Brussels

To fully take advantage of the Northern hemisphere winter, we decided to take a trip to Belgium - home of some of the best Christmas markets in Europe.

We hopped on the early morning Eurostar on the Saturday morning, Hamish feeling a little worse for wear after going to his work Christmas party the night before and Lou not feeling much better after waking up with a migraine. We got to Kings Cross early in hope of a decent breakfast and strong coffee, and were disappointed – note to self, do not eat in the French café in the station again.

We were slightly delayed in boarding the train due to the late arrival of the train the night before, we didn’t think anything of, and little did we know that this would happen again very soon. 

When the train came out of the tunnel in France, we immediately saw the abundance of snow they had got. It was beautiful countryside with little farmhouses; white trees and frozen ponds everywhere.

We arrived at Brussels Midi station about an hour late; we attempted to navigate our way to the Crowne Plaza where we were staying. It turns out that in Brussels it is perfectly acceptable to have two Crowne Plaza’s in the same city. Our luck being like it was meant that we went to the wrong one. Our luck being like it was that the one we were actually staying in was the poorer quality one.

Brussels has grown from a 10th-century fortress town founded by a descendant of Charlemagne into a metropolis of more than one million inhabitants. Since the end of the Second World War, Brussels has been a main centre for international politics. Although historically Dutch-speaking, Brussels became increasingly French-speaking over the 19th and 20th centuries. Today a majority of inhabitants are native French-speakers, and both languages have official status.

Once we had checked in, we added a few more layers of clothes and headed out to explore this cute little city. The main focus of the city was the Grand Place square, it is a reasonably sized cobbled stoned square surrounded by the guildhalls, the city's Town Hall, and the Breadhouse. The Town Hall has a statue of St. Michael slaying a demon. As it was Christmas, there was the quintessential nativity scene, complete with real sheep and a massive Christmas tree. A nice touch was also the Christmas carols being pumped through hidden speakers.

We wandered on to the Christmas markets themselves, passing heaps of chocolate and antique lace shops. The markets sold everything from waffles and “vin chaud” (mulled wine), to sweets of all varieties, Christmas decorations and gifts. We also saw a reindeer hunting gear and reindeer skins, which was quite un-festive really. There was an ice skating rink and Ferris wheel set up for the kiddies too. 

One observation we did make was that every second stall was one selling a variety of alcohol, from shots of jager to ‘hot mojitios’, people here seemed to come out of their homes just to have a drink.

Moving on, we found one of Brussels’ most iconic statues the Mannekan Pis. This little statue is famous as the legend goes because of Duke Godfrey III of Leuven. In 1142, the troops of this two-year-old lord were battling against the troops of the Berthouts, the lords of Grimbergen, in Ransbeke .The troops put the infant lord in a basket and hung the basket in a tree to encourage them. From there, the boy urinated on the troops of the Berthouts, who eventually lost the battle. 

Well in the true tourist fashion we found that this little statue replicated in so many different ways, key rings, chocolate, cork screws, magnets etc. Great.

Driven inside by the plummeting temperatures, we found a nice little café where we tucked into Hoegaarden and olives and cheese. 

We headed back to the market and sampled Belgian scampi and sausages. YUM. We also bought one of the unrecognizable chocolates to have taste. 

The markets really came into their own at nighttime, the lights were amazing and it had such a nice festive spirit.

The cold is hard to describe, the wind chill makes your face numb and the snow makes walking hard and you just want to drink hot drinks continuously. We got back to the hotel and realized it was only 7.30pm, but a hot bath was so very welcome.

 

Highlight: Christmas markets – you can’t not be in the festive spirit after seeing these.
Lowlight: The cold. And the amount of clothes you have to wear just to walk around.
Interesting fact #1: You can make anything out of chocolate, literally anything.
Interesting fact #2: Hamish was the only person walking around with no hat or scarf

Bruge

After a good nights sleep we were back on a train this time to Bruges.
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. Along with a few other canal-based northern cities, it is sometimes referred to as "The Venice of the North". Bruges also has a significant economic importance thanks to its port. At one time it was the "chief commercial city" of the world.

We ate the chocolate that we bought the night before for breakfast on the train and it was the original mallow puff! All the ones you get in NZ are poor imitations.
 

We were so impressed with this little city, it is cris-crossed with canals (that were frozen over at this time) and is covered with churches and cute little parks.

We found a nice café where we stopped for breakfast called T’oost. We ordered what we thought was the express breakfast of toast and a hot drink. What came out was a huge bowl of carbs…..each. Each bowl has a croissant, a pain au chocolate, a huge bread roll, and about 3 slices of other types of bread. Along with the carb explosion was 4 shot glasses full of different flavours of jams. Hamish really got into this breakfast, and ended up passing Lou the extra bread under the table for me to put in my handbag and then getting the left over jam out of the shot glasses with a spoon. Classy.

