was john kerry belgian? March 15, 2007

cuz those waffles taste so gooood!!!!!!!!!

sorry about that horrible joke, possibly not only tasteless, but perhaps even unsensible. but to the post. thank you all for your patience, and now i will release my long-awaited report on our travels to land of french fries, waffles, chocolate, amazing beer, the EU, and a terrific tradition of colonial brutality! My impatience has led to me make lists, which hopefully will expand into descriptive sentences, patience pending.

Day One: Brussels, or, Bruxelles, or Brussel, or, the city where no one knows where they are

1. We arrive in Belgium after a short detour to Rotterdam.
2. We are early, and celebrate by trying to find our hostel so that we can meet chris and mara well ahead of time and maybe enjoy a fine belgian beer; are plans are thwarted by not only our (understandable and forgivable) inability to navigate the city, but moreso, by the belgians own failure to point us in the right direction.
3. Finally we arrive at our rather lackluster hostel. Problems: 1) Curfew is 1 AM, 2) We must be out of the hostel every day from 10-2; 3) the double we were promised turned out to be bunkbeds; 4) the lady at the desk is a fascist. Elaborations on her fascism: she spoke in the manner only of a former bureacrat, with a blinding efficiency and that certain forced monotone cheerfulness that renders speakers unresponsive robots, or much like the woman whose blank, indiscriminating, ever-awake, soothing congeniality leads one through an automated phone service, as you perplexedly feel guilty about your annoyance when stumbling through a series of responses, “yes”, “no”, “three”, “DOUBLE-YOU-AYE-ESS”, “Glendale”, “no”, “NO”, “speak to a real person!” in an attempt to use 411.
4. After some fries, we meet chris and mara (luckily only slightly late) for some drinks in the Grand Place. Description of Grand Place: a sprawling, old old old city square, paved (like most of old europe) with bricks and stones, surrounded by long baroque churchs and civilian buildings, museums and restaurants all of a scale and intricacy that simply overwhelmed the viewer, and demanded several hours to process in full. Gold leafs decorated many of the buildings in this square, as the tables of restaurant outdoor patios beckoned you to sit and dine. Plaques declaring “Karl Marx once celebrated New Years here!”, and museums covered with intricate furnishes and architectural embelishments. Condition of Chris Forster Smith upon arrival: good, straping, somewhat bored in france, happy to see old faces, surprised by the state of my hair, and at times puzzled by the inevitable phenomenon that occurs when any old friends meet again for the first time in some time, in which each friends striggles to report what has been going on, debating which points of the past are relevent for reporting, and feeling somewhat unaccomplished when it comes time to report your ongoings and projects, forgetting that friendships are not built on comutual admiration of one another’s accomplishments and undertakings, but rather the joy of the refuge taken in that place created by the simple presence of one another. But, I digress, and chris is good company.
5. Head back to their hostel, and make plans to get dinner near grand place and attend a puppet show performance (in french, we later found out) of Romio and Juliet. Dinner, the crazy street (small and narrow, missing car traffic but not human traffic, like a busy alleyway, lit by neon lights, whose patio tables and chairs impinge the movement of the onslaughts of tourist movement) in which we were beseeched by many a consierge to dine at their purportedly fine restaurants. Our decision (To eat at the “Bourgeois” a place which offered us free apertifs, and directions to the nearest ATM), and disappointment by “The Bourgeois” (it was after all, an overpriced ritz place with lackluster food, and faux-service, billing itself as fancy, but being rather underwhelming on the whole, not to mention, i’m pretty sure the mussels cassie had made her sick). The Toone Puppet theatre and show: a neat old builiding which housed a small puppet theatre in the attic from which sank two floors of spiraling stairs; maintains a bar in the basement, and a small musuem; The show…was really neat for being on the whole unintelligible (at least judging from linguistic comprehension requirements, namely, that dialogue of actors take place in a language one is familiar with), the movements and dress of the puppets where neat, there were little kids there who delighted in the story, and from what i could discern, the show was a rather humorous adaptation of the shakespeare play).
6. Mara decides to hit the hay, but Chris is up for more drinks and we find a place called “Le Crois” (i think). It is nice, peculiar, “viennese” (According to chris), and full of great beer.
7. We return to the hostel before 1 only to find that the hostel is also home to a bar downstairs, at which we drank until the wee-er hours of the night, after touching conversations in which we declared our devoted love and upon said declarations cassie became suddenly and violently ill. Coincidence?, a question considered. But not at this time–i still blame those damned mussels.

