Bill and Llew’s Excellent Adventure: Maastricht and Bruxelles
I’ll begin by apologizing for the title. But I just couldn’t resist.
When we last left our heroes, they were standing on the platform at Delft station waiting for a train that would take them in the direction of Maastricht.
Eric had printed out a nice routing guide for us that listed which trains to take, where to make connections, the times of the trains, and even gave several different options for how to get there. It all looked so easy. LOOKED.
I don’t even know if I have the energy to write about the trip to Maastricht… It took us about seven hours (as opposed to the four it was supposed to.) We took… I think six different trains. Due to scheduling problems, un-announced track maintenance work and general confusion (not least stemming from Dutch announcements on board) we visited the same station three times before finally getting to our destination. On the whole, it was fortunate that we had plenty of beer and stroopwaffels. They almost made the trip tolerable, but at one brief, terrible moment (when the near empty train stopped ten minutes out of the station in the middle of nowhere then reversed directions and returned to the station) we had to resort to the genever.
We did, of course, finally make it to Maastricht, though the journey was such that it called for a stop at an Irish pub for a pint of Guinness on the way to our hotel from the railway station. Thus fortified, we made our way to the Botel, a (and I’m sure you could have figured this out by yourselves) floating hotel on the river Maas that’s been converted from a barge.
Our first night in Maastricht wasn’t a terribly exciting one. We had a bit of a wander about, catching the local fair in the town’s main square, and enjoyed a couple of kebabs (the best food to be had in the Netherlands. It’s a depressing commentary on the state of Dutch cooking that the two best cuisines to be had in the country are Turkish and Indonesian.)
The next morning Bill and I set out to explore some of Maastricht. The town is just lovely, with almost all of its buildings maintaining their medieval character. This is only slightly spoiled by the huge numbers of designer clothing shops, jewelry boutiques and expensive restaurants that occupy the buildings. One way or another it’s a nice place.
Perhaps the most impressive features of Maastricht are its romanesque and gothic cathedrals. Each one of them is an impressive sight, but their concentration (you can see three of them from the central square alone!) makes them an even more wonderful sight.
We hadn’t done an awful lot of planning for the remainder of our trip, and this situation didn’t really improve as the day went on. We were headed to Belgium the next morning, but save for a fruitless attempt to find a guidebook to the country (the only bookshop to be found amongst the designer clothing shops, jewelry boutiques and expensive restaurants was curiously missing two countries from its BeNeLux travel book section) we didn’t do much.
Most of the early afternoon was spent laying about in a lovely park just outside the remains of the city walls, sleeping and watching all the others who were doing more or less the same thing (id est, nothing) as we were.
Towards the end of the day we headed to a local supermarket to procure some dinner for ourselves. The decisions about food didn’t take too long, but the beer choice was problematic. We could go for the usual cheap but poor tasting Bavaria Lager. Or we could get something REALLY good. OR, we could go mid-range and buy the Grolsch that was on sale at a great price, the only problem with that being that you had to buy 16 large bottles. Eventually we decided that the Grolsch deal was too good to turn down.
That evening, as the sun set over Maastricht, we sat on the top deck of the Botel with a great dinner of cheese sandwiches, fresh salad and stroopwaffels. I taught Bill how to play backgammon (he was a natural) and over the course of the evening the Grolsch wasn’t FINISHED, but enough of it was drunk to make it clear that we’d made the right choice.
The next morning we woke up, packed our bags and, after a brief stop to return the empty bottles and the plastic crate they came in, headed to the train station.
Thankfully our trip to Bruxelles (I much prefer the spelling with an “x” in it, don’t you?) was much simpler than the one to Maastricht. We did have one train change to make, but that went fine, and the border crossing was smooth, even by European standards (which is to say that we didn’t even realize we’d crossed.)
Our arrival in Bruxelles was only mildly confused. We had no idea where we were going, or where we’d stay, or, indeed, where anything was, but by dint of following street signs we made our way to the main square.
Bruxelles main square is absolutely stunning, a mixture of gothic and baroque buildings, there’s not a single building on the perimeter of the 300m square area that doesn’t grab you and say “Look at me!”
Aside from the aesthetics, the square also had the benefit of housing the tourist information office, where they kindly booked a room for us at a Hostelling International place not far away.
