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Thursday. Still cold and cloudy. It’s been a bit of a crappy week. I hate disappointing people and even if I do my best to avoid that, I fail sometimes. It’s known that we can’t please everyone… But anyway, I try.
To lift my spirits without drinking, (plus, it’s 8.10am), I’ll write about something that always makes me smile, this time, through the tears.
I love traveling. I love visiting places and I love meeting people when I travel.
In 1999, when my life with the man was still nice, my cousin, the one who lives in Barcelona, visited us.
At the time, we were living at a university campus in Cowshitland and the place was quite boring, so we decided to go to Brussels because neither my cousin or the man had ever been there before.

It was July and really hot, totally unusual. We were in the highway stuck under the sun, for several hours. We got to Brussels exhausted, much later than intended and without a place to sleep. So instead of seeing the city, we spend a few more hours looking for a hotel. Holy crap, EVERYTHING was full.
After a really long time searching, we found a hotel with one free room with one double bed and one single bed. Perfect!
The hotel was really old and it looked deserted, but according the person at the reception, it was full.
We took our bags from the car and went upstairs. As soon as we entered the room, we noticed that the double bed was actually a single bed frame with a double mattress on top. I sat on one side and the other side almost flipped over me. We were laughing like crazy and I remember saying: “It’s fine!! We can still sleep here if we stay near the middle. I’m not going to search for another place for 2 hours, plus, the bed may be twisted but at least it has clean sheets”. And as I was saying that, I was pulling the bedspread and discovering there was a hair on the pillow. “WTF!!” I shouted , half laughing half gagging and wanting to cry.
If you wonder, I can’t remember from which body part that hair was and now I’m afraid to ask… It’s better if I ignore the information… And I did sleep on that bed, I put a towel on top of the pillow and didn’t dry myself when I took a shower.

That’s the first memory that comes to my head when I think of Brussels.

Before that, in 1994, I visited Brussels with my sister. As soon as we left the train station, we found a youth hostel to stay. Hole in one. Everything was great. Since the hostel was near the city town, we decided to see the place at night. As soon as we got the market square, a nice guy came to talk to us and after a few minutes, he asked us if we would like him to show us some places. We agreed. That was very nice since every time we had to find the places we wanted to see on the map, we got lost and I had to hear my sister complaining for hours because I made her walk too much. But she refused to be the one reading the maps because she said she didn’t understand them… And it seems that I didn’t understand much of them either.

Nice guy took us to see several night clubs and to see The Manneken Pis, a little statue with a boy peeing. He probably took us to many more places but I just remember those.

That’s The Manneken Pis. You mostly don’t see him naked.

Every day, he wears a different suit.

We had nice memories about the city and specially about the nice people living there, so the following year, 1995, we decided to go there again, but this time, also a friend came along.

One of the hardest things to do when you are traveling, it’s to find a clean bathroom. Mostly every city in Europe has public bathrooms somewhere, but sometimes, finding those bathrooms took a very long time, so we kind of had this “refreshments for bathroom” deal and we went every day to a McDonalds (or place of the kind) to get something to eat/drink and then we used the bathrooms.

As we were approaching the counter to order, a nice lady came to us and asked us for change. You have to imagine that it was hard for us to hide the smile (read laughter) after she started talking.

That’s Ivette. She could speak five languages. We spent some time talking to her. I took a picture of her together with my sister and friend Karina. I promised Ivette I was going to send her a copy, and I did.
I’m amazed that the actual picture wasn’t blurry… That’s a picture of the picture, I’m sorry it’s not that good.
It’s a shame you can’t really see the stockings. And also that her friend wasn’t as nice as her and didn’t want to pose for the picture.

Ivette was a “Lady of the Night”, the so called “Oldest Profession”.  I’m pretty sure she was one of the founders… And she was still working!

If you are planning on visiting Brussels, take the time to meet the people, they are amazing!

~ by DotedOn on April 30, 2015.