Belgium made good choices.

I have about 12 hours to relax/sleep before I leave for Cologne tomorrow. Today was marked with a 3 hour written final for my Cultural Studies class. Then the Americans had a nice relaxation session before heading out to the Oude Muntkelder, a pancake place on the Oudegracht. All you can eat, which for me means three, of your choice of sweet and savory pancackes. None of us have been in Holland enough lately, so there were communication problems galore with our waitress. The important part is, we ate a lot of pancakes. Now I have just enough time to reflect on Belgium and prepare for Deutschland.
Barry, Mike and I took the Eurolines bus down to Brussels on Thursday; a three hour ride that had us in the city by 19:00. We stayed at the Van Gogh Youth hostel, a nice place just south of the Noord Station and near the Jardin Boutique. The place had a nice bar, an outdoor terrace, and a spacious kitchen and dining hall. We were settled in and ready to hit the town by 8ish. It was a 15 minute walk down to the Grand Place, the centre of Brussels. The tempature was a balmy 75 most of the weekend, and didn't drop much at night. Our first stop was just off Grand Place, a street line with kebabs. We washed one down with a Hoegaarden and stopped off to see the famous Manneken Pis statue. For those of you who aren't familiar, Manneken Pis is a foot high statue of a naked toddler pissing. Its image is on most Brussels souveniers. A few pictures later, we were at Delirium Cafe, a place I had briefly visited with my family. This time I stayed for quite a bit longer. There was a live jam, and for the most part it was quite good. The highlights include Roxanne, and a French guitarist trying to sing Sweet Home Alabama. Just sing that with a French accent. Hilarious, right? We only had five beers at the Delirium, but you have to understand, Belgian beer doesn't work like American domestics. Every beer has a bare minimum alcohol content of 6%. And we were sampling stuff in the teens. We made it back to the hostel safely, though a wee bit later than scheduled.
Friday morning we boarded a train to Bruges, a nice city an hour NW of Brussels. We spent all of six hours there, but it was a packed six hours. On our way to Marktplaats we saw Minnewater Park, Madonna and Child, and the Begijnof. After having some lunch on the steps of the Belfry, we stopped in a Salvador Dali exhibit. It was actually really cool, and contained about 120 original Dali's, including his illustrated Bible. Wild stuff. Before leaving we trekked out to the outskirting windmills and turrents, then climbed the Belfry for a nice view. Then we got lost trying to get back to the station. There are worse places to get lost. We were packed like the proverbial sardines on the train from Bruges to Ghent, which dropped us south of the city. It was already dusk, so we saw what we could in our time there, which included a quintessential castle in the middle of town, a really cool alley covered with perpetually changing grafitti, and a genuine Cafe Leffe, where we enjoyed a few cold ones. We caught the last train back to Brussels and were back by one.
The first full day in Brussels started with a nice breakfast and a cash withdrawl. We picked up a welcome pass that covered museums and transport for 24 hours, so we went to the ends of the city and caught as many museums as possible. We took the metro out to the Atomium, which is the strange result of hosting the 1958 World Exhibition. We skipped Mini-Europe, because hell, we're in real Europe. We then took multiple public transports out to see the Royal Museum for Central Africa. This place housed some great artifacts from the Congo region, which Belgium used to control. Back in the 19th century, the king gathered up a bunch of cultural items, animals, and people, for his exhibition on the region. In front of the museum was a huge garden, with a nice reflecting pool. After a quick lunch we checked out the brewery museum on the Grand Place, which was basically worth the cold beer. Then it was off to the Museum of Musical Instruments. This place had a great audio system. As you stepped in front of each instrument, your headphones would play a nice tune featuring the drum, sitar, etc. The 6th floor also had a great view down to the city centre. With some goods from the local grocer, we cooked up a huge chicken and pasta dinner, washed down with 75cL of Jupiler, the Busch Light of Belgium. Then we went out for a few beers at O'Riley's, the Grand Place, and lastly Delirium. We were fortunate enough to score a barrel-table near the bar, and the place was packed. We perused the giant menu, and chose some pretty distinct beers. La Fin du Monde, a Quebec brew, was the highlight. We capped off the night with some great frites at the creatively named Friteland.
Sunday morning started with Mike having two pieces of toast stolen from right in front of him by a quiet Spanish girl. He's going to need to make up for that embarassment at some point. We headed out to the Royal Museum for the Arts, where the ticket-person finally filled in our card, so we had an extra 24 hours to play with. The museum had some great Flemish artists, included Reubens, and most of the stuff was biblically themed, and well done. We spent a good two hours there before checking out the City Museum, home to all 200+ costumes ever worn by Manneken Pis. My favorites are Elvis, Texas Cowboy, and Delirum Cafe. After lunch at the hostel we headed out to the EU district and took naps in two consecutive parks, much earned. We also checked out Antoine's for the country's best frites. We then headed towards Zuid Station to find a nouveau theatre that was closed. We dined at Chez Leon on le Rue des Bouchers, a place famous for its mussels, and enjoyed their Lambic beer, which is brewed with bacteria from Brussels' underground river/sewer. Back at the hostel, we enjoyed a beer out on the terrace before crashing.
Monday was our last day in town, and we started at the AutoWorld, a 400+ car showroom near the Jubelpark. It was a pretty cool building, an old palace, and a lot of the cars were pre-1950. But I'm not much of a car guy. Speaking of which, if anyone is looking to practically give one away, I'm in the market. Ask my folks, my standards are low. We had pretty much seen all the sights, so we headed back to the centre to check out a tea place, a vintage postcard store, and a secondhand-store before having a great bowl of soup at a place in Chinatown. Then we listened to the city band practice at Parc de Bruxelles for a while before gathering our things and catching the bus back to Utrecht.
Belgium really made some good choices when it came time to decide what to be good at. Beer, chocolate, frites, and mussels. I do believe that list pleases everyone.