Since you have been so kind as to consistently provide signage and basic directions in a language that I can understand, I have decided to give back. In my American Autobiography class in England, we have been discussing why autobiography is so quintessentially American, and my English colleagues have been kind enough to point out that most American heroes’ like to give back by writing their autobiography and offering it to the public as a model life that other people should try to emulate. This made perfect sense to me and answered all the questions I’ve had recently about why English people would want to be American studies majors. It’s so obvious. They read American autobiographies because everyone wants to be exactly like America, the greatest country in the entire world. Anyway, as I was reverently reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography for the 73rd time this weekend (I like to read the autobiographies of all of our great American forefathers every week to keep my patriotism sharp), the idea struck me like the American flag struck the moon in 1969 (before the Russian flag): I, too, could provide both England and America with the great public service of talking about myself a lot and expecting everyone to want to be just like me! Now that I have spent 5 entire days traveling in Belgium, I like to consider myself a foremost expert on the entire country and on backpacking in general. So here is an account of my trip so that your Belgium experience can be just like mine:
First, some things to remember:
1. Pajama pants (that’s pajama trousers for all you ridiculous English folk) so that you do not face the option of sleeping in the same dirty jeans every night vs. the alternative of just boxers in a hostel room full of awkward strangers and potential serial killers (just kidding, Dad).
2. Speaking of pants (trousers), pack a second pair in case of the unlikely event that you discover a humongous hole in the right inner thigh of the jeans that you wore on the train, the only jeans that you will have for five days.
3. A towel so you do not have to dry yourself with a small washcloth that you borrowed from the front desk of your hostel.
4. If you plan to bring your very heavy computer so you can check on the progress of your extremely time sensitive visa to India and field e-mails about flights, bring a European converter so that its battery does not run out within 8 minutes of your turning it on.
5. A phone that has been topped up with more than £5 so that when you try to meet up with the rest of your group, which you split off from in Ghent because they wanted to eat boring overpriced tourist food and you wanted to look at weird Belgian home movies and vacuum cleaners from the 1950s in an old cathedral with vaulted ceilings that has been converted into a folk museum with linoleum floors to emulate a creepy Stepford wife kitchen, you need not frantically attempt to understand the 12 step process written entirely in Dutch that is required to make a simple phone from a payphone in the market square this is a run on sentence.
6. Do not get assigned to a room your first night in the hostel that also has a middle aged, burly gentleman with a balding Sideshow Bob haircut named Boerst that sleeps with his eyes open, a scowl, and a bed that faces the door so that you have to wait until two more hostel roommates show up so you can go to bed with the knowledge that you will not be serial killed in the middle of the night (just kidding, Dad).
7. A basic understanding of simple Dutch words and phrases such as bathroom, train, appletini, bus, and do you speak English?
 |
| Not an appletini. |
The journey began at around 8am as my travel buddy, Kaitlin and I caught our first bus so that we could eventually catch our train, and the tube, and our other train, and get lost in Brussels Midi station for about an hour because all directions were written only in Dutch, and our other bus, and walk the wrong direction for about half an hour in Leuven. Sadly, the only new relationship I made on the journey was my new arch rivalry with the gentleman sitting next to me on the first train (we didn’t say anything to each other, but he knows that we’re arch rivals. We had that connection), who I can only guess was extremely proud of his brand new saggy gangster pants and wanted to show them off by taking up as much room as possible. I can think of no other explanation as to why Saggypants McGee felt the need to very obviously encroach over the line that separates seat space since he wasn’t any bigger than me, but don’t worry, America, I claimed the shared armrest in the name of our beloved Barrack Obama every time he moved even slightly. Our hostel, delightful though it was on the inside, happened to fulfill the natural law that every building I ever sleep in loud construction outside. We sat in the hostel common room for a while, waiting for our travel buddies from Bologna to arrive, so my first sampling of hostel life is a happy montage of pink-velvet-pants-girl who was watching a show on her computer with her earphones in and laughing very loudly at jokes that no one else could hear, Sebastian the cheerful tai chi and android phone enthusiast, and Boerst the clown haired serial killer (I’m not sure if his name was really Boerst, it was a grunt-like name). Anyway, my APO sweet frat bro Kristin and her two friends finally arrived and off we went to explore the castle and magic laden streets of Leuven. Kristin and I, being Scrubs enthusiasts, decided to go on a quest for appletinis, favorite drink of one J.D. the doctor. Unfortunately, I had not yet become completely fluent in the Dutch language or Belgian customs (so foolish I was those 5 days ago), so I accidentally ordered an Appel Jenever which translates roughly in English to “expired cough syrup and antifreeze on the rocks, shaken not stirred” or apple gin.
