After a fairly inactive period post-London, I got the urge again to grab Europe by the balls, in a metaphorical way. Aside from traveling, I channeled that energy into spending hours meticulously reading my EU law books. Now that I'm getting a little more into the swing of things at Erasmus, I'm really enjoying the chance to immerse myself in all things EU. Studying the EU makes me feel like I'm home, not necessarily because I want to live in Europe, but because it brings out some innate sense of happiness in me.
At the same time, I realized that my weekend was going to begin on Wednesday afternoon, so I started thinking of possible trips. Long story short: my friend Matt from my Brussels study abroad trip invited me to hang out at his home in Leuven.
I spent the first half of my 4-day trip in Brussels. It was a very strange feeling being back in Brussels over five years after my study abroad. I couldn't help but think about how much has changed over the course of these five years. Back then, I was like:
After putting on my big boy pants, I ventured on another Eurolines bus from Rotterdam to Brussels. I misjudged the distance between the North Brussels station and my preferred hostel, so I ended up walking for 45 minutes in a surprisingly hot sunny day with my heavy winter coat on and a heavy backpack. Point being, by the time I got to the hostel (I highly suggest Meininger Hotel should you end up in Brussels) the lady at the front desk was legitimately concerned that I had some kind of health problem due to my excessive sweat and face redness, maybe MRSA or SARS or Acronym's Disease (AD).
After dropping my stuff off, I made my way back towards Grand Place, the heart (and tourist trap) of Brussels. As a tourist, I immediately found myself trapped...in the majesty of "Eurohouse," a store filled with things covered in the EU flag.
Yes, that is a weird-looking EU toothbrush, and an EU thermometer. Big Government Eurocrats shoving their healthcare down our throats! The rest of the day I wandered aimlessly around the Grand Place area, checking out the always-unimpressive Mannekin Pis, drinking Belgian beers and absinthe at Delirium and the Green Fairy, and eating mussels and a durum (all hail the mighty rotating meat log).
The next day, I continued my aimless wandering around Grand Place until my friend Matt arrived in Brussels. I had an especially fun time since, having checked out of the hostel, I was back to hauling a military-sized backpack ("Back-support the troops!") in my good ol' winter jacket carrying souvenirs I bought during my travels. It felt like I was giving a piggyback ride to a school of rock children in a greenhouse.
Once I met up with Matt, my first order of business was unloading some of the rock children from the school bus, i.e. my back, i.e. my shoulders were going to fall off. We located a Belgian "post office" in a convenience store inside of the central train station. BPost (which sounds suspiciously like a fake rapper name, "Yo, sup BPost? It's TPain!") has graduated pricing based on your package's weight in kilograms, going up to 1 kg, then 1-2 kg, then over 2 kg, etc. Of course, my package was 1.13 kg so I had to unpack-then-repack the box and keep some chocolate for myself (poor me...). I'm fairly sure that removing the chocolate brought the weight to 1.01 kg, but my dawg BPost let it slide.
Afterwards, we went to Cantillon Brewery, which makes a really fantastic kind of beer known as lambic (the beer is exposed to "wild yeast" to ferment - specifically, the yeast that party way too hard for their own good). I went on a brewery tour and tried some of their beers, which easily qualified as the best beer I've ever had. We also grabbed some lunch nearby at a really great SomeKindOfHalalSomethingOrOther restaurant called Art Food, which had a TV broadcasting the Hajj.
