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The Europe Tour 2000-2001 >
Brussels, Belgium |
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OK. What the hell is it with Belgium? What a strange country. You could be born, raised, and live in Belgium all your life, never dealing with the outside world, yet you would still have to be multi-lingual. Different parts of Belgium speak different languages, and the different languages seem to bring different people as well. While people in Gent spoke Flemish and perfect English and were nice people, people in Brussels spoke French and very little English and they were French. By now you might know my opinion of French people. However, the Brussels French people are even worse. It's not like I'm the only one who felt this way either. I got varying reports from all sorts of people on how rudely they were treated almost everywhere. I didn't like this city from minute one. Our group arrived to the hotel and proceeded to check in. There were only 25 of us, so it shouldn't have been a huge deal. Well, with the front desk staff having the intelligence of a bowl of fruit, the process took forever. I was maybe 10th in line and it probably took half an hour for me to get to the desk. They were so disorganized and understood so little of what was asked that it was almost useless even trying. I remember having problems here when I was here with Pocahontas. I finally got checked in and made it to my room, which was quite small, albeit much bigger than the one I had in this hotel two years ago! I had my own room becuase my friend Cecilia from Sweden was going to be visiting this week. My plan was to unpack, then shower, then go to sleep for a while. Well first I notified the front desk that my minibar did not work, and I needed it replaced (I had some meat and stuff I needed to be kept cold!) I woke up quite late the next afternoon and went in search of a convenience store. I wandered around several streets coming up with nothing. I walked in the direction of the grocery store I remembred from my last visit, but happened across a small convenience store on the way. I picked up some munchies and a "LARGE PROMO PACK!!" 12 pack of Coke. I guess that's quite a novelty over here! I returned to the hotel, again notifying the front desk that the minibar had not been replaced, and proceeded to play on my computer the rest of the afternoon. Monday night, I went to the airport to pick up Cecilia. It's lucky I decided to go early, because her flight was about 30 minutes early getting in. I think that's a first in the aviation business. If you're wondering who this girl is, read the Goteborg entry. I'm not providing any details from this point forward! The next day I had to go to work fairly early at noon to load in. Before leaving, I yet again notified them that the minibar was out of order and needed to be replaced. They stared at me like I had just asked them where I could find a sale on inflatable Virgin Mary's. I just shook my head, and went to work. Although the building is still a dump, what a relief it is that they have resurfaced the floors, so that no longer do we have to push everything over the paved equivilent of a gravel road, and now get a nice flat floor. Too bad they didn't add about 3 times the space when they were surfacing the floor!! That would have helped immensely since there was very very little space to put anything while loading in. This slowed us down a bit, but we still managed to get everything up by the time we left that night. Wednesday, I again had to go to work early to finish up load-in before opening with two shows. Before leaving, you can guess what I had to do yet a fourth time. Yep...I NEED A MINIBAR!!!! And wouldn't you know it that that night I received a very large minibar!! Over the next few days, Cecilia and I did a little sightseeing, stopping by The Grand Place (a very old market area with a big castle looking building by it). One thing I didn't see was some statue of a small peeing boy. I have no idea why this silly statue is such a big attraction, because I've seen 100 statues of peeing boys in fountains. I guess this is one damn cute peeing boy! Friday, we visited the Palace and walked by The European Union building. This is the building that basically controls Europe I guess. It is by far the biggest building I think I have ever seen. Take the number of floors in the Empire State building, and put the same floor space in about 15 floors. The thing stretched further than I could even see. For anyone in Memphis, I think it's even longer than the Federal Express warehouse, and obviously much nicer and higher. We also ate at some really nice restaurants, but I'm really surprised that in a very busy area of town, almost all of these restaurants closed up at 11pm even on Friday night. It's even more surprising when you know that almost all restaurants close also from 2pm-6pm!! Of course, in finding an area with restaurants, the front desk was about as helpful as a fart in a spacesuit. On one other night I wanted to order a pizza, and they just didn't understand what I meant. I think one of them finally got the gist of what I was asking and told me that wasn't possible, even though the next morning I saw a pizza box sitting by someone's door. I've noticed something interesting about Brussels. It has a distinct lack of stoplights. Even at major intersections, stoplights are a rarity...no stop signs even. It's just two roads that intersect, and cars drive at full speed right through them, I guess praying that no one comes the other direction. One of my favorites was where two major roads merged, and there weren't even any lines anywhere, just two massive lines of pavement running into each other, and cars flew in and out of each other going their various directions! How they avoid crashing is beyond me. On Saturday, I went to a three-show day and Cecilia left to return to Sweden. Not fun on either account!!! By the way, we are still just friends! Don't be expecting any wedding invitations anytime soon!! One cool aspect of this building is the amount of grafitti inside on the loading-area walls. I think every crew member of every show ever to play here