It's May 23, 2004, around 12:30 pm and northern france is going by at 300km/h. I look around the cabin of this train, which they call a carriage, and see what I assume to be a nice random cross section of Europeans. Across the aisle from me is a young couple of lovingbirds, they look 19 at the oldest, who are so much in passioned they have curled around each other to sleep like 2 jelly worms fused by squeezing in a little kids warm palm. Neither of the two is taller than 5'4". Wound together like 2 short little love scribbles. And I'm traveling by myself on this slightly interesting modern wonder blurring a countryside of farms and french peasants past the window.
I scan the train car for possible Al Quida agents, a fun hobby I picked up as soon as I landed at Heathrow and my general paranoia got the kickstart of a lifetime. Pretty much any time I see someone who looks swarthy and nervous I wonder if he will tear open his jacket to reveal 50 red sticks strapped to his chest and a giant digital clock reading 00:05, 00:04, 00:03, 00:02 ...
Of course that game gets tired and eventually gets replaced with the game of guess what nationality the asshole trying to sneak in front of me in line is. That game goes on for the whole trip. And as a little background to fill in any questions, this trip began when I landed in Heathrow, spent 2 night in London, then took the Chunnel to Paris for 3 nights, which brings us to today, on my way to Brussels from Paris on the TGV.
So I'm on my way to Brussels, Belgium. A city and a country I can honestly say I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about. Brussels is my next destination purely by accident. Tomorrow I am catching a plane from Brussels to Stockholm, where I will stay with a friend of mine and his swedish girlfriend. Brussels has the distinction of being a way station on my route to a more interesting(to me) European place.
When the train pulls into the station in Brussels the sky is kind of grey and cloudy. The first thing I notice through the train window is a vending machine that sells Carlsberg (ironically a Danish beer I believe). I am most impressed by the guy buying a beer, since it is roughly 1:30pm on a sunday and he's in a train station. The tone is set.
So I get off the train, and so far on my trip I have moved around cities primarily by my two shoes or the metro's, the underground trains. So I find the metro station, then discover I am already in walking distance of one of the hotels I picked out on the internet the day before.
I got to the hotel, get a pretty fucking good deal on a room by total chance, so I check in my shit. Then I ask the girl at reception where the nearest McDonalds is since I learned that in Europe it is the only place that is only an affordable double the price of home. I wander towards the center of town and get a filet-o-fish then realize I have no cash left.
I proceed to try every cash machine around and they are all out of cash. As this wild goose chase continues I decide this whole experience would be enhanced by some booze. I notice that all the corner store's sell tall boy beers. After trying the 8th ATM which gives me no money I reluctantly talk to another tourist having the same problem. He tells me that Brussels is on a 4 day weekend so the banks are all closed. As an unusual consequence of this all the ATM's have run out of cash. Apparently this happens almost every weekend. I sort of get the impression many of the people in Brussel's had built a special cannon designed to shoot their head directly up their ass as far as possible. Either that or they somehow got to Canada and used mine. This whole cash drought is inconvenient, but my attention is divided between the man recounting these facts and the cloud of tear gas billowing down the street from a roaring crowd.
Me and this guy talking to me are somewhere in downtown and a few blocks down the street is what must be Brussels entire police force with riot gear and barricades holding back some sort of mob. This seems like something worth investigating, but first I need some cash. I wander into a little shop and ask the guy if I can use my credit card to get cash from him, he says no. So I do the logical alternative and I buy 2 heineken tall boys, 2 carlsberg tall boys and a bag of euro-doritos that wound up tasting super gross.
I throw 3 of the beers in my backpack, open the 4th and go to check out the riot. As I get closer the crowd is already dispersing, I missed it. I later learn that there was some Euro 2004 soccer game going on between England and Belgium and the hoolzigans were out in total force. I suppose I must have looked like a hooligan myself wandering through Brussels in the middle of the day drinking a tall boy. The sun comes out and the sky turns blue so things start looking up. I begin to take some pictures in Brussels. This is one of a bus stop sign which has a poster for a new Prince release. Here's a picture of me in front of it.
I don't know if any of the songs on this new Prince album are new, but anyway this poster amuses me. I guess he went back to calling himself Prince. Based partly on this poster which I see on every bus stop in Brussels I make the assumption that anything that had long since bitten the dust back home somehow thrives in Brussels.
For instance Chi-Chi's.
This is the first Chi Chi's I have seen still serving food(ahem) since the mid 80's. I suppose it is possible Chi Chi's has survived in other places as well, somehow keeping one step ahead of natural selection much like the Ceolanth, platypus or Rosie O'Donnell.