Day 2 began promisingly as Boerst did not serial kill me, the hostel provided free breakfast, and I had the good sense to bring my dinosaur shaped sandwich cutter in place of a second pair of pants, a charged phone or a converter. (I highly recommend that all travelers bring a dinosaur sandwich cutter on every trip. It turns even the scariest foreign language meal that you order via the point-and-pray-that-it-is-not-insect-brains method into a delightful dino adventure). So after consuming Nutella covered dino-toast and 38 cups of hot chocolate (free and from one of those really fun machines) off we went to explore Leuven by the light of day. Crazy castles, cathedrals, a flea market with a Belgian version of the Shamwow demonstration (don’t worry, I took a video), etc. I knew that Leuven was the city for me when we reached the market square and found it decorated with a 14 meter high statue of a giant impaled beetle.
So after spending the morning basking in the glory of Belgian culture, sampling the exotic flavors of Belgian Capri Sun (they have a different orange flavor!), and surreptitiously trying to pet people’s dogs as they walked past, we decided to head into Brussels. Having become far more wise from our 1 day of Belgian assimilation, I negotiated the train tickets by shouting “You speak the American?!” as Belgian custom dictates that the most polite thing a tourist can do if they do not speak your language is repeat the same thing loudly with Tarzan grammar. It worked wonders. In Brussels, in addition to more most-beautiful-church/building/mural/chocolateshop/statue-in-the-entire-universes we found a shop that sells doll heads (just the heads), random keys, and old already written on post cards for weird people like myself that have a voyeuristic obsession with strangers’ pasts, so now I am the proud owner of several postcards written in French and Dutch in the 1960s and a key to a filing cabinet somewhere in Russia. We also had the first of about 300 waffles and went to a chocolate museum with some of the most interesting racist propaganda I’ve ever seen (I’m actually being serious this time. The old racist posters that they had were really interesting. But again, Feminist Jesse will go away now). Side note, Brussels mascot is a statue of a peeing child.
In the evening, not wishing to return to the scary, loud bar with strobe lights more seizure inducing than an anime convention, Kristin and I split from the group and re-embarked on our quest for appletinis. After sagely pointing to things on the drink menu that had the word “appel” and shouting “You speak the American?!” several more times, we managed to get the barman to take pity on us and he laughed (in a perfect American accent) and told us we had just ordered apple juice. Alas, no closer to the Scrubs holy grail of silly drinks. To add wounds upon wounds, we later went to Beethoven Kareoke club. Imagine my disappointment when I excitedly scrambled up the stairs like a child on Christmas morn and there were no inebriated Belgian college kids at the top rowdily singing the cello part to that timeless classic the 5th symphony in C minor (England, this is not what actually happened on the Christmases of my youth. That was a metaphor about presents. I know your people are still learning hard rhetorical devices like we Americans use, but try to bear with me). I still managed to enjoy myself as I listen to renditions of popular American songs be sung by several people who had no clear grasp of English. My personal favorites were Carlos, who sang a heart stirring rendition of Listen to Your Heart in broken English, and Sven. Sven chose an old timey country tune with a music video of a horse walking down a dirt path playing on the teleprompter, and he had rehearsed this song so well and practiced his timing so perfectly that he successfully executed a dramatic mic drop and walked off stage at the very end of the song just like that you-got-served moment where Eminem schools his nemesis in a rap battle at the end of 8 Mile. All my favorite American music stereotypes wrapped up into one glorious performance.
