Last weekend, a crowd of almost 20 people from Sarphatistraat (me among them) spent their weekend in Belgium. We left Amsterdam by coach on Friday morning and, after taking a train in Bruxelles/Brussel, we got to Bruges/Brugge. We spent all the afternoon walking around the old city center and taking pictures of it; since we we’re tired and we wanted to save energies for the following night (la Nuit Blanche) we went to our beds early… well, not all did that, the two Peruvians had a Belgian beer drinking night and, after arriving to the hostel around 6am, one of them threw up… next morning, he had left the night before’s dinner in Brugge and he was bringing with him to Bruxelles/Brussel a big hangover…

In Bruxelles/Brussel the weather was not as nice as it was in Brugge, I mean, rather than being chilly and cloudy it rained… That’s why, after being at the Grand Place/Grote Markt and taking the typical photo in the Manneken Pis‘ corner, we decided to take a sightseeing tour in a bus… a common activity that many tourist do, but when you’re a 20 people’s group you’re willing to get a discounted fare since you know you have bargaining power… and when there’re two different companies’ empty buses parked in the same corner, your bargaining power increases even more!!… and usually happens (if not, they collude) that the two bus drivers get into a price war (starting to voicing lower ticket prices) … and it might happen (as it did) that the price war becomes a personal question and one of them gets into his competitor’s bus and tries to punch his face (a violent alternative of kicking your competitor out of the market)… But, besides that, the sightseeing tour was really nice (it even took us to the Atomium!), long (1h30′) and cheap (5€).

Afterwards, we went to have a beer at the Delirium Café, a pub awarded with a World Guiness Record because of its 2.004 different commercial beers you can find there (e.g.: a Cruzcampo… 6€!). After having dinner, we gathered at the Grand Place/Grote Markt, which at that time had become the “Botellón Place”… la Nuit Blanche’07 had begun!! However, at 1am Giulio, Teresa and me decided to go to see a concert held in a pub nearby… but, after getting lost for a while, when we reached the pub there was no concert there!! So, we decided to have a beer in a bar opposite to it. What a bar, man! It’s called “Booze’n'Blues” and once inside we realized we had got in a music temple: a “Frank Zappa plays Frank Zappa” poster hang it from the ceiling, a french chanson poster hang it behind the bar, a blues stars concert one in another wall… and an old jukebox full of vinyls ready to be played for 50 cents each; we’re chatting there until 3am. Then, we walked back to the Grand Place/Grote Markt but it was empty of people and full of garbage… and, after rambling around for a while we ended up in the same bar again. There it ended our Nuit Blanche, having a cup of tea while listening to some rock&roll classics coming from the old jukebox… It was not the kind of night I expected, but it was nice though.

But what I wouldn’t have never expected after such a night was meeting the guy we met in the bakery where we’re having breakfast. He was a vagrant who had slept that night in a street of Bruxelles/Brussel and, unusually (as he said), was having breakfast in a bakery; rather than asking us for money, as it may be expected, he just wanted to hold a conversation (he even tried to invite us for a coffe). He explained us that he had been living in several places of the world (he was able to speak Dutch, French and English); he had had several jobs, although nowadays he earns some money playing the saxo in the streets; and that he has been a “whisky drinker” for more than 20 years. He advised us to travel around the world and enjoy the present as much as we could. Personally, I had the impression he had come out of a de André’s song. Although he had been in many places he was still looking for a place where people would be warm and talkative; after my Italian colleagues suggested him to go to the South of Italy, he told us that they weren’t the first to suggest him that, so he’d move him to there as soon as he could gather enough money.

Touched by that unexpected meeting, we left him in the bakery since we had to meet the rest of the people before taking the coach back to Amsterdam. We met them at the lockers of the Gare Bruxelles-Central/Station Brussel-Centraal and, after getting to Bruxelles Nord/Brussel Noord, we took the coach back to Amsterdam at 12am.

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