It's All Double Dutch To Me

Howdy, I'm in Amsterdam now and I'll get onto telling you about my Dutch escapades in a minute but first of all I've gotta tie up a few loose Belgian ends.

The Back End (so to speak) of Belgium
Litterally 10 minutes after I last updated my blog, I began aimlessly wondering the Antwerpian side-streets until I somehow got caught up in an anti racism march through the centre of the city. I'm sure it was quite a bizarre sight for any onlookers, as in a sea of people from the the former Belgian colonies like the Congo and a whole host of immigrants from Turkey, Morocco etc, stood two confused looking pasty white Englishmen not knowing quite what was going on. Anyway, it cleared my social conscience for the day, and, surprisingly, I think I may even have the begginings of a young Nelson Mandella.

Anyway enough of the radical freedom fighting, they also had a outlet of Greggs the bakers in Antwerp, no Steak Bakes though, which was a shame. That was pretty much it for Belgium. If I had to summarize it in one convoluted sentance, it would be the kind of place you'd go to if you liked picturesque gothic architecture, market squares, rain and getting fat from drinking from the selection of over 450 beers and eating waffles.

Now, in a new feature of my blog I'm gonna give each country a rating and Belgium gets the ball rolling with a solid if not spectacular 6.84/10.

Holland
Holland or The Netherlands if you want to be pedantic, is odd in the most complementary way possible. We passed over the border from Belgium about a week ago now and our first stop was Rotterdam. The first thing that struck me about Holland in comparison to it's Benelux rival is that there are a lot more bikes, litterally thousands of them. The road system is geared almost entirely for the cyclist which makes crossing the road particularly tricky as not only do you have cars coming from the wrong direction, there are trams which seem to appear out of nowhere and then of course the bikes. I'm sure if I remeber the Green Cross Code i'll be ok though.

Rotterdam is a pretty cool place although it is quite modern, this apparently has something to do with a few stray bombs thrown their way by Adolf's barmy army, this resulted in there not been an amazing amount of stuff to see but it was good anyway. The highlight of Rotterdam was drinking with Dutch football fans before a match, which was a bit like the atmosphere you'd get before an England game but without any fighting. The lowlight of Rotterdam, and I can't really blame this on Rotterdam in anyway, shape or form, was finding out that the mighty GTFC fucked things up in the playoff final. As you may have gathered i'm grasping at thin air for stuff to write about the place really.

Next stop was Amsterdam, which is bizarre and beautiful in equal messures. There is so much cultural stuff to see such as the Van Gogh museum, Anne Frank's house and the Vondelpark that the prostitues and drug taking almost take a back seat. When all the degenerate stuff is so blatent that it is quite hard to ignore, but rest assured I managed to resist and keep my saintly nature intact. It is a fucking wicked place though.

I also went to Den Haag. It was crap. That is it.

But anyway, I'm a little bored of typing now so i'm gonna go. In the new wacky rating scheme i've got going Holland gets 8.8/10. It would have been higher but Den Haag sucked and i keep getting lost in Amsterdam. Good country though.

What Would Belgium Be If Not For Its Squares

I made it then! I've been in Belgium for all of 4 days and already I feel compelled to update this thing. It has quickly become apparent to me that despite my past travel experience i'm still not much cop at it. I landed in Brussels not knowing which of it's two airports I was in and then spent the next 2 hours looking for the hostel, which with a backpack is a lot of walking. Asking for directions was the first test of my foreign language skills, which, in French stretch to 2 sentences. One 'do you speak English?' came in quite handy, the other 'I am wearing blue trousers' wasn't quite so helpful.

Anyway, after finally locating the hostel and then locating a bar I felt quite at home again on the road. The life style of doing nothing during the day and then drinking in the evening is what i was born to do. We moved on back to the hostel bar a little later where we were accosted by a group of 16 year old Swiss schoolkids, who thought they were been sophisticated by drinking Bacardi Breezers and snorting something i initially mistook to be crack, but I later figured out was Tobacco, although I never got an official verdict on this as none of them could speak a word of the Queens English. They continued to try and engage us in conversation in a mixture of broken English, the aforementioned French phrases and the little bit of German I know, for 2 days. Very very irritating!

Other than that, Belgium has given me the delights of rain, waffles and an unnecessary amount of guilded market squares which all look exactly the same. I have travelled from Brussels to Bruge and now Antwerp and they are all an indentikit copy of each other, very picturesque, very gothic, but very much the same.

Anyways, the pressures of an internet countdown are getting to me now and I'm also itching to get back and have another look at the Antwerp market square before I go and share a few cold beverages with my travelling buddies,

So until the next time,
Au revoir,
Rich