19/06/2000

On Friday morning we were going to leave to Brugge, Belgium. I woke up with enough time to make the bus for the train in the morning, but I didn't feel too great (my own doing), and thought that a shower would be a good idea. Thus, I headed off to the bus by myself, and caught a train through Thionville and then to Luxembourg. The stop in Thionville was particularly interesting, as our train crashed (sort of) into the one in front of it. The impact was hard enough to throw people forward somewhat, and definitely woke those sleeping up. In any case, I made the transfer and surprised the group by making it. (As it's probably not obvious to all readers, there were too ways to connect to the same train in Luxembourg, and I just took the later one that had much less leeway in the transfer time. Regardless, I had 10 minutes to spare, which is an eternity in European train travel).

We made it into Bruxelles-Nord, and then got to Brugge, Belgium. Brugge is an interesting place. Since we didn't have plans ahead of time, we didn't really have a place to stay. By "we" I mean Charlie, Sang, Adrian, Luis, and myself. Luckily, we got into the same place the rest of the folks were staying. It was basically a youth hostel, but the problem was that it was exactly 8km north of the train station. Public transportation works, but as usual, public transportation limits your options and never runs at reasonable times into the night. Nonetheless, the hostel had a van that picked us up (all 8 + 5 of us) and got us there and checked in. For 550 BEF, we got a bed, sheets, shower, and breakfast, which is quite nice. The location was terrible, but interesting. If you had the foresight to bring sheets, you paid only 430 BEF (Adrian was the only one to do this, although I think I'll do that just in case from now on).

The hostel seemed to serve mainly crew rowing types, since they had about 20 rowing boats and all the gear, and were on a fairly large canal. The area was industrial, but not unsightly; we were located next to a really cool power plant or something of some sort; I have some pictures of it. (hostel pics)

In Brugge we saw lots of things. Here are the pictures...








EURO2000 is a really annoying set of soccer games, since they bring lots and lots of soccer fans to wherever you're going.

Amsterdam was really cool, but we didn't have as much time there as I would have liked (and Euro2000 added a lot of drunk folks to the atmosphere). Immediately upon exiting the train station we started looking for a place to stay, but those waiting in the information line found out that nobody was interested in a group of five for one night -- they wouldn't even talk to you unless you were in for two nights.

Thus, we just decided to not worry about a place to stay until it became necessary, as with a Eurail pass you can always just hop onto a train to your next destination whenever you want and get a reasonable safe place to sleep for a few hours. We visited most of the traditional things to visit in Amsterdam, and had a good time. The red light district is particularly interesting, although I left there feeling distinctly unimpressed, which bothers me somewhat.

Basically, you have your typical place with lots of porno shops, along with the not-so-typical constant rows of large glass doors, all with curtains over them. From what I saw walking by, most of the little rooms have curtains that can be drawn over the door, a bed, a toilet, and chairs for the prostitutes to sit on whilst soliciting customers. The entire thing seems to be run from behind the scenes by pimp-type people, although they weren't always obvious. As you walk by, you see all of these girls behind the doors, and they generally dance or do some other pseudo-seductive thing to win customers' preference over the other prostitutes. From what I saw, a large majority of the customers were tourist-types, although there were a few locals mixed in. Taking pictures here is "strictly prohibited," and although I'm sure I could have gotten away with it, I didn't really see too much worth commemorating.
Besides my personal objection to the idea of prostitution, the red light district really only bothered me for one reason. Amsterdam is supposed to be one of the biggest places like this in the world, and it's legal there. The red light district of Atlanta, GA in Hapeville probably turns twice as much business as the main Amsterdam place was, and that was during a huge soccer match and on a Saturday night. Perhaps I'm missing something huge, but the couple of times that I've ridden a bike or driven through Atlanta's esteemed areas I've seen far more women working the street. Of course, from what I've seen Atlanta looks like it has legalized prostitution, due to the lack of police presence.

In any case, we did more than just see the red light district. By 1am we found a reasonably priced room downtown and crashed until 8am or so. The next morning we went out and did the Rijksmuseum and a few other sights, and then I got separated from the group for a while. After we performed what must have been a perfectly organized race through the museum for about an hour (missing each other the whole time), I decided to just head back to the lockers in the train station and wait there.

During this time I also went into the international travel information area to find out what the best route to Metz would be. While waiting for my number to be called I checked back at the lockers every 20 minutes or so, in addition to one wait in the ATM line to get money for a quick bite of food.

During the wait in the ATM line I ran into an interesting guy from Holland, but not Amsterdam. He had been in town to pick up his new rowing bike, which is something I'd never seen before. Basically, it's a recumbent bike with a rowing apparatus, and according to him it's fairly efficient and fun on flatter ground. The mechanism was neat, and it utilized clipless pedals and an arm-powered rower to propel the rider forward. In any case, I took a picture of him and the bike (which turns out to have been somewhat of a mistake on my part, as a suspicious-looking kid near the ATM machine was checking out my camera and me in general).

A few minutes later, on my way to check the lockers where we'd stored our stuff, I got basically knocked flat on my face as the guy who looked suspicious to me attempted to steal my beltpack off of me by grabbing the buckle and trying to release it. I got lucky, and it didn't budge, but in the process he threw me to the ground. Mind you this was in a rather crowded train station (the wait at the ATM machine not 20 meters away was 20+ minutes). He kept running after unsuccessfully trying for the bag, and was way out of there before I or any bystanders could do anything. I spoke with the police, who kindly took my poor description and did what most police would do, which was to write it down and smile.

After this fun, I went back to the international bookings room and determined a decent itinerary for us to get back to Metz, and then proceeded over back to the lockers. (This time I made it unscathed). At this point, the group had made it back there, so we were able to rejoin and get things figured out for leaving. I survived the mostly good-natured proddings about getting lost in the art museum, and then we found our way onto the trains. We got lucky on one transfer and caught a much delayed train into Metz from Bruxelles, saving us about an hour of transit time.


This picture just gives you an idea of what language is spoken in Amsterdam. They try to tell you that it's Dutch, but they really all secretly speak English when we're not looking. This is from the keypad used when renting lockers in the Amsterdam train station (text on picture added).

Vanessa Explains It All -- coming soon to television near you.

In Atlanta, you see big flatbead trucks carrying around advertisements all the time. In Europe, they can't afford (or fit) the trucks, so they use scooters instead.

This is Chantelle (spelling?), one of the really cool waitpeople at La Rozell. Greg crowned her. Dinner here is very cool.

GPS receivers and Zyrtec -- two of the modern inventions we'd be lost without. (Well, maybe not, but it's close). The GPS receiver is Charlie's and the Zyrtec is mine. A 20 day supply costs something like $6US here, and that's really cool, since I'd be dead with allergies otherwise. You can buy it (as well as any of the other popular non-sleepy allergy medications) over the counter here. The US should do this; perhaps I'll die in 10 years of allergy-medicine related side effects, but at least that's 9 years or so of not sneezing 15 times an hour.

This was the bus stop we went to on the way to our hostel in Brugge.

Charlie and I awaiting dinner in Brugge. Gotta love my hair. That water to the left of my beer cost the same as my beer.

Steve, hanging out.

Steve, hanging it all out at a public urinal. To his credit, I also used one of these. The trick is to not make eye contact with someone while you're walking up there -- you lose your nerve if you do.

This is the sign for said outdoor urinals. I thought that they were just something trucked in for the drunk soccer fans, but it turns out that they're a regular fixture of the city.


And that's it for the pictures that I put up here. I'll have thumbnail pages of everything I took up soon, but for now, you can always go to the raw pictures and browse around yourself.