We arrived home from Belgium on Monday, November 5th around 6 p.m. a little tired, glad to be home, but also sad to have left. The people we met showed us a great time and made some lasting impressions. I’m going to attempt to run down some of the things that made our first trip across the pond so awesome.
Wednesday October 31st:
Our flight arrived in Cologne, Germany at 7:30 in the morning. After gathering our luggage, we proceeded out the front doors of the terminal to meet Patrick from Buzzville Records. After trying cell phones, Tony and I determined that we had service but couldn’t seem to make any calls. Jay and I then spent about twenty minutes trying to place a call on the payphone, which was difficult due to not being able to read German. After our initial frustration wore off, I realized that the country code we had been attempting to dial was different in Europe, even though it was my US cell phone I was using. So after forty minutes of panic, we were able to track Patrick down, who was at the next terminal over looking for us. We packed the gear into Patrick’s Renault mini van, and let’s just say that there wasn’t much spare room. Off to Belgium.
After a two hour-plus trip, including a stop at a gas station in Germany to drink some much needed coffee, we arrived at Patrick’s house in Merchtem. We met his daughters, who thought we were Germans (because we were loud), his wife and dropped off our guitars. On to Brussels.
Upon arrival in Brussels, we parked in a garage which was in a building that was sort of a tower. We parked on the roof and got a great view of the city from there. After walking for a few minutes we arrived in the Grote Markt, which is the grand center of the old city. It was amazing to see the difference in the architecture compared to back home. Everything was so much older and cooler looking. Having never been to Europe before, and having only seen it on TV, it was so much more awe-inspiring in person. We converted our American dollars to Euros and struck out to get some long awaited food and drink some of the world famous Belgian beers.
We walked down this crazy street that had a bunch of Turkish restaurants one side, and Greek ones on the other. They were all yelling at each other and at passing customers to get people to eat at their place. It was really funny and pretty crazy. Patrick explained that the two sides can’t stand each other and competition for customers was heated. We settled on a Greek cafe and had some meat plates with all kinds of sausages and pulled pork, lamb, etc. The food was out of this world and the beers went down like water.
After eating, we made the two hour trek to Stavelot which is where the bungalow we were staying at was located. We watched some of the new AC/DC DVD and then hit the sack. We had been up for 27 hours and sleep was a priority.
To be continued…
