In Bruges

      

We went because of the movie, but stayed for the Belgian beer, chocolate, waffles, and stunning architecture of one of the world’s most famous gothic cities. Bruges. It’s like a town that’s been frozen in time. 

Most if not all of the buildings are intact from 12^th century, and they sit on top of rippling canals. The streets teemed with tourists. It was packed! People had come out en masse to enjoy the clear and warm summer Sunday. It was like Disneyland without the rides. People were everywhere, jossling along the streets, stuffing their faces with local culinary treats and taking in the culture.

Tara and I only had a day to marvel at this place of history. We took a bazillion photos, which have been culled to the bare minimum. Highlights included the history of chocolate museum, full of facts about one of the most consumed treats on the planet (plus a chocolate figurine of Puss in Boots) , The Basilica of the Holy Blood, which had a relic said to contain the blood of Christ, and the chiming bell tower, which peeled ding a ling dongs each hour.

Kitsch markets lined canals and it was easy to get around on foot, drinking in the many statues, unique building facades and watching horses and carts trample along the cobbled streets.

It was a quick visit but one well worth it. We’d both love to return to this romantic place in the dead of winter, with snow falling it would have to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In summer it was amazing, just a little crowded.

Amsterdamnation

Sex, drugs, clogs. Three key things the Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular have to offer. 

We arrived into Amsterdam expecting the place to be a bit seedy, with weed smokers roaming the streets, glaze-eyed searching to satisfy their cravings in the local ‘coffee shops.’ What we actually saw was a hell of a lot of awesome street art, sophisticated European culture, beautiful boat-lined canals and a few hookers standing in windows.

It really is such a weird clash of worlds, this underbelly of sin being thrust out in the open, amid a normal backdrop of an historical city. What may be completely off-the-wall for most places, is simply commonplace in this city of sin. It was certainly a far cry from the religious streets of a mid-Ramadan Morrocco, but just as crazy in other ways.

The day for us started with a train-ride from our removed caravan park into the city centre. Locals and tourists jossled together to get out of the pouring rain, with stray umbrella spokes almost taking out the odd eye. We had planned our day online the night before; first get some lunch at a vegan restaurant, next go to Anne Frank’s house, The Van Gogh Museum, eat a space cake, then do a walking tour of the red light district. Normal right? 

It’s funny how when you go to Amsterdam, knowing it’s one of the prostitution capitals of the world, you look at every woman wearing leather boots and black stockings, and wonder if she’s a sex worker. Pretty much everyone in Amsterdam wears leather boots and black stocking, so it was hard to divide the professionals from the amateurs. Even Tara was looking sideways at everyone. You eventually come to the conclusion that it simply takes a normal person to have what we may consider an abnormal job. It’s the world’s oldest profession, so they say. Prostitution exists everywhere, whether it’s out on display in a window or hidden behind closed doors.

The first half of the day went off without a hitch. Succulent vegan soup warmed our chilled bones as we dried off in the restaurant. Outside, were houseboats floating in the canal, bicycles whizzing by and a crazy black and white stencil mural on the wall opposite. Once the rain died down, we roamed around; taking snaps of the art that plastered the walls, before stumbling across the Anne Frank house. I’m not going to go into the full history of it here, but if you’re not familiar, this is a house where a whole Jewish family hid from the Nazis, in an attic during World War II. It’s bizarre to think that just over 50 years ago, this all went down in the same place. The line to get in was ridiculous, so we decided to simply peer inside from the streets before hitting the Van Gogh museum on the other side of town.

If you’re a fan of art, you cannot go to Amsterdam without going to visit this amazing museum. It’s a vibrant insight into the bi-polar mind of one of the world’s most fearless artists. His work barely made an impact while he was alive, but now it has shaped so many styles of what we see today. You get to walk around, through a timeline of his work and see it grow, before falling into the despair of mental illness. Amazing that Van Gogh didn’t even pick up a paintbrush until his mid-twenties and only painted his first major work aged 32. It gives all of us aging wannabe-something’s hope. This was probably the best thing we saw in Amsterdam, sober.

We had booked in a walking tour of the red-light district to start at 6.30pm. With an hour or so to kill, I dragged Tara into one of the ‘coffee shops’ on the fringe of the sin district. Of course, they do sell coffee, but that isn’t their main money-making product. Tourists come from all over the world to smoke hash, or weed legally in a comfortable setting. The joint we went to was called Abraxas. It’s a quant little two story place, filled with smoke haze, comfortable couches and Rasta music. It was kind of cliché, but at the same time very cruisey. I promptly ordered a space cake and orange juice for myself, and a mint tea for Tara. Having had a bad experience in the past with ‘Level 10 muffins’, I decided to take it pretty easy. Munching down half of my blue berry delight, I waited half an hour before taking the rest. Nothing happened. A little disappointed that my foray into legal drug taking didn’t yield the desired mind bending results, we moved on to the walking tour.

