One week later...

We left Amsterdam running (literally). We made our train to Antwerp with a few minutes to spare. Running with 6 months of supplies on your back was fun. I think half way through the train journey I stopped sweating.

We arrived in Antwerp Centraal midday Monday 8th. It was a very impressive station, and by impressive I mean large, and by large I mean very hard to navigate. We had a bit of trouble figuring out the transport system, but sure enough we found our hostel (3 hours later, hahaha).

Our hostel was... an attic? It was above a jazz/folk music bar. 8 beds, two showers, a grand piano in the corner of the room, and for all that mattered to me a toilet outside. The stairs were like walking in an M.C. Esher painting. Alex, the guy giving us the grand tour said the steps are even more fun when drunk. And to add to the madness of this place, the next morning when I came back from the shower Dermot was being serenaded by a large black man from Brazil named Patrick playing the piano that was in the room, I think he was singing "A Kiss is Just a Kiss". I have pictures. We'll post them tomorrow. We fell asleep and were eaten alive by mosquitos while some crazy girl howled below Dermot's bed. And in the morning, we were talking to the owner of the place about our travels and our money concerns 6 months from now and he said not to worry, you can always rob some old ladies. There are lots of old ladies in this city. So, that was the hostel, anyway. I was going to give it a bad review on the website we booked it on, but now in retrospect I don't think I'm going to. It had character... or atleast was full of them.

Antwerp was beautiful. The weather was perfect so it gave us the opportunity to stroll and get lost and take lots of pictures. We've been surviving on pizza this entire time because we're on a strict budget and Italian food is the cheapest. I told Dermot that I felt like I should be eating meatballs, yanno maybe something cultural, but cultural means expensive. So we ate Belgium waffles instead, it was a nice compromise. Belgium beer is the best beer in the world. And in Antwerp we found it to be very inexpensive. Our first day we drank around the city in various street cafes then ended up in the Old Arsenaal, a pub that hasn't changed it's decor since 1924. We drank Troubador, a strong but sweet tasting German lager, as recommended by a gay Englishman who was sitting next to Dermot. We soon ventured to Robinsons, a real local pub with a wonderful bar lady who spoke English alongside 4 other languages. I must say, the trip thus far has really humbled us. I know a few words in German and Italian, Dermot speaks beginner French, and we meet people like this who are quite common in these areas. The bar lady was wonderful to talk. And we actually got to talking to a local who was sitting next to us at the bar who taught us about the rivalries within Belgium: North/Flanders/Flemish speaking vs the South/French speaking factions. On Tuesday we ate some more Italian food and headed to a beautiful, quiet part of the city to play scrabble under a tree. Dermot won, whatever. A guy was playing the clarinet next to us. We eventually ended up in the Old Arsenaal again, this time staying til closing time. We got to talking to two very nice old ladies from Germany that were impressed that we were heading to their area of the world the in the coming week. I counted to ten for them in German, they feined excitment. A local Belgian popped up for a bit, and we had the bar man Stefan take a photo of the five of us. Stefan's family has run the bar since it's opening in the 1920's. We told him as we were leaving that we hoped to see one of his son's here again someday. He smiled as best he could considering that we had drank more than we could afford to pay for.

We left Antwerp for Bruges on the morning of Wednesday 10th an hour later than intended. How do you say hungover in Flemish? Stupid sexy Flanders beer. I said to Dermot as we were on the train to Bruges that we might as well taking a train through rural Pennsylvania the countryside was that similar. I wondered if it was a reason why the Amish decided to settle in PA. Even the passing houses architecture was similar. So, we arrived in Bruges 2.5 hours later, and got a bus to the center of town. Luckily it was a beautiful day because we had to walk some distance to our hostel. The hostel had a perfect location. It was probably one of the best we'll stay in. Cheap beer at the bar and a happy hour to boot. Bruges was gorgeous. It was touristy, over priced, over crowded, but for a good reason. It had that stuck in time feeling. The locals seemed very proud of their city's beauty, and as we saw they had good reason to.

Our second day in Bruges we decided to beat the crowds and the high prices and head to the beach across the Belgium countryside on bikes. The beach was an hour and a half from Bruges, so we headed out early morning. I think that road to the beach will be one of the things I see before I die, one of the supposed scenes that flashes before your eyes. It was heavenly. It was the highlight of the trip so far. The road was through a secluded countryside, slopping downhill in the shade of the trees and the wind was at our backs. Now, uh, during this piece of heaven, we weren't really thinking of the return journey. A town called Damme really saved our asses (literally). We stopped on the way back to cool off and eat some pancakes in a local restaurant. The pancake was called Franse and it was artichoke and ham wrapped up and covered with cheese and tomato sauce. It was good, actually, our first real affordable authentic meal. The way back to Bruges was torture. Stopping for the meal gave our asses time to bruise. We had to cycle to the train station on the complete otherside of town in the searing midday heat, and of course we went in wrong direction before turning around. And while we're on wrong directions we never actually made it to the beach. Do they make watches with GPS systems? That night we went on a free walking tour of the city, which was a nice rounding out of Bruges and of Belgium.

Yesterday, Friday 12th we arrived in Cologne after a 3 hour train ride. Cologne has a cathedral. Actually, the largest cathedral in Germany and definitely the largest and most impressive that we've ever seen. And beer halls, Cologne has beer halls. They serve beer in 200ml glasses from a tray that looks like an old cinema reel turned on it's side. And the halls themselves are like no other place we've drank in (and that's saying something!). Great atmosphere and wonderfully stereotypical. We met some Germans from Frankfurt last night that of course spoke great English. One of them actually tried to tell us a joke. It went something like: what is the difference between a girl in a church and a girl in the shower? One has hope in her soul and the other has soap in her hole. Very droll and we laughed despite ourselves. When you do the calculations, or, let's be honest, when Dermot does the calculations, we were paying 4.50 for a pint of 4.8% beer. And since an Irishman cannot just sit back and sip beer, we sought cheaper alcohol in what we thought was the center of the student population here, and where there are students, there is normally cheap beer. We were wrong. We found swank pubs with even more expensive drinks. We walked by Papacitas, a Spanish restaurant and saw the words Happy Hour. We proceeded to enter and drank ourselves silly on girlie cocktails for an hour. By girlie I mean pink, but there was nothing girlie about the strength of them. We finished off the night with two buritos supremo and said hasta to Papacitas. So, what I'm essentially saying is Cologne has a massive church and nice but expensive beer halls, that's about it. I mean, if you were a gay drug addict, you might like it. But, let's just say we're looking forward to Heidleberg tomorrow.

I like German keyboards I can do stuff like this: ö ä ß

Heidleberg is tomorrow. Then Munich on Tuesday-Thursday. Then we head for Interlaken, Switzerland on Friday for the weekend.

This is quite a whirlwind tour. But sure, what else would you be doing?

Hehe.