Thomas Crown In Bruges

I feel like writing something now that I’ve been on the road for about a week and half. Though I’m not sure what to report on… Starting at the beginning is always a good place to begin, right?

I got out of Madrid late Thursday night of last week by way of a night bus to the Madrid Airport. Or maybe I should say I thought I was taking a bus the airport. I ended up taking a bus not to the airport but a small little village like place near the airport. It created some confusion on my part because I wasn’t entirely sure where I was other then that I thought we had passed the airport. So I started walking back, which was kind of the a trick because the fastest way there was by expressway. Honestly even at that hour with so few cars, I wasn’t going to walk on the highway just in case there was someone who decided to be stupid or I failed to see them, so I had to shun-pike it and go by a few other side streets. I got lost more then once and walk the wrong direction for quite a while but ended up at the right terminal eventually. The real crux was it was the last day I’d be in Spain for a while and it was the first time since I’d been there, I couldn’t walk somewhere directly; I love last days, blah.

My first RyanAir flight as far as I’m aware was completely uneventful because I spent the entire time passed out. All I really recall is lift off and then landing which worked out nicely seeing how RyanAir charges you for pretty much anything else. We landed at the RyanAir airport outside of Brussels and had to take an hour long bus right into town, which cost about the same as the plane ticket. (Yeah “cheap flights”!!) It was amazing to see Belgium with all the green. I hadn’t realized how used to Spain’s small trees and Spartan foliage I’d become accustomed until I ended up in Bruxelles. Brussels in general was pretty unimpressive. It’s got a lot of cool buildings and parks. It is also the capital of the EU which was something interesting to see, at least in theory. The EU capital building looked like a very boring office building, I have pictures simply because I spent a bunch of time walking to it, but know I’m going to have to explain to people why I took pictures of a completely boring building.

Though the main highlight of Brussels, was I did get to see the museum of Magritte who was a 20th century French speaking Belgian surrealist (in similar vein as Dali) but not quite the same (no melted clocks). He’s most famous for the painting of a man wearing a bowler hat who’s face is obscured by a green apple. It was famously alluded to in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, I no idea if its in the original. I unfortunately discovered that most of his famous paintings are in US, but it was still cool to see some of his back catalog.

I then went on to a little city in the northwest of Belgium called Bruges. It was a little more chilled out and totally worth the trip. I ran into a lot of Spanish people, which was cool since most of my Spanish knowledge mostly revolves around introductory questions. The place is called Brujas in Spanish, something I learned by talking to them. In truth the main reason I ended up in the small medieval town was a movie released in the last year with Colin Farrell called simply In Bruges. It in truth actually mocks the city and calls it boring and uninteresting. What’s so interesting about it is that the reason it developed into a tourist town in the first place was because of an article around 1905, that criticized it as a poverty stricken, canal strewn waste land. Oddly enough that was enough to get tourist interest in the place and people have been coming ever since. It really is a quaint place and refreshing far away from the rat race. But in truth I was there for 3 nights and that was way too long; Bruges boredom descended in earnest.

I then ended up in Amsterdam, but I’ll save that for another entry…