Hippy goes to the beach..

Spent another 3.5 hours in a net cafe and then rode to Damme. It was meant to be a nice day trip, 6k out of town. Well, day trip, sure if you ride slower than I walk! Anyway, it WAS very nice riding along the tree-lined (Poplars I think I read?) canals, watching the Mississippi-style paddle boat travel slower than Ma and Pa out for a pootle..

It just wasn’t enough so I decided to head to the beach. Mostly on small paths or reasonable road shoulders.I arrived in Knokke, passing a Bentley dealership (with a Ferrari parked out front) and stopped at a pub/cafe for an iced coffee. “Tracks and Travellers” was the name of the place. It was run by an ex-cruise liner bartender and his decor is made up of some seriously funny items! Like the glass rack made from two old ski next to each other and the massive Lonely Planet Guide collection.. and what’s with the large penis above the bar??

Anyway, the iced coffee was like nothing I’ve had before. It was awesome! More like a frappacino, ie. with more ice than milk but it was seriously good to drink it on such a hot day. Bartender was quite a character too and he filled my bidons for me. Champ!

Apparently this is the most expensive real-estate area in Belgium – some houses 40mil euro? No wonder there was a Bentley dealership here! The bartender was saying Porsches are “pfft nothing” here.

He also gave me a map, which made finding the beach and returning easy (unlike me and most maps!). I waded a bit and watched some dudes flying a massive kite. On guy was really good at it, making it do loops really close to the ground, but the other guy kept crashing it as soon as he took over the controls.

Taild trihardalete home for a bit then thought I should take a turn in front, so I did, maintaining same speed. After a minute or so he shot past, obviously not intending to take a turn! Hehe! Well, I was heading home anyway, so lets just try and punish this bitch’s ego.. I chased him down before town hahaha fat guy on loaded mtb takes trihard on roadie with skin suit haha I hope you’d smashed yourself beforehand dude coz you just got owned! 😉

Brugge -> Knokke Stats:

52.32k, 3h34m, 14.7kph

Showered, washed clothes, drank Coke and wandered into nearby “Soeure Sourire” for dinner. Vegie plate and Croque Boum Boum (Bolognaise). Croque was nothing special but filling. 4.50 euro for a plate of vegetables was supposed to be me attempting to be somewhat healthy. Turns out to be an extended version of the crap salad I already got with my croque. I’m sorry, but lettuce, tomatoes, onion and a piece of FRICKIN’ WATERMELON!! are not vegetables!!! I wanted vegies damn you!

40 school kids rock up mid-meal for dinner here – the reason I couldn’t get the ‘speciality’ of savoury pancakes.

I also saw a crazy kid seat on a bike, where the child seat sits on the top tube, near the bars and the parent leans over them to steer the bike! Never seen that before.

Dessert was “Coupe Sourire”, some kind of Advokaat, egg nog, ice cream, cream, choc sauce concoction. Whatever! It was nice!

18.50? for dinner. Notice I found the ? key? 🙂

Every 30min that same Marley track would be played.. GET OVER IT!

Okay, my first night in Brugge was tainted with a severe lack of sleep. Big thanks to my happiness dealers for making the next day, Sunday 19th June, so much better. Amazing what 8 hours sleep, positive vibes and some frickin’ NICE weather will do..

The Brugge Triatlon was on today (www.triatlonbrugge.be) and of course they had energy drinks at the finish.. and BEER! 🙂

They also had a dj cranking out some tunes. Lots of nice bikes rolling around. Geez imagine hitting the cobbles with a couple of grand worth of carbon wheels! :S

As I said in the other entry, I was really bummed watching all these people racing and not being involved. No wonder I take so much pleasure in beating grannies off the lights..

Did 10-20k just cruising around the very nice town in the very nice weather. I decided to follow the locals and not wear a helmet. I figure if I was the only one wearing a helmet, then sure as shit I’d be the one to be hit by a car!

