Yesterday was one of
those days that you can really only experience while traveling in Europe. I’m
going Bill Simmons-style and giving you a retro-diary of arguably the best road
trip of my life to date:
The Netherlands
08:00—Woke up on the
floor of our room in the Jupiter Hotel, a few blocks away from Leidseplein (the
clubbing center of Amsterdam, as long as you don’t preface that with the word
“strip”). We had been squeezing four people into our two-person hotel room for
the weekend, despite the suspicious – and often downright creepy – gaze of the
hotel’s owner. I had thought ahead and brought a sleeping bag with me,
effectively volunteering myself to sleep on the floor for the whole weekend.
Foresight is not always the best thing to have.
9:15—After a hearty
continental breakfast in the hotel lobby (all while avoiding eye contact with
the owner), we checked out and piled into the rental car. The plan is to drive
to Brussels, get some lunch there, and see what the city has to offer. None of
us knows what to expect, beyond the fact that there are probably a lot of EU
buildings there (for all intents and purposes, it’s the capital of the European
Union).
9:20—Five minutes outside of Amsterdam, and
we’re already surrounded by cows. While the German countryside is dotted with a
bunch of little towns and relatively little farmland, the Netherlands is all
fields. In the hour or so that we drive on the Dutch highways, we go through an
endless swarth of cow pastures and get to feast our eyes on some of those windmills
this part of the world is so famous for.
Belgium
10:30—Belgium doesn’t
look significantly different from the Netherlands, especially because we’re
still in the Dutch-speaking (well, technically Flemish) part of Belgium, and
thus the road signs pretty much look the same. There are just as many cows,
too, but these ones are exceptionally muscular – apparently they’re “Belgian
Blues”, which possess a genetic trait that increases the production of new
muscle cells rather than simply causing the old cells to grow larger. Wikipedia
says their meat is leaner, but all I know is they’re the most intense-looking
cows I’ve ever seen.
12:00—After some
confusion in the outskirts of Brussels, we find ourselves directly in front of
the triumphal arch and, assuming we’ve made it to the city center, we park the
car (free parking on Sundays in Holland and Belgium) and check it out. It’s
basically Brussels’ version of Berlin’s Brandenburger Tor, except the wings of
the monument actually function as museums (free entrance). There’s an awesome
park (Parc du Cinquantenaire – we’re in the French part of the country now) on
the other side of the arch, and there’s signs up for “La Garden Party”, where
they set up a DJ booth, lawn chairs and food and drink vendors every Sunday during
the summer. So far, Brussels looks pretty cool.
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| The triumphal arch, commemorating Belgium's independence. |
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| La Garden Party looked like a pretty solid way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. |
12:15—Well, maybe not
that cool. We got directions to the city center, and for the first 15 minutes
of the walk we pass nothing but EU and finance buildings. It looks kind of like
downtown L.A., but with a lot less traffic and way more blue flags.
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| The Berlaymont building in Brussels' European District. |
13:00—After we pass
the EU buildings, things start looking nicer and nicer. We take a stroll
through the Parc de Bruxelles, walk down a nice outdoor staircase, take
pictures next to a giant umbrella sculpture, wind our way through some
alleyways, and end up at the Grand Place. It’s fantastic. What’s more, they’re
in the process of setting up the “Flower Carpet”, which fills the entire square
and is only installed for five days every two years. It’ll be there from
Wednesday to Sunday, which means I may need to come back to Brussels this
weekend.
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| Town Hall, the centerpiece of Grand Place. |
14:00—After refueling
at a café overlooking the square, we check out some maps and postcards and
realize that Brussels is home to the famous Manneken Pis (a statue of a boy
peeing) and head out to look for it.
14:30—The Manneken Pis
is easily the most anti-climactic monument I’ve ever seen. It’s tiny, and it is
quite literally just a little boy taking a piss. It’s still insanely popular,
but it’s kind of like the Mona Lisa in that the crowds dwarf the spectacle
itself. In any case, I’m glad we stopped here because there’s a stand selling
fresh escargot and a bar with Maredsous on tap. We get some snails and some
beer, an underrated and underutilized combination.
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| It's kind of hard to see, but the Manneken Pis is in the shadows on the right side of the picture, urinating away. |
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| So getting escargot from a street vendor may not have been the most hygienic choice—that big vat of cooked snails was definitely sitting in the sun all day. |
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| Belgium in a nutshell. |
15:30—We’re back at
the car, and I’ve just eaten a delicious waffle with chocolate sauce at La
Garden Party. It takes a bit of a complicated car ride through the city to get
there, but we eventually make it over to the Atomium, which the Belgians built
for the 1958 World’s Fair, Expo ’58. We were debating whether it has any actual
chemical significance, and it happily turns out that it’s a model of an iron
crystal’s unit cell. It also produces the opposite effect of the Manneken Pis –
it’s way bigger than I expected and dominates the skyline around that area.
Apparently there’s a really good view from the top, but we’re in full-blown
money-saving mode right now, so we head back to the car and start driving
toward Luxembourg.
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| Belgium in a slightly different nutshell. |
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| Look carefully and you'll see the atomium lurking in the background like some creepy sci-fi mothership. |
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| The atomium in all its chrome-y glory. |
17:00—Quick tangent as
we drive through Belgium again: I’m really proud of the system I’ve developed
for my iPod. Since the rating system tends to stop being useful past four
stars, I’ve begun making category-specific smart playlists that take advantage
of rating rather than artist or genre. Right now, two stars means Top 40, and
I’ve put together a solid playlist for this car ride just by changing the
ratings on a bunch of songs. I spend the first 10 minutes of our drive adding
200 new songs to the Top 40 playlist.
France
19:00—It’s debatable
whether we actually crossed the border into France at any point—I for one didn’t
see any sign, but my friend swears he did—but if we did it was at about this
time and only for 15 minutes. It happened while we taking the scenic route to
Luxembourg, and regardless of whether we were actually in France at any point,
I’m going to just say we were, largely because it’s crazy that we could just
take a wrong turn and end up in France.
Luxembourg
19:30—Did you know
that Luxembourg the country consists of more than just Luxembourg the city?
We’ve been driving in Luxembourg for a few minutes now, and there’s still
another 30 km to the city itself. Meanwhile, for a country that’s supposed to
have the second-highest GDP per capita in the world (fun bit of trivia: number
one is Qatar), Luxembourg sure has a lot of tractors – we’ve already seen five
of them driving on the highway.
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| A Luxembourgish village, taken from the backseat of the car. |
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| Luxembourg is Gorges. |
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| For some reason I can't find the name of this building online. But it overlooks the Pétrusse and looks awesome at sunset. |
21:00—After a failed
attempt to eat at a bar downtown (we at least got to try some Bofferding, which
is a pleasantly non-descript Luxembourgish beer), we had to decide between
eating at McDonald’s or Quick (the Belgian McDonald’s). We chose Quick for the
novelty factor, and it was actually pretty decent, although the soda machine
did have carbonated iced tea for some reason (yes, it’s as bad/weird as it
sounds). After dinner we went back to the car and started off on the final leg
of the day’s journey.
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| Some clever wallpaper in the bar's men's bathroom. |
Germany
22:00—The rest of the
trip is pretty hazy since I was asleep for about 90 percent of it. But at some
point we crossed the border into Germany and our GPS started working again. (The
rental car was pretty sweet, but for some reason its GPS didn’t work outside
Germany. This made getting around Amsterdam and Brussels a little complicated.)
I also remember stopping at a gas station and dropping off someone in the
nearby town of Limburgerhof. But either way, I made it back to my apartment
around 12:30 and promptly passed out.
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