TheBlondeBackpacker - Bruges or Brugge?

If anyone has seen the film In Bruges starring Colin Farrell you might think of it as being a boring cobbled stone town in the middle of nowhere offering nothing to do. And if you did think that you’d be pretty damn right. We went to Bruges because it’s touted as being one of the best things to do in Belgium. A quaint city of around 117,000 there are plenty of bicycles to be ridden (and I don’t mean easy women) and chocolate shops to visit. So with little else to do we hired some bikes and rode to get some chocolate. That took around all of fifteen minutes so we started looking for something else to do. Our options were to visit the town square, a church, a bridge or a bike ride to a near by town called Damme.

Set on the Zwin River, it was a 4km bike ride down the canal. We had no idea what would be there but figured it would kill a few hours so we set out with the intent being to have lunch there followed by a bike ride back. How very Von Trapp of us. The ride was pretty along the canal and we figured if we just rode straight we’d eventually hit the town. It would no doubt be raging, full of celebrities and suede stores. After some time, admittedly no idea how long, we arrived. Now forget In Bruges, forget Johnny Depp, George Clooney and the von Trapps and start thinking more along the lines of Children Of The Corn, that delightful family flick. I never knew empty towns with tumble weeds really existed. The roads were empty and somewhere a faint bell was ringing, we all prayed it was from the wind. All of the stores were locked shut and we realised lunch wasn’t going to be an option. As we resigned to riding back to Bruges to look at the town square again we saw a small diner with an open sign displayed. Think a little less Children of the Corn now and start thinking of the murderers diner from The Goonies. It wasn’t run down but was clearly owned and ran by a family of murderers with a disfigured giant brother in the basement – I have a gut feeling for these sorts of things. Surprisingly we didn’t die though, we didn’t find a pirate ship either.

Back in Bruges we’d done our dash, there was no option left other than to go back to the bar below the hostel and drink. Sigh. We were staying at a place that was filled with a mixture of student backpackers and student backpackers from the eighties who’d never left. One of these men we named the Grasshopper mainly because he reminded us of Amsterdam. While sitting with our beers he came over for one of his philosophical chats. He was a pure hippy and was distraught over a dream he’d had. The dream that started with him holding a baby, but when he looked down at the baby, he realised that the baby was him. Whoa man, that’s wild.

Finally, when the sun had gone down we were able to go to a bar called Cambrinus, a Belgian beer specialist serving over 400 beers. Now that I was a fully fledged beer bandit strange and manly trip highlights like this excited me. The fact that I’m a girl – Irrelevant. We’d met an American at the hostel who seemed normal enough, I forget his name so I’ll say Cody and we invited him out with us. The bar was much like the rest of Bruges; it was there I guess, with little else happening. To pass the time Cody suggested we play a game. Lush seemed like the most likely person to lead it as it was sure to guarantee us a laugh. After all, she’d already made the grocer yell at her earlier that day by pulling the ends off the snow peas so that they’d weigh less at the counter – “Zat is not how we do sings in Belgium!! Out!”

The game was more like a task. Lush had to create a logical sentence using three words chosen by Cody and deliver it in a serious tone to the bar tender. If she succeeded we all had to buy her a drink each. It seemed easy enough. She’d string a sentence and get three free drinks, but this was Lush, it was never going to turn out that way. It would end up being classic and result in a dinner party story for years to come. I can’t remember all the words but the one that stuck was Negate.


Negate – ne-gate:
1:  to deny the existence or truth
2:  to cause to be ineffective or invalid


Lush who was already drunk poised herself ready to charge into victory. We followed her to the bar and as anticipated victory was ours. It started with a large burley bar tender around six feet four high and four feet wide looking down his nose at her as he swung his cloth over his shoulder. Resting his hands on the bar he just stared as we took a slight step back in fear while the drunk one unaware of his brooding psychopathic tendencies eyed the beer menu. He almost growled at her asking what she wanted. ‘Beer’ chimed Lush. We were in a bar that was famous for selling, well, beer. The bar tender hence was not impressed. Plus the bar was starting to fill and he had little patients.

“What kind of beer do you have?”

“We huv four hondred beers, order whatever you like.”

“So you’d have any beer I want?” Lush was being obnoxious.

“Yes.”

Now, if I was in a Belgian pub, famous the world over for selling 400 beers, in a country famous throughout the universe for the beers they produce, and I was asked by a blonde angry Giant what I wanted to order, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t say this:

“I’ll have a pint of Melbourne Bitter.”

I swear to God The Giant grew another foot and steam flew out of his ears.

“We do not have that beer”

“I thought you sold every beer.”

Even though the pub was loud we heard something crack in his head.

“Melbern Beeter? Melbern. Beeter!!?? This is Belgium!! We serve Belgian beer, not you Melbern Beeter!!”

We all wiped the spit off our foreheads in unison. Lush wasn’t perturbed though. Too drunk to realise how mad he was she decided that now was the time to whip out her stupid sentence. Before she could spit it out though she knocked a wine glass on the bar while trying to point for effect, sending it and others down to the wooden floor. They smashed everywhere and everyone stopped to look. Without hesitation The Giant bent down and stood back upright holding a dust pan and brush. He thrust it at Lush.

“You! Clean!”

Obediently Lush got down on the ground to her knees and started crawling around the floor around the other patrons’ feet while The Giant watched on. As she scrounged around he smiled delighted and spat at her, “how do you like your Melbern Beeter now?”

We left pretty soon after that with Lush yelling something about negating beer to anyone who would listen. No one did.

And so, we had succeeded. We’d been to the world famous bar and Lush had entertained us with her usual whimsical ways. A good night out really, considering we were in Bruges.

The next day it was time to leave. By then I couldn’t remember why we’d even come to Bruges but whatever the reason, I’m sure we hadn’t done whatever it was we had planned to do; Unless the plan had been to ride to a strange town, smash a row of wine glasses and make the vein pop on a Giant Belgian mans head.

Huh - maybe we had succeeded after all.