Trip to Brussel and Colonge (1)

I was freezing to death in Berlin. The weather varies, rain came suddenly from time to time, leaving us no time to figure out what to do and how to keep warm. All my gears were all too thin...
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Without too much preparation, Cathy and I set off to Belgium, thinking we might figure out the way to Brussel. Getting a car to drive is very interesting feeling, I mean, at least I haven't been sitting in a private car for long time (VIVA public transportation!, Viva bicycle!). The drive was pleasant, weather was nice, and the road signs are pretty clear. We had not problem getting to Brussel at all, we thought.

However, we under-estimated the difficulty of getting into Brussel city center. Without a city map, we drove around and around, trying to find the direction to zentrum (centre/center/centrum). We finally found the central square. After parking the car, getting into the streets filled with mussels and frites restauarants, it had already turned 9pm. We picked a restaurant, ate the overcooked mussles and very expensive wine (I suspect they'd rather overcook the shellfish to make dead all gems and bacteria. Taste? Who cares, most tourists only come to Brussel once in their life time). However, the busy areas near the Cathedral and square are pretty nice to look at. Let's not worry too much about the food, we will find our hotel tonight, maybe I will buy some fruits and snacks along the way.

After the meal, we are ready to hit the road, 11pm that was. We had a couple of maps, all not very detailed. We need to figure out how to get to Brudge in 2 hours. However, we were first trapped in the city, although we duly followed the sign to ring road, we spent almost 45 minutes to get to the motorway. We thought that's the end of our nightmare, oh well, the show just started. First of all, we were driving to the wrong direction heading toward Paris (many thanks to me, I mis-read the map). When turning back to north, we were trapped in the most terrible traffic jam I have ever experienced in years. Our car moves like snail for almost 1 hour, it is already 1am in the morning and we were still at Brussel ring road!