Since Bruges takes a day or two to see everything, spending 7 days here is a bit of a challenge. But I’m trying to provide an update, even if it’s just me looking at the same things again. It’s getting increasingly cold throughout the week, which is not pleasant. And I did pace myself here, so I do have things to do. Wednesday morning I actually made the trip up the tower.
It’s a fairytale town, isn’t it? How’s a fairytale town not somebody’s fucking thing? How can all those canals and bridges and cobbled streets and those churches, all that beautiful fucking fairytale stuff, how can that not be somebody’s fucking thing, eh?
Most of my day is dominated with talking to my English friend David, who must be in his mid-60’s, and has a girlfriend here in Bruges. He needs help with his iPad and stuff, likes to talk about how messed up the world is, and has a lot of stories from his world travels over the past 40 years. He’s quite nice and most of them are interesting enough.
But anyways, this is the tower from the inside courtyard.
The top was a little disappointing, after walking up all 365 steps or whatever it was. It was netted in up there, so you couldn’t really lean down and see the square. It was a nice panoramic view of the city though, and was a great way to cause permanent hearing loss due to the incessant chiming of the bells.
As you can see, there was also a market there this morning. Fresh vegetables, flowers, fish, and other other middle-aged gardeners like.
I took a walk all the away across Bruges to Minnewater Park, which has a nice lake to walk around with swans and ducks and stuff. I walked around the park, and the birds are like back home. Honestly, not really a big fan of birds; they are overrated. How can fucking swans not fucking be somebody’s fucking thing, eh? How can that be?
Of course this week I’m getting all my reporting and billing done, and I was pretty productive so I decided to call it a day and celebrate with a couple beers at the hostel bar. So I drank some famous Belgian beers, which I think have a higher alcohol content than the bottle wine I drank last night.
A bottle, that can kill ya. That’s a case of “It’s you or him”.
What sorrows?
You know, being a sad, old, ugly little man.
I drank my beers with Jenny from Toronto and Miguel from Bruges, who has a charmingly handsy fellow already several drinks in with a Chinese neck tattoo of his Belgian girlfriend’s name. We’re best friends now.
One of my favorite things about travelers and English-speakers from other parts of the world is the different words they use that are unpopular or rather archaic. David uses lots of fun British words: bloody, trousers, bloke, chap, twat, bollocks, I’m not being funny, arse, jammies, bugger, cheers, piss off, etc. Jenny said “gussied up”. And Yuri, always going on about the alcoves.
Met up with Ashok the next night, who was doing a beer tasting, then I joined their group afterward and went across town to Le Trappiste. I just had one beer then headed back to go to bed.
I worked just a bit on Friday, but then decided to take the rest of the day off to do some sightseeing with the crew we had gathered. Jenny, Andrea, Darren, Duncan, and I met up and went on one of the canal boat rides. The highlight was a weird duck.
After that, we went to a famous beer shop and purchased some Westvleteren 12, the “best beer in the world” and is made by Trappist Monks in Belgium. Here’s what purchasing it looks like:
So we drank these 12€ beers in wrapped up paper in a park as it rained, looking like bums. Pretty classy way to drink the best beer in the world.
Then we went to the narrowest street in Bruges to another bar that had a special house beer – the only place it is served, and had a couple of those. Got some pasta, then headed back to the hostel for a bit. Then we tasted some more Belgian beers and hung out fairly close to the hostel the rest of the night.
And now I’m off to Antwerp for a night before going to Amsterdam. Oh, and I bought a scarve at H&M so now my neck is warm.