Cleetbos

Brussels and Bostogne

Travelled via intercity train to Brussels, very easy and painless process. Nearly immediately, once I entered Belgium 🇧🇪 the infrastructure quality was far inferior to NL.

Arrived in Central Brussels and went on surprise surprise a walking tour. This was run by a Brussels local and was the worst quality tour I've had so far. He was very nonchalant and didn't really offer much useful information. Luckily, on the tour, i met another Aussie, and she had plans with some other people to go for drinks afterwards, so i got to meet a lot of other travellers during that, which was good. Funnily, the place we were meant to meet was a spot called "Delirium." However, if you look at the video in this post, there were about 15 stores called that right next to each other. There is nothing else to report on that front. Besides, it seems that a lot of Europeans sadly use Brussels as a party spot to get wasted.

Went for a walk around brussels and found:
- Tin Tin paintings on the street next to a comic book store. Apparently Belguim has an even higher comic book output than Japanese Anime (Asterix and oblix etc)
- A little boy peeing fountain (Mannekin Pis). Apparently this is meant to signify Belguims dont take themselves very seriously as its sort of there unofficial mascot. Funnily enough its been stolen 4 times so they put security cameras up next to it and if you look at the photos ive taken. The security cameras then got stolen too! During the Belgium national day apparently the little boys water gets swapped out for beer so belgiums will line up and fill there mugs with free beer from the little boys willy
- Some buildings captioned in photos for your perousal

Bastogne
- Rented a little french Citroen car that was so guttless, speed limit in Belguim was 120kph and the guttless little fartbox struggled. Nonetheless it was different driving on the other side of the road, especially in a manual. Didnt really struggle, it was mostly guessing at what some of the road signs meant
- Drove 2hrs from brussels middi station which is the southern central station in brussels. It was interesting how the second you leave brussels central the city turns to a steaming pile of shit, junk everywhere, homeless people all around and lots of poor immigrants everywhere. Like i passed an invisible barrier and the city was like "oh this area we dont maintain or care about." Even the station at brussels Midi and brussels noor were so decrepit, and so were the trains, such a stark contrast to the beautiful stations of the Netherlands and well kept trains there.
- Went to the Bastogne war memorial as i wanted to see the history of the battle of the bulge that took place in 1944, the stand against the Germans last counter offensive before their defeat.
- The Americans lost 76,000 soldiers over 30 days of continual fighting and the townspeople didnt forget it. There's American flags everywhere
- i went and visited the actual battleground, and it was littered with foxholes and shell holes. The trees had recovered, but my god, there would have been so much shrapnel from the trees flying around. Didnt get any photos on my phone all on my proper camera. Just imagine a bunch of holes in the ground
- interestingly the anti aircraft guns were just 4 x 50cal machine guns in sync on a trailer. Which apparently was very effective against infantry too which doesnt surprise me. From experience 1 50.cal is enough to obliterate nearly anything let alone 4.

Was going to go to luxembourg and stuttgart next but floods in southern Germany happened so i fly out to oxford on the 10th and stay with some family friendsRead more