Germ-infested trip to Belgium

Armed with a head cold each, on Friday night Kinga and I piled into my tiny car (photos to come, seriously give a girl a break!) and drove to Brussels. We avoided traffic by leaving at 7 so we didn’t get to have dinner in Belgium though!

The secret to road tripping in our work cars is that the petrol cards only work within the Netherlands. Outside of the Netherlands our petrol is still paid for by the car lease company (ultimately) but we have to pay the expense ourselves and then claim it back from the company (and given that it’s the Netherlands, who knows how long that will take). So to maximize cash and minimize hassle, the plan is always to fill the car as close to the border as possible and then to make it back over the border again without running out of gas. Now this is trickier than it sounds, for starters neither of us knew how far we would drive before we actually entered Belgium, so as we passed every petrol station it was pretty much a gamble as to whether it was indeed the last station in the Netherlands. We did ok though, and filled up roughly 20 min before entering Belgium. At this point the road was starting to look curly for me (cos I was so exhausted from all the auditing, hehe) so Kinga took over driving detail.

GPS is a funny wee thing. Generally, I’d say that it is great. A million times more reliable than just printing out directions from an internet site (and not just because it recalculates the journey automatically if you take a wrong turn). The instructions it gives you are also usually much more explicit than the internet directions. Sometimes the internet directions say ‘continue along highway A2’ and yet you’re at a fork, and it’s the A2 in both directions and you have to guess which one to take. Our GPS lady, Bonnie, is always saying to us ‘keep left’ or ‘keep right’ or ‘at the fork, veer right’. So helpful. However, upon arrival in Brussels (yes we actually made it and roughly on time too) GPS Bonnie tells us to take a street that has a roadblock. Now the GPS system has a function where you can program this in and they’ll recalculate a different route, but we hadn’t yet found this. So we try to drive around it and end up in the same kind of place on our own, the whole while GPS Bonnie is saying ‘make a U-turn’ and ‘turn around as soon as it is possible’. We muddle our way through, and get to where Bonnie announces ‘you have reached your destination’. Success! And then Kinga says “Uh, this isn’t it”. I’d never been to Milli’s apartment before but he had, so I’m definitely going to believe him on this one. And he’s right. Luckily, we were on the right street, it was just the numbers that Bonnie stuffed up. We were a block away from Milli’s.

Milli had arranged for us to stay in Greg’s apartment while we were there, because the he (and the majority of the other Aucklanders) had gone to London for the Waitangi Day celebrations. Unfortunately for him, he was the only Brussels secondee to not be infected with the head cold we each were carrying into Belgium. Oops! So with no one feeling the best, we had a quiet Belgian beer at the local pub (ok, yeah, I had wine, but the others had Belgian beer) and then headed to bed for an early night (and hopefully some recuperation and regeneration). I had proudly tracked down both Strepsils and the Dutch equivalent of Lemsip lemon drink (Citrosan!) and so was dishing them out to everyone left right and centre.

On Saturday, we went for a walk around the Brussels town centre. Armed with a map, Kilo took us around the city and showed us the sights. We saw the statue of the peeing boy (Manneken Pis):

He's pretty cool. He has over 500 outfits apparently, and they're changed regularly, usually to brass band music!

And we saw some other things - here's Milli and I in Grand Place in the centre of town.

And near the Royal Palace...

Brussels is absolutely beautiful. There are historical monuments all over the place, and the cobblestone streets remind me of the Bourne Identity movie trilogy. And our zippy little car really made me want to get into a high speed chase like they did in the movies. But don’t worry Mum, I didn’t!

The most amazing part of the day was the two churches we saw. Both were really big, and amazingly beautiful. The first one smelt like the catholic incense/smoke stuff (man, I’m a bad catholic for not knowing what this is) and so Milli refused to go into the second one because (and I quote) ‘it will smell like death’ and freak her out. The second one was Saint Michael and Gudula's Cathedral and was incredibly beautiful. It is this huge cathedral, it's bigger and more impressive than any church I’ve ever seen in NZ. It had stained glass windows and monuments all the way up the sides of it and there were at least three different areas where services could be held all in the same cathedral. Although not all at once, because the sound really travels in that place. At the front door there were signs telling visitors to be quiet during services in at least 6 different languages. Down towards the front there was lots of art, all on display. As I was just rounding the last corner and considering leaving, a guy sits down to the organ and starts to play. At this point, I reconsider and sit down in the pews with some other visitors. Then, two girls start to sing with him! They had amazing voices, and the harmonies were so beautiful. The sound carried right up to the stained glass windows at the roof and filled the space. I sat there for ages just listening.

For our last Brussels sight, Milli took us to this great little chocolate shop where we got 500g of handmade Belgian chocolate for just €8.70! Yee-ahhhh!

On the spur of the moment, we went out to Waterloo (where Napoleon was defeated –for further reference see the ABBA song). We saw the battlefield and the Lion Mound, where a monument has been placed and you can get a panoramic view of the battlefield. We were there at sunset and it was absolutely beautiful.

Here's the Lion Mound...

And the view as we were driving away - it was sunset and stunning weather...

And here's me at the Wellington Café! You can see the Lion in the background (very small on the roof)...

We headed back to Brussels to meet up with some of the others – Gareth and Cat came across from Luxembourg and brought with them Jen, a NZer living in Amsterdam, and the South Africans in Amsterdam Cath and Claire came down in their van. We went for Italian (Cath’s third Italian meal in two days) and I ate pizza. Milli and Gaz both ate a whole one. I tried, but failed miserably. Gareth then had this huge crème brulee, which he couldn’t quite handle, so Cath and I finished it off for him.

By this stage I was feeling worse and worse, so was keen for a super early night. So were Kinga and Milli so we all ended up in our respective beds around 11 – on a Saturday night! Pretty poor effort, huh.