Gent: Part 1 - The Crazy Night Before NYE

It's finally 2012!!!!

It's the Big Year that we've all been waiting for - Or maybe that's just me. 2012 has been marked in my mental calender for years as what should be an amazing and unpredictable year. With the prospect of living in a country I know nothing about, studying at Uni, living on campus, making new friends, travelling with new and old friends and My Love coming to meet me in Sweden at the end of my studies - the first half of this year should prove to be a dooozy! Who knows what the second half will hold?! So how was everyone's celebrations into the New Year? Mine were celebrated in a Medieval city called Gent in Belgium.

We left on Friday afternoon the day before New Years Eve and were planning to be back on New Year's Day afternoon. The cat, of course, was not so happy about the prospect of us leaving for so long.

Goodbye Poffy!

So, we casually just drove to Belgium, picking up Michiel's brother along the way, and 2 and a half hours later, we were in Gent! Finding the Bed and Breakfast (Myriam's Place) we were staying at was an absolute bitch to tell the truth. By the time we got there, it was night time and the gps was just, well, being a gps. Telling you to go down roads that ended up being dead ends because of construction sites or telling us to go down one way streets the wrong way. It was all very confusing and a little stressful for all but a GREAT TOUR OF THE CITY!!!! We drove through what I think ... was a shopping street...for pedestrians because there sure as heck were no other cars there. The pedestrians were looking at us like we were the crazy tourists that we were as we drove through...slowly parting the shoppers but there was no other way to go!!! Honest. And we drove down tram lines that were "strictly not for cars" and began to familiarise ourselves with multiple landmarks as we saw them time after time again. When we finally found the street our BnB was on, it was a thin one way street with no parking so the lady (who's name is actually Myriam) told us to "park wrongly" so we parked smack in the middle of the street and fetched her as she was going to lead us to private parking. It was a quiet street, but of course, just when we need it to stay quiet, all the cars magically decide they want to drive down this tiny little hidden side street causing quite a bit of problems, some honking, and unsuccessful parking attempts, awkward reversing and just a lot of fuss in general. The whole ride through Gent was also really bumpy cause their roads are all cobblestone - very cool - but kinda bumpy and uncomfortable when you have a tendency to get carsick...I much prefer walking around on cobblestones!

Anyway, Myriam's place was as charming and ancient as I had been promised. I scored a bed up in the loft!

Now, what were we planning to do in Belgium? Ang and I had made an "itinerary" *proud face.* 19 awesome pubs. We were going to go bar hopping and drink at least one beer at every single one of them! That's right! Yeah! Because we all know that the thing to do in Belgium is DRINK BELGIAN BEER! (and drink we did)

Here is a proud Angela with her itinerary and Michiel excited because he will get beer.

Our first walk through the city of Gent was breathtakingly awesome. It has a great atmosphere and a lot of the really nice buildings are lit up with these lights which are embedded in the pavement floor. It was, however, hard to get very nice photos without the flash as they kept going blurry - damn shutter speed!

We ended up getting quite lost but eventually found our way to the restaurant area of the city.

Pretty right? I was also told that I HAVE to drink thgis beer, which was made by monks and was meant to be amazing. I found this sign advertising if in the window.

We had already picked the place we were eating: a restaurant specialising in different animals such as rattlesnake, ostrich and crocodile. The menu looked pretty awesome!

We ordered ourselves a round of Delirium Tremens and it was, actually, really delicious! I really liked it and not bitter at all!

In terms of meals, Michiel and his brother both ordered the Crocodile, Angela wanted to try Kangaroo as she had not yet tried it and I was going to get the Ostrich. But they ran out and for that night, there were no other crazy meat dishes. The only other thing on the menu which was kinda different was a Congo dish called Moambe which was Chicken with lots of things we didn't know, one called "saka saka". One thing to remember is that the menus here and in Netherlands are in dutch and that makes it quite hard in a restaurant. I'm lucky to have people with me to help me and translate but it must be pretty interesting for other ignorant tourists.

Of course, here is my food shot.

So what were the meals like? Haha, well we tried a bit of everyone's and that was definitely an experience. The crocodile looked a little like largish pieces of white fish and they were topped with red curry sauce. It was suprisingly chewy but with a fishy texture. The kangaroo had been cooked to perfection and it was very soft and really yum! (usually the times I've had it, it has been kinda chewy too). My chicken was also quite tasty but reasonally non offensive. The two interesting things on my plate however, were the "fried banana" and the "green goop." Which to talk about first? Well, the green goop can only be described as having the look, taste and feel of crushed up, blended, grass. It tasted like grass. It smelled like grass. Do I like eating grass? Um, not really...  haha. And the banana was especially strange. You'd think it would be soft and mushy but it appeared to maybe be dehydrated, so it had the texture when you cut it, of hard butter and just tasted odd... ODD, I tells ya! All in all though, we were quite content with our interesting meals, in the interesting restaurant, drinking our beers. We got quite full actually but still managed to fit in dessert. Here is my creme brule! YAY CREME BRULE

A group shot before we left

From there, we moved on to Pub #1, a reasonably packed European looking pub, with barrels, beer signs, and specialising in something like 100 different kinds of beers.

My first beer was called Barbar, recommended to me, and was a honey beer. It was quite tasty, but if I had to pick, I liked the Delirium even more!

Next round was the killer. We decided to get, after seeing the guy on the table next to us, a round of "QUARKS" or "KWAKS?" (I'm not sure how to spell it). They were these crazy big glasses of beers with a bulb on the top and a bulb on the bottom. But they came at a price. Our shoes. No joke. The guy who took our order stole one shoe from each of us! It was a deposit to get the glasses back. Now we knew these glasses were going to be something special.

All the drinking meant lots of toilet trips, so my sock also got quite dirty :( I did try hopping

Angela refused to walk to the bathroom with one shoe, so I had to give her my other one. Except she was wearing a boot with heels and I was not so, that was a good look. I think it will really take off!

From there it was all kinda down hill.

We also decided to see how many kwark beer glasses tall I was:

I am 3 qwarks tall!

Yay we got our shoes back eventually!

Needless to say, we had a pretty fun night and eventually stumbled home, getting very lost again for a nice long sleep. During the trip home, I lost my camera lens cap, my umbrella was broken, and the furry hood of my jacket got a ripped off a little bit and now it flops weird. The photos I took, however, are AWESOME.

This is getting long so I'm going to pop the actual NYE into a new blog for your convenience. Aren't I kind?