Stopped for um.. lunch.. around 4pm. “Kleine Aardbeien”, known elsewhere as strawberries! Bought a large stuk or punnet for 2.40euro. Musta been about 400g or so? I haven’t had strawbs like this since I was a kid. I ate the whole lot in about 10mins! They weren’t as good as the Japanese ones but damn they were nice!

I was sitting near a church eating them and I swear I heard Faithless: “God is a DJ” playing from within!!

Rode around some more. Went back and had a long shower – no stupid push button showers here!

Back to ‘net cafe and he gave me too much change. Lucky me.

“Kebab Schotel” from “Sultan Kebab” for dinner.

“‘t Brugsch Kreimtie” on a street off the main square, provided my dessert, in the form of 3 scoops of yummy ice cream for 2.70euro. He was a really nice guy and gave me extra too. Go there.

Still awesome here.. might stay another night..

Damn.. i just blogged my last entry again.. what a waste of time!!

I slept in my clothes in Gent after forgetting to get bedsheets.. EEEW! It was a hot night and I woke feeling dodgy at 5.45AM. Wandered the streets, checked out a bric-a-brac market and returned for one of the better hostel brekkies I’ve had. Chatted to some US cyclo tourists – Gent seems to attract lots of bike tourists.

Paid 5 euro for a groovy boat trip down the rivers/canals. I like these trips. Being on the water is nice, not walking is nice, the views are nice, the commentary is kinda interesting.

Paid 3 euro to climb up the Belfry – some exhibits and a nice view. The tune it plays (as well as the nearby church’s tunes) are pretty funky.

Mmm.. “one Appelflap, please”. “0.82 euro”. I love bakery food!

Dinner last night was Turkish.

Lunch was at “De Foyer”.

I’m doing other stuff so I’ll update this later..

Right, after a brief ‘interruption’ 😉 I’ll continue..

Yes, lunch was “Dag Schotel”. Sounds gross right? It just means “Dish of the day” 🙂

This was a salad, followed by Steak and chips and a pastry for dessert. Pretty good for about 14 euro plus beers (“Brugs” white beer, made where I’m typing this, Brugges). The most interesting aspects of this lunch were the fact I was sitting outside with a great view of the church and square below and the salad contain snails..

SNAILS!

I saw lettuce and stuff and though cool.. then I saw these little grey things I thought were funky mushrooms.. then I looked closer.. holy shit! SNAILS!

Well, I finally get to try them (it wasn’t even intentional, say, for a dare :P). They were quite nice, with a little bit of mustard. Chewy, like a piece of meat but not real tough like a steak or something. It was a bit of a psych out before the first one, but I wasn’t going to leave them on the plate!! All in all not too bad a lunch.

Net cafe for 2.5 hours for 1euro/hour was pretty good.

Trams here are the same system as Antwerp so basically 1euro per trip (I think the ticket lasts for an hour).

When I’d arrived in Belgium, I’d contacted Jeff Jones from www.cyclingnews.com because I knew he was working in Belgium from his “Belgium Commuter” pro-bike review 🙂

Just before my phone ran out of credit (cough)Tam(cough) we sorted out an interruption to his Tour de Suisse reporting. It’s always good to talk to fellow Aussies despite what Dan might tell you 😛 and to talk to a cyclingnews reporter in Belgium was pretty cool for this hippy! Thanks Jeff, you rock! Now get typing! 😉

Did more wandering and found cheap looking place for dinner. “Grill Shoarma, Bij St Jacobs” – I don’t know if that’s the name of the place or what, but it’ll do..

I bought “Kip Shoarma Maison”, knowing only that it contained chicken and the “maison” ones were “with cheese”. I didn’t know what the food actually was.

It turned out to be a kind of pita pocket filled with meat and veg – like a souvlaki perhaps? It had four little sauce tubs you could spoon from as your desired. It was quite nice and cost 6euro. The 33cl Hoegaarden was 2euro which went down real well given the hot, sticky conditions that night.

Anyway, the dude serving was young and seemed pretty cool with his dreads and he was nice when serving. I was eavesdropping on his Dutch conversation with a young couple and in between the music heard two words, well one hyphenated word, that I recognised..