Thoroughly full, we strolled down the snow packed streets. We found some really beautiful churches. The shops were quite similar to Brussels lots of chocolates and lace. We also found the most awesome Christmas decoration shop, that sold every single different type of Christmas decoration you could think of, we spent quite a bit of time in there!

We saw the sights of Bruges including The Provincial Hof (the City hall), the town square where they had yet more Christmas markets and the infamous Belgian Beer wall.

Mmmm beer wall

We were keen to try mussels from Belgium as they promoted them everywhere we went. We found a nice restaurant and ordered a pot of mussels and a Flemish style stew. The mussels were about half the size of NZ ones and not that tasty, a bit disappointing but also quite a nice feeling that we have the best seafood in the world!

We noticed while we were nice and cosy inside that it had started to snow, really snow. We were like little kids and went out side to play, until we realised that when snow melts on you its really cold. But we still chucked around a few snowballs.

Thats snow all over Lou. Not bad dandruff...

We had a thought that our scheduled train might be a bit late because of the snow so we made the call to head back to Brussels earlier. We thawed out on the train dried out our gloves and stuff and then once we got back to Brussels we wandered around for a bit before getting to the station. This was also the time we got to try our first Belgium waffle, amazing. Freshly made hot waffle topped with strawberries and chocolate… bliss.

We turned up to the station and the Eurostar line was pretty substantial at that stage, but we had 90 minutes to go so we weren’t too worried (for trains you only need to be there 30m before). Then the rumours around the crowd that all the trains were cancelled started and there was massive snowfall in London. Since we had got no information from the Eurostar we didn’t know what to believe.

It became obvious that something was up when our train didn’t show. We ended up standing in a line in a packed room for about 9 hours until at midnight, the Eurostar staff finally told us that they would put us up in a hotel for the night but “come back as soon as the station opens because the next train is first come first serve”. It got quite ugly and the police and the dogs had to come because some of the passengers got really upset. It was really badly handled by Eurostar with no actual line and people almost (and in some cases actually) fighting past each other to get through - it was madness.

So we had no sleep, but just lay down on this hotel bed for a couple of hours. Then we were back at 4.30am and the first train was cancelled again so we finally got on the train about 9.30am and got back at lunch time...I a little late for work. What a mission.

We were so happy to get back to London; there was so much snow around but not half as pretty as Belgium. We got home early afternoon, tired and dirty but full of nice Christmas memories.

Snow on our street when we got back to London.

Highlight: The Bruges city, so beautiful in every way
Lowlight: The waiting…..and the waiting and more waiting.
Interesting fact #1: The first book in English ever printed was published in Bruges by William Caxton.
Interesting fact #2: Eurostar have rubbish customer service and dont know what to do when it snows even though it happens every year.

Cardiff Nov 2010

Fresh snow!

The All Blacks. The reason we went to Cardiff (as well as catching up with some friends), meant we piled into a coach on Friday night all set for the 3 hours journey west. 

We had wrapped up warm but nothing could prepare us for the icy temperatures that met us in Cardiff, the capital of Wales. Snow had been falling for the couple of hours before we arrived and it was very picturesque as well as dangerous walking in slippery shoes!
Cardiff is home to about a million people, and this weekend the influx of Kiwis would have pushed that right up.
We were picked up by Ned (Hamish’s mate from Christchurch) and taken back to their apartment in Cardiff Bay, where we hit the hay in preparation for the big day ahead.

Saturday morning dawned and the snow hadn’t gone anywhere. We had a decent breakfast and hung out with Ned’s son Zinzan, who is a big bundle of energy. Spending time with a 3 year old for prolonged periods of time made Lou less keen on having kids and Hamish more keen. Then we all went out for a walk around the Bay area, it’s very nicely done with lots of bars and cafes, but the icy wind drove us back inside pretty quickly.

 

Great hair day

Then we stocked up on supplies at the supermarket and cracked open a few beers while some other Kiwi’s joined us for the pre game drinks. It was nice to have a room full of New Zealand accents for a change! 

Late afternoon rolled around and we started the process of wrapping up for the game, never in Lous life have has she worn so many layers and still been cold. In the end we think Lou 6 layers on top - very Michellin man like.
 

Zinny with his super powered flag

We arrived at the Millennium Stadium very excited, it was impressive. The Welsh fans seemed to be very confident that they could actually win for some reason (apart from the guy next to me who admitted he put £100 on NZ for the win). We had great seats just on half way, under the upper tier, although the roof was closed anyway.

