Flying the Coop “As you wander on through life, child, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not the hole.”

Monday morning, I left Bruges for Brussels.  After the train ride, struggling to find the hostel, checking-in, I pretty only had time for dinner and to study the  free tourist map I got from the hostel.  I didn't have much advice from Rick about Brussels, so this map was great, with many tourist and non-tourist tips for eating and sightseeing.

Tuesday started slow after a pretty fitful night of sleep. It's been awhile since 6 strangers kept me up despite ear plugs and an eye mask.  I've lost my callouses.  Also after staying in several hostels, I don't know how I've missed this guaranteed hostel dweller type so far: the person with insanely bad BO.  Well, my turn came up.  Holy cow this guy is impressively.  The smell really penetrates our tiny room.  Not surprisingly, I haven't seen him shower in the past 1.5 days.  This hostel, 2GO4 Quality Hostel, is actually super deluxe.   Free coffee in the morning, free internet, free linens, key card entry for the building and rooms, lockers in each room, little lights and electric outlets above each bunk bed, good water pressure, elevator, bathrooms in each room AND the hallways, etc.  Really, the only bad element is Mr. Stinky ... and sharing a room with 6 strangers.

This just in: as I was writing about Mr. Stinky, he took a shower, but came out smelling exactly the same.  So apparently it's a laundry issue.

Brussels is definitely the most difficult city I've navigated so far, mainly because there are so few streets.  It's mighty frustrating.  Every movement from place to place took forever because I kept getting lost.

First, I went to the Royal Museum to see some Bruegels and Rubens; I think after London, I'll be done with museums for a long time.

After an internet cafe visit and lunch, I went to the European Parliament area.  The visitors info center had not a gift shop, but cabinet after cabinet with shelves of free posters and brochures like "The Single Euro Payments Area: What It Means for Consumers" and "A Quality Environment: How the EU is Contributing" in many languages.  It was the wonkiest tourist place on earth.  And people were snatching these things up!  Free makes people crazy.

As you can imagine, the European Parliament tour was boring.  It consisted of an audio tour with overly peppy voiceovers and way too much detail about the EP process, even for me, and we walked into 2 spaces.  One of which was the grand assembly room where the environmental commission was meeting.  The audio tour would occasionally use "Ode to Joy" as interstitial music.  But the highlight was the end music, which involved rapping and record scratching over Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."  The EU apparently completed the process of requistioning two turntables and a microphone.

I've seen tons of temp agencies (Adecco, Manpower) storefronts in Brussels and nowhere else.  I have assume it has something to do with EP being here.

After the EP tour, I took the advice of the map and rode on tram 81, which goes around the city into several different neighborhoods.  I also stopped at the Horta Museum, which is the former home of the architect who was influential in the Art Nouveau movement.

In Amsterdam and Brussels, lots of women wear head scarfs.  It was noticeable to me mainly because it's surprising in retropect how rare it is to see it in LA.

The problem with flying to Geneva tomorrow and using a super low cost carrier like easyJet, as I am, is that they have crazy luggage restrictions, i.e., ONE piece of hand baggage and you have to pay €7-15 to check any luggage, and then there's a limit of how much baggage you can check.  I have acquired a few things since I left LA, mainly warmer clothes because it's because much colder than I expected.  I valiantly fought to get everything in my little backpack (and ended up wearing both my pairs of pants plus 2 shirts+sweater+jacket onboard to save space AND emptied my purse contents into my travel/cargo pants pockets), so we'll see how it goes tomorrow at 8:20 am.  I have to wake up and leave the hostel by 5:45 am to get to the airport especially because easyJet won't let me check-in online because I'm not an EU citizen...?

Update:  the bag got through!