PSY-TRANCE

This was all the ammo I needed, so I moved up to the bar and started chatting with dread-dude about Psy (it’s a stlye of techno music for all you normal people reading this..).

Turns out he’s a dj. Not a Psy dj, he plays reggae, but his mates play psy-trance and they were running a party just around the corner at “Kosmic”. It was free entry! But it started at 2am. Hmm.. how do you kill time in Belgium? Well, you stay right where you are and sink a heap more beer, chatting to dreadguy! 🙂

I walked by Kosmic after 2am to check it out and there were heaps of people outside (and inside) so I went back to the hostel and changed clothes. I cant dance at the best of times but in thongs?! 😛

I stayed at Kosmic until 6AM noting some of the following things:

– Belgians, or at least those that like psy, smoke a SHIT LOAD of dope! The air was thick with it! Not that I’d know what it smells like or anything.. Hi Mum.. 😉

– Ventilation in clubs here is shoddy or non-existant! Fark it was hot and fark it was smokey

– Dancers here sometimes confused the floor for a mosh pit! Maybe there’s just more room to flail in Melbourne clubs?

– The crowd outside was half raver, half dodgy looking fsckers and there was broken glass everywhere! Heaps dodgier than Aussie parties.

Anyway, it was actually a pretty frickin good party! I went to bed for a couple of hours and then got up for breakfast, looking like death.

I found that there was no room available for tonight so I decided that I would skip the two bars I wanted to visit (one had bike theme or something, the other had 250 beers on offer) and head to Brugges early. I didn’t really mind, because beer was the last thing I wanted that morning!

GENT -> BRUGGES STATS: 46k, 2h 20m, 20kph

I only got a teeny bit lost but that was because the signs are fucked. I kinda thought they might be dodgy because they took me away from the river and the hostel guy told me to stick to the river.. so I wasn’t really lost.. just wanted to check who was right, signs or hostel guy. The whole ride was on bike path next to the river except for small joiner sections and some off-road bits. Pretty tame. Because I left early for once I could afford to take my time. Yay for leaving early!

Spun around Brugges for a while, maybe another 10-15k and then stopped at bakery for food. Decided to have a pancake at the “pannenkoeken” shop next door. Got some sweet cider for 2euro which was really nice. The pancake was “ijspannenkoeken” which was a thin pancake wrapped around ice-cream with chocolate sauce poured over it and almond slices on top. Also got a “Moka” milkshake, coz I’m a pig! VERY hot day so I needed the cold stuff – that’s my excuse anyway!

Yeah, so, as Tam mentioned I was in the shower when she called. I was expecting the call but it’s a good idea to take all the beeping things out of your bag if you plan to stash it under the bed!

Some foreign girls walked in and I was a bit concerned that I was in the female showers but I am pretty good checking this kind of thing so it’s usually the other people that have it wrong. In any case I think it was a unisex shower block. The girls didn’t hang around long when they heard a dude talking (to himself perhaps?) in the shower cubicle. 🙂 Still spewing at the 60p/min to RECEIVE calls.. what a scam!

Walked into town. Brugges is like the Venice of Belgium. It was PACKED with tourists. You know, swarms of US retirees loaded up with cameras and video cameras filming everything that moves..

Last night was making me grumpy (okay, grumpier than usual! :P).

Into a restaurant and I was directed to a table. A few minutes later some guy tells me to move!

I’m thinking, “What the fsck?! Kiss my arse buddy!” and he tells me again.. then I noticed the bunch behind me and I figure this arse-clown is actually staff and he needs the room for this bunch. I move and one of the customers thanks me, but not the arsehole staff dude..

Ask for a menu again and wait.. and wait.. and wait.. and notice that the bunch that needed my table left and went elsewhere.. and waited and then thought to myself “fuck this!” and walked out.

Went to takeaway stall in the main square and had shitty food there (“Bicky” burger and chips and mayo). Bad mood big time now and I just wanna get home coz I know the hostel has a bar.. so what happens? I get fucking lost walking home! I’m about ready to give up and lay in front of a truck when I make it to the bar! Saved!!