We headed over through Bruxelles beautiful streets and discovered, to our surprise, that it was closed. I’ve always had mixed opinions about HI hostels. They’re invariably clean, but they’re also often very institutional, sometimes to the point of being authoritarian. This particular one was a fine specimen of the type, int hat it locked its doors for the night at 23:00 and, far, far worse, between 10:00 and 14:00, supposedly for cleaning. This wouldn’t have been that bad, except for the fact that everyone was expected to be out of the hostel at this time. Forget sleeping in, no matter how late a night you had…
Anyhow, complaining aside, it was actually not entirely bad as we sat in the park across the road waiting for 14:00 we met a nice Indian-American fellow who helped us deal with the last of the Grolschs and accompanied us on the afternoon’s outing: the Cantillon Brewery.
As many of you may be aware, Belgium is renowned for its beer. But there’s beer and then there’s BEER. Cantillon produces the latter. It’s one of the very few breweries left in the world to produce genuine lambic beers. For those not familiar with lambics I’ll do my (probably not entirely adequate) best to enlighten you:
There are three broad categories of beer. FAR and away the most common are lagers (which ferment at cooler temperatures after having been injected with yeast that sinks to the bottom of the fermenting vessel) and alse (which ferment at warmer temperatures after having been injected with yeast that rises to the top of the vessel.) Then there are lambics, which were the ORIGINIAL style of beer, and aren’t injected with any yeast at all. They begin fermentation after being left in a wide pan, open to the air, into which the natural yeast spores floating about fall. Since the specific yeast used for fermentation is so important to the final brew, each lambic brewery does its best to maintain the exact same conditions in its innoculation areas year after year so that the same yeasts happen to float into the vat.
Lambic beers are aged for a long time (usually 1-3 years), have a distinctively tart flavour, are bottle conditioned (fermentation continues inside after bottling) and are often flavoured with fresh fruits. After a look around the very traditional brewery (including the wonderfully scented aging cellar) we got to try a few of their brews (gueuze, a blend of 1, 2 and 3 year old lambics), kriek (cherry flavoured lambic) and framboise (rasberry flavoured lambic) as well as to talk a bit with the brewmaster and an old Belgian man who recounted what the country’s beer culture was like in the old days. The whole tour was very interesting, all the moreso because you were more or less free to wander around the brewery on your own. This would have been utterly impossible, in North America, where saftey goggles, bans on open toed shoes and strict rules preventing one from touching anything are the norm on brewery tours.
Following the brewery tour, we took a long and circuitoous route back to the central square. After munching on some frites (perhaps the most typically Belgian food) and watching the world go by in the square, and dicovering that we were a few minutes late to be admitted to the town hall, we headed back to the hostel.
On the way there, we stopped by perhaps the most famous of Bruxelles’ sights: The Manakin Pis. I must admit, I’ve no idea why the sculpture is so famous. Its story is entertaining. It was comissioned by a man who, having lost his son in Bruxelles, found him two days later urinating in the very spot now occupied by the statue. For all that, I still didn’t see the attraction. Apparently a lot of others did though. In many ways I think that showing it surrounded by a horde of Asian tourists is actually the NATURAL state of the statue, and much better than an unobstructed photo.
That evening Bill and I occupied first the hostel’s basement bar, then the courtyard upstairs, then, briefly the bar again. You might think that while in the courtyard we were taking a break from the riotousness and alcohol heavy atmosphere of the bar, but you’d be wrong. You see, there was still the little matter of a bottle of genever that hadn’t been dealt with. Down in the bar when happy hour ended we discussed our options and came to a conclusion regarding the genever that can be summed up in a single sentence: it’s not going to drink itself. Thus we headed up to the courtyard, played a game of scrabble and put ourselves into a state that made it difficult to leave the hostel by the 10:00 lockout time the next morning.
A bit belatedly, we DID leave the place, and immediately set about taking care of some pressing business. I was enjoying the low countries, but I had come to the conclusion that I just couldn’t stay there much longer. Things were just too draining on my wallet. Thus it was that we headed to an internet cafe where I set about finding a less expensive place to be.
Ninety minutes later we walked out, Bill having accomplished… well, I actually don’t know what exactly, and me having purchased a plane ticket to Turkey for early the following morning. Having done this we went for a bit more of a wander, through perhaps the prettiest shopping mall in the world, as well as a number of other Bruxelles streets, in search of a guidebook for me. Showing up in Amsterdam or Bruxelles with no idea about the city is one thing, but I had a feeling that Istanbul would be a different matter entirely.
Having found my book we could get on with a bit of sightseeing. First stop was the Belgian chocolate and cacao museum. It was a reasonably interesting place, and the biscuit dipped in still warm liquid chocolate that we received at the start of our visit was almost worth the price of admission in itself.
