Europe Trip, Part 6 - Leeds

I'm now on a bus between Taxco, Mexico (insanely cool city) and Mexico City, so it's time to continue the blog with Operation England. The reason for this off-the-tourist-trail destination was simple - my brother Terry lives there. He and his family were nice enough to put me up for a couple of days, which is always a plus.

After my flight into Manchester and a short train ride, I arrived in the Leeds train station. Terry said to meet him in the pub there, so that's what I did. I was pretty hungover, but I figured a pint or 2 would make me feel a little better.

It did. But that's not exactly how it went down though.

After Terry arrived, we went on a pub crawl through the center of Leeds. A similar one to the one we went on 6 years ago when I was there, but there were 2 major differences. I wasn't brutally hungover then, nor did I have to drag a suitcase into every bar. If you ever wanted to announce yourself as a liquor pig tourist, try wheeling your suitcase down a bunch of narrow alleys into pubs...at 1pm. I got some great looks of amusement. It was a lot of fun. The two trips did have one thing in common though:

This was my second time not remembering a damn thing about most of these pubs.

I think we ended up going to 5 pubs total...maybe 6. It's a little foggy because we were just mainlining pints and bullshitting about everything. Terry's a super intelligent guy and despite growing up in different worlds, we have a lot in common so I always enjoy getting to hang out with him. So after a few hours of that...yeah, I was pretty drunk. I don't think he was too far behind either. We headed back to his place so he could have a nap before we headed out that night...to a soccer game.

I probably should have slept at that point too, but instead I played on their computer and listened to my ipod really loud like a moron in their kitchen. So loud that I didn't even realize it when Shelly and Ryan got home. Shelly is Terry's super-nice girlfriend, and Ryan is their 16 year old son. They walked in to see me swaying around like a retard and singing along to something terrible, which is always the best way to re-introduce yourself after 6 years or so.

By the time we headed out, I had sobered up pretty well (surprisingly). I had always wanted to go to a real live English football match, and this was my chance since Shelly had grabbed some free tickets from work for the game. Leeds United used to be an elite team, but had fallen on hard times both financially and on the field in the past few years, and had plummeted down to the 3rd tier of English football (somehow called League One - yeah, I think it's dumb too). Shelly drove us over, and Terry, Ryan and I went up to our seats in one of the ends behind/above the net. Folks, it was a trip.

The ends are the cheap seats, where all the rowdies hang out. Terry had told me not to bring my camera to the game because of where we were sitting, and now I knew why - these guys were NUTS. First off, they never sat down. They paid for seats (I think), but everyone stood up for the entire game. Odd, but whatever. Then they started chanting.

For the entire game, we were surrounded by fanatical fans that chanted about everything. They had their usual Leeds United chants and songs, along with some pretty impressive improvisations. For example, a player for Oldham named Chris Price did something...oversold a tackle or something, can't remember. Right away, about 1000 people started chanting "CHRIS PRICE IS FUCKING SHITE!" Over and over. No, I didn't spell shit wrong Canadians...that's how they were saying it.

After a pretty pathetic first half, Leeds scored 2 goals in the second half and looked pretty impressive. What wasn't so impressive is that they don't sell beer at the games anymore, but I could deal with that after epic last 24 hours of beer consumption. Either way, the crowd went home happy (well, as happy as those crazy fuckers can get) after a 2-0 win. I was certainly impressed...it was a shitload of fun. Leeds has since been promoted to the 2nd tier of English football, and hopefully someday soon they can get back into the Premiership so I can go see a top-flight game back in Elland Road. Awesome, awesome experience.

Shelly came back and picked us up, and we headed back to their house for a chilled out night. Couple of beers, watched some TV, and got a good nights sleep. The next day was the perfect day for someone who had been on the road non-stop for 2 weeks at that point - we did pretty much nothing. Terry made me breakfast, I did my laundry, and we watched gameshows and other awesome English shows on TV for most of the day.

For those that care, British TV is waaaay better than American TV. The gameshows rule, and they have some killer comedy/variety shows like 8 Out of 10 Cats and Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which had me in tears from laughing. Between that and bullshitting with Terry about all sorts of things all day, it was exactly what I needed to recharge a bit for my last week on the road.

After Shelly and Ryan got home, we headed out to a pub to grab a great dinner (turkey, beef, veggies, you name it, all buffet style for like 6 bucks) and had a couple pints and talked for a while. The last time I saw Ryan he was only 10, and he was hilarious. Not much has changed except for the fact that he's a lot bigger and a pretty talented singer now. He's still super funny.

