Long sleeve shirts in Rotterdam

I got home last Wednesday from a 10 day trip to Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Germany again. It was pretty hectic and I was moving hotels almost every night, but I was able to pack a lot in to the trip. I'm also slowly becoming a little more familiar with the different areas of these countires. As with most countries, there are regional disagreements. In Belgium, this is a pretty serious situation between the Flemish speaking region and the French speaking region. The disagreements have essentially brough the political process there to a standstill for the past couple years.

In Holland, they also have some differences, but from what I've gathered, there are less serious. They seem to be NY-Boston type of rivalry between Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The way it was explained to me is the following - people from Rotterdam think people from Amsterdam are stuck up, over educated and all talk, conversely people from Amsterdam think people from Rotterdam are ignorant and have no culture. Anyways, our local partner there is a "Rotterdamer" and proud of it, and he had a great one-liner - "If you buy a long sleeve shirt in Rotterdam, the sleeves come rolled up, so you're ready to go to work right away."

I had one free day on this trip and was able to see some of downtown Brussels. I also visited the Delerium Cafe on the recommendation of my buddy Scott. It was quite a journey finding the place, but I eventually made it, only to find it closed...after I'd been walking around for most of the afternoon. Anyways, I found a place around the corner which had some type of affiliation with the Cafe and sampled some of the Abbey beers there. Here are some pictures from the trip:

Old looking cathedral in Brussels.

City street in Brussels.

Massive cathedral in center city area of Brussels. This was only one section, my camera didn't have a wide enough lens to get the whole thing.

Here's the place that was closed.

Here's a shot of the place I found inside. The barrels served as tables.

They had like 300 beers available. It's a good thing Scott had given me a recomended list before I went to this place because I'd never heard of any of these.

This is a church in a small town in Northern Germany near Kempen.

Center city of that city.

Definitely a cool area, there was some type of festival going as well when we were there.

I'm headed to Philly for my brother's wedding and on to West Yellowstone on Monday, where the skiing looks to be shaping up to be amazing.