-€.50 Museum Visit

The camera was on another elephant's butt


At my hostel in Bruges I liked everyone that I met with the exception of one guy who was a know it all jerk. As luck would have it when I checked into my room in Brussels that same guy is in the bed next to me. I said hi to him but he has been avoiding me as much as I am avoiding him, I guess the feelings are mutual.

When I first got to my new hostel there were 10 people in line to check in and the clerk was going crazy. He couldn’t handle all those people and was telling people to put their luggage in the luggage room and come back later. I went to the Grand Square, a place only for tourists with really old buildings that look pretty cool. I went into the tourism office there and looked at the brochures and found one on the Natural History Museum that looked interesting. (I always spell Museum wrong when I type it)

Last night I went to a local Jazz Bar that was full of both people and smoke. No one else I encountered there with the exception of the bartenders spoke English. The music was awful, I don’t know if any of them had played together before or really if they had ever played instruments at all. I stayed around long enough to drink two beers and then have a drunk guy try and convince me in French to buy him a beer. Of course I did not buy him a beer, I’m stingy that way.

This morning I went to the African Museum, which I thought was supposed to be about the exploitation of the people of the Congo. It is actually a museum that was built to gain support for the colonization of the Congo in the late 1800’s. Mostly it has lots of animals, art and memorabilia from Africa. There is also a small section on the exploitation and on the Congo’s independence. I did learn some interesting things about Africa though like that 45% of the population is under the age of 15. That is an insanely high number. Luckily it only cost me €1.5 to get in with my student discount and when I went to put my stuff in a locker I found €2 in there and so I ended up making money out of the trip.

After seeing all of the dead animals at the Africa Museum I decided that I would skip the Natural History Museum and instead go on a brewery tour. I went to the Cantillon Brewery that is family run and makes a special type of beer called Gueuze. The beer uses water from under Brussels, that has special organisms and it takes three years to make. The tour was self guided through their small brewery and then samples are given out at the end. The beer they sell is unlike any beer I have ever tasted, it is really sour, mouth puckering sour. Tonight I’m going to a place that hold the Guinness Book of World Records for the most beers, I’m sure I can find something there that I like.

The beers I have drank on this trip

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10_13_09 Brussels small