Belgium - the Country, not the Biscuit

I do miss the biscuits though...

So, 2 weeks ago I went to Belgium with Andrew & Tony. We caught the Eurostar after work Friday from Kings Cross St Pancreas to Brussels, then a couple of regional trains to get us to Ghent. I think we were there about 22:30 (europe time, not this am/pm bollocks) so it was pretty easy.

Tony posing at St Pancreas, we were going to get some champers from the Champagne bar, but at £7.50 for the cheapest glass we decided to head to M&S to get a few cheap beers (and hot cross buns!) instead.

Arriving in Ghent we eventually stumble upon our hosts Thibaut & Angela's place - a couple who Tony & Andrew hosted through Couchsurfing. Thibaut & Angela were excellent hosts - they took us out for drinks at The Pink Flamingo - a bar with cool music, cool decor (similar in feel to the Wunderbar in Lyttleton, but different...), a definite undercurrent of European trendiness and plenty of smoke! It also had plenty of beers to aid us on our quest.

Andrew & Tony with an Italian couple & Angela

The Next day we did some tourist stuff around town:

The Boat el - love it!

Tony pointing out a wall - great tour guide!

There was quite a lot of graffiti around, here are some of the better/more amusing examples:

One thing I didn't know was that Belbium brews Primus beer, the beer of Optimus Prime:

We visited a castle, it had these 'cool' video tour guide things; they played a pretty aweful movie that was both educational, cheezy & mildly entertaining.

Tony & Andrew modelling the video guides

A Medeval Bread slicer of sorts

Meta-tourism, nice posing Tony

Le Trebuchet

In the afternoon we wandered around the town looking for beer, waffles & frites (belgium fries), we managed to find ample quantities of all of the above, also a shisha store...

A beer shop, look at all the bottles!

Also note that it appears the guy in the poster is going to shove a big orange pencil up my bum

In the evening we made our way to Brussels, we stayed with Yosef, a Morroccan dude Tony met back in NZ a few moons ago. He had a wicked pad:

The next day we ventured to the atomium, this was both impressive and disappointing. you would think that when you build a big, cool structure like this you would at least try to make it interesting inside, well they obviously didn't.

Andrew was obviously impressed, just look at the jazz hands he is making.

Later we ventured into a disappointing town centre - well not dissappointing really, more boring(we had been warned it was rather dull).

Me at the Manakin Pis, we went went back past later and there was this ceremony of sorts with a whole lot of ridiculously dressed men singing and doing all sorts of ceremonial stuff at the base of the statue.

These couple of characters were touts outside a narrow alley restaurant, they figured out we were NZers and challenged Andrew & Tony to a scrum. I think it was the first time any of them had been anywhere near a front row but I still reckon they could teach the aussie forwards a thing or two!

So that is a bit of a whistle stop summary of Belgium, on the whole pretty good, love the beer, Ghent was nice, Brussels was boring. Waffles & Frites are good, so is deep fried cheese.

Next post will cover Madrid, probably unless I get sudden inspiration before then

Haere Ra

Lucas

Murder!!

I was going to do my next post on our trip to Belgium but then something much more 'interesting' happened - there was a murder on my street last night. Pretty much straight across the road!

Of course, this happened on the weekend when Rebecca & Clas were over here from Sweden to visit for the weekend. They won't forget this trip anyway!

I won't say any more than it was a stabbing and there was a little blood (not as much as Hollywood would have you believe). The house is well known in the neighbourhood for it's colourful drunk inhabitants such as 'Mad Michael' who spouts on about the Last Night of the Proms on BBC1 and other harmless issues.

The street was cordoned off as a crime scene and we had to sign in and out when we were going in/out. Kinda surreal!

Ironically last night I was defending my part of town as perfectly safe and a cool place to live. I stand by the second statement but I might have to rethink the first. I have never had a problem and it was probably a one-off domestic incident but it does make you think...

************UPDATE************
I can rest easy tonight, the murderer has been apprehended

So where was I... (part 2)

Continued...

On the Weekend after Waitangi Day I took part in the London institution that is the Waitangi Day Circle Line Pub crawl:

Angus, Betul, random german guy, Janet, Greg, Colin

Greg, Me

Sorry Jay - I stole your photos.

Springtime in London
Big Ben

So, that is a very brief recap on what I've been up to over the last few months, there are some good stories to go with many of the photos/trips (like falling asleep on the tube on the way home before the Brighton trip, and having to get a £40 taxi home at 2am) but I'm not going to write them all here because I don't want to bore you!

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Worldly Adventures of Lucas!

Teaser: In the next episode Lucas discovers the pleasures of Belgium beers in their natural environment and discloses an embarrassing moment...

So where was I...

I had just arrived in Copenhagen and done a bit of touristy stuff, I guess I just got bored of writing a blog!

Anyway, Andrew & Tony have bullied me into kick-starting it again after our recent trip to Belgium.
I though I should give you a bit of a run down of what I've been up to since the last entry, what better a way than with photos.

Copenhagen was awesome:

the Carlsberg Brewery was worthwhile

This guy did some awesome spray painting art.


