Belgium

Me and my friend Jeremy went to the piss capital of the world, Brussels.

Getting pissed

It started of bad with the rain falling down ironically and when we got to the hotel they said they were fully booked even though we had already paid for it. The receptionist was rude and didn’t listen to us at all and he just called a cab for us in 1 minute to take us to another hotel far away, because he didn’t want to discuss it at all. He thought he could just place us at another of their hotels and get away with it if he got us in the cab as soon as possible, so his problem would be out of the way. 

I got really upset with him because he knew he was in the wrong although he would never admit it and they probably overbook all the time and then send people off to the other hotels they own where people don’t want to stay. He was talking so much crap and he could never answer any of my questions so he just kept on interrupting me saying something else than I asked him about and we refused to stay at another hotel that they owned. He said he would pay my money back to my credit card for the hotel, but what I didn’t know at the time, was that it would take 3 weeks and lot of work for me to get the money back by communicating with my bank about the money that was held in the air.  Without the knowledge of this we went and found another hotel which looked more like a hostel but it seemed alright anyway. And we were just glad to have somewhere to stay in the city center. 

We hit the streets and of course we started off with the famous waffles and even there you couldn’t escape what Brussels wants to be known for, piss. 

No questions about the hygiene?

And since Jeremy had been in Brussels recently while he was interrailing through Europe he let me suggest that we should go and see Atomium which looks like a flying boule set at the outskirts of Brussels. It was originally constructed for the Expo 58, the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair and it looked amazing still. We also tried to get a sneak peek into the Mini Europe which is a park made up as a small version of Europe but all we could see was a little Big Ben and that was enough we thought. 

We got back into the city center again and started our own piss tour, it started with Zinneke Pis which is a dog who pisses. Then we went to the most famous one, Manneken Pis, which is a little guy pissing, and today he was celebrated with an orchestra playing while he had gotten dressed up, and tourists were gathering around. And lastly the hardest to find was Jeanekke Pis which is a girl squatting down and having a go with her bladder. 

Then Jeremy guided me through the upper side of the city where he had been before and we saw Audrey Hepburn’s childhood home. I got the feeling that Brussels weren’t as dull as I had imagined since its mostly famous for being the center of European politics, it was actually pretty nice!

The next day we took the train through the landscape of Belgium with Luxembourg as our destination. I noticed that some weird animal had bitten me in the hotel during the night and I had three dots on the arm, almost looked like some weird religious symbol, two dots up and one down in perfect symmetry. I started to worrying about how I would die from it, but then a goth turned up at the train and I focused on him instead. I was amazed that they still exist and in rural Belgium, in daylight even, and I tried to imagine how his daily life would be like. Working at the factory at day and drinking blood at night maybe.

Now you got to wait some time to find out about our trip to Luxembourg, as a cliffhanger, but maybe the best thing about the trip to Belgium happened on the train back to Brussels again. We had bought some beers and since our train broke down we had to change and we ended up in a very old wagon with a compartment with its own door. The train was full and we got the last two seats together in the compartment with 4 young people from Belgium. Getting a bit tipsy on the beer, feeling the party vibe while the unknown cities of Belgium rushed by in the night outside. That combined with the people talking French in the setting of an old train made me feel I was finally interrailing which is a dream I always had. Sometimes all you need is an old train, good company and some imagination!

* Best things about Belgium – piss
* Most mediocre thing about Belgium – it has its charm but it’s also one of those countries that you seem to forget about
* Worst things about Belgium - hotel receptionists

Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Andorra
2. Belgium
3. Albania
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