)! A blow up matress was even included in the package.That night we walked around, talked to a few people, had some beers and a bbq, but all hit the sack relatively early as we were all pretty tired after the journey up.

[image camp site]

The next day was more of the same. Mucking around, talking to people, bbqing, etc – everyone was waiting for the following day, the car show. Oh, and we also went to Santa Pod dragstrip, but to be completely honest, I find drag racing to be pretty boring. We were there much longer than I would have liked too! Gah! But it was OK, because the next day was the show!

[show from above]

Which was pretty amazing. Not only were there hundreds of excellent cars, there was free entry to British motor museum. We spent the day walking around the museum’s car park, looking at all these great cars. Some which I had seen in magazines, other’s from the internet which I had always admired and plenty of other excellent cars. It was especially cool to see one of those MK1 Golfs with the ridiculously tidy engine bay!

[car]

[car]

[car]

To be honest, it is a huge effort to get pictures for this, there are hundred of them and I don’t have the time to upload them all just now. I’ll chuck up a few and then the others later.

I am also changing the sizes of the images on Flickr, it takes way to long to upload all these pictures at 4 meg each.

*note for later,

I will add in the images soon! There are a lot to process.

Oxford!

I haven’t posted in a few days due to having spent the last few nights in Oxford – yup, the university city.

The main reason I travelled to Oxford was to catch up with a friend of mine (and Mattinum), Isaac. He goes to university in Manchester, but luckily for me he was back at his parent’s place for summer holiday. It also turned out that he was good friends with the manager of the hostel which I stayed at (Central Backpackers) which was good as this allowed him to come into the hostel for drinks and things. It was good to catch up with Isaac and hopefully I will go and visit him again in Manchester at the end of the year.

But enough about that, here are a few highlights from Oxford. Firstly, the buildings. These are (for the most part) even older and more interesting than the buildings found in London. I think that may have something to do with the great fire of London in 1666 though, as many of Oxford’s buildings are from well before that.

The Oxford Library

This building was epic. Built in the 1300s, the Oxford Library (according to Isaac) has the largest collection of books in the world, all stored underground. Apparantly they had some deal with a large number of publishers who would give them a copy of every book they published. I’m unsure if this is still going now but i’m told it was in occurance for a large number of years.

The Oxford Castle

The Castle is a newly opened attraction in Oxford as it only ceased to be a prison in 1996. It’s creation first started in 1071, making it one of the oldest buildings in the city. It was very cool to see, but unfortunatly due to it’s former prison status, I don’t think it works overly well as a castle tourist attraction. And the fact that it is in the middle of town makes it rather hard to take a decent photo of it.

But the buildings which are most commonly talked about in Oxford are the colleges. This was truely amazing. I had originally thought that there was one Oxford university and that was how it has always been. This was proven to be untrue. There are historically around 40 different colleges in Oxford, now all brought together to form the prestegious university you all know. Every college building was more impressive than the next, with architectural feats such as this:

A university square

The above image is just one of the 40 colleges seen in the city. They all now appear to house different faculties of the university from history to physics. But what I thought was the grandest of all the colleges was Christ Church. This place was amazing, just like something from a book or a film, which seems appropriate as Harry Potter was filmed there and Alice in Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass were both written there.

Christ Church

Entrance to Christ Church

Isaac also took me to a pub called the Turf Tavern, which is supposed to be one of the oldest pubs in Oxford. The roof was so low that it was less than 6″ away from from the top of my head at the beams. Isaac could not stand in it properly without having to bend sideways! We got some pints of Sadlers Worcester Sorcerer Ale and sat down. Here are some fun facts I read on the wall: in the 16th centuary, the owner died in the pub. In the 17th centuary, swordfighting was a common sport loved by patrons of the pub. And in the 18th centuary, cockfighting!

The following day, I got to experience something even more exciting (even thrilling if you lose your balance). This was known as punting. It’s the British version of the Italian gondola, and you propel yourself down a calm river by pushing the riverbed with a long aluminium pole. At first I was all over the place and almost fell into the river (which was pretty haggard, baby poo-eqsue colour), but soon i got the hang of it. The worst part about it is when you slide the pole up out of the water, it all drips down your arms and you end up kinda wet, but apart from that it’s pretty good fun!

Punting!

There was also two ways which it can be done. In essence, they don’t physically differ at all, it all depends on which end of the punt you stand on. In the picture above, I’m standing on the platform which is considered to be Oxford style. You can also stand at the other end, which is not as solid. This is known to be Cambridge style. Apparantly they have Oxford-Cambridge races and such which I can only imagine would be pretty amusing to watch.

So yes, Oxford was a pretty interesting little city. Unfortunately I forgot to go up the lookout tower, but  I’m sure I can do that in many other places along my travels.

My next port of call is Southend-On-Sea in Essex, then off up to Warwickshire for the RetroRides 08 Festival which should be very cool.

How Cute Is This?

Domestic SquirrelOriginally uploaded by laza.abroad

Rachel had a BBQ for family and friends today, one of the invited guests being this blind and epileptic squirrel which had been raised by her neighbour, an RSPCA employee.

How awesome is a pet squirrel!? He loved to be rubbed in the arm pit and would throw his arm out to get better reach!