I met some welsh chaps who I now see a bit in and around London:

they were up for anything that night!

From Copenhagen I went back to Sweden for a while, the main highlight was going to Accelerator music festival with Nathan:

Rufus Wainwright

Nathan with some friendly Swedes: Karin, Malin & John

Nathan had a shisha pipe in his flat...

That was the end of the Scandinavian adventures (well for a few months), it was time to come crashing back to the reality that money does run out and I had to head to London & start my job to get some more, DO'H!

London in brief (& short holidays):

Summertime in London:

Sean posing in Hyde Park - the day of the Tour de France Prelude

Reading Festival:

The weather was fantastic

I saw one of my favourite bands, The Shins

A week holiday in the Greek Islands in Sept/October, with Sean, Larry, Ken & Rachel:

The Parthenon

The Acropolis

Another mean Greek feed

Another awesome temple

Meta-tourism on Santorini - people lining up to get that perfect sunset

Action shot at the hostel pool

Autumn in London

Green Park

Brighton - Mine & Fi's Birthday trip

I didn't take many photos this day, but I did take this one of the sky pulling faces at us.

I went to Cardiff with Andrew & Tony for a weekend to catch up with Andy, Emma & Gemma, some Welsh mates from Wellington days. Again few photos but eh...

The Gang braving the cold in Cardiff

In mid late December we had our work Christmas function & celebrated by heading to Boulogne Sur Mer in France. Apart from going to the restaurant we didn't really do anything on French soil so I don't really have any good photos. Next!

A the start of this year I went to Havant / Portsmouth To catch up with Paul, an old workmate. Again no photos...

In February I went to Maidenhead to celebrate Johnny's birthday (Jonny being one of those Welsh boys from Copenhagen)

The night heated up a bit later on!

Continued in Part 2

(I think I have the max number of pics for one post)

Bergen, Copenhagen

Bergen really lived up to the stories I had heard:

 

- It's way nicer than Oslo

- the train ride over is spectacular

- it rains 275 days a year.

 

On the train ride over I met possibly the one and only Norwegian with a thick (dirty?) kiwi accent. I was talking to the girl working in the cafe (if you don't have a seat reservation you end up spending a whole lot of time in the cafe) and turns out she had spent 6 months or so in Glenorchy and had developed a genuine kiwi accent, complete with kiwi slang like 'random'. quite funny I thought.

 

I had all up just under 2 days based in Bergen, on my first afternoon I caught a funicular (what the Welly cable car is) to a viewpoint and made my way back down the mountainside, and wandered the city for the evening.

 

It was raining on my second day, I made the most of it by doing a fjord tour called 'Norway in a Nutshell', it was well worth it and I got to see some pretty spectacular scenery. I must say though that if you have been to Milford sound or anywhere in Fjordland then the beauty of Norway's scenery loses a bit of its gloss.

What did crack me up though was all these Japanese and German tourists who were surrounded by this amazing scenery but were taking photo's of the seagulls around the boat! c'mon! get real.

 

Overall Bergen was a great town to visit, I wish I had a bit more time there to have a look around the city itself a bit more, but not this time.

 

I'm now in Copenhagen (I caught a couple of ferry's and a train to get here) and enjoying it. I've just spent the day cruising around the city with Jeremy, a Canadian guy in my dorm which was cool. Tomorrow I'm going to head to Århus and check out that city. A visit to Carlsberg brewery is also high on the agenda, maybe in a day or 2...

Narvik - Oslo in 24hrs, Oslo

I just had a massive 24 hour bus and train trip from Narvik to Oslo, I was only going to travel as far as Trondheim (knocking 7 hours off) I couldn't get the right night train to make that work, so i caught another one and went all the way to  Oslo, I had a rather sore neck this morning after sitting up all night!

 

So I arrived in Oslo first thing this morning and went out for a look around, the best place I went to was Kon-tiki museum about the Norwegian guy (Thor Heyerdahl) who sailed the balsa raft Kon-tiki from Chile to Polynesia, and the reed boat Ra II from Morrocco to Barbados. Quite a guy.

 

Tomorrow I am off to Bergen in the western fjords, the rail trip is apparently one of the worlds finest so I'm looking forward to that. I have a couple of days there and then I'm off to Denmark!

Northern Norway - Narvik

The rail line to Kiruna terminates at a Norwegian port Narvik in the Ofoten Fjord. This is where the Swedes ship all their iron ore to.

A surprisingly nice town, surprising because the guidebook introduced it with "welcome to the town that most Norwegians describe as their ugliest town", it would put many in NZ to shame.

 

In the harbour there are about 35 ship wrecks from WWII, the Germans tried to take the port (and iron) all for themselves, the allies bombed the hell out off them and destroyed the German fleet, which now lies on the seabed, as do a number of allied ships. I learnt all this (and more) at the first museum I'd been to without being dragged there by the parents.

 

I originally had high hopes of spending some time in the Lofoton Islands which border the fjord, they are by all accounts amazing. But due to being told it was too early in the season and the timing of accommodation further down the country I ended up high-tailing it south straight away.