Pub Crawl!

My next day in Belgium was just as awesome as the night before. After getting a late start on the day (probably due to the crazy night before) Jasper and I made a tour around the city starting with his University. While walking to the University, Jasper decided to make a quick detour to stop at the largest beer store in Ghent (Gent). I can’t remember how many different types of beers were in there but it had to be a lot (at least 800+ I think). I was like a little boy in a candy store, marveling at all the different types of beer; big beer, small beer, cheap beer, “how much!” beer, delicious beer, @#%! beer, widely distributed beer, local beer, monk beer, Scientology beer (jkjk). Seriously tho, they had everything, even kits for brewing your own beer. After wisely choosing a beer for each of us, we made our way to the street to continue our trip, drinking our Belgian beers on the way of course which is legal (in the bottle unfortunately, sorry dad).

Jasper’s University was nice and had a lot of character to it. It reminded me of a much smaller version of Washington State University with all the red bricks. But we quickly saw it all, and decided to check out the museum of Ghent nearby. For only 1 euro (student discount), I had an amazing time in the little museum of Ghent. They had lots of cool artifacts and information about the history of the town, but the two highlights were the map room and lego room. In the map room you could walk on a brilliantly lit up satellite view of the town, and in the lego room, well, you could play with the legos. Haha We built and destroyed some towers which was fun.

Anyway, the next part of the day is when our day REALLY started. It was time to do a pub crawl in Ghent. With over 1,500 beers made/sold in Belgium, I had a lot of work to do for the day. Quick side note, they have sheep roaming along the canals to “mow” the grass which is super cool (Jasper thought I was retarded haha). All of the pubs we went to were were unique and typically small with brick walls, dark lighting (some had candles), and old wooden décor. They reminded me of pubs that probably exist in Ireland. Either way, the jazz club and “bike part ceiling” pub were the coolest for sure.

Over the course of the day/night Jasper carefully selected a number of beers for me, all of which were delicious (except for maybe the sour beer), and were often of very high alcohol % (9-10%). At one point we hit up a fry shop, which I was desperately craving at the time. Haha And at one of the pubs we went to the night before, we met some fun students our age who were hilarious to talk to joke with. After buying each other a couple rounds of whiskey shots (chocolate, cactus), we recruited Frederik and Eveline to join us to the next pub, as well as Jasper’s friend Simon. The rest of the night was such a great time hanging out with everyone, and tho there were no particular highlights, it was the kind of night you look back upon and just smile thinking about it. I love Ghent.

The last bar we went to had thousands of old rusty bicycle parts hanging from the ceiling (I’m pretty sure I had to duck in several places in the bar to avoid hitting my head haha). It was also completely dark in the pub except for the wooden fire an old man was tending to and candles on the tables. It was SOOOOOOO cool!!!! The old man was kinda creepy as well which added to the unusual atmosphere. We had a great time tho, and I got to become pretty good friends with everyone there (I have a ton of new foreign facebook friends now which is sweet haha). Sadly, the pub crawl came to an end after here, but what a night! I wish the pubs in California had this kind of atmosphere. Oh well, I’ll be back in Europe soon enough!