Markus and Brian's Excellent European Adventure

All Wet

Markus again nicely summarizes our time currently in Bruges, but I wanted to add a few small points:

* I saw another sex-driven advertisement. These highly amuse me. It's a jeans store, and their ad -- in fact, their whole logo -- is a naked female bottom / torso / legs with denim pockets on both cheeks. (In various colour versions, Andy Worhol-style.)

* Why won't the rain stop? It's been raining every day of our trip. Only once has it been sunny for a few hours, in Amsterdam. What's worse, it's half-assed rain. If it was full, pouring rain, we'd know that we need to stay inside. But this pathetic drizzling is just light enough that we still venture out and try to do SOMETHING with our time than just post in Internet cafes. It's just light enough that we end up getting totally soaked anyway. We'd be perfectly dry if it was pouring outside. The weather plays stupid mind games. (Current score: Weather - 5, Us - 0)

* We'll be heading out to what sounds like an awesome drinking experience tonight. There's a little area on the outskirts of town we've read about with a bar in a vast, dark mansion. With lots of brooding, gothic paintings. Sounds damn cool; maybe we'll come back with two new extra long teeth and capes.

Where's my sword when I need it

Hey there peoples,

Well, today we decided to do something a little more docile since tomorrow will consist of clubbing it up at the Fuse. Hence, we came to Bruges, the most preserved medieval town in all of Europe. Now, I tried to imagine what a medieval town would look like in modern times and instantly I was horribly punished with flashbacks of that movie, knights tale, but thankfully that horrible vision is nowhere near the truth. The town is very tourist oriented, this I have to admit, but for being oriented at tourists theres still a lot of class and charm here. Seing it is a little hard when it's raining on the fifth day of our european adventure, but it's hard to ignore the way they've preserved things here. The buildings, roads, churches and government buildings are all in wonderfull condition and give you the feeling that, were the cars and bikes replaces with horses and pedestrians, you would feel like you were whisked away to the past. I know most of you are sticking your fingers down your throat at this point and or falling asleep at this amazingly exciting description, but like I said before, we're resting and it's raining. So just back off. Okay? Okay.

One exciting thing that I would like to mention is that I had my first REAL European coffee today. I've been drinking the stuff at the hostels, but it can't compare to the stuff you'll get if you go into an actual cafe and order one. All I can say is that the withdrawal will be severe once I'm forced to go back to Tim's watered down equivalent of something that might once have been coffee. Okay, maybe I'm exagerating, but all I'm trying to say is that I like it. A lot. But I'm not addicted, don't be rediculous. I could quite any time I want...I just don't want to...

Well, it's time to quit for today. Hopefully we'll be able to give you some great descriptions of European clubbing life after tomorrow.

Take it easy,

Markus

Picture Imperfect

Finally found an Internet cafe that would allow me to upload photos; too bad we had to travel to Antwerp to find it! (Pictures down below.) Na, I'm just pulling your collective leg: We decided to leave Brussels with a plan to return later, as the city has relatively few sites of interest during the week (especially when it rains every day of our trip so far), and we'd like to return on Saturday to finish our tour and visit the Fuse nightclub (apparently one of Europe's best electronica clubs, and like most serious clubs in Europe the party doesn't end until 7-freakin'-AM the next day).

Antwerp, on the other hand, is hailed in the guidebooks as an oft-overlooked destination; it's a little drab and boring during the day, but at night it's reputed to have one of the best nightlifes around. We arrived this morning, and after checking out the Grote Markt and the very expansive and historical Our Lady Cathedral (the oldest and largest Gothic church in the Lower Countries, according to the brochure), we headed down to the shop-laden Kammenstraat street to visit Fish & Chips.

Fish & Chips is something of a pheonomenon, we gather; it's a massive, multi-storied clubbing / rave / punk clothing, shoe, and accessory store. The staff is so hip and experimental in their fashion it hurts, there's a bar and internet access upstairs, there's a rack devoted to grafitti spray cans, and the best part -- the best part -- is that there's a hole in the ground on the entrance level that leads to the lower level via an enclosed red tube slide. Like, from a playground. It's so damn cool. You emerge into a white, glowing tunnel you can stand up in, and enter back into the actual store from several side openings. Mr. Maltby, you'd love this place.

Anyway, we went there to get the scene on stuff happening tonight, and the extremely helpful staff basically told us in a very lengthy way that there's nothing really going on tonight, though there are some hangouts that are pretty decent any day of the week. We've got a personalized hand-drawn map, to boot.

Oh, something very amusing about Belgium is that they're not very timid when it comes to sexuality in advertisements. Seeing scantily-clad women on TV or on posters is rather common. What's even better is that they tend to use sex to sell everything: We saw a poster with an upper-body shot of a topless woman (cut just high enough so that nothing was too visible) holding a package of batteries and smiling. Smiling, as if to say 'These long-life, durable batteries make me want to get naked!' Another poster showed a woman, from behind, taking off her top, facing a smug, smarmy guy holding a cellphone, implying that as the new owner of the Nokia Sexamaphone, woman will be powerless to resist ravishing you -- on the streets, no less.

