2 days and a night on Beligian soil - Part 1. Review on Belgium, General

I have been always fascinated and mystified by Europe and its culture. As luck would have it, I got a chance to go on a work assignment in Netherlands. I thought I could use this time to exploit the continent, of course when I am not working on weekends.

I had received great reviews on Belgium from my Dutch counterparts. Ravings like how it is a must-visit place, Venice of North Europe, most underrated tourist destination etc. That made me find out more about it on the net. The reviews fascinated me to no extent. I got so excited that I booked a room to spend the saturday night in a Belgium city for me and my 2 other Indian colleagues who seemed to be equally gung-ho.

It was a biting cold, rainy Friday in Amsterdam. The mercury read 3 degrees which felt like -2 degrees because of the strong cold wind blowing over the country from the North Sea. Everything was murky around, including our plans to spend a good time under the sun on weekends. The forecast looked gloomy over the entire coming week. My two colleagues who were enthused about going out on weekends had chickened out already. But I was resolute. Somehow managed to brainwash them into making the trip happen. But that wasn't until 12:30 pm in the night. Getting a good night's sleep after the monumental effort to convince them was out of question and more so because the first train to Brussels was at 8 in the morning. Too ambititious maybe. But we decided to stick to the plan, come-what-may. We were absolutely ready to weather any kind of storm coming our way. Woah! That sounded good..But frankly speaking, at the back of my mind, I was skeptical about the weather myself. I had visited weather websites and things didn't look good anywhere in Europe and to add to my apprehensions, I met an Indian fellow in the hotel lift on my way up to the room who expressed his great concern over the weather. He went on to say that I shouldn't go there since one of his Belgian friends had given him the grim weather update.

Anyway, I managed to drag myself out of the bed in a wee hour of morning. As soon as I got up, I squinted outside the window to check if the Weather God had obliged. It didn't seem all that great. All disoriented, I managed to combine a few ingredients and made, what I call as the 'Sandwiches' for the trip.

Once ready with our travelling gears, the 3 of us rushed to the Amsterdam Central Station in the hopes of catching the earliest train. We did make it and also managed to get a 40% discount on the tickets at the last minute. Just then, I saw a few shafts of sunlight glimmering thro' the station roof. Things didn?t seem so bad all of a sudden. Those rays of hope instilled a renewed zest in me.

It was first experience in an European International train. It?s a pleasure just to watch the scences and locales pass in front of you. Everything was lush green around with the arrival of spring.

There was an eerie silence inside the train and at nearly every station where the train pulled up even with all the passengers boarding and alighting the train. Much contrary to the commotion so common in Indian trains. Damn, I hate to say this but we are a noisy lot. Now don?t hold the population as an excuse here. Even a single Indian has a huge noise-making potential. I just think we should master the art of talking slowly with voice modulation rather than shouting on top of our lungs to make ourselves the center of attention everytime. Nonetheless, this train journey seemed quite meditative and pleasant.

Three hours went by and it seemed like just an hour! We had reached Brussels.

I stood in the queue in front of the tickets counter to get the tickets to Brugge for the evening, while Joe got us hot steaming Waffles, a local delicacy.

All done, we got outside the Central Station just to be greeted by cold breeze slapping our faces.

Boy, it was really cold! A teenage girl approached us and tried to sell us the city tour package.

We could barely stand in the cold, but the deal looked quite good, so we listened to her details and got the tickets. The good thing about the city tour is that it has hop-on, hop-off buses at key locations after every 15 minutes. So you could get down at some point, roam around at your own pace and catch the other bus to some other point. What?s more, the ticket was valid for the next day too.

Since we had some time on our hands, we walked around the buzzing streets.

There were markets and shops all around. A lot of interesting artifacts to be seen. Some street aritist would be enjoying playing a santoor-like instrument with amazing proficiency and in total oblivion, filling the air which carried the whiff of waffels with melodious tunes.

They say Belguim chocolates are one of the best in the world. So, had to buy them. Went nuts just seeing the different types of chocolates.

Okay, enough shopping. Now was the time to hop on to a City tour bus. Brussels looked absolutely superb in sunshine interspersed with spells of rain. A nicely planned city which has its ancient heritage preserved, but also has good modern structures. The mix was just great. Needless to say, we went beserk with our cameras.

Brussels is not a flat city like Amsterdam. It has a lot of hilly terrain which makes it even more interesting, especially, the view from the highest point where you get to see the city?s breath-taking skyline.

Next in line was Brugge. Heard a lot about this town. Now I was really looking forward to visit it.

We were just in time for the Brugge train at 6. So there was a chance to get around Brugge in the evening as opposed to reaching there at night just to sleep.

...continued in the comments section coz of 8000 words limitation..don't forget to check them..