I tipped the bartender after grabbing a beer, and he pointed out that they don't tip in the UK. I had been in so many countries that I couldn't keep track of where to tip and where not to. I won't forget again though, because the kid did an excellent job of teasing me about it. He recently posted a facebook status concerning the vuvuzelas at the World Cup, with something along the lines of "I'm not donating to those African charities anymore because instead of buying food, they're spending the money on annoying trumpets!" Hilarious. Between that and his mom's video of him passing out in their dog kennel in the backyard after a night of drinking...the kid's given me more internet laughs over the last few months than anyone I know. Great stuff.

So after another chill night and a good sleep, I had to get up at the dreaded 5am to head back to Manchester to catch my flight to Copenhagen. Canada was playing Russia in the quarterfinals that night, but the game didn't start until 1:30am UK time, so there wasn't any real way for me to watch it and be able to make my flight. I tried to find out the score on Terry's computer when I got up, but my cab arrived before I could boot it up. I'll save the story of how I found out for the next blog.

Europe Trip, Part 5 - Brussels

I was waaay behind on these, but I had to catch up on them before I could start posting my Mexico blogs. Mexican buses gave me the time to write them, so I'll post one a day until I'm caught up, then start on the DF. Here we go...

I'm on the comfiest bus ever right now, traveling between Puebla and Cuernavaca in Mexico. Seems like a good time to write about Belgium, right? Sure. I'll ignore the sweet sounds of The Taking of Pelham 123 dubbed into Spanish and put down my snickers bar and get on it.

I've always wanted to go to Brussels for some reason...I've never been sure why I tend to pick off the wall spots as my dream destinations. Missoula, Montana is probably the strangest. Anyway, my flight took me to Amsterdam, and I had booked a high-speed train from there to Brussels. I still had 3 hours to kill until my train left, so I took the train into the city center of Amsterdam. I'm not sure what to say, really. Amsterdam isn't that great. I walked around a bit, checked it out...it's pretty, I guess...lotsa canals and stuff. I guess it's just not really my thing though. I never had any real desire to go there, and now I know why. I don't smoke weed, pay for hookers, or like Dutch people. Yes Milo, this means you.

So, it's train time. I go back to catch it...and had to wait another hour because mine was canceled. I arrived in Brussels around 8pm, after seeing a whole bunch of windmills and some snow. The highway system is strange in Brussels. It weaves up and down like a rollercoaster, through these mini tunnels, then back to street level, then another tunnel, and so on. It almost made me carsick. Oh, and every taxi driver in Brussels looks exactly like Badr Hari.

True story.

So I arrive at my hotel, and for the first time on my trip, the staff doesn't speak English. Oh, and they can't find my reservation. GREAT. So I had to revert to my pathetically bad French to help them try to figure it out, which they eventually did. Barely. They tried to make me pay again, despite the room being pre-paid. Frogs these days.

A quick walk around revealed that I had booked my hotel right in the middle of Brussels' version of a red light district. It was pretty amusing, actually...lots of sex shops and Badrs wandering around. It's not very big though, maybe 2 blocks long. In the other direction from my hotel was the center of the city, which was pretty chill at night. Since there didn't seem to be much to do, I just grabbed some food and beer and chilled in my plush room.

The next day was a fairly big adventure and a half. For some reason, my plug adapter didn't work in my hotel room, so I had to go use the internet at a cafe down the street. Despite it being 7am, the place was packed with people, and they were all yelling at each other in French for some reason I couldn't comprehend. I didn't last long in there, partially because of all the yelling, and partially because French keyboards are a bitch. It's official. I hate all that is French. Even the fries, dammit. Just because.

After that, it was dorky tourist time. Grand Place is fucking amazing, one of the coolest squares I've ever been in. It was kind of odd because at first I couldn't find it to save my life...I walked all over the place for an hour until I actually stumbled across it. Once I found it once though, I couldn't avoid it after that. Every road I went down seemed to lead me back into it. Weird.

There are a ton of cool little plazas and statues all over the city, including one of a gigantic pylon. Not sure why, but it made me laugh.

Being a dorky tourist makes a guy thirsty, so it was pub time. I had read about a pretty unique pub that was up the street from my hotel, so I went to check it out...and it was certainly unique. I walked in, and it was dead silent. No music, no TV's, nothing. Just a bunch of tables with chess boards on them, and a gaggle of old guys, 2 to a table, silently playing against each other. It was sort of haunting because of the quiet, and it was one of those times where everyone in the place looks at you when you walk in. Eerie. I sat at the bar and had the quietest pint of my life (I even tried to swallow quietly...how dumb is that?) and headed on to slightly louder pastures.

I decided to go to a store I had read about called De Bier Tempel. It sells 550 different types of beer from around the world, and it was like my version of heaven. I just meandered around the store for a half hour, checking out all kinds of strange shit. Eventually I picked a few that someone had recommended and took them back to my hotel to enjoy later. That turned out to be a terrible idea, but I obviously didn't know that at the time.