 

The local brew

New haka, Lou always call it

The anthems and the haka were amazing, and so was the minute silence for the Pike River miners. But the Welsh really know how to sing a tune, when they started singing Bread of Heaven, it was incredible - it was so loud!! But I guess that’s what 75,000 people sound like. 

The game itself was patchy, but Dan got his record which was cool to see. There were a few moments when we were looking at each other saying that if the Welsh won we were going to be on the first bus out of Cardiff, but the boys pulled through. Interesting to see how many Welsh supporters started leaving with about 10 mins to go.

The record breaking kick

After the game we headed into town (which was literally like the next street) and stopped for some fuel at McDonalds, it was strange having the game start at 5pm as it seemed way later when the game finished. We headed to a bar called Tiger Tiger where some friends were, it also happened to be the closest bar to the Hilton where the All Blacks were staying….
We saw a few random Kiwis we knew and had a bit of a boogie, but no sign of the AB’s.

Welsh girls are an interesting lot, they seem to be immune to temperature, we have never seen so many girls wear so little when the temperature is below zero. Their skin was literally blue and they didn’t seem to care.
 

Lou - "I can't feel my face..."

We decided to head home about midnight, and due to Hamish’s amazing sense of direction (after a few beers) the 15 min walk home took us about 40 mins. I was no help as I was trying to cover as much of my face as possible whilst still trying to see and walk in a straight line.  

A great night out, the Welsh people seemed to be so happy that all us Kiwis were there and having fun in their city.

The next morning with heavy heads, we noticed that the canal that came from the sea in front of the apartment we were staying in was frozen over. And then we heard that it was minus 18 in parts of Wales the night before…..and this is what Hamish made me walk home in!!!!  

We had a lazy breakfast and then headed back into the city to see what it looked like in the daylight before we went back to London. It’s actually a really nice city, and the size and the atmosphere reminded us of Christchurch. We walked past the Castle but didn’t go in, I think we were in no state to absorb any interesting information.We took Ned and Zinny out for lunch to this old man’s bar, and paid £6 for a great roast with all the trimmings. Things are so much cheaper outside of London!

 

Then we said our goodbyes and then cruised round the shops and then headed to the bus stop. On the way there we randomly walked past the Hilton just as the All Blacks were leaving. There were a crowd of about 30 people waiting outside, and some of them were seriously hard out autograph collectors, like they had scrap books with photos of all the players that they were getting signed. We saw quite a few, John Afoa, Mills, Corey, Hosea and Brad Thorne. Most of them were stopping to say hi to the fans and sign a few autographs, but when Dan Carter came out, he just sprinted to the bus and ignored everyone. Too cool ay.

The funny part was that a lot of the All Blacks were walking to the bus each holding a box of beers!!! Not so sure if the PR people would like that.

All Blacks Bus

Finally, it was time for us to go. The bus trip home was painful, especially when we arrived and London was having another Tube strike, it seems to happen every time we go away…

A great weekend, catching up with some good friends and seeing the All Blacks win.

Interesting fact #1: You can teach a 3 year old to say anything, including “Get in there boys” whilst watching the game.
Interesting fact #2: You don’t need a passport to get into Wales.
Interesting fact #3: Wales has not beaten the All Blacks since 1905.

Prague - Day 1

The Bandits adopted two honorary members for their first venture into the Czech Republic, James and Emma joined us for the weekend jaunt to Prague, the Czech Republic’s capital city. 

Praha (as it’s known to the locals) has had a czechered past (note the first use of the pun on Czech, there will be more to follow), known as Bohemia up until 1918; the country has been through 8 territory and name changes up until 2010. Prague is now a fully cosmopolitan city of 1.9 million people, centred on the Vltava River and the Prague Castle.

Praha began to flourish during the era of Charles the 4th in the 14th century, hence why so many things were named after him including the famous Charles Bridge. And according to the locals - they loved him. We arrived late on a Friday night to rain and cold, as well as a speeding driver known as Jakob who delivered us in record time to our hotel. We stayed in the Red and Blue hotel that was really nice, although there was a distinct lack of blue that we saw. After czeching in (note the other pun), we had a quiet drink in the bar and then headed to bed to rest up for the day of sightseeing that would follow. 

Saturday morning, and the first thing we noticed was that it wasn’t as cold as we were told it was going to be, in fact it was warmer than London - result!  

We headed to the hotel café for the buffet breakfast, which included a random selection of cheese, ham, bread, tomatoes, cucumber and capsicums, and then the sweet options of random cakes and biscuits. It was delicious. 