The bartender is real cool and I start trying all the heavy hitters, Westmalle Tripel 9.5%, the local Brugs Tripel 8.5%, then a constant stream of Leffe Blondes 6% maybe? The dude tells me to try Leffe Tripel – his favourite beer, but they don’t have it here. I vow to hunt it down..

I ended up quite drunk and joined a table of pommie school teachers who were ‘winding down’ after a day of battlefield and graveyard visiting with a bunch of their students – can understand why THEY were drinking 🙂

Went to bed pretty fucked. At least at this place I don’t have to climb into top bunk like Gent! Nearly tipped that bed over!!

Young Man Abroad

Yesterday, I had a long brekkie, chatting to Sena and a couple of Sydney-siders and then checked out and trammed into town (Antwerp) to look at some Rubens paintings in the Cathedral. Now, they were good paintings, but the whole religious impact that they are supposed to convey was kinda lost on me. Sure check ’em out, but don’t expect a life-changing experience. The Cathedral was impressive (but arent they all, rich religious bastards!) and it was only 2 euro.

Then I hit a net cafe, 6 euro for 2 hours. Why oh why did I sign in to MSN.. oh, that’s right, nevermind 😛

It’s now 3pm and I’m finally leaving Antwerp’s hostel. Sena is there again to say goodbye. Hey she was on the tram into town too! Stalker? 😛 Who can blame her really? hahaha If you ever stumble across this.. I’m joking.. you were cool and I hope your arts study is going well..

So, I have no frickin’ idea where to go. hippy touring tip – buy maps that include the town you’re staying in and don’t buy large scale car maps. Reality: Meh, I’m not spending THAT much on those funky maps! Just frickin wing it! Europe is so densely populated, there’ll always be somewhere to stay. Maybe not in winter though, or the east or or or.. 😉

Anyway, after one hour of riding I was back in Antwerp where I started. Asked a few people and finally discovered the building I had to go into in order to cross the river! Yeah, there’s a tunnel under the Scheldt(sp?) River that takes you to the other side. Once there, I asked again and it was “N70, that road there, straight, will take you all the way to Gent”.. and it did, pretty much.

Two major towns and some minors along the way – Sint Nikkolas being the first and Lokeren the second. Good to know the in-between towns so I know if Im off course.

Just as I rolled out from Antwerp on the other side of the river (1hr after starting!) there was a bike crash. I think a car hit the rider. Dude was on the ground, blood spilled, twisted up in his bike. Oohh.. this doesn’t look good..

There were other people standing around him, locals, in a better position to help, so I waited until I saw him move and was sure I couldn’t do anything to help, and then I rolled on with a sick feeling in my stomach.. nasty seeing any rider down, especially nasty when cars are involved..

The N70 is not the main road to Gent, perhaps like Maroondah Hwy traffic levels. The big difference though is that it has bike lane along the WHOLE FRICKIN ROAD!!

Okay, so they took me off course once, but luckily I realised relatively quickly and asked another rider for directions, which saved the day. I AM going too fast to read the signs. I’ve noticed that lately, I don’t so much cycle tour as ‘cain myself to get from a to b as fast as I can’. It’s not quite TT style but I keep leaving too late and having to suffer to arrive on time.

This wouldn’t be the case if I had proper maps and planned stuff. The cool thing about being RUSHED on a bike tour is that even when I’m hammering, it’s not like a car where you miss everything. I still stop and take pics of interesting stuff (read: catch my breath!)

The whole ride was into a head wind. Well, not quite. When I was going the wrong way I had a tail wind hahahah!

At one point, I was drafting a scooter!! It took my approx. 20kph up to 30+kph for a few minutes. They eventually noticed me and I waved them on faster until they turned off. It’s a scary thought that they might have paid good money for a motorscooter that can only travel as fast as a fully loaded hippy bicycle tourer!!!

Oh yeah, motorscooters can use bike paths, it seems. Quite a few faster ones zipped past me.

Stopped at a Colryut(sp?) for drinks and food. It’s like a supermarket but seems geared up for bulk, frozen goods. SPA mineral water tastes like shit!! Lucky I drank the stuff so fast it missed my tastebuds!

