Brussels - the trip

Brussels, Beligum, French, Dutch, chocolate, waffles...

Going there - Friday: trains, planes, and buses
I walked to the train station, which is about a 40 minute walk from where I live. I thought about biking but didn't want to bike when I came back on Sunday night (which turned out to be a good decision since it was raining when we got back on Sunday). I got a Young Persons Railcard which gives me 1/3 off of all train tickets as well as tickets for the train to Stansted airport. The guy was really nice and gave me all the discounts possible and explained everything. London has about 3 airports. I flew into Heathrow from Boston which handles most of the planes that come from out of Europe. For this trip, I went to Stansted which handles most of the within Europe stuff. And then there's Gatwick, which I think, handles smaller planes and within UK things.

I thought Stansted was a pretty nice, medium sized airport. There were lots of shops and food places but not too much. Mahalia and I were admiring the trusses that our structures professor talked about. Everything went pretty smoothly except Sarah had to buy some small bottles to hold her contact solution and the Border Control didn't know what to do with Poting's Hong Kong passport. Apparently a Hong Kong passport allows you to travel to many countries without a visa but most people don't know that since it does say China on it. But it's blue instead of red so I really don't understand...

Anyhow, we had to take a bus for about 45 minutes to get to the center of the city. It was freezing cold and we got to the train station where the Eurostar comes into Brussels at around 12:15am. The metro closes at midnight so we ended up taking two taxis (there were 9 of us) and the taxi that I was on took the long way and he charged us twice as much as the other taxi.

Day 1 - Saturday: waffles, chocolates, and more food
6 of us were in the same hostel room. It was small and cramped. The bunk beds weren't too staple but all we wanted was a place to sleep. I didn't too much. The next day we got up for breakfast. This hostel came with free linens and breakfast. Ross was very disappointed at the toast and corn flakes. I was actually very pleased since there were 4 different spreads for the toast and we got a choice of tea, hot chocolate, coffee, and orange juice. The hostel in Munich had gave us bread and water.

And then we started wandering in the freezing cold. We saw the EU buildings (head of the EU is in Brussels). There was no one around since it was Saturday. We decided to skip the NATO buildings. Some people wanted to go to the Art Museum so we headed that way. On the way, we passed by a waffle truck and got some waffles. They were sooo amazing. Not like the stuff you get from the fridge section. They make it right there and it has a lot of suger in it so no need for syrup. We just ate it as is. I really appreciated the warm part since it was so cold out.

Part of the group (including me) had not interest in art. So we went to the Grand Place (big huge, town hall) and walked around for a bit. Then we all realized we were hungry so we went to a cafe that was recommended by Ross' Brussels book. Their menu was in both French and Dutch. So between a few people who had about a semester of French and Mahalia's German, we were able to figure out most of the menu. We all ended up ordering either chicken or mozzarella paninis that were hot and drenched in butter. It also came with a side salad so it was a good meal for 5 Euros. After this we went to a grocery store and got lots of really good chocolate for cheap prices and separated into groups. My group consisted of Chaitra, Poting, and myself. Most of the other people went to the art museum but we didn't want to look at art so we wandered the city instead.

We had dinner at restaurant that only had French menus. So it was a bit more difficult this time but we managed. None of us really knew what it was that we ordered but they turned out to be really good wraps that came with very interesting and tasty sauces.

After dinner, a few of us went to a bar that was recommended by Ross' guide book. Took us a while to find but it turned out to be an old man's bar with lots of interesting pictures. The guy got mad at us since only two people ordered drinks. But whatever, I didn't want to get drunk. Ross and Yaoyao played chess. After their game, we decided to try out some French fries at Fritland. They were freshly made, really hot, and pretty good. We came out smelling like fries. Yaoyao had to go back to Cambridge for a rowing race on Sunday so she took an overnight bus back.

Day 2 - Sunday: Beligium Unity
The next day, we really didn't do too much. The highlight of the day was the Manifestation of Beligum Unity march. So Chaitra and I were strolling through a botanic garden near our hostel and were heading to pick up Sarah from church. And then we noticed that there were lots of people heading the opposite way, many of whom were had Beligum flags or wearing Beligum colors. We thought it might've been a football game or some sort of sports event and we stopped a guy on a bike and asked him.

Me: What is happening? Game? Football? (points down the road)
Guy: No, uh, convention.
Me: Convention?
Guy: Convention, eh, Beligum pride.

We were intrigued by this so we went on asking several other people and we got bits and pieces of information like: Beligum unity, manifestation, Beligum pride, and that it's at the train station.

We were really confused about what this "manifestation" was supposed to be. After we picked up Sarah though, we saw a huge stream of people walking on the street. At first it looked like some Independence/National Day parade but there was not much noise coming from the group. "A silent celebration?" how strange. Sarah left something at the hostel so we went back there and asked the person at reception about this. He was more helpful since he spoke English. It turns out that some politicians want to split the country up into 3 parts: French, Flemish, and Dutch. But the people doesn't want this to happen so this march is supposed to be a show of Beligum unity - thus a manifestation of Beligium unity and pride.

If we were staying longer, we would've joined the parade which goes on until 6pm where there will be concerts and such. Such a shame we couldn't but it was cool to see it.

After much debating, we went to the cafe that Mahalia and Ross were in that morning and ate sandwiches there. The sandwiches were cheap but the bread was hard and wasn't very good. But it was a nice place to hang out for a while and defrost. We walked to the Eurostar train station and after running about for a while, found the bus that goes to the airport. Wish we were taking the Eurostar instead. It would've been so much nicer. One of these days...