Next we ventured out to soak up a little of Prague’s atmosphere before the walking tour began. We found a few of the interesting sites including the ‘Dancing Building’, the National Theatre and the first of the hundreds of clocks we were going to see over the weekend. Clocks seemed to be a consistent feature of Prague, each intersection on the road has a clock - this was great when the game was made up that every time you saw a clock you could hit Hamish…

We met out guide Filip and we began the walking tour of Prague. We learned heaps of interesting facts including the origins of the word Bohemia (the original name for the Czech Republic), how the translation of the title of the Czech national anthem is “Where is my home?” and all about how “Good King Wenceslas looked out….”, and he wasn’t even a King, he was a mere Duke.

We saw some amazing examples of Gothic, Art Nouveau and Baroque architecture, including the Church of Our Lady before Týn where if you look closely you will see that the right tower is bigger than the left tower, and no one knows why. Also in the Old Town Square was the statue of Jan Hus who was burnt at the stake on the very spot where the statue is now for his religious beliefs.

The astronomical clock takes centre stage in the old town square, it’s ok. It’s a large clock that includes the zodiac signs on the face, and on the hour a few things happen on the clock and a trumpeter blows his horn for a bit. Slight let down considering how many people were there to see it.

 Next stop was Wenceslas square (where I guess he was looking in the Christmas Carol). This was the place of many protests in Prague’s history, the most notable being in the 1993 where over 800,000 people stood in the square and jangled their keys to show that they wanted to be in control of their destiny.  

We came across another Church where our guide told us a story that went something along the lines of this thief went into the church to steal a necklace off the Virgin Mary and the statue came alive and wouldn’t let his arm go. Eventually the Priest came along and cut his arm off and there is a petrified remains of a human arm still hanging on the church wall. We went into the church the next day to see if this was fact or fiction and this was confirmed (in a way - although we couldn’t really tell if it was an arm or not).

We also saw the giant metronome perched on top of a hill above the city, which is in the location where a massive statue of Joseph Stalin used to stand. Built in 1991, its constant ticking is meant to remind people of all the time wasted during the communist era.

Prague has a reputation for having some examples of Cubist buildings, we saw a good examples (pictured), can’t say I was blown away by it, but the shop was cool.

The city also has a Jewish quarter, which originally was one of the poorest slums of the city due to the racism brought on by Hitler and because it was up to 2m lower than the rest of the city and prone to constant flooding. However there are beautiful examples of old Synagogues as well as the Jewish Cemetery which is now on a slope due to the number of people that were dying and the religious ban on cremating, people simply piled more earth on top of the graves and buried more people, meaning in some areas there would be about 8 bodies deep. On the outskirts of the Jewish quarter is a monument to Frank Kafka, of a guy sitting on top of this other guys shoulders and that guy had no head - apparently in reference to one of his stories.

Once we said our goodbyes to Filip, we went to possibly the most famous bridge in Prague, the Charles Bridge. Basically it’s a bridge with lots of statues on it, and a lot of beggars and people trying to draw your picture. Great photo ops though.

Post bridge we decided to head to the monastery underneath the Castle where the monks brewed their own wine and beer. It was a long steep walk but the view from the top was worth it, and the beer was good too. Surely drinking beer made by monks gives you God on your side?

Then it was All Blacks time. James had handily looked up an Irish bar in Prague that said it was playing the rugby so we found our way to JJ Murphy’s where we nabbed a couple of sofas and some beers. We watched a great game, drank some great beer and some nice mulled wine and thoroughly enjoyed the international experience of watching the All Blacks play Scotland, in an Irish bar in the Czech Republic….

Post rugby with a glow on our cheeks we were on a mission to get some dinner - Czech style! After a few false starts we found a local café that served up local food for very local prices. We sampled goulash, stroganoff, pork neck and goose, all of which were outstanding. Not so sure about the overdose of cabbage and dumplings though. We rolled back to our hotel and went to bed full of good food and beer.

Interesting fact #1: The clothing manufacturer Hugo Boss manufactured the Nazi war uniforms in World War 2 and they have a store smack bang in the middle of the Jewish Quarter…. ironic juxtaposition?!
Interesting fact #2: Czech beer is very good. Very good and very cheap.  

Interesting fact #3: Back in the day when people couldn’t read or write, streets were known by the gable on the corner, so instead of saying “I’ll meet you on 8 Smith Street”, you would say “I’ll meet you on the corner of the black spider and the golden bucket”.
Interesting fact #4: Nobody knows why the towers are different sizes on the Church of the Lady on Tyn. Some Czechs will say it represents Adam and Eve, Adam being larger and protecting Eve from the harsh weather, but more honest Czechs will say that someone stole their building materials and they had to cut corners, or they made mathematical errors….we think this is more likely.