Corinne CrawfordAfter I dropped my aunt off at the airport, I had about 2 hours to wait for my bus to take me to Brussels. I was on my way to the north coast of Spain but it was a monster bus ride so I broke it up to spend about 30 hours in Brussels. It still left a 15 hour overnight bus to my final destination but it was the best I could come up with. As we left the Amsterdam airport, the bus route took us through Rotterdam and I got to see something that answered a lot of questions for me. Many cities in Europe, especially older ones, have very narrow streets with no rooms for multiple bins or even dumpsters and no garages so for trash removal, there are community bins every block or so but I always thought they seemed awful small for the density of the neighborhood. Well, the bus was stuck behind the trash truck and I saw the magic in action. An arm swung out from the top of the truck and latched on to the top of the 3×4 bin on the sidewalk. It lifted the bin and lo and behold, a large, dumpster size underground vault came with it. The arm lifted the whole apparatus over the back of the truck and the bottom of the vault fell open disposing of the trash into the truck. The trash dumpster are hidden underground! What a genius aesthetic solution. After a 4 and a half hour bus ride from the Amsterdam airport, I walked the 10 minutes to the hotel I booked, Hotel City Center. I initially tried to book a hostel to save some money. I knew I wasn’t going to stay in a lot of hostels during this trip partly because honestly, my luggage is a little bulky to maneuver in a small dorm and because I might snore. But I thought when there was a location that I was only going to be in for a night or two, staying at a hostel was going to be a good way to save a little money here and there. Well, as I was looking for a hostel in the area that I wanted to stay to be close to the bus station and the main part of town, the hostel had an age limit! You could not be over 35 to stay in one of their dorms. Can you believe this?! Age discrimination. So because I am apparently an old bitch, it cost me 3 times as much to stay the night in Brussels. The audacity! But I was quite happy with my budget hotel. The room was tiny, I mean tiny – maybe 7 feet across and the water closet with the shower was so small that my knees extended into the shower when sitting on the toilet, but it was clean, comfortable and private and had good Wi-Fi and very helpful and friendly staff. I was only in town from about 2pm until 9pm the next night so I researched some must sees and dos and it boiled down to beer, chocolate, waffles and history. I meant to do all 4 but as usual time got away from me and I only managed the beer and the history. I hit some of the historic and recommended beer joints and always asked for the bartender’s recommendation. I even had someone buy me a good beer when he realized I was a tourist looking for a good local beer. Many of the beers had a pretty high alcohol content so I tried to choose carefully and stick to ones that were around 6% or less with the exception of the beer the local bought me. I was impressed with the smoothness and flavor of the beers but quite honestly don’t remember the names of the ones I tried. I do know that one of them apparently was the oldest continuously brewed beer in Belgium. I went to one of the recommended joints when you google beer hall in Brussels, translated to Sudden Death. It was a beautiful interior and not super busy but as I sat there for 5, then 10 minutes and watched the servers deliver second beers to other tables and then completely ignore me, I finally just got up and left. I am not sure why I couldn’t get service there but had no trouble at some of the other places. I then went to Delirium, a pretty well known brewery globally but they were not super friendly either. Although I will give them a bit of a break, they were super busy and packed with tourists so it was a different sort of vibe.
I did have a beer and sat outside but then moved on. I remembered too late that I had met a lovely couple when I was in Colombia that were from Belgium so I Whatsapped them but did not get enough service to see their reply and only saw it when I had 3 hours left in the city. We planned to keep in touch as Alice was also doing some travel to Spain. Flash Forward – I saw Alice in San Sebastián and will go into that later.
