why i hate breda but can’t stop posting about it
i arrived in breda expecting this to be that magical town everyone raves about but instead i found myself staring at a canal wondering why my coffee is getting cold and someone keeps riding a bike into a floating garbage bin
this city is a mess of old buildings that look like they were designed by a drunk artist and people who think ‘pedestrian’ means ‘slowly keeping their eyes on the road’
i just checked and it’s 8.5 degrees here which means i’m either freezing or pretending to be a german tourist who doesn’t know what sweat is
the rivers here are supposed to be this big deal like ‘we named the city after the wide maa’ or whatever but for some reason it feels like we’re just standing on a big pond that occasionally tries to flood
there’s this place calledOURt market that’s on reddit or something and every tuesday and friday it turns into a chaotic mix of people selling random crap and tourists pretending they know dutch
someone told me that one time a guy tried to sell me a vintage toaster for 20 euros and i almost bought it because i thought it was a prank
if you get bored rotterdam or anvers are just a short drive away which is fine because i’ve never really left this province anyway
i checked some random reviews online and one person claimed the castle is just a giant empty room with a confused rook in the corner but then another said the museum has that weirdo modern art exhibit where the walls are covered in sticky notes so i guess we’ll call it a tie
there’s also this thing calledklema where you literally sit outside for hours grilling a sausage with your friends and someone will inevitably start a fight about whether breyerd beer is better thanベルländish or whatever
the weather here is really the worst like today it’s supposed to be 8.9 max but i’m seeing people wearing jackets and sweating because of the humidity which is 80 percent and i don’t even know what that means
the city is really trying to be this green city now because they’re like the first national park city in the netherlands or something which i guess is cool but i just saw a duck walking through a drainage pipe next to a café and thought about how basic that is
there’s a church with a tower that’s 97 meters tall which sounds impressive but i looked up for five minutes and couldn’t find where the bell was anyway
i don’t know why anyone would want to live here but i did see a group of students protesting in the square for some reason and they were all dressed as pandas which is both weird and kind of awesome
the main square is basically a parking lot for tourists who think it’s a good idea to eat outside in 8 degrees
i tried to find some local food and ended up paying 15 euros for a plate of fries that looked like they’d been microwaved by a sad raccoon but at least breyerd beer cafe has 300 different kinds of beer which is excessive and also a little scary
i’m not sure if breda is really special or if people just like to romanticize it but i guess i’ll stay here long enough to see if the city becomes a national park or if it just turns into another dutch city full of cars and angry cyclists
i’m still here because i’m cheap and the rent is low and also because i accidentally booked a train ticket to here from amsterdam and now i’m stuck but hey at least i’m not paying for it yet
if nothing else breda taught me that even the most mediocre places have their own kind of weird magic or whatever so i guess i’ll go explore that street art district now or whatever
i just realized i forgot to mention that the canals here are so full of algae you can’t even imagine and the mayor keeps promising they’ll fix it but by 2030 which sounds like a distant dream to me
i’m leaving soon if you saw this post you should probably come here because it’s cheap and i’m already bored and also someone might steal your bag on the street and you’d have to deal with it
ps i’m tired my brain is fried and i can’t spell so enjoy this garbage
You might also be interested in:
- https://topiclo.com/post/basra-a-city-of-old-mosques-fish-and-maybe-a-few-secrets
- https://topiclo.com/post/nagoya-where-industrial-meets-industrial
- https://topiclo.com/post/canagatan-where-the-only-thing-more-unpredictable-than-the-weather-is-the-wifi
- https://topiclo.com/post/aleppo-honestly-its-complicated
- https://topiclo.com/post/campinas-where-coffee-meets-concrete-and-i-almost-got-lost