Belgium and its beer.
Trip Start
Unknown
1
8
28
Trip End
Ongoing
Brugge, West Flanders, Belgium
Thursday, August 19, 2010
The first thing I learn in Brugge is: watch out for bikes. Cars will stop for you in the street, even if you step out directly in front of them. Bikes will not. Bikes will rarely even swerve or slow down to avoid you, even if they see you coming from a kilometre away. They will ring their bells furiously, and if you don't move, well, that's your problem.
I get out of the train station and realise, as usual, how good it would be to prepare and organise myself before visiting a foreign city. I do not have an address, or a phone number, or a map, or any idea how to get to my hostel. Lucky for me they had an ad up at the train station telling me what to do. And, there was a lovely girl on the bus with me who was also going there, so we struggled together (she, at least, had the address!).
I am staying in another St Christopher's hostel, since Paris was so excellent. This place is great too. The staff are all overly friendly (yes, overly, but in a good way, not a creepy way. Or, maybe a little bit creepy...) and my roomies are great - Anita from Chile (my bus buddy) and Bridie and Miels from Perth.
Anita and I signed up for Belgian beer tasting at the hostel that night. It seemed like a good idea at the time...
Actually it was really fun! Our host (Kai?) reminds me of my friend Ivan from NJ. And by that I mean he is like him in every way. He is completely mad. But hilarious. He told us all about the beers we were tasting, as well as lots of others that we didn't get to taste. We tried Orval, Chimay, Hoegaarden, Duval and...?
Kai told us about a beer called Westvleteren, a trappist beer which is 'really easy to get' - you can't buy it in any bars or stores, and you can't drive to the brewery to buy it. You have to call them on the 'beerphone' and make a reservation. Once you have called once, you can't call again from that same number for a certain period of time (maybe a year). Then, when your time comes up, you can drive to the brewery and get one case only, and take it home. When you drive there, they take your licence plate, and you can't drive in with that same car for a certain period of time. Then, the beer takes 3 years before it's even ready to be drunk!
So, we didn't try that beer...
After our beer tasting we hung out at the hostel bar. Anita is really cool and invites me to come visit her in Chile (unfortunately, we never exhanged contact details!) and we meet the lovely Nikki and Kyle from South Africa, and Kyle invites me to come visit him in South Africa! Kyle then buys us all beers, and the night kind of falls apart after that.
We did have quite a lot of fun chuckling at this old lady who was really concerned about smoke going on her dress. She was sitting at the bar on her own, and apparently was there the night before too. But, she wasn't at all sad, she was having a lovely old time watching the football and listening to the open mic. She just didn't like smoke, I guess.
So, welcome to Belgium!