has entered their sign, symbol, or saying. Crews from Monkees to Metallica, Queen to Queensryche, and everything in between had something up there. They've had everything but the catchy N'Sync. Check for mine in the pictures section when I get that done!! On Sunday we did three more shows and a loadout that rivalled the fun of tooth decay. At one point some things got pretty heated between some of the crew and the stage manager. And at another point, no one could find the truck drivers to bring in the last truck. So we sat around waiting for 15 minutes until someone finally found them having a sandwich and a cigarette in a break room somewhere. After that we finished and headed home. That night, my worst fear became a reality. I was cooking dinner in a hotpot and had to empty some over-boiling water into a bowl. The next time I had to empty it, I subconciously thought the bowl was empty and picked it up kind of sideways, splashing some of the previous boiling water on my hand. This caused me to drop the bowl, right onto my computer. And I watched as the thing just shut off. I did everything I could to revive it, but I got no action until the next morning. And it wasn't until even later that i found out several keys no longer worked. Only a few inoperable keys is not too shabby for spilling a bowl of boiling water with pasta bits on it. Monday morning proved the utmost in front-desk-staff stupidity. Now I have had stories from them all week, but this was incredible. I got down there to find a huge group of very frustrated people all mumbling things like "stupid" or "idiots" or "!&#^*@*@." Knowing I was in for some fun, I got in line to check out. That's when I saw one girl nearly in tears not knowing why her phone bill was so high. The front desk guy was insisting that she pay it immediately, and she was saying "But I don't know why it's so high, can you show me the bill?" He was saying that couldn't show her the bill, but that she had to pay it. So me, being a little more direct than she could be, stepped in to help. I went through the same thing with him telling me she has to pay it, but he won't show it to her. I informed him that if he couldn't show her a bill, she wouldn't to pay it. He said she had to. Au contraire (okay I have no idea how to spell these silly French words, but it's close)! About 5 minutes of arguing later, I finally got him to print out a bill. He had the phone numbers on his screen but said he couldn't print them. So I said "Then write them down on the bill." He looked at me, and said "Say please." I nearly fell over laughing. He actually had the audacity to ask me to say please to him after he had been such an asshole to this girl! When it came time for my bill, I didn't have the energy nor the desire to deal with their bullshit anymore, so I just told them that they were idiots, paid, and walked off. I happened to hear someone taking it a little further than I did, nearly ripping one guy's head off. I think they had had the cleaning staff break an expensive item in their room, and the manager was "never around" to deal with it. This particular day, he was supposed to be in at 6:30am. This conveniently changed to 7:30. It was now 8:15, and he wasn't there. The people at the front desk said maybe he had something else to do and wouldn't come in until later. When pressed with the question if he was always this reliable, the front desk's response was, "Well, the world isn't perfect, sir. Sometimes people have other things to do." Managers of hotels have other things to do than come to work at their hotel??? That sounds highly suspect. But by far, my favorite story of all is the following: There are a lot of people in our group who use toll-free calling cards. The hotel had charged for accessing toll-free numbers, which is of course wrong. I'm guessing they do it to catch tourists who don't pay attention to their bills. Well, anyway, everyone had these charges taken off their bills, one by one. Then one of the last guys came to the desk to pay his bill. He had checked it the night before and had brought just the right amount of money with him to pay it. When he received his bill this time, it was more than twice as much as the night before. He noticed a very large amount tagged on the end and asked what it was. Remember all those charges that had been removed from everyone else's bill? They were put on his bill, becuase "someone has to pay them." The hotel staff added all the calls removed from others' bills to his bill, telling him he had to pay them because the others didn't. He looked at them with the blankest stare possible, not even knowing how to respond to this stupidity. He just said "This is how much money I have (being the amount from the night before), and this is how much you are getting." He placed it on the desk and left. They told him he had to pay all of it, but of course he did not. From there we left for the airport, after waiting forever for a few poeple who had wandered off somewhere. At the airport, I was yet again very last in line to check in. For every flight thus fasr this year, I have been last, no matter what! We received slightly better service at the check-in counter than at the hotel. Smiling faces for once. I listened to a really funny conversation happen next to me... "Hello! Welcome to Whatever-Air!"It just struck me as funny, becuase it let out all the sentiments I have been feeling. From there I went and got a very-overpriced pasta for lunch, checked out by a very rude checkout woman (in Brussels?), before heading for the bus to the plane. I was the third person on the shuttle bus to the plane. After about 10 more people got on, he closed the doors and started to pull off. I thought, "Cool! Only about 13 people on here, choice plane seating!" Wroooooooong! Just after moving, he stopped to let a few more people on. Then a few more, and more, and more. The bus filled up to full capacity, and I got shoved to the back. Therefore, by the time I got off the bus, I was near last in line to get on the plane. Ugh. I managed to get an okay seat, and settled in for the trip to Valencia, Spain. Three words: I HATE BELGIUM! |
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