Belgium - Part 2

Good Afternooooooon everybody - it's Steve and his travels putting you to sleep. Welcome to brussells, home of bureaucracy and French speaking people. We took off on our road trip to france and Brussels was our first stop. We stayed with a Polish guy named Bory (pronounced Borice) There is such a wide range of nationalities in Brussels - highlighted by the fact that we stayed with a polish guy. While we were there we learn about how his family lived under a communist regime, how people worked, how the government controlled what people bought in shops, how they had money but couldn't spend it etc etc. Very interesting indeed. What did we see in brussells you might ask? Well we saw the usual things, the nice buildings, the churches, walking around the town was not a problem the first day. A nice calm city was old Brussels, and the fact that they tell you that they speak both french and dutch in the city is a dirty lie. The flemish people are not in huge numbers here, the signs are in dutch and french, but people in shops will address you in french every time. The waitresses also didn't speak dutch so we were a little lost - even with Bory's broken french. We went and saw an accordion band - which I thought after 5 minutes of scoffing was pretty cool. Maybe it will catch on in australia. (they might have them, but I haven't seen them) It was at this band that we saw Dave Cutherbertson Doppleganger (for those who are not familiar with how a used that term it is the lookalike) I will add the photo later - but it was a little freaky. Except that dave had somehow learnt to speak french and dutch... We had a late night that night, we met some Russian girls who were on holiday,  sang the Russian anthem for us, and Bory sang the national anthem of Poland for us also. Amusing. The next day we hired bikes and rode around the town - so annoying is the roads with cobblestones - the bikes we hired were so so so so heavy, so no give in the wheels, and because the roads are so old - they hadn't invented tar or whatever by then.

Note the heavy frame in the wheels... makes for uncomfortable riding on cobbles.

We rode around for a good 4 hours, went and saw a huge park in the city, watched in amusement about how belgium motorists don't drive around you when clearly there is enough room, they just wait behind you until there is two lanes.. Crazy. So we had a few cars banked up behind us..





That night we went out and watched the boxing match at an irish pub between some english guy and some Ukrainian. Amusing. Boxing is boring.  So we left the pub and went home, tired from riding around all day. Oh, I almost forgot, while walking to the subway we saw a bag snatch attempt. This guy was STTTUUUPIIDDD.... I suppose to bag snatch you must be, but come on... He not only chose the quietest street in Brussels to steal the bag, but he chose to steal it off a few fit guys, so they caught him in about 300m. We thought we were going to witness a guy get smashed, but they let him go!! Wow... There was about 10 people around him yelling and pushing him and grabbing him... Fair enough too, but we would not have let him go in Australia. I am sure of it.
We saw a few more things that day with Bory being our tour guide, oh I forgot - he cooked us some traditional food from poland - some weird stew, but it was gooood. 
We are now in a town called Ardooie, and we are going to the beach. So I will update when I get back This afternoon.

Bory andrew and me in Brussels in front of the celebration of 50 years of the EU or something like that - I forget now.