Tuesday the 12th of August, 2008 – Brugges is picturesque but overcrowded with tourists.

We left our hostel not that bright and early to take the train to Brugges. It didn´t take very long. I kind of wished that I seen the film In Bruges before I went, though that didn´t seem to matter much when I got there: apparently locals hate tourists coming into their town and talking about the movie.



I would have feared for my life had I stepped onto one of their bike baths – which incidentally are much wider than their pedestrian pavements – only to have gotten hit after hit by a deadly tirade of provincial bicycles.

Ding! Ding! Ding! would ring their bloodthirsty war cry.

Bruges is very pretty but the amount of tourists makes it practically unbearable, and it is for this reason that we didn´t stay long.

What we did do, however, was this:

- looked into the shop fronts of over-priced tourist trap chocolate and candy stores.

- bought and ate a bag of coffee bean-speckled white chocolate buttons for – wait for it – 1 euro. WIN.

- bought and drank a bottle of chocolate beer, bought from the same Chocolate café (getting the bottle open was another story...).



- visited the Friets Museum (this was pretty exciting as an idea but in practise, it was mainly just a lot of rooms of information about potatoes and only one room about chips....so in the guestbook by the door, I left a message that said ¨If I wanted to learn that much about potatoes, I would have gone to the Potato Museum¨).

- How´s them apples?



(PS- upon finding out that most chips are made in animal fat at any particular stage, I decided to quite chips. Like, for the forseeable future. No biggie. Plus, it´s probably a good move, health-wise. I grow unnervingly rounder and/or flabbier by the day.)



We had dinner at the hostel and talked a little with the three boys from Sydney who we´d kept bumping into during our stay (and who were also going to Pukkelpop but staying in a hostel instead of camping at the festival.

Oh, the highlight of our evening was when we bought every brand of kriek beer from the store in order to conduct a highly scientific taste ratings test. This is how they fared:



#1 Lindemans – Very smooth with a vivid cherry taste. At just 2.5% alcohol, it is the perfect drink for a lazy summers´ afternoon , providing you don´t want to fall asleep in the sun after a few glasses. Extra points for only being served in small bottles. Classy.

#2 Mort Subite Extreme – The ´extreme´ stands for extra fruity flavour. Apparently. Similar to Lindemans in taste but it has a cheaper feel to it, a bit more soda-like. Alcohol content is 4.5% and you can buy it in a can or a small bottle. This is the beer that I fell in love with after sampling it at Pukkelpop 2006.

#3 St Louis - Couldn´t quite put our finger on the taste of this. Sort of like Red Bull or some other energy drink. It pretty much just tastes like a can of soda, It only comes served in Red Bull-shaped cans too...hence, soda. Nothing special.

#4 Timmś Light - This tastes exactly like Dr Pepper. The others rated it higher than the diet kriek in their taste test but I can´t stand Dr Pepper, so here it sits at fourth place for me.

#5 Bellvue – This is the stuff they pass off for authentic kreik at the Belgium Beer Café in Perth. Boo! This just tastes like beer. Beer...possibly with some glazed cherries thrown in. Not worth the inflated import price.

#6 Mort Subite Kriek – Again, this just tastes like lager to me. This is probably what the original, authentic kriek is meant to taste like but fuck it – I´m a girl and they don´t call it a girl´s drink for nothing.

I would like to become a world authority on kriek pls. Employ me as a buyer for your tavern or international beer retailer. Pay me a salary and urge me to sample it all day long.

PS - I read Kafka´s Metamorphisis on the train there and wished to have a dialogue about it but nobody was interested. Uncultured swine. Though in all fairness, our attention was being wooed by chocolate and fries, so I forgive them.