Brussles day 1

Brussels (or Bruxelles as they call it here in da hood) is amazing! I loved it. Fantastic beer, fantastic food, awesome culture and friendly locals - they have it all.

I woke up and immediately went downstairs to enjoy the all you can eat buffet for €7. I met a cool American from California there called Nicole. She had also arrived from Berlin the night before. She was much more organized than me and told me about some free walking tour that was starting very close to our hostel.

The walking tour was great: we had a very enthusiastic and quirky tour guide, we passed dozens of cool churches and parliament buildings and it was filled with a whole bunch of Americans, Canadians and Brazilians. One thing I noticed more than anything was the Gothic architecture. Apparently it wasn't always this way though; in the 1800s the French invaded and played their violent game of angry birds on Brussles. Rather than rebuild it the way it was, the Brusselonianites decided to construct the city anew using Gothic style.

At one point we stopped over to have Belgian waffles! Holy crap! They're sooooo good. They had an entire menu for the type of dogh you wanted to eat. I got the Liege waffle which had special sugar crystals in it that had just started to caramelize by the time it came out of the waffle press. It was beautiful and soft - like an edible pillow. It didn't need topings, but I got Belgian chocolate (they just call it chocolate here) and powdered sugar anyway.

At this point our tour guide started talking about WW1. I was casually and carelessly smudging waffle in and around my mouth as he described the Schleffen plan. In WW1, Germany needed to knock out France in the first 6 weeks so that they could focus their army on the stronger but slower to mobilize Russians. Some bloke (I think it was Wilhelm or something?) who was in charge of the German army made a plan to go hit Paris via Belgium. Now that I think about it, his name was probably Schleffen. But Belgium was a total badass and held back the German army for 6 weeks which was enough time for France to prepare themselves. Our guide was so wonderfully enthusiastic and nerdy that he even started acting out some of the war scenes as if he were there. I was so entised by the story that I caught myself at one point wide eyed with chocolate dripping from my cheeks and chin. Kinda like how a kid eats ice cream, but much much more embarrassing.

After the tour I gave the guide a tip of €10 and promised him that I'll join him for the beer tour that he was also running in a couple of hours.

At this point I was hungry again so I suggested to the others to get frites. Everyone got fries with samurai sauce, except for me who got a steak and frites sandwich. I was in such a dilemma about whether I should finish the sandwich or not because it was so delicious, yet I was extremely full - I don't think even Aristotle could help me out with that paradox.

In the spare time I had before the beer tour I decided to go to the train station to see if I could find a way to Lleida pirineus. I need to get there on the 18th at night so that Pablo and Africa can pick me up to go skiing! Its actually really difficult to get there without paying a shit tonne of money on bullet trains and night riders, so I wanted to see if there are longer but cheaper routes that aren't posted on my rail planner app. Unfortunately they couldn't help me because they said they had lost some business contract with France and they couldn't see all possible connections to Spain. It's not the biggest deal though coz I was planning on heading to France tomorrow anyway. I'm sure I'll figure out some way to get there - nothing is going to stop me from skiing.

The beer tour was outstanding. Our ticket gave us each 4 holy nectars to sip on. I liked the Lambic cantillon the most because it tasted like no beer I had ever tried before - for this beer they didn't add yiest in the fermentation process, instead they let natural bacteria eat away at the sugar. Its a very old school method of brewing passed down by the monks, but its also a dangerous method of brewing because you massively increase the chance of your brew getting infected if it gets exposed to the wrong type of bacteria. I also learned that a lot of brewers here also make their beer by adding 'brouwland' sugar - I might try that when I get back to Australia.

We only had 4 beers, but they were all around 9.5% alcohol so we were starting to all feel quite tipsy by the end. The group and I decided to continue on to the next pub afterwards which was just down the road. The next pub was perfect; it was underground, made of wood & stone, low lit, had a low ceiling, and had great beer. I honestly can't imagine a better atmosphere for a pub. They also sold large salami sausages with nuts that you could chew on. Perfect.

Overall I just had a fantastic night. I think its for 3 main reasons; I didn't get plastered drunk, the company was great and I DIDNT go to a club! That's right! NO DANCING!! Wohoo!

Oh yeah, I was too slow in the morning to ask for an additional night in the hostel, so I ended up not having a place to stay when I got back. Fortunately a few of the Americans were kind enough to sneak me into their hostel and let me crash on the floor in their 16 bed dorm.