In Bruges 2

So I had found out in Brussels that is was going to be pretty expensive to do all the travel I wanted to do. It was kinda stressing me out trying to decide if I should still go to Berlin or not. But I thought I would follow through with the original plan. First I went to wash my clothes with the tokens I had bought the day before. I found that the hostel was doing all its washing at that time but I couldn't wait because I wanted go and do stuff so that was annoying. Bugger 1. I then went to book train tickets and a hostel, but the wifi was being really flakey. After wasting 30 min trying to book stuff I had a go using the desktop computers. Bugger 2. Didn't really like putting my credit card details in though. Unfortunately the hostel that was recommended to me was fully booked so I tried to book the best rated hostel with available beds. Bugger 3. Then the website threw an error at me saying there were no beds left. Bugger 4. So I booked the next next best thing. Stupid flakey internet. I booked the train ticket and elected to pick it up at the station. So I left the hostel much later than I was hoping. Bugger 5. I had also forgotten to get the booking reference number from my emails so that I could go and pick up my ticket. Bugger 6. I wanted to go up the Belhof and still make it to a brewery for a tour and then get to a walking tour at 2:30pm. Turned out the Belhof only holds 70 people at a time (and I can see why inside) so there was a bit of a wait to get up there. It was a pretty cool view from the top:

They used to store the towns treasure up there and it was really easy to defend because of the tiny staircases (366 narrow steps to the top). At the top was a sweet bell mechanism as well:

I guess all bell towers have them but I've never seen it before.

It gets "programed" with new songs every year by some dude. I then figured I should make a dash for the brewery. I thought I might make it before 1pm (in case they had tours on the hour) but was hoping I could just have a look around by myself like the other one in Brussels. Unfortunately I hit quite a bit of traffic on the way down. I had a bit of a run to get to the brewery only to find I had missed the tour at 1pm by 3min. Bugger 7. The last one was at 4pm and the walking tours are usually 2 hours so that was dumb. Feeling dejected I decided to be productive and pick up my train ticket instead of in the morning in case I was in a hurry. I remembered that my phone was just smart enough to get emails on it with wifi, so I found a bar and bought a beer to make it all better. When I downloaded my emails I found an email saying I had booked the hostel twice and another one once. I sent emails cancelling two of the bookings but lost my deposits on them. Bugger 8. But I got the booking reference for my train and went and picked my tickets up. Now I had to get across Bruges very quickly to get to the walking tour.

I felt really stink and I realised that when things are going well by myself then all is well, but now that things had started to go pants I don't have very good solo coping mechanisms. But now I had booked everything I needed to for the next day but it was all pretty damn expensive (150 euro for train Bruges-Berlin, it will be another 100 to get from Berlin to Munic). But I figured I just needed to get on the tour and have a yarn to a few people. I made it to the walking tour by the skin of my teeth but then left half way through to get to the brewery tour.

The brewery tour was OK, not as good as the one in Brussels as it is pretty much just a mass-produced beer using modern techniques. It had a couple of sweet chillers thought, new:

and old:

Apparently the design was inspired by a woman's body or so the story goes. But the primary goal of the brewery and walking tour was achieved as I met a guy on the walking tour from New York and he was keen to have a beer and show me around New York when I get there. I had also signed up to a beer tasting so I had a quick bite to eat and went to that. It was a bit crap as it was beer tasting for people that didn't really want to "taste" beer (they just wanted to get drunk) but the guy taking it was pretty entertaining. I then went on a pub crawl and only got into bed at about 4am. This was gonna be a pretty crap nights sleep. Mission accomplished though: talked to lots of people. Very stressful day though.