 |
| In Leuven |
Day 3 Ghent
 |
| In Brussels |
America with your sea to shining sea and liberty and justice for all, England with your… glorious rainclouds of oppressive imperialism and your bizarre queuing conventions, if you want to see a beautiful city, go to Ghent. I could have wandered around this place just looking at the outsides of buildings all day. Home of an entire street of amazing graffiti, the awesome cathedral converted into a museum of 1950s consumerism and the 12 step Belgian payphones that I spoke of earlier, I can only say that even the McDonalds in Ghent are classier than anywhere else I’ve seen (and I like to consider myself an expert on McDonalds. I’ve been taking pictures and studying them in every city I visit. This one had three stories and a blackboard with the special of the day – the Big Mac – handwritten in chalk to create the illusion of an elegant café. Good job, Ghent). Also, I made a train friend who taught me important Dutch words. It turns out appelsaen means orange. (Another obstacle in the appletini quest thwarted.) Sadly, our Bologna friends had to leave us on this night because of an infortuitous combination of Murphy’s Law and Ryan Air.
 |
| Grafitti street |
Days 4 and 5 Bruges
The only place in Belgium that might be prettier than Ghent. Plus, it gets extra points because of the sheer number of silly tourist traps (boat rides, horse drawn carriages, unbelievably gorgeous pedestrian bridges, who are you trying to fool Bruges?), and lace window displays with scary dolls and lifelike grandma mannequins on display. I actually ended up staying an extra day instead of returning to Brussels because I liked it so much. In addition to a feminist nunnery, and a giant map of Bruges made entirely out of lace (I didn’t manage to see it but I imagine it looks like grandma doilies with street names embroidered on), Bruges is also famous for the Church of the Holy Blood. Some Catholics believe a vile there contains the blood of Jesus Christ brought back from the Crusades and at certain hours of the day, you can venerate it. I was lucky enough to arrive during those hours, and I attempted to politely and unobtrusively take a picture, to characteristics that Americans excel in, except I forgot to turn the flash on my camera off so I instead received a dirty look from the priest. He was probably upset because I got his bad side. Anyway, the hostel we stayed at was the best ever. Called Snuffel Backpackers, so already fantastic because it reminds me of my childhood favorite, Sesame Street, it had the most hilariously inconvenient one lane spiral staircase which I can only assume someone with a sense of humor slightly more twisted than mine designed so that he could watch as travelers in their early twenties attempted to negotiate its dizzying heights with giant 45 lb. bags strapped to their bags. Further, it was attached to a bar so I had the rare honor of eating cornflakes at a bar at 9am the following morning to the judgment of all the strangers outside walking by the window, and best of all, the showers were located down the spiral staircase, through the bar, outside, back in and up the stairs. This place housed by far the coolest roommates including an 8th grade history teacher, a recent American college graduate (countryman!), a dynamic brother/sister duo, and 6’10” Hungarian student who I refused to speak to unless I was standing on top of my bunk bed so as to make eye contact.
