Too much chocolate and beer can make you stupid.

We stepped off the train in Bruges, Belgium eager and excited to explore somewhere new. This was the first city that my European travelling trio (consisting of myself, my much younger sister Caitlin and my friend from work Kate) were going discover after activating our Eurorail pass. We were quite prepared for this day jaunt into Belguim; we had my sister, who speaks fluent French, and our trusty Rick Steves guidebook. Rick says, “take a bus from the train station to the main town square”. No problem – leaving out the fact that none of us actually ride the bus in our own home towns, how hard could this be.

The first bus we approached seems to be destined for “park ing”. Unfamiliar with the word, we enlist the help of Caitlin, coercing her into approaching the driver and asking for clarification. In flawless French, my sister asked the driver if this was the correct bus to the town square. The driver must have looked at her confused, she went on to ask him if the town square was referred to as “park ing” and if so, was this the correct bus? Maybe he thought we were trying to punk him or something. He cocked his head looking at Caitlin, while out of the corner of his eye watching Kate and I trying to figure out bus fare and then responded, in perfect English; “No. This is the bus to the parking lot”. Ahhh…I see.

After a few more humiliating episodes we did finally reach the town square (not referred to as “park ing”). Rick Steves speaks the truth about this square, there are some delicious French fry vendors. Sufficiently stuffed on deep fried goodness, we split up to explore the town. Kate opted to tour the city by boat, winding though the many canals. Caitlin came with me as I set off on a mission to find the windmills that I once saw in a brochure. Cartoon map in hand we set off – we didn’t make it very far until we stumbled upon a chocolatier. Deciding right then that there is no possible was that we can come all the way to Belgium and not indulge in one of their greatest exports, we elect to stop at every chocolatier we pass and just sampling one truffle in each place.

The tourist part of Bruges is shaped like an egg and is only 430 hectares (I have no ideal what that is the equivalent to but its not big) and in this tiny area they have 65 chocolatiers! Anyway, after an hour of walking and countless delicious little morsels of confectionary goodness, I deduced from our cartoon map that we were lost. Having encountered nothing but kindness here, I decide to enlist in the help of a local while sampling one of her delicious caramel treats at our next chocolate stop. Our earlier bus debacle taught us that the local language was Flemish and not French, realizing that my sister would be of no good in this situation, I took control. I explained, in that slow and patronizing way that North Americans have, that I was looking for the windmills. The lady looked at me blankly. Hmm…too many words in my sentence I guessed. “which way, direction to windmills”, I asked nice and slow, while pointing, and with more volume then the situation required. The candy store lady tilted her head to the side and replied “I don’t know”. Ahhh…I see the language barrier was greater then I thought. My sister tried to interrupt at this point but I shushed her, determined to elicit the information from this kind lady. Not knowing a word of Flemish, and clearly my patronizing English was doing us no good I resorted to charades. Yep, not a high point in my life, but I stood there in that chocolate shop acting like a windmill. I mimed the blowing wind and spun my arms around – just like a windmill. The lady stared at me as if I was from another planet instead of another country, I was shocked at her evasiveness, how rude! My sister interrupted again, this time to explain patronizingly to me, that this lady knew what I windmill was she just didn’t know where they were. Oops, I may have muttered thank you before I ran, red faced out of the store.

I decided the only way to overcome my embarrassment was to drink my sorrows away. Luckily not a problem here in the land of beer! We took a brewery tour with a very harsh Belgium women who had nothing kind to say about big breweries, canned beer or really anything made outside of Belgium but they gave us a ton of free beer so who was I to complain. After a sufficient buzz had been achieved and realizing all the chocolate shops had closed we decided it was best to head back to Paris. As we were now old pros at the bus system it was mere minutes until we were at the ticket wicket trying secure our boarding passes for the next train.

Caitlin and Kate handled this, I, still a tad ashamed of my poor performance as a windmill earlier, watched from close by. Have you ever watched two drunken people trying to make train reservations in a foreign country? Hilarious. They explained to the agent that our final destination was Paris and we need to go ASAP. He then said, sure, first take the 1835 train to Brussels and then change to the 2015 train to Paris. I understood this, I have no idea what Kate and Caitlin heard. One of them then replied, that wouldn’t be possible as we couldn’t catch an 1835 train out of Brussels as we were, very clearly, still in Bruges. Most places in the world, the agent would just repeat his directions. Not here – he put his head down on the desk. Our ticket agent gave himself a time out. I think he may have banged it a few times too before he turned around and picked up a glossy brochure to use as a prop. He then explained, in the slow and patronizing tone I had used earlier, that we should get on a train – just like this pretty one in the picture, when the hands on the clock both point to six. Sufficiently humiliated at the degrading instructing they had received, the two of them made their way to the platform, my sister pausing just long enough to drop my boarding pass on me - I was on the floor, laughing my ass off.