The group we were with on this tour couldn’t have been more eclectic. We had young backpackers, an old Indian couple, some mid aged Canadians with bumbags on, and us. It seems sex is interesting to everyone. No surprise there. It was a mind blowing experience, walking through the city, learning the ins-and-outs of the in-and-out trade. You see gay clubs with blacked-out windows because the dress code is no clothes, you see novelty condom shops, more coffee shops, and women in windows dressed in skimpy lingerie beckoning passersby inside for a 50 euro 15 minute romp. There is a street which specialises in transvestites, another for Asians, another for black women and one narrow alleyway called ‘elite street’ where the high class, high paid ladies have their windows. There is the main strip full of strip clubs and live sex shows, and the occasional restaurant. You simply have to go there to really get an understanding of the place. The crazy thing is though, after an hour or two, it all just seems quite normal. Why wouldn’t women rent out windows for an eight hour stretch and make a profit from weak willed men, or men hire out windows to make a profit out of weak willed men. It was a shame that you can’t really take photos while on the tour, since if a prostitute thinks you’ve taken a picture of her, they’re likely to come storming out of their window, grab your camera, smash it on the ground and then stab you with her high-heeled stilettos. They value their anonymity very highly on the streets of Amsterdam. No one wants to be the most famous prostitute on the internet. Luckily I’ve found some photos on the internet to help illustrate what I mean. There’s always someone willing to take the risk!

I could go on for hours about this part of Amsterdam, but I will not. The tour ended and we were starving. We searched for a vegetarian restaurant close by, but kept getting side tracked. I wanted to stop and look at the art on the walls, or check out a crack in the pavement. It was then I realised the space cakes had kicked in. No wonder I was so hungry! After a wonderful feed of Indian, Tara guided me back to the safety of our campervan, where I slept of the last of the effects.

The next day, after one of the best sleeps of my life, we packed up the van, drove through some windmill-lined, sheep dotted countryside and made our way to Belgium. It is a real tourist thing to stop and see the windmills and clog factories along the way. 

Being tourists, we decided to do ‘the thing’ and try on some wooden shoes. The one’s Tara tried on where a bit big. Since they didn’t have her size, we moved on, next stop: Bruges.

Swiss Bliss and German Wolfpacks.

Switzerland is one of the most naturally stunning places in the world. We lucked in with constant sunshine during our drive through the mountainous countryside, and were treated to scenery normally reserved for postcards. There were green slopes, vineyards and castles dotting all the way through. Words cannot adequately explain how blown away we were. Hopefully our photos do it some kind of justice.

After spending two days in the lush and beautiful terrain of Switzerland we emerged into Germany. We had very little expectation of this country, known for its bratwurst and beer. We weren’t going to go to the cultural city centres, and figured all we would see were overweight sausage-eating men anyway. How wrong could we have been!? We camped for a few days in the famous Black Forest, which runs along the far eastern border of France and Western border of Germany. 

It’s a tranquil place, full of dappled sunlight, which pours through towering pines. On our second morning we woke up at sunrise to walk through the forest. It felt great getting back to nature, drinking from small mountain streams, breathing in the cold morning air and generally soaking up the green light of the place.

This walk was topped off with a sighting of a bear and wolf sanctuary at the end of the trail. It’s similar to open range enclosure, which houses six bears and three wolves. Tara was jumping and pointing like a three year old, as we stood mere feet away from ex-circus bears who are now living the good life in the forest. 

Given that it was daytime there were no wolves to be seen. However, we started chatting to one of the park keepers, and he suggested we head back on dusk to see if we could spot them. At about 7pm, after a few tasty local wheat beers, we strolled back to the park. The keeper we had spoken with earlier was there with the park manager. They had closed up for the night, but were happy to sit with us, talk about the project while drinking a beer and watching the wolves. We were treated with a playful show of three wolves rolling around with each other as the moon peaked its head over the top of the forest pines. Absolute magic! Unfortunately we didn’t get any good photos, since the light wasn’t great and we didn’t want to scare the wolves by using the flash. However, the memory is burned into both of our minds.

The next morning we awoke to pouring rain, so decided to pack up camp and make the six-hour drive to the home of all that is sinful in the world, Amsterdam.