20.2.12 Bologna, Italy and Bruges, Belgium

I got the best sleep I’d had on the trip probably. I slept in Luke’s Turkish roommate’s room, who hasn’t been around for weeks. He’s an interesting guy it sounds like.

We went around the corner to a café and got croissants with cream and strawberries in them and cappuccinos. If there’s one thing I really love about Bologna it’s all the small cafes and the people going there for their normal morning routine. Plus there are usually papers lying around.

We walked down to his school, passing though a little market street which would have been nice if it weren’t raining all day. We also stopped into a supermarket and got soap for me. At least we think it’s soap, we weren’t really sure. I love going to very normal things like supermarkets in different countries. It gives an interesting look at what life is really like in that place.

After passing the guy everyone at the school calls The Fruit Man, we got to his school with a little bit of extra time so he showed me around. The classrooms were mostly small. He took me up to a little terrace overlooking the city that the rooms connected it. I’m jealous he gets to go to school here. If I had any reason to go there, I would. He took my down to the library and I printed off my boarding pass for the Brussels to Dublin flight, saving me about 60 Euros or trying to find a place to print in Belgium.

I walked back through the rain and for once the porticos were nice. Bologna is one of my least favorite Italian cities and a large part of it has to do with the porticos making you feel enclosed always and how they covered up the entire city with new facades. It’s a nice place, just not the most exciting.

Back at Luke’s I took some time to actually figure out how to get around in Belgium. Turns out the airport I’m flying into is outside of Brussels and I need to take a bus to a train station to get to Bruges. I so downloaded a map of Bruges to my phone and sent the Wikitravels to my Gmail too. It was nice to have internet for a little. I did 5on5s and researched Bruges and Brussels. The internet is a great thing when you can get it.

I had everything packed (I conned Luke into borrowing Kim’s Italy book so it wouldn’t take up space/my bag would be lighter and also threw out a white t-shirt I brought to sleep in. I’ve just been sleeping in after I cleaned my boots with it. I felt like a savvy traveler.) I looked in the Italy book for a place to eat in Bologna and it suggested a small place not too far away from where I was going to meet Luke to give him the key by the Neptune statue.

I think I was the only non-Italian in the place, which is what I was hoping for. It was a quirky place with book and kid’s paintings on the walls. I liked it.

I ordered some sort of pasta with tomato and cheese sauce and bits of eggplant in it. It was sort of like short spaghetti noodles. I really liked it. I also got a big thing of carbonated water and a caffe latte. The total was the same as my coffee in Rome

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I met Luke and Carolyn by the statue and gave them the key. We talked for a little and I said bye. This was a great trip so far and I’m glad I got to see Luke for a little, I feel like I never see him. At the end he said he’d see me in America, which is a weird thought.

I made good time to the train station but there was a decent line for taxis. It moved fast and when I got in the cab I gave me best Italian ‘aeroporto.’ I was pumped.

It took maybe 15 minutes to the airport. He asked me something in Italian and I had to blow my cover and say I didn’t speak in Italian. The dream was over.

As soon as I got to the station I saw a sign saying the Ryanair baggage drop and document check was in the east terminal, a 10 minute walk away. It wouldn’t be a day in Italy/a Ryanair flight if I didn’t end up sweating from physical exertion. I ran down there since I had less than an hour and the path took me outside. At that point I realized I left my umbrella in the cab. It would be fine for Belgium but it’s supposed to rain a bunch in Dublin. I was not in a good mood.

I ran back and made it through security quickly. My gate was immediately outside the security and it had just started boarding when I got there.

We took the bus down to the plane and I grabbed the first seat by the window with someone in the aisle seat. This is the key to Ryanair.

I fell asleep before takeoff and when I woke up I wasn’t sure if we were in the air or not. It’s a strange feeling. The girl in the aisle seat was watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ with Italian subtitles. I typed everything up until here on the plane.

I spent the rest of the fight looking out the window at all the mountains an then the Belgian fields. It’s incredible how quickly you go from one to the other.

The Express City Bus to Brussels is just outside the terminal. I couldn’t figure out how to get a ticket with the kiosk so I bought it from the stand. The bus is super nice. Big comfortable seats, no stops, and takes you right to the train station. It took about 45 minutes.

In the station I couldn’t figure out where to buy tickets and then once I did, I couldn’t figure out which train went to Bruges. I finally asked someone and she told me to take the 8:05 train. I had a little time to wait so I bought a chocolate bar with truffle and a chocolate bar with caramel and some sort of wafer inside. I liked he truffle one more.

The trains are nice, better than Italy’s. I pretty much just spaced out on the train. I’d be on so many lately it didn’t feel like I was in Europe or really had no idea where I was going or was in the world. The train took about an hour. I spent just about as much time getting around in Belgium as I did flying in from Italy.

Since I downloaded the map of Bruges to my phone, I decided I would just walk it. It was pretty simple and an amazing walk. So I saw the movie, ‘In Bruges’ and combined with the recommendation from Mrs. Tipton, I thought it would be a good place to check out. In the movie they said it was like a fairy tale. I had a hard time believing it really was.

It is.

So I guess the story is they were huge in the textile trade and fell into hard times in the 1600s so no one updated the town for hundreds of years because they were all poor. So that means the town is basically untouched since the middle ages. And it looks it. The roads clearly were not built for cars and are all cobblestone (brutal on my suffering feet). The buildings are all brick, many with a triangular top. And the churches look incredible from the outside. At night I felt like I really could be walking around hundreds of years ago. It’s an absolutely amazing place.

I found the hostel surprisingly easily and was given a bed on the top bunk in a building just down the street from the reception area. They also gave me a discount card to go with my electronic room key. This is a super nice hostel. They have cages you can lock below the beds for your stuff. The bathrooms are big and clean. And most the beds have curtains you can pull across to make dark. Sadly, mine didn’t. I was looking forward to that for some reason.

I walked down to Burg and Markt squares. They’re unbelievable. All the architecture is spectacular. I said something about my neighborhood in London having the best architecture in the world earlier. I think I was wrong.

I ended up just walking down streets and looking around the city. I heard a loud instrument that I had no idea what it was. As a general rule of thumb, if you hear loud strange music, go to it.

Turns out it’s the 10^th anniversary of Bruges being named the European City of Culture and they had a guy performing for it. He was a French guy who invented his own instrument, which is probably why I couldn’t figure out what it was. It sounded sort of like a cello with effects on it. It wasn’t particularly melodic but it was interesting. And they did an awesome job lighting it. I couldn’t imagine anything like this at 10:30 p.m. happening in America.

I went back to Markt and went into a little sort of fast food place where there were a couple kids eating. I got a veggie burger and fries. The guy said if I was going to eat it in the place I had to get a drink too, so I picked out a random drink from the fridge that looked like it involved chocolate. It was sort of like a Yoohoo. The burger was fine although with ketchup and mayo on it (even though I said I didn’t want it) it kind of ruined it for me. Fries are a huge deal here. These were pretty good. And the guy gave me those little fork things to eat them with. So civilized here. Although the whole time I was in the place the guy was intently watching a documentary on the killing and trade of seals in English, not the most atmospheric video while eating.

I wanted to get up early tomorrow and my feet were destroyed so I walked back to the hostel. I couldn’t figure out how to get online and the reception room was closed so I ended up just typing from bed.

I’m really excited for tomorrow.