My first full day in Brussels followed the usual routine on a first day in a new city: go on the free tour. I was assigned to red-headed bear of a dude, who did not look at all like I assumed a Belgian would (what did I think one would look like? No idea. Not him) but was hilarious and showed us all around the beautiful, unique, and entirely under-rated city. At the end he had a rant about how Hotel Rwanda made Belgium look like the bad guys for supplying the Hutu with the guns they eventually used to massacre the Tutsi. He was angry that history had painted the Belgians as responsible, and he knew this wasn't true because his dad worked for the Belgian government at the time and his dad wasn't a murderer and HOW DARE THEY ACCUSE HIS FAMILY OF GENOCIDE! And then he cried. It was weird. I was confused. I had spent half the movie Hotel Rwanda cursing both the Belgians and the UN over their refusal to step in and try to stop the madness, and I was pretty sure that supplying guns to help a civil war had never solved anything so I was therefore also pretty sure that -- yep -- Belgium was pretty responsible.
All that crazy probably should've kept me from taking his advice to all of us to try the beer tasting tour later that night, but it didn't. I was picturing something akin to sitting around sipping tiny shot glasses of different beers while someone explained the unique Belgian process, and it did kind of start that way. We met in the upstairs of a pub near my hostel and were given a full glass of Chimay, a dark beer that I really liked but which is 9% alcohol which is apparently pretty strong. We learned about the different kind of beers we would be tasting and then set off for another pub. This is when my red-headed bear of a tour guide from earlier in the day joined us. More on that later.
At this second pub we learned about this super cool and bizarre way of making a really sour tasting kind of beer I don't remember the name of. This beer wasn't covered in our tour fee, but it was so weird and different and unique to Belgium that I had to try it so I got a half-pint. (By this point in my trip I had consumed so much Guinness on an almost nightly basis that my famed light-weight status had all but disappeared. Or so I thought.) We ate raw barley with it and while most people despised it, I thought it tasted similar to grapefruit juice.
At the third pub I ordered another dark beer and met a sweet Canadian couple who I bored with the story of how Jamie and I had come together and that I was going home to him in less than a week. There are no pictures from this pub because I'd just given up trying to operate my iPhone by that point. (The blur in the picture of barley was not deliberate, though I think it's a nice touch…)
Finally we arrived at our last pub. Which was not a pub. In fact, if I remember correctly, it's actually part of the company's pub crawl. But we came because they have the largest supply of beers on tap, apparently anywhere in the world. The list of beers you can choose from is so big they had to put it in a book. And people try to steal this book, it is so impressive. It's so impressive, I tried to get a picture of it with my little intoxicated fingers. You can't really tell how thick it is, so you'll have to trust me. It's….impressive. I attempted to order a half pint of another dark beer but found out that the smallest I could get was a pint. "Whatever," I said, "I'll just drink part of it." (Spoiler: I drank it all.)
I spent yet more time gushing to my new Canadian friend Emily about how much I loved my boyfriend and how I couldn't wait to get back to the US to be with him (her boyfriend had managed to give us the slip, probably because I was annoying).
The tour was supposed to end at this point but our red-headed bear of a tour guide from that morning persuaded some of us to go to another club for dancing. My Canadian friends decided to head back but I'd met a brand new girl I'd never seen before (but who apparently knew our red-headed bear of a tour guide) and I was busy telling her all about my wonderful boyfriend waiting for me back in the States.
My plan was not to drink anymore. I was now somewhere around 3 1/2 pints full of alcohol, which was more than I had drank my entire trip. However. I was 3 1/2 pints full of alcohol and therefore STUPID. New girl I'd previously never met before hands me a glass of what I recognize as Strongbow cider, which I had enjoyed in Wales. "Hold this for me!" she yells over the noise of the dance club, then shrugs "Or drink it, whatever." I'm drunk, I'm thirsty, I've had 3 1/2 pints of alcohol and no water and now I'm standing in the middle of a dance floor surrounded by strangers, with a glass of cold liquid and no common sense left.
I drink it. Of course.
And I dance. Always in groups of girls because you have to be smart, you can't be sending the wrong signals to guys, that's not safe. Much like taking a drink from a stranger is not safe. Much like getting drunk in a strange city where you know no one is not safe. But, you know, at least I remembered one thing.
I've seen my red-headed bear of a tour guide dancing around, talking to girls from my group, but other than a smile-and-nod of "yes, I know you were my tour guide this morning," we have no interaction.
Until we do.
I was trying to find the girl from earlier because I was getting bored and didn't really know anyone else, when red-headed bear of a tour guide comes over with his friend. He asks if I enjoyed the tour (I did) and introduces me to his friend (hi) then tries to kiss me. I laugh and push him away, saying
"I have a boyfriend." (My go-to line for getting guys to leave me alone, even before Jamie and I were a couple, because guys are more likely to respect another guy's "property" than they are to respect your decision not to interact with them.)
"We already made out earlier," he presses. I panic, then quickly realize that though I am drunk, I am not drunk enough not to make out with a random guy, or even drunk enough not to remember it happening. I also realize that he has probably made out with half the girls in this bar and has no idea who I even am.
"Noooooo we didn't." I say.
Somehow an argument breaks out.
Soon he shouting a few inches from my face "This is my country! You are a guest in this country! You're lucky you're not a man, we'd take this outside! Who do think would win? Huh? Me or you?"
And I am repeating "Just back off. Back off. Back. Off." with continually widening eyes and a sterner expression. As if I could intimidate him into leaving me alone.
Finally his friend guides him away with "She's not worth it, come on."
I am so shaken I sit frozen for a minute, pretending to be fuming. As soon as he disappears in the crowd, I disappear into the girls restroom and begin crying. A group of girls emerges from the stalls and I awkwardly ask if they speak English. Luckily they do so I explain that I just got in an argument with a guy and feel really unsafe and would they please just make sure I make it out of the bar ok. They offer to call me a cab but I don't want to pay for a cab and I (somehow) know where I am and that I am not far from my hostel.
They see me outside, I thank them and head back toward the hostel. After a few hundred yards I pull off my flip flops and sprint through the 2am alleyways back to my hostel. (The next day I look it up and see I ran over a mile barefoot.) I collapse in the hallway near reception and use my phone to call Jamie over Google, sobbing. (The next day I find out he stayed on the phone for over an hour just listening to me cry, unable to discern what I was saying had happened.) The night receptionist eventually comes to check on me because he can hear me crying. After a while I head to my room.
I spent the next three days in Brussels hiding out in my hostel and the neighboring two streets because I know that the red-headed bear of a tour guide's tour does not come down this way. My hostel kicks me out of my room from 10am to 3pm every day so unfortunately I either have to sit in the lobby on my laptop or roam the mall with my things. I eat way too much McDonalds.
Even when it's time to move on to Amsterdam (oh comforting Amsterdam! Whose streets I have already learned, and where the hostel is run by Christians and provides amazing free breakfasts, and where my weird tour guide never threatened me, and I can eat all the cheese I want.) I am still afraid to walk through downtown Brussels to the train station.
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