Later in the day we headed to the cathedral of Saints Michael and Goedele. It was a beautiful gothic cathedral, though I was a bit disappointed by how clean and bright it was, having been restored and thoroughly cleaned uprecently. I suppose that this really was the point of the style, but I still like my gothic buildings dark and gloomy. The cleaning certainly had done some good for the stained glass though.
After the cathedral we headed back towards the restaurant quarter. This was an amazing area of town that consisted of NOTHING but restaurants, each advertising their dishes and set meals outside on large sidewalk boards. It was a great looking place, and gave Bill and I a chance to complete our Belgian food triumverate: Beer, chocolate and… Waffles. It actually took a bit of work to find a place that made fresh Belgian waffles (leading me to wonder if Belgians actually did eat them, or if it was just a tourist thing) but they were definitely worth the wait!
We spent a good chunk of time sitting around in the afternoon sun at Bruxelles’ largest park before our final sightseeing stop, the Palais de Justice. I’d really wanted to visit the building, primarily because of its age and sheer size. I wasn’t exactly disappointed by it… It was very memorable, and quite a sight to see. Just not an entirely GOOD one. In fact, the building was really hideously ugly. I wish I’d got a photo that illustrated this, but you’ll just have to take my word as to its gaudy, tacky, poorly conceived architecture.
Just before our return to the hostel we stopped for some more frites (about the only reasonably priced food to be had in Bruxelles) where I amused Bill (and myself) by trying a couple of times to order “des frites grosse.” My first attempt was met simply by a confused look. My second by one of comprehension and the proprietor saying “ah! We close 21 o’ clock.” After that I just asked for a large fries.
We’d spent much of the day in search of a venue at which to watch an event we’d eagerly anticipated: the final of football (soccer)’s European Champions’ League. Under almost any other circumstance, I’d be all for the removal of TVs from bars (they so easily distract people from social interaction, which is, in my view, the point of a bar) but on this one occaison their scarcity at Bruxelles’ public houses was a bit of an annoyance. In the end we headed back to the hostel to watch it.
The match was to be played between AC Milan (the clear favourite) and Liverpool. Bill had always been a footy fan, and I was something of a Liverpool supporter myself (had been ever since my dad brought me a Liverpool scarf back from England when I was… seven maybe?) so we were both eagerly anticipating the match.
It didn’t get off to a good start. Milan scored a quick goal, and by the end of the first half, Liverpool were down 3-0. Then somehow, miraculously, around the 54th minute the game took a radical change. Within six minutes, Liverpool had scored thrice, and tied the game! At the end of regulation time the score remained 3-3.
This presented me with something of a problem. I really wanted to see the end of the match, but my flight to Istanbul left Bruxelles airport at 05:45 the following morning. The first train left for the airport at 04:50, meaning that really I needed to catch the last one of the night to be on time for my flight.
Reluctantly, I said a quick goodbye to Bill and ran out the door, pack on my back, intent on reaching the airport in time to catch the end of the match there. Somehow or other I managed it. The airport was all but empty when I arrived, but I heard noise coming from one corner and arrived at the cafe (closed, but with the TV still on) just in time to see the final four penalty kicks which decided the match in Liverpool’s favour. What a finish!
I was very happy with the result, but grew a bit less happy when I scanned the departures board on the wall. My flight was nowhere to be seen. Had I made some kind of mistake (I must admit, this was a possibility, given that the airline website where I’d made my reservation was entirely in Dutch) did Brussels have more than one airport? Had my flight been cancelled?
I wandered about aimlessly, eventually deciding that there was nothing to do but wait until the information desk opened in the morning. During the night, I was at least mildly relieved to meet others in a similar quandry about the same flight. If I’d screwed up somehow, at least I wasn’t alone. I passed a restless night, laying on the hard floor of the airport with my pack as a pillow.
Come morning, there was still no sign of the flight on the board. I met several other people, Belgians, Dutch and Turks alike hanging around the airline’s unattended desk similarly concerned. Finally some kindly soul approached us. Apparently the flight was replacing one that had been cancelled the previous afternoon, and while it hadn’t made it on the departures list, was being checked in at that moment. WHEW.
In the end, the flight departed a couple of hours late (grumble… I could have watched the rest of the match at the bar and caught the 04:50 train) but I was off, on my way to a country that was entirely unexpected, and almost entirely unknown to me.
Many thanks this time to Bill. He was, as I knew he’d be, a very fun travelling companion. We had a great few days together wandering around the low countries. Yes, perhaps I saw less than I might have and drank more than I should have, but travel with a good friend was something I’d missed on this journey, and it was great to share a bit of it with one of my best ones.
Tags: Netherlands & Belgium
Llew