Birthday in Brugge

Birthday in Brugge

by Rebecca Smith

So, on Friday we left for Brugge. I went into work, bearing cakes, as that is the custom here. I found a card left on my desk (I say my, but really I don’t have one, I just move from desk to desk whenever someone goes on holiday) and was gifted with a picture postcard of my future royal husband, Wills. Louise, one of the 2 other women in my department, said she had never in her life bought any royal family memorabilia before this (this statement was accompanied by a look of horror at the memory). So I guess I owe her one. I left early to meet Suz in the station downstairs. We took the express out to Stansted where we basically walked around a maze in order to reach the check in and another to reach the gate. That’s what you get for budget travel. Then, you wait in this boarding pen with your fellow passengers, where you are constantly reminded that once you board the plane you can “select” your seat, which is the nice positive spin on what I like to call a mad dash for seats. Poor little grandmothers are knocked over and polite British propriety is tossed aside in deference to the ultimate goal of winning this unreserved seat lottery. It’s madness--almost as bad as Black Friday, but not so much. All this so we could have a seat on what appeared to be a shite-ier version of the Magic School Bus, now with wings. The chairs were fashioned of some plastic material and spaced so you could just about stand upright throughout the flight for your comfort, in other words they pack you in like sardines. Ahhh, budget airlines. So what else did I expect for 2p rtn. Oh well, for the most part the flight was fine, except that the ride was like off-roading in a Ford Focus with no shocks. Lovely. The landing was superb, that is if the result you are going for is the Home Depot paint-mixing machine. In which case, SUCCESS!!!

So right, so we landed in Brugge, where we then boarded a bus to town, which dropped us at a taxi stand outside of town, where we took a cab to our hostel. I say hostel, but I think the Belgian word for this must translate in English to “pit of Hell” because this place truly was. Or at least it was on the cusp of one of the rings. I mean it was quaint and lovely if by quaint and lovely you mean craphole where you fear you might be cleaner if you had never set foot in the shower. I had to shower in the dark one morning, and am sad to say, that probably made the experience more enjoyable as I could not see anything.

But besides the accommodations, Brugge was lovely. We ate and drank, and ate, ate ate ate, and ate, drank drank drank and drank, shoppy shopped, just a bit, ok a large bit, sampled some chocolate, and by sample I mean bought 12 kilos, ate some more. We ate moules et frites (or mussels and fries/chips as the Brits call them), we ate gaufres (mmmm waffles), chocolate, chocolate gaufres, we even had pizza one night (where I was horrified to hear Suzanne compliment the chef on making “the best pizza” she’s had “outside of New York” OI!), and pastries. Oh the pastries. We went to this one shop so many times we were loath to have the shopkeeper recognize us and, rather than just not go back and get more pastries (why the hell would we do that, they was damn good pastries) we attempted to disguise ourselves as Canadians. Thankfully she didn’t remember us, so we got a pastry…or 2, or 7, ok we had her box up a tray for us…..SO WHAT?!?!?! Boy those were good pastries.

One night when we went out, we wound up at this small pub where the bartender was singing along to the music with a baritone like Pavarotti. There was a group of drunk Scotsmen singing along as well. They knew every word to every song, lame or not, that came on. It all began with “And I would walk 500 miles and a I would walk 500 more…..” you know. And it went from there. Finally Suz and I had had enough of lame tunes, requested some Bruce or “Sweet Home Alabama.” They played a couple more including Charlie Daniels’ “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which surprisingly the Scotsmen knew, before they played Sweet Home Alabama….and lo and behold, NO ONE knows the words. For GODS sake, they knew every single word to “Devil Went Down to Georgia” But “Sweet Home Alabama” they look dumbfounded. I mean its only one of the greatest sing along songs EVER!!! Oh well, CRAZY SCOTS!! There were these crazy girls in our room at the hostel. One girl, whose name we could not remember the WHOLE weekend, was celebrating her birthday too, same day, HOW CRAZY is that? And her cousin had just moved to Hoboken, HOW CRAZY is that?? And she had gone to Catholic, HOW CRAZY is that??? And the last night we were there, we all went out together, and then Suz and I got tired and bored, so we left, but they stayed out. When we woke up the next morning, they had not come back. They rolled in at like 10 am saying that when they got back they had missed curfew (which was 4 AM) and wound up sleeping in some guys they had met Grandmother’s bed, HOW CRAZY is that???!?? Well, as it happens, that was TOO crazy for Suz and I. So we peaced out like they had the Black Death, and what else, went to eat. YAY!!!

While in Belgium, I treated myself to many excesses and just kept hearing myself say this phrase as justification, “It’s my birthday, so what!!” So, I sort of bought myself a designer bag to carry my crap to work in…..WHAT---I needed it!!! Mmmmmmm Longchamps. And I of course needed to buy stuff to go with it. No jk, I needed pants, so I bought some and then some shoes and a sweater and……oh who am I kidding, I went a little crazy. “We all go a little crazy sometimes.” So next time, I will need to keep myself a little better in check, so I don’t eat till I roll down the street and then convince myself that all this eating requires a little exercise in the form of handing over my credit card (ie lift from wallet, lunge forward, swipe, return, and repeat, don’t forget the signature and the actual act of shopping, walking, trying on, carrying heavy bags……IT’S GOOD FOR ME!!!!!!!) So after all this excess, it was difficult for Suz and I to hop back on the Magic School Bus (well it would have been hard for us to just “hop” on anything, what with all the eating and drinking we had been doing), and go back to the budgetary lives we had to lead in London. So with a tear in our eyes, we reboarded the bus to the airport. Ahhh but the adventure continues.

At the airport we were loaded into another pen-like waiting area, where the sport of the day was people watching. There was this one woman with some sort of GROWTH (Suz said it was a zit, I thought it was chocolate, Lord only knows what it really was) under her nose and she was popping large chocolate truffles into her mouth like they were mini M&M’s and Suz and I thought this was excessive while we worked our way through an entire box of chocolates and watched. HAHAHAHA hypocritical, NO!!! Then Suz and I started to try and pick out the cute guys. Suz liked this one guy, and then he started to pick his nose a bit, and by a bit I mean stuck his finger up there and started massaging his brain. Boy was digging, “There’s gold in them thar hills!!!” Muah ahahahaha, ewww gross!! OK then we got on the plane and were treated to the most hilarious safety demonstration EVER. The girl stood right between us (remember the cattle call for seats, yeah well we had to sit across from each other), and she looked like a Nordic Amazon woman, extremely tall and strong looking, and yet was extremely awkward and nervous looking through the whole presentation, it was obvious that she was watching her co-flight attendants for her “lines” if you will. It was SOOOO funny. I mean all you have to do is wave your hands and demonstrate a seat belt, you don’t need to remember much. She had some major stage fright going on. GRRRREAT!!! My flight attendant looks more afraid than me, the passenger on the bus with wings. What does that say to me, the person risking her life with a budget airline…..??? Oh well, we made it home safe and ready to plan our next budget airline based trip!!! YAY!!! OK, till next time!!