Western Europe Day 2

◊ The next morning we hopped a train for Brussels. On the way Nathan asked me if I felt anything after eating the hash cake the previous night. No, no I did not feel anything. This kind of disappointed me because I had one night in Amsterdam to figure out why potheads are the way they are and the stuff had absolutely no effect on me at all. Bummer. Well, at least Nathan got something out of it. His cake took him for a ride on the hippy express.
◊ Belgium is known for several things. It has waffles, many beers, and has served as the traditional speed bump for Germans on their way to Paris. They also are the headquarters for the EU making them also famous for their bureaucrats and moronic laws. We were only interested in their waffles and beer. We got off of the train and promptly hit a waffle house where I had the best waffles I have ever had in my entire life. They really were that good. Over the course of the three hours we spent there we bought many waffles. The other thing that we were sure to see was the 'mankin pis'. It is the famous fountain featuring a little boy pissing the stream of water. This alone may not seem interesting, but it is what the locals do to it that is so funny. There is a long running tradition of dressing the little guy up in random costumes made especially for him, which are then stored in a museum. Some of them are downright hilarious. Sadly, he was not wearing anything special while we were there.

◊ Next stop, Paris. Early on when it looked like we were not going to have nearly as many days to travel as we had hoped, Paris was the first city we cut from our plans. I have been there once before in High school and let me tell you, I was not impressed. Last time I was there the entire tourism industry was on strike and the Eiffel Tower was under repairs. My impression of Paris was a city full of people hopping at the chance to be rude to a group of American school kids. However, we really wanted to see the beaches of Normandy. And to get there you have to go through Paris. So we figured we would see the city because we would be right there. How bad could it possibly be? I told myself that I was going to approach the situtation free of any stereotypical anti-French bias. After all, we all know that all stereotypes are wrong don't we?
◊ Nathan and I were off of the train for all of 10 minutes when we were robbed. We were attempting to purchase metro tickets as Paris is a very large city to be walking across. We found the window where they were selling them and got in line. The man in front of us overheard us talking and pointed us towards the machine that we needed to use. He even came over with us and offered to help. I was flabbergasted. To think, a random Frenchman taking a few moments to help out two confused tourists. Could all of those years of French bashing have been lies that I was unknowingly perpetuating? Or was this some kind exception to the rule. He asked us how long we were going to be in the city and we told him 3 nights. "Then the best thing for you would be to get at three day pass." he said. "They will cost 33 euros each." I did some quick math in my head and realized that either the Paris transit system was unspeakably expensive or on would have to ride many times each day to get their money's worth. I just decided to go with it. This guy was being so nice I didn't want to somehow offend him.
◊ He asked if we had coins for it. Seriously, who carries around 33 euros in coins? I pulled out my credit card and he stopped me. The Frenchy told me that they only take French credit cards. This was when alarms began to sound in my brain. 'That does not seem right' I though. Then again, this IS France. They DO have a reputation for spitting on anything that is not French. I still resolved to not entirely trust this guy. Especially after he offered to use his card to purchase the tickets and have us pay him in cash. I carefully watched the screen to make sure he was purchasing what he had said. I saw the screen clearly say 66 euros. The tickets printed and I watched him grabbed one and hand it to me. Nathan took the other one. At this point we realized that we did not have exact change for this guy. So he led us a few meters to a florist and tried to get her to make change. Of course she would not. From the distasteful look she shot towards Nathan and I, my guess is that she said something along the lines of, "I do not make change for tourists". Somehow the guy talked here into it but we still were one Euro short. The guy said to not sweat it, it was only one euro. We once again profusely thanked him for his generous help and went on our way.
◊ The first stop was our hostel. Finding one in Paris had been difficult. Most of the hostels in Europe us sites like www.hostelworld.com where travelers can easily search a city for open beds and usually make reservations. Not the case with Paris hostels. There are only a few on Hostel World and they were booked solid. We found out from a friend that most of them don't used web sites or reservations because that attracts foreginers. We bounced around between some of these off-grid hostels before finding one that had open beds. After hitting an internet cafe to let Nelson know where to find us, we headed to the metro to see some of the city by night. Suddenly we found ourselves with the upleasant realization that our over priced metro tickets were not going to let us back onto the system. It didn't take long to figure out what had happened. That jackass in the train station had managed to switch our tickets with one-way passes and kept the expensive ones for himself. Even though I thought I watched his hand the whole time he must of somehow switched them when he reached in for mine. That guy was good at what he did. Just one more reason to hate the French.
◊ After that we made our way to Sacre Coeur, a goregous church on a tall hill overlooking the rest of the city. It sits in an old neighborhood called Monmarte and near the bottom is the Moulin Rouge. I don't feel like explaning the history behind these things. From there we made our way over to the Arc Du Triumph, and then on to the Eiffel Tower. After being robbed of so much money we were looking for ways to cut back on spending for this trip. Tourist traps were chosen so we sat and stared at the tower for a while and I pondered what I would do if I ever caught back up with that scumbag. It had been a long evening of walking so we went back to the hostel and turned in for the night.