Stranded in Bruxelles -The City of the Whited Sepulchre

The Grand Place

In Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, the main character Marlow, describes Brussels as "a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre."  By this, he alludes to Christ's characterization of the Pharisees as "whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."  (Matthew 23:27.)  This is the third time that I've been to Brussels and, in my experience, this characterization is fairly accurate.  In fact, I've never successfully traveled through Brussels without having serious issues.

Until today our trip had been too perfect.  Something was bound to go wrong, and today it did.  Our flight home left Brussels at 12:10 p.m.  We drug ourselves out of bed early enough to catch the 8:36 a.m. train from Bruges.  After our New Year's Eve celebration, that was quite a feat and we were both still feeling pretty rough.

On the train from Brussels to the airport we found out that the woman at the ticket counter in Bruges gave us the wrong tickets.  The conductor pointed this out to us and scolded us, but took pity on our ignorance, seeming more frustrated with the lady from Bruges than with us.  He simply told us to make sure that we got the right ticket next time.  I thought that this would be the end of our troubles, but boy was I wrong.

We got to the airport around 9:50 a.m. - more than two hours before our flight - completely exhausted, only to find out that our flight had been inexplicably cancelled!  We stood in line for over an hour waiting to talk to the airline staff before someone finally explained the situation to us.  When the plane was coming in from Washington, there was a "bird strike."  That means that a bird got stuck in one of the plane's engines.  We were told that, when there is a bird strike, the plane is immediately grounded for 24 hours so that they can clean the engine and make sure it is working properly.  The problem for us, though, was that there were no other flights out of Brussels that would get us home today.  Instead, the airline booked all of the passengers rooms at the Airport Sheraton and comped all of our meals for the day.  The flight situation was so dire that they couldn't even find a way to get a surgeon back to Atlanta today so that he could perform a critical surgery in the morning.  Ironically, the last time that I was in Brussels it was because I was on a flight back to Milan that had been cancelled and I had to stay over in a crummy airport hotel.

If we were stuck in Bruges, that would be one thing, but being stuck in Brussels was not particularly exciting, especially because we were both about to keel over from exhaustion.  Still, we decided to make the best of the situation.  After dropping our stuff at the hotel, we hopped on a train back up to the center of Brussels to do a little sightseeing.

As most everything was closed, we just did a lot of walking around and exploring.  We started at the Grand Place - undoubtedly the part of the city that Marlow was referring to in Heart of Darkness.  The buildings there are stunning.  From there, we grabbed a few beers for later and walked down to the Manniken Pis, a statue of a little boy peeing that has become a symbol of Brussels and Belgium.  They typically dress him up in a wide variety of different costumes, depending on the time of year or the various holidays, but because it's New Year's Day, he was naked.

Our next stop was at the Delirium Cafe.  They are famous for two things.  First, and most significantly, it is the cafe with the largest number of beers - somewhere over 2,000.  Second, they are the makers of Delirium Tremens, which they claim has been voted the best beer in the world (trust me, it's nowhere close).  Still, the cafe was really cool.  It's set in a yellowed basement in a back alley with metal beer posters and trays all over the room.

My last goal for the day was to visit the European Union Parliament.  This proved to be extremely difficult.  We walked for miles, often in the wrong direction.  We followed signs that led us to the wrong places and got lost several times in the sprawl of Brussels.  After two hours of wandering around, we were about to give up and started walking to a structure that I thought was a train station.  Much to my surprise, it was the Parliament.  The building was really neat.  Even though we couldn't go inside, it was cool to be at the epicenter of so many important political decisions.

After finding the Parliament, we were both spent and went back to the hotel to take a nap, have dinner, and relax for the rest of the night (with several good beers, of course).  I'm crossing my fingers that our attempt to make it home tomorrow will be more successful than it was today.

In Bruges

Kati an Me at the Snow & Ice Sculpture Festival

Yesterday was New Year's Eve and it was a busy day for us in Bruges.  The city was packed with tourists; something that I definitely didn't expect when we booked the trip.

The first stop on our tour of Bruges was the Disney Snow & Ice Sculpture Festival.  It sounds really cheesy and kid-oriented, but it was awesome.  Seriously, the things that they did with ice was amazing.  There were castles, pirate ships, bars, and dozens of storybook scenes.  There was even an ice slide that you could take down from the ice castle.

After we got our fill of the freezing cold, we hustled over to Heilig-Bloedbasiliek (the Basilica of the Holy Blood).  It's so named because it houses a vial of Christ's blood, brought to Bruges in the 12th century during the crusades.  The basilica was stunning.  The entire chapel was painted and adorned with golden designs.  It was very reminiscent of the painted churches in Eastern Europe.

By the time we finished up at the basilica, we were both ready to relax and get some beer, so we headed down to the Brouwerij De Halve Maan, the only operating brewery still in Bruges.  They make four different beers: Brugse Zot (their flagship), and three beers sold under the Straffe Hendrik label, a tripel, a quadrupel, and a quintessentially Brugian brew called "Heritage."  The Straffe Hendrik beers were particularly great.

We spent most of our afternoon exploring the streets of Bruges and stopping in different shops, grabbing a few beers along the way.  After being turned away from climbing the Belfry, we decided to stop in to the nearby Salvador Dali museum.  Dali is one of my favorite painters and his exhibition did not disappoint.  Even though there weren't any of his most famous paintings on display, we got to see tons of his rarer pieces and get a glimpse into some of his even more bizarre and surreal works that would likely be considered too strange or too perverse for the general public.

Enjoying our Westvletern Conquest

Our last stop in the afternoon was Cambrinus, a well-known beer bar in the city.  They closed at 4:00 and we squeaked in at 3:50, on a mission to complete the hardest leg of my beer tasting adventure in Belgium.  The Westvletern Abbey, located in rural Flanders, about an hour south of Bruges, produces some of the most sought after beers in the world.  The monks there still do all of the production themselves.  You can only get their beer AT the abbey and they limit how much you can buy.  To begin with, you have to call a single phone line and hope that you get through.  If you do, you can make a reservation to stop by on limited days and pick up the beer.  When you make a reservation, you have to give them a license plate and you can only get two wooden cases of beer once every 60 days.  The beers are not supposed to be sold on the commercial market but are regarded by many as the best beers in the world.  The beers are sold in nondescript bottles that can only be distinguished by the color of their cap: green for the blonde; blue for the 8, and yellow for the 12.  We had gotten word that Cambrinus served the Westvletern brews (for a price) and we had to check it out.  We were in luck!  They had all three.  We tried the blonde and the 8, both of which were truly incredible.  I don't know if I would go so far as to say that they are undeniably the best beers in the world, but they were very enjoyable.  My only regret is that we decided against trying the 12 as well.

After a tiring few days, we decided to take a quick nap to rejuvenate ourselves for the New Year's Eve festivities.  Thank God that we did, because it was another long night.  After an enjoyable dinner, we wandered around the city, grabbed a few more chocolates, and enjoyed a couple of beers to kill time before midnight.

Around 11:30, we walked down to t' Zand.  The whole square was a giant party.  They were playing the top songs from 2013.  It was hilarious to see the Belgians lose their minds when "Wrecking Ball" came on.  At midnight they set off a very impressive fireworks display set to Abba's "Happy New Year."  It was a truly incredible ending to the perfect week in Europe.  We capped it off by enjoying a bottle of St. Martin's Rose Brut and turning in so that we could still manage to wake up early to begin our final journey home.