Two pubs later, a couple of people started talking to me in broken English, and were eventually joined by 2 girls who only spoke French. Eventually, they said they were going to grab some beers and go drink in the park. Did I want to come along? Sure, why not...haven't drank in a park in a while (or ever), so it seemed like a good idea. So we go to the store, and they tell me to wait outside and they'll grab the beer. I do that, and they come back with...a 40. In a paper bag. Really? I'm brown bagging it now? This isn't fucking Compton, it's Belgium...I thought it was slightly more civilized, but apparently not. Werd.

So, we're sitting under some trees, drinking in the park. No one else is drinking in the park, but these people don't seem to think it's unusual, so whatever. We're all bullshitting about this and that, and after a bit, the guys and one of the girls say they're gonna jet, but that I should stay there with the other girl, Marie. Uh, okay. She was cute and all that, and I had been talking to her a fair amount, using one of the guys as a translator. I was definitely down for hanging out, but how the hell was I going to talk to her now?

It was...awkward. It's pretty hard to be charming when the girl you're talking to doesn't understand anything you're saying. I think I was doing alright though, for a while at least. At some point it started to rain, and I signaled her to get up so we could go somewhere...ya know, DRY, but she wanted to stay. So we sat there, getting soaking wet, drinking 40's out of soaked paper bags, and playing charades to fucking communicate with each other. Yup, that's exactly how I expected Brussels to turn out. Sure.

Eventually she signaled that she wanted to leave. It was getting dark, so I did what sounded like the best idea in my head...I signaled her to come back to my hotel. I figured that's where it was headed, so why not, right? Uh, NO. Apparently that idea offended her, because she started swearing at me in French and doing a good enough job of charades to imply that she wasn't a slut and it wasn't fucking happening. Me getting denied? What are the chances? At least I can say I've been shot down by women in English, French, and sign language. Go Tim.

So now that I was all alone again (huge surprise there), it seemed like a good time to go back to my hotel room and drink the beer I had bought earlier (even bigger surprise). I played on the net and drank some of the fancy beers, not really paying attention to how inebriated I was getting. I didn't even consider the idea that the beers I had bought would have a higher alcohol content than usual. Well maybe I should have, because once I finally figured it out around midnight, I was smashed. And I had to get up in 5 hours to catch my flight to England. Ruh roh.

So, what did this super-responsible world traveler do?

Kept drinking, that's what. Not the brightest idea.

A few hours later, I could vaguely hear ringing, but couldn't make out where it was coming from. It went away, then came back again. Weird. By the third time, I finally clued into the fact that it was the phone ringing. As in, my wakeup call. I answered, and the lady said in her stupid french accent "Zees is your wakeup call, sir. Zeee TURD one" and hung up. Zut alors, skank.

I was barely functional at this point. I narrowly avoided falling asleep in the shower, packed up my stuff on auto-pilot (and forgot my watch and earphones), and somehow steered myself to the lobby. I walk up, and I shit you not, a BLIND lady is the receptionist. She tries to make me pay for my room AGAIN, which was starting to get pretty annoying, then tells me I had a beer from my minibar. I guess it has sensors or something, because there's no other way she would have known that. She said it was 3 Euros, so I go to hand her the money, and it turned into a Laurel and Hardy sketch.

She sticks her hand out nowhere near me to grab my money, so I reach over to give it to her...and she moves her hand even further away. I know she's blind, but she can hear my voice right in front of her...why would she reach to the side for the money? Finally I just put it on the counter, while she felt along the entire thing before finally going to grab it...and she knocks the coins onto the floor in front of me. So...we go through the whole fucking thing again. And she knocks the coins over AGAIN. Argh. I still can't figure out how she was able to look up my reservation and stuff, but wasn't able to see my fucking hand right in front of her. Braille monitor? Who knows. All I know is that blind people and hangovers don't mix well. Throw in the french, and I wanted to kick a baby at that point.

Anyway, to get to the Brussels airport, you can either take a taxi, or walk 1.5km to the train and take that. I had approximately zero desire to walk anywhere, so I just jumped in a taxi. I figured it was only a few km's, so it couldn't be that pricey.

Uh, no. 20km. 41 euros. Or about 63 bucks. FUCK.

So, I'm brutally hungover, a blind lady has enraged me, and I've been ripped off by Badr Hari, all in the course of an hour. That was how Brussels ended. I actually enjoyed the place, believe it or not...it just wasn't my favorite departure of all time. Luckily, my day was going to get a lot better, courtesy of family, beer, and soccer.