Sep 5-9 Amazing gothic architecture…great food…easily navigable subway system…all these things make it hard to describe why there was something a little…off…in Belgium. It started when we bought our first Belgian Waffle (a nice, sticky, chocolate-covered slice of heaven). When we started to eat it, I realized we didn’t have a napkin. So I asked the vendor for a napkin, and he proceeded to rummage around behind the counter, come up 20 seconds later, and hand me – one – napkin. Ok, I thought, no big deal. I’ll just have to live with it. Later on, we went to a kabob shop, ordering the delightful meat concoction that every city should sell, and again, upon asking for napkins, we were presented with one, single napkin. Yet after that, we ordered some hamburgers at The Quick, basically a McDonald’s without the grease (why would you get rid of the grease?), and once more, after asking for napkins, we were given a lonely, solitary napkin.
This happened on, and I don’t exaggerate, 8 different occasions – which clearly makes it a trend. (Ok, maybe 6 occasions.) Why would all of Belgium, a country who prides themselves on being the best at so many of life’s luxuries – chocolate, beer, seafood, etc. – why when they have so many ways in which they make the world a better place, why are they so protective of their napkins? How, from a sociological evolutionary standpoint, does a culture develop the need to conserve as many napkins as possible? They’re not even nice napkins; they’re ordinary. I could understand if they were silk or lace, but they’re rough and scratchy.It’s just odd. But I digress…
Belgium, napkin-hoarding aside, has a lot of charm. While we stayed in Brussels for the majority of the trip, we took day trips to Ghent and Brugge. Ghent is one of the nicer “small” medieval cities we’ve been to, and probably has more gigantic, beautiful cathedrals per square meter than anywhere else in the world (sorry – I’m thinking in the metric system - it probably has more cathedrals per square foot than anywhere else). Brugge, meanwhile, is a canal-medieval-city, and was great for biking around, as it’s a bit too large to cover on foot. Both were very beautiful. 
For the record, Sophia and I are horrible bikers. I’m a bit too kamikaze, especially considering I never quite figured out how to ride in a straight line (I blame the fact I grew up riding a hand-me-down bike without pedals on unpaved roads). And while Sophia is better than me, she has a habit of twisting her ankle when walking down the street; if you apply this level of balance and agility to bicycles, you get the idea (note that she tripped and fell in Brussels, severely scraping her knee and looking like a fool, her words). Anyway – it was cute, we took some pictures, they’ll be uploaded on Shutterfly shortly – blah blah blah. Time for the good stuff… So my main objective in Belgium was, as some of you can guess, to try as many beers as possible (in moderation). I am, after all, a self-proclaimed beer snob! And for all you other blossoming beer snobs, let me just say that this is the place to hone your craft; good beer flows like water from the old-world pubs of Brussels! But it doesn’t stop there; we also made sure to eat as many waffles and chocolates as possible. This is what vacationing is all
about…13 pubs, 34 beers, 8 waffles, 46 pieces of chocolate, 64 mussels, and we even got some Vietnamese soup in there one night! Anyway, I believe we took pictures of every beer, waffle, and chocolate shop we went to. A lot of pictures, and a lot of fun. Made for a different type of vacation, because we didn’t really do any “touristy” stuff this trip – yeah, we walked around and looked at buildings and castles, but that was more because the places we were going to (chocolate shops and pubs) caused us to cross by some of these things. And that’s why Belgium is cool – because you can go there, and not have to feel like you’re missing out on something if you don’t see everything, and you can just relax and indulge yourself.Great trip on the whole. For the record, I feel I can now officially consider myself a beer-snob. So that leaves me with only a couple of further “snob” activities to learn from my European snobbery to-do list:
- Cheese
- Wine
- Cooking puff pastries
- Looking down my nose at people who don’t pronounce French with the correct accent
And these remaining snobberies lead perfectly into our next trip…
Next week: Burgundy!