Day Two: Ghent, if only I’d have met ye sooner, or, Pas Bloomen, Fijfe Euro!

1. Woken up by the cleaners at 10, barging in demanding we leave. Our encounter with the fascist desklady: “you’re late. (accusatively) what is your room number? (snarls) Curfew is one o’clock, you must leave in the morning by ten!” Our travels to the nice restaurant that had given us directions the day earlier. Perusal of grand shit sale. Description of grand shit sale: never before have i seen so much shit (and i mean that in the most basic way possible) on sale in one concentrated and large place as that. It was an open city square in which there were literally hundreds of bed-sheet sized plots in which hundreds of men with shit to sell sold their shit. Cassie claimed she thought one or two were estate sales. i found a guitar for sale by his owner for only 4 euro (but decided not to buy it because it was missing strings and was unsure if it was 4 euro or 40…i regret the decision today). there were many poorly crafted busts of unknown long-dead aristrocrats or people thought worthy objects of bustsmanship. there were discarded radios from the fifties, and plates, audio cassette tapes, and books in foreign languages. there were live horses with polka dot manes, and blue velvet capes that promised the charm of invisibility or at least antiquated awkwardness. there were models of yachts and yachts carrying models. there were hats.
2. Breakfast at the fine restaurant which has a name (displaced), our omelettes and coffee, the rollicking game of chess, and the boy with flowers. Our walk to train, trying all the way to resell flowers for profit, despite ourselves being overcharged in the first place.
3. Trainride and arrival in Ghent, where flower sales continue, and we find the Bellfry and ancient church. Ghent suits me, says I.
4. Our walk to a nice belgian bar, the bumper pool, and the walk to Le Petit Restaurant, where we met a rather delectable meal. Our meal.
5. Our arrival back in Brussels and a trip to the bar downstairs, where annoying french people could not decide whether or not to dance, but were certain that they would be loud and french.

Day Three: Farewell Brussels, city of great fries, waffles, bureaucracy and chocolate.

1. Aroused once again by cleaning staff, reprimanded again by fascist desklady.
2. Meet chris for breakfast where we dine on WAFFLES!
3. Journey to Belgian Comic Museum. Words that come to mind: underwhelming, limited, not-worth-more-than-an-hour-of-one’s-attention.
4. Mara departs again, chris, cassie and I leap on train to see the illustrious EU buildings. Brussels underground. Brussells above ground–EU has basketball courts in front of expansive parliamentary buildings. Disappointed to find out chris is purportedly injured and unable to play basketball in front of EU. Very disappointed. Amazed by massive architecture and desire to spell architecture with an extra e and an x.
5. Walk to some big park with arches and museums, all of which we did not opnce come within 200 metres. Leap on train to see old book fair. It was nearly closed. Rush to meet mara, first stop for a bite of ice cream in grandplace…precious ice cream–tiramisu, and cappucino caramel. Belgians refuse to fuck around with their chocolate.
6. Meet mara, go to moroccan restaurant. tasty. next to celebrate St. Patty’s at an irish club where we ponder over the rules of cricket until we muster the courage to ask a local, who turns out to be a states-born, englishmen, who gave us his card. nice guy. weird sport.
7. sick of cricket and brits, we departed to return to “le crois”, had drinks and bid adieu to chris and mara. went back to godforesaken hostel, which required us to leave by 10 in the morning. downstairs to bar, where bartender reported he was closing early (to the disappointment of the french). he was to celebrate st. patty’s day, but since he thought we were cool (and we thought likewise, regarding him, of course), he’d let us follow him and let us back in to hostel in morning.
8. we depart for first irish bar with octavio (our bartender of mexican desent, who had been in the country illegally for 4 years, but because he is not moroccan no one cares, and who spoke a spattering of spanish, french, dutch, english and italian) to meet a girl he didn’t even seem to like once we met her. she was somewhat embarassing, a wench.
9. talking goes well with octavio, we leave bar around 4 to another irish bar, which is far more packed. we drink, we laugh, we dance.
10. good times are had by all, octavio leads us back to hostel, where we fetch breakfast and pack our things to depart back to netherlands. it is 7:30 in the morning. After a small fight (instigated mostly, and mistakenly, by myself) we head to train station and leave for amsterdam. amsterdam finds us well and tired, after all, we had been up all night. All in all, a great trip.