Belgium: Brussels and Antwerp March 13, 2008

The rumors were true. Brussels was filled with waffles, chocolate shops, döners, and beer, the things dreams are made of. On both nights we went to Delirium, a bar that offers over 2,500 different types of beers. They have everything from light to dark, fruity, strong, dark, hoppy, anything you could want in a beer. We sampled a bunch of different types, one getting spilled on Frank’s pants. I had to do charades with a bartender in order to get paper towels since we couldn’t understand each other (Picture me calling over the bartender, pretending to tip over a beer and then fake sopping it up, then raising my eyebrows to see if she got it. She didn’t. Instead she ran over to another bartender, did the same charade).

The second day in Brussels we ate waffles and saw the statue “Manneken Pis”, which is Dutch for “Little Man Peeing”. I was surprised at how small the fountain was. They even have a museum of the Manneken Pis dressed up in different clothes which to me is a little strange. Then we went to an ancient art museum which seemed to be more like Renaissance art than “ancient” art, but it was all right. The Royal Palace was closed, so we were only able to take pictures of the outside. We went to a park and walked around the city, sampling chocolate shops as we went. After eating at an Italian restaurant, we headed over to Delirium to try more new beers. Frank left to get us a drink and next thing I know a Belgian dude is spitting game at me and I stop him mid-sentence and say “Sorry, I speak English, I’m with my boyfriend.” And he says “Sheet” and walks away.

The next day we headed to Antwerp, Belgium, the world capital for diamonds. To save money we stayed in a dorm-style hostel called “Den Heksenketel”. The stairs to our room were like climbing a winding ladder. There weren’t lockers or anything to put our stuff in so we felt a little uneasy about the security of the place. We walked to Het Steen “the stone”, a castle which is Antwerp’s oldest building that controlled access to the river. Then we sat out on the boardwalk to people watch and to see the ships go by. We walked along the main shopping street, The Meir, bought some postcards, and then drank a few beers at the Celtic pub by our hostel.

We retired to our bunk beds in the hostel and wrapped our valuables in our jackets and stuck them under our pillows for a sense of security. I probably could have done without that because I barely slept the entire night. The bunk beds were so squeaky you were woken up every time anyone moved and there was a snoring man that kept most of us up that night. I seriously think you should be banned from hostels if you snore like a giant. In Poland, Frank and I were in a room next to a supersnorer and it sounded like he was chopping trees down from dusk til dawn. In the morning we packed up our things and were happy get out of there. We stopped at the grocery store to buy some bread and cheese for the train ride and ran like hell in order to catch our train to Amsterdam…only to find out it was delayed. It was OK though, we were off to the Netherlands!

Brussels Main Square:

Marakesh? More like Marapoop March 13, 2008

I was really excited for the trip to Belgium since I had never been there, even after hearing mixed reviews. I figured, how can you go wrong with a place that is famous for waffles and beer? We arrived in the Brussels train station, bought a far too expensive map there to orient ourselves, and made our way through the center of town to our hotel. It was neat to see that all the signs are in French and Dutch, so I tried translating the French using my Italian, and Frank handled the Dutch using his German. After walking around the city for a bit, we scoped out the restaurant scene. I was a little leery of the places that had servers outside the door trying to lure people in. Part of me thought it was just them working hard, and part of me thought how come they need to beg people to eat at their restaurant?

Eventually we got away from the touristy part and figured we were in the clear. We walked by one place and took a look at the menu they had posted outside. A man quickly came out of the door, speaking good English and I thought he was going to ask us the time or something. Instead he flew into selling-mode and started charismatically telling us that the restaurant had anything we wanted and would take good care of us. After a few indecisive looks back and forth between Frank and I, we shrugged our shoulders and figured, hey this guy seems nice and we are hungry. It can’t be THAT bad.

Rule #1 when traveling: Never go to a restaurant where they have to lure you in. Ever.

So we sit down and realize this place is a Moroccan restaurant, La Marekesh it’s called. We are given a few different menus, in different languages, so we are trying to decipher what one dish is by clues on the other menu. We think, hey this is kinda cool, it’s run by a Moroccan family, they’ve got Moroccan music playing, lanterns on every table, we are having a cultural experience. It’s about halfway full, so someone’s got to like it here, right? Cut to Petey, the 15-year-old Frankenstein looking busboy, who we gathered was the younger brother with a few screws loose. He nervously walks to our table, sets down a bowl of bread, walks away, and gets praised from the other servers like he just conquered Everest. We figure the bread was leftover from someone else’s table or from the night before because it is stale. It takes about 30 minutes to get a beer, but we’re relaxed. We are in Europe; things move a little slower here.

Thirty minutes later we order. I ended up playing it safe and getting chicken while Frank figured we are in Brussels, the land of mussels, and goes for it. After it taking an hour to get our meals we’ve turned from forgiving tourists to antsy critics. The food was lackluster to say the least. In Frank’s words…”the mussels tasted like sandboogers.” The music that was so exotic and pleasant has now turned to Celine Dion “My Heart Will Go On” and has started to skip…and skip…and…Do they not hear the skipping?! By this time, the restaurant was full because our English speaking doorman buddy had lured in table after table. We wanted to scream out at the people who came to sit down “Keep walking, go! GO!! We’re already too far in this thing to be helped, but save yourselves!!” By now we’d been in this place 2 hours. They had roughly 12 tables that we could see..not to mention a whole other room of tables…and one server.

Since it took so long to get our main course we debated even asking for dessert, but since it was included in the meal we figured dessert can’t take that long to prepare. We should have realized by then that rationality does not apply to this restaurant, but no, instead we ask for our dessert. Forty-five minutes later after multiple dirty looks and putting on our coats and taking out our money Ali, our server, brings us dessert. When he brings us the dessert he just says “Sorry,sorry…about the time”. He offered us a free drink but we were too irritated to accept, we just asked that he bring our bill. Now, in a normal situation, you would think that a server, after neglecting its guests over and over, for almost three hours would get right on that. Well 20 minutes later, during which time Frank and I consider walking out, Petey nervously delivers the bill. The bill was 40 euro (~$60) with no discounts. We couldn’t let Marakesh get away with taking over 3 hours of our lives, so we each put down a 10 and walked. Whew.

(Added note: We saw the doorman the next night on our way to the bar.)