Well, I think I'll get to the pictures now. The software seems broken -- again -- so I'll just post things manually and slowly for now. I'll put each of them up with 3 on each row, and then a caption legend down below. It's been very rainy for the past 4 days we've been here, and I have yet to learn most of the camera's settings, so the pictures may be a little drab for now...

Amsterdam
1) Us with Molly and Catherine (see post from a few days ago). Great people. What they don't know is that we took their wallets during this shot.
2) Tiny little side streets zig and zag off main roads in Amsterdam
3) Bridges like this are commonplace in Amsterdam -- imagine a drop of water creating ripples in a pond. That drop of water is Centraal Station, and many canals spread outwards from the station in concentric circles. Then, roads all lead in straight lines towards the station, hence creating a billion bridges like this one. It's veddy cool.
4) We stumbled across this movie shoot
5) This is the "Before" shot. I'd show you the "After" shot, but I still don't know where he is now.
6) The Dutch love their bikes. There are even bikes in a multi-level parking garage, on the left.

Brussels
7) Brussels. Filled with lots of suits, as the capital of the EU.
8) Some people in Brussels just can't slow down.
9) Old architecture meets modern traffic.
10) Markus, the friendly traveller, has just finished telling an old woman to let him drink in public in peace. (He's a raging boozer, remember?)
11) Actually, he was watching this girl.
12) From Grand Place, a large building in silhouette.
13) Some of the statues carved into the side of said building, many meters high in the air.
14) Side view of said building. Bonus: Another building too!
15) Another majestic building. Man they're getting old. (Yes, Markus, your type of humour has competition!)
16) Heil statue!
17) This photo comes a few minutes after the girl on the left arrived. Before that, the girl in the center holding the flower was surrounded by a hoard of boys all hurtin' and courtin' to win her heart. One boy was in the way, though, and by the time I finally got my surreptitious shot I think she noticed me...
18) Markus finally wanders back in a stupor from Amsterdam...
19) Our hostel, the Van Gogh. Easily one of the nicest places we'll stay in on our trip, I'm sure.

Antwerp
20) A shot from Grote Markt. I think the lady at the bottom is yelling "No pictures, you insolent Canadian twerp!" (I kind of forgot what she said when she punched me in the nose.)
21) Fish & Chips, as described above. Oh, and a clothing store with an interesting name.

That's it for now. See ya.

Red Light Restaurants

Markus has this entry pretty well covered below; Brussels seems to rock my socks, and we only just got here. Grand Place seems to be living up to its reputation as the best city square in Europe. Around Grand Place is a restaurant district that's just like the Red Light District in Amsterdam, except with food. That's the only difference; the restaurants are still surrounded by red neon lights, it's widely known as a common tourist trap, and there are incredibly pushy waiters soliciting business outside on the extremely narrow street (think 10 feet wide). "Hey! Table for two?" "Eh! Eh! You want to try some fantastic lobster?"

Time's up on this 'net computer, later!

Van Dam This city is fine!

Hey there peoples,

I have to make this one quick since I've got a timer staring me in the face from the measly Euro I had to put in this machine. Brian and I have now entered the home of Jean Claud Van Dam - Brussels, Belgium. I was not expecting much from this city. I don't know why, it's just one of those biases I can't exlpain. Actually, maybe it's from watching some of Van Dams recent quality cinema, but whatever the reason, I was wrong. This city is absolutley stunning. The architecture is a mixture of new skyscrapers which have no problem giving you the vertigo you're used to in large cities and old style palaces. There's a square here called Grand Place which simply took my breath away. This was all old style, with gothic and romanian carvings along every building. It was magnificent.

Now, you're probably thinking, "Architecture is all well and good, but you're straying from the important things. Sex, drugs and alcohol!" Now it's true that Brussels can't compare to Amsterdam on the sex and drugs market, I mean you can buy a woman and a joint in the same shop there. What these people take very seriously, however, is their chocolate and their beer drinking. Now, I assume that these passions don't mix well, but I'm Van Damed if I'm not going to find out for myself. (I know, enough with the stupid Van Dam jokes already. I'm sorry. I hang my head in shame :.-( )

Seriously, though, the chocolate here is so good that even I'm starting to think that it could be an alternative to sex. We went into this little specialty shop, Brian spoke this funny language which vaguely sounded familiar (ahh, the benifits of a French education through Grade school into grade 9, "Je mapel Markus!" Yeah! woohoo! that's it. I've got nothing left.) and then we ended up purchasing some of the tastiest morsels this Universe could possibly have to offer. It was grand.

Secondly, since the people here in Brussels take their drinking so seriously, the beer is dirt cheap. I mean like 1 euro dirt cheap. that's about $1.60 canadian, no taxes, no tip. I'm starting to like this place a lot.

Anyways, as you may remember from before, I'm on a limited time schedule here, so I must bid you adieu. I hope everything is going well for people and just in case you don't know, you can post questions or comments to these posts by clicking on the link under here that says "comment(0)". It may not be a 0 if someone has already posted a comment, but it's the thing in blue. Come on people, don't be shy. Ask away. Comment away. Let us know someone is reading this jumbled rambling!

Take it easy,

Markus