In Brugge
'Maybe that's what hell is, the entire rest of eternity spent in fucking Bruges.' - Stupid grumpy Ray from In Bruges (the movie).
Of course, for me replace hell by a good idea of heaven, please! I am like the good old romantic Ken from the movie who wants history, culture and a good time to be able to call it a good day. Good life even. When I watched the movie back in 2010, I knew I would visit Brugge one day.
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| the sight of the bed! |
That day arrived in 2016 July. After the super flop journey to Brussels and making J and Paglet bear the brunt of my illness, I channeled all my inner will power and strength to go to Brugge. We left Brussels at a leisurely 11 am in the morning on the 21st of July. An hour long, uneventful (thank god!) train ride later, we were at the Lybeer Hostel, lugging those dreadful backpacks and that cursed stroller on the cobbled streets of Brugge. The pragmatic in me was cursing the romantic by this time. I made myself lie down as soon as we entered the room. This seemed to work for the pragmatic.
A bit about our hostel. It was 15 minutes walk from the railway station. We had a single room with 1 bunk bed and shared bathroom. It was clean and it also had a window which opened to the terrace! It also had an open kitchen, library with book exchange, open bar and lounging area. One hour rest later...
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| hostel terrace! |
We were to take the walking tour of Brugge with cyhit the same day. We had already been introduced to our tour guide Thijs, through his successful attempt to scare us. (He knocked on the door. I opened the door, totally unaware and he scared the hell out of me by presenting himself in one of those K3 type masks. He was apparently trying to scare Paglet, being colleagues. You know how it went).
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| very very good! |
The afternoon (3 pm) tour was supposed to start from the Charlie Rockets Youth hostel (another very nice hostel with a social vibe). A bunch of us 3 Peruvians, 3 Scottish girls and 2 Indian girls (us) were to be Thijs's party for the afternoon. The tour was filled with his antics! He made us touch and feel history, making us stand on the oldest bridge in Brugge for a few minutes. We made our way through Astrid park, walked through the prison which is now a residential area to the city center. Brugge is home to a very famous church which supposedly houses the blood of christ (in powdered form). No we did not go there. I am just sharing knowledge. After some more medieval stories and jokes, we came near the bell tower. The famous bell tower. I and one more girl from Scotland were the only ones who had watched the movie In Bruges. So we two were the only ones who got all Thijs' jokes and references. Pop culture FTW! He shared few more anecdotes from the movie and gave us recommendations about where to have the best fries and chocolates. (Belgium is the home of potato fries and some really good chocolates!) We also did a secret pitstop at a very nice and old pub and had the most amazing local beer. I was unwell but I tried it a little. Belgian beer y'all! The beer stopover also gave us a chance to sit down and relax and get to know each other. Some fun exchanges later we started the part 2 of our walking tour. We also got introduced to the symbolic Brugge architecture and some flemish history. Thijs gave us some really cool and cheap references for food, beer shopping, ice cream and things to do. Thijs was a storyteller who made us time travel while narrating some of the incidents of the west flanders. The 2 hour long tour ended at the oldest hospital in western Europe. (I highly recommend it if you are interested in local culture, cuisine, history and fun :))
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| Tour group! |
Brugge is really small. You can travel from one end of the city to the other in 30 minutes, 40-50 minutes if you walk leisurely. Paglet and I roamed around a bit. Had some delish fries and mayo, soaked in the sunshine. Surprisingly I was feeling sprightly again. We then bought some local beer and made our way back to the hostel. As soon as I was inside the hostel, the body pain and being unwell feeling was back. But we met some really fun people and the evening went on smoothly, with conversations. There was a solo traveler from Turkey who knew very little English (the language). I cannot tell you the pain I felt while trying to make meaningful conversation with him.
We called it a night sooner than everyone else.
Next day when we woke up Paglet was showing the first signs of being ill. I was slightly better. So we decided to have some breakfast and just take it easy, since we also had to leave for Amsterdam the same day. We went to Astrid park and sat around like bums, studying the city map thinking what next to do.
We decided to buy some souvenirs and found an interesting souvenir shop on the map. There is a very famous Sanskrit idiom which means something like this 'When your bad time is going on, you tend to think unintelligently.' Our walk to the shop was going to be something similar. Little did we know. We walked through the city to the other end for almost 30 minutes to reach the place only to find out it was like a huge super market of second hand goods. It had really great, kitsch stuff but there was no energy left in our sick bodies and fevered brains to sift through them. Each of us bought goods worth 25c as souvenirs to remind us of the death walk. By the time we reached the hostel, we both were feeling really really sick. We even got annoyed by each other and quarreled and fought and did not talk to each other till we boarded the bus to Amsterdam later in the day. Talk of ending a perfect day on a sour note!
Before leaving the hostel I bartered books at the hostel bookshelf. I had noticed 'museum of innocence' on the bookshelf the night before and could not contain my excitement. I had been meaning to read that book for a long long time. Meeting a traveler from Turkey the night before and seeing a copy of the book made me believe in 'a book finding the reader' theory even more. So I kept a friend's copy (which I had finished reading) of 'the man who knew infinity' with notes and picked it up. Verdict below!
Sad to report that halfway through this book and I am finding it insufferable. Need some cheer in life. pic.twitter.com/zr35N7oT6N— Y (@yaymini) August 4, 2016
Anywho, Brugge was a dream come true to me. I really liked it. I wish to return to live there for a few more days. I leave you with a postcard from Brugge.
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| Beautiful Brugge! |
P.S. So the essential part of the post. Costs!
Brussels - Brugge ticket - 20 Euro per head
hostel charges for a day (separate twin sharing room with shared bathrooms) - 59Euro (~30Euro per head)
misc - 20 euro per head
dinner - 15 euro per head
Total - 85 Euro
Hostel link - http://www.hostellybeer.com/