I find my way to the central area of Brussels with all the sights, such as old buildings and roads with touristy crap on them. Planning ahead I buy 2 more beers for a euro each(cheap) from a grocery store. I am beginning to feel a little drunk around the time I wander into a big plaza area that apparently has some kind of rich history. Using pictures I took with my fancy digital camera and the flash plugin I have made a virtual tour of this plaza. Using my own patented state of the art SUPER-VIEW-A-RAMA (I also thought of the name) technology.
This particular area becomes boring after I accidentally walk in front of the 500th persons camera while they are trying to take a picture of someone in front of something.
So I wander through the streets of souvenier stands and I pass by a store that grips my attention instantly because the front window is full of smurfs. Most of the stuff in the store appears to be smurfs. Were the smurfs Belgian? I seem to remember something about that, I knew they were french somehow, but maybe Belgian french? Jesus Christ I can't just pass by something this important!
Then I see a sign on the door saying back in 10 minutes. The store is closed. I instantly have my suspicions about this sign's reliability in a town where all the ATM's run out of cash on the weekend. The store owner could have put that sign up on Friday. Then it occurs to me that a smurf would be the perfect souvenier to give to my friend Jansen. As it happens he has never mentioned them in the entire time I've known him, but I just have this feeling he would want one.
I decide to continue my sightseeing and come back to this store on the way back to my hotel.
Someone told me that in Brussels there is a famous statue of a little kid pissing. The kid pissing is called the Mannekin Pis, and people dress the little statue up for some reason. So to kill time I figure I might as well check out this statue. I mean what is more enticing to a lone man than to look at a young boy pissing? I walked past a doorman in front of a hotel on the tiny lanes that make up the tourist zones and I said, "Je cherche le enfant pissing?" My french is very poor.
The doorman looks at me sort of puzzled, so I use my finger and sort of draw a dotted line in the air beginning from where my penis would be down to the ground. Then he gets what I mean and tells me it is down the lane and the second left, which he tells me in English. What a guy.
So there it is. You can't really tell but he's wearing a sailor hat and I believe swimming goggles, not to mention a coat and boots. This is apparently the zenith of comedy in Brussels not to mention the number one tourist attraction. There is a large crowd gathered around to check out this amazing sight. I believe at this point I am on beer number 4.
I go back to the smurf store, its been about an half an hour, its still closed. My decision to buy one for my friend is in my mind quickly becoming the single most important thing I have to do in Brussels. Everything depends on this now. I can't go back home without a smurf for Jansen, I can't let him down like that. My resolve has hardened to stone. I swear to you Jansen, not even God himself is gonna stop me from getting you that smurf.
The store next door to the store I want is an ice cream shop in which a very cute young woman is working. She sees me through her store window staring into the store next door, a Canadian Orson Wells lost on a french planet. I can see her looking at me, so I try to act natural as I open beer number 5 and drink it while peering out the corner of my eye at the smurf shop.
The time drags past and the ice cream girl is still looking at me most likely disturbed by my lurking. After about 10 minutes I decide to diffuse the tension in the stupidest possible way. I walk into the ice cream store and ask her if she knows if the store next door is open today. To my surprise she actually speaks no english. So I try to ask her using the 5 french words I know, but I somehow end up asking her if the ice cream store is open next sunday. So I give up and walk out onto the street.
Then by luck the smurf store opens, the lady who runs it unlocks the door and I step inside to peruse the merchandise at which point I feel a slight sense of how this might not have been as incredible an idea as it seemed 10 minutes ago. The next thing I notice is there are far too many different smurfettes.
"There are too many smurfettes."
"What?"
"Too many smurfettes. There was only one."
She looks at me appropriately like I'm wasting her time and I realize that the glaringly inaccuracy represented by this smurf assortment is of no concern to this Belgian lady, so I drop it. There are many different smurfs, skiers, doctors, painters, etc. I eventually settle on the one holding a camera and tote bag because he looks like a tourist, or more precisely an asian tourist. And since the friend I am buying it for is asian the joke basically writes itself.
Beer number six I drink on my way back to my hotel, it is now around 6 pm and I'm drunk and tired. But I pass a waffle place on the way and you may recall Belgium being famous for waffles. So I buy a chocolate covered waffle and it is actually really good. Then I go back to my hotel and watch MTV europe until I fall asleep. But not before writing notes in my little notebook which when I read later didn't make a whole lot of sense. But I did write I fucking love europe.
And that is Brussels. A bientot.