Made it to Gent. Spent a while with the stupid changing street names and streets that go around corners until I found the hostel. Yay, I was immediately happy. The guy at the front desk was funny as too, which was nice.

I was in a full room of six. Not so good, but beggars can’t be choosers or some guff.. Bit more expensive here than Antwerp because the bathroom was in the room.

Met an interesting dude from Slovakia attending a conference and another bike tourer and another guy who just finished 12 month around the world trip. So, again it was late before I finally left, cleaned, looking for dinner. Lucky some places close at midnight. I picked a Turkish place – Ankara I think? It had a picture menu for dumbass Aussie tourists like me!

Wandered the beautiful cobbled streets a bit, sat by a really romantic canal (well it would’ve been romantic if I wasn’t alone!) and took some night photos. Gent is very pretty.

ANTWERP -> GENT STATS:

74.74k (actual 50k), 4h06m, 18.1kph

I’m too busy with emails and have to make it to Gent today.. so rack off the lot of you!

JUST KIDDING!! Come back please!! I’ll write something soon promise!

hippy found a beer house with a list of six hundred beers.. yes 600.. 6-freakin-hundred!!!!

He’s too drunk to blog, so he’s just gonna read his fan-mail, look at some porn and fsck off..

hahahaha Belgium RULES!!

I asked AT LEAST twelve people for directions to Antwerp yesterday! All locals and none of them had a clue. It took a grey-haired roadie to “tow” me onto the N1 from Menchen and say “follow this road and it will get you there”. I thanked him.. a LOT!

Then it was HUSSLE time! 20kph uphill, 30kph on the flat and 40+ on any downhills – this is actually really motoring for me and the loaded GT. In or near Antwerp I hassled a young pizza delivery dude for directions (strangely enough, not his pizza..) and he was SPOT ON! “five sets of lights and turn left will get you here” and he points to the map. No shit, I counted the lights as I rode along the ‘under construction’ street and not even sure if he was including ped crossings, etc. I found the “spider” building he mentioned! You rock dude! Shortly after I found a camp ground. No one in the booth to pay so I did a lap and just before I could set up camp out he popped. Turns out the yoof hostel was just around the corner, but he said if it was booked out or I didn’t want to stay there he’d let me sneak in and I could pay the 5euro tomorrow morning. The hostel turned out to be fine and only 15euro inc. breakfast. It’s really not worth camping with the people you meet in hostels, the bars, the brekkie, not having to setup and take down the camp, bike lockup, etc. So, the tent remained a backup for another night..

Before That…

The distance between Brussels and Antwerp is somewhere in the region of 45 to 50 kilometres, depending on which map or signs you read. I did it in 85 kays!!! 35k of riding around in circles, riding backwards to Brussels, more riding around in circles, etc. It wasn’t all my fault either! Roads that exist on the map just stop in real life and the only road that actually would’ve got me there with relative ease was a frickin Motorway.

Other than getting well lost and arriving later and more rushed than I’d have liked, the ride itself was cool. Nice weather (more sun – doh! forgot the sunscreen again!), nice quiet roads and canal paths and just, well, interesting and nice to ride!

I stopped for lunch around 4pm at “Huis ten Halve”, just outside Willebroek. The only thing I could ID on the, now Flemish, menu was “Mixed grill met 3 sauzen” which I assumed meant 3 snags (sausages). It actually meant “3 sauces” and was a grill plate laden (not Bin) with different grilled meats. Chips too, of course. The people here all speak english quite well (probably better than me!) and even pick me a nice beer.. which is the heat and dehydrated state goes straight to my head. Better make it the only one! :S

After (finally) arriving..

Chatted to ‘room mate’ for ages. Interesting dude, born in Zaire and well travelled. He uses the hostel as a temporary base for his current contract project. I showered (push-button grr..) and did some clothes washing (in the shower). It was 11.30 when I staggered out of the hostel. Sure as shit, this remote(ish) hostel had nothing to buy food from nearby, so I had a can of Coke and went to bed hungry..