 |
| Bruges |
 |
| Scary lace window display |
Kaitlin went ahead to the Brussels train station to finish some work before we went back, and I had such a good time that I missed my bus by about 2 minutes. Two fateful minutes that that had I known its implications, had I known that chain reaction of Jesse disaster and hilarity that would be its inevitable conclusion, I would have stopped to take stock of my life. By missing this bus and having to wait an extra 10 minutes, I allowed the universe to place me in the ticket line (because remember, I still have no idea how to negotiate Dutch directions at the train station and have to ask for directions) behind a gentleman (most likely Saggypants McGee’s cousin), who felt the need to talk on his cell phone (that’s mobile, England, try to keep up) for 10 minutes before ordering his ticket. This gave me exactly one minute to sprint through the station, find my platform, and fall to my knees crying NOOOO melodramatically as rain began to fall and the irreversible automatic doors closed 3 seconds before I reached them. Obviously, Jesus was angry that I had taken a picture of his blood with my flash on. Anyway, after waiting another half hour, bonding with all the other people that couldn’t figure out how to open the complicated door to the rain shelter on the platform, the intercom said something important sounding in Dutch and everyone left the rain shelter and started walking toward nothing in particular in the rain, so I followed them. The train arrived in front of the rain shelter, so I still have no idea what the intercom said, probably something along the lines of “make the foreigner wet at all costs.” Anyway, I boarded my train and off it went. Fifteen minutes into the journey, the screen at the front flashed that the train would be going through Brussels Zuid and Brussels Centrale, neither of which are Brussels Midi, (the place I needed to be in half an hour so as not to miss my train, and subsequently my other train, my other other train, and my bus, leaving me stuck in a strange Belgian station overnight to be serial killed by Boerst the eyelidless wonder). Luckily, I had the good American common sense to deduce that Belgium, being an inferior country, probably had different names for the same station in French and Dutch since everyone there spends too much time studying languages and being generally educated and not enough time studying Miley Cyrus lyrics and eating Big Macs like every great nation should. And I was right. With that cleared up, I was free to panic about other inane things like the fact that the screen was now flashing the message: “Opgepast! Geef zakenrollers geen kans. Drag zoorg vor ur betziggen!!” with far too many exclamation points to be anything positive. The message flashed again in French and then in German – the only recognizable word being ACTUNG!!, which I do not know the direct translation of but do recognize from every movie about Nazis ever made. Anyhow, this combination of events – Boerst, the general lateness panicking, the exclamation points, the portrayal of Nazis in the media -- primed my mind for what I think was a very sensible translation: “Danger! Terrorists have high-jacked your train and you are going to miss your connection!” So I was pretty pissed. As it turns out though, it actually just meant “Caution! Pickpocketers tend to steal things!” Thank God, they warned me. I had planned to sleep under a blanket I knitted from all my unused euro bills.
So I made it to the Brussels Midi/Zuid with about 10 minutes before my train (which I should have checked in for 20 minutes ago) left and I sprinted through the station stripping off my belt and jacket for the metal detector as I went. Somehow this was the one time in British history that England decided not to construct an insane 4 hour bureaucratic system for me to perform a simple task (I thought this strange at the time, too convenient, but made no comment. But don’t worry, America, you’ll see what happens) so I made it through customs with two minutes to spare and entered my terminal triumphantly singing a mash up of God Bless America and God Save the Queen to commemorate that historic occasion that England was finally nice to me… and my train was delayed by an hour. But that’s okay because I brought my ukulele, another travel item far more useful than a towel or working phone, so I was able to entertain myself. I thought the adventure was over, but when I finally did board the train, sadly separated from Kaitlin, the gentleman across from me whipped out his computer and started airbrushing a photograph of a model. My sheer nosiness allowed me to befriend Mr. Amersterdam/South Africa photographer and the guy next to him, a philosophy student named Thor, who spoke only in idealistic Disney clichés. About six hours later, when I finally caught the bus in Norwich back to UEA, who should step on the bus at 2AM but one of my beloved Frisbee colleagues wearing footy pajamas.
In conclusion, Belgium was absolutely fantastic, even the parts that would be really stressful and unpleasant to a normal human being. It also made me realize as I was arriving and sigh at the familiar sight of London and the sound of English without bizarre Dutch overtones, that I’m starting to consider mother England as a second home – like with a leaky roof and bad lighting and a really inconveniently placed staircase – but still.
No comments:
Post a Comment