Next stop: Leuven (pronounced "Lovin'" or "Lowvin" or "Loervin" or "Lois and Clark" or "I don't know how to pronounce you, so I'm gonna say La La Land"). I really enjoyed Leuven/La La Land. My time there can be best described as a mix of high-quality beer tasting with pleasant sightseeing and good food interspersed, all in good company (Matt and his girlfriend Odette were fantastic hosts - thank you guys!). I tried a wide array of famous beers, including Westvletern 12 (the #1 beer in the world, as they say). I also tried something called advocaat which is essentially a pudding (I got pistachio flavored) mixed with some type of alcohol (strangely enough, advocaat is Dutch for lawyer - which explains why it's filled with alcohol). Some of the places I saw were the Stella Artois factory (didn't go in - their beer sucks), the most spectacular City Hall of all time, Beetle on a Needle, Pater Damiaanplein (where apparently the hand of the Leper Priest is housed inside of this granite-looking box thing we saw) and the Beguinage (UNESCO World Heritage Site). Did I mention we moved a large, heavy cabinet across town by hand? Also, this:
If there ever were a picture to describe the Dutch...
Anyways, on the last day of my trip, I went with Matt and Odette back to Brussels. We took a pleasant, casual stroll to do a little "window shopping"...through the Brussels Red Light District. It wasn't at all what you would expect, so long as you weren't expecting makeup-caked scantily-clad prostitutes hanging out in windows. This was all just to get the delicious Turkish food nearby, I swear. From there, we walked around parts of Brussels I had never seen even on my study abroad trip. We stumbled upon a block party with all sorts of children's activities, as well as a very nice city garden. Since Brussels has a Dutch (Flemish)-speaking population, of course we witnessed a bike accident along the way. A little boy who was riding his bike alongside a parade of kids on bikes wiped out as they were going down a VERY steep road. But he must have Dutch blood, because despite his fall (and I imagine painful scrapes) he popped right back up without complaining at all and refused help from an adult. We also stopped into an English-language bookstore, where I found my new favorite book: Fifty Shades of Chicken.
To make the transition back to the Netherlands easier, Brussels even gave me the perfect Dutch send-off: a bike festival or race or celebration or ritual sacrifice or something to that effect. Basically, there was a lot of bike action covering entire city blocks, so I knew it was time to go.
In the interest of time, I'm going to end this post here, and catch up on everything since then in a separate blog entry...
Today's Dutch lesson (aside from advocaat): lopen (to walk). As in, Ik liep te veel (I walked too much).
At the same time, I realized that my weekend was going to begin on Wednesday afternoon, so I started thinking of possible trips. Long story short: my friend Matt from my Brussels study abroad trip invited me to hang out at his home in Leuven.
I spent the first half of my 4-day trip in Brussels. It was a very strange feeling being back in Brussels over five years after my study abroad. I couldn't help but think about how much has changed over the course of these five years. Back then, I was like:
But now I'm like:
After dropping my stuff off, I made my way back towards Grand Place, the heart (and tourist trap) of Brussels. As a tourist, I immediately found myself trapped...in the majesty of "Eurohouse," a store filled with things covered in the EU flag.
Yes, that is a weird-looking EU toothbrush, and an EU thermometer. Big Government Eurocrats shoving their healthcare down our throats! The rest of the day I wandered aimlessly around the Grand Place area, checking out the always-unimpressive Mannekin Pis, drinking Belgian beers and absinthe at Delirium and the Green Fairy, and eating mussels and a durum (all hail the mighty rotating meat log).
The next day, I continued my aimless wandering around Grand Place until my friend Matt arrived in Brussels. I had an especially fun time since, having checked out of the hostel, I was back to hauling a military-sized backpack ("Back-support the troops!") in my good ol' winter jacket carrying souvenirs I bought during my travels. It felt like I was giving a piggyback ride to a school of rock children in a greenhouse.
Once I met up with Matt, my first order of business was unloading some of the rock children from the school bus, i.e. my back, i.e. my shoulders were going to fall off. We located a Belgian "post office" in a convenience store inside of the central train station. BPost (which sounds suspiciously like a fake rapper name, "Yo, sup BPost? It's TPain!") has graduated pricing based on your package's weight in kilograms, going up to 1 kg, then 1-2 kg, then over 2 kg, etc. Of course, my package was 1.13 kg so I had to unpack-then-repack the box and keep some chocolate for myself (poor me...). I'm fairly sure that removing the chocolate brought the weight to 1.01 kg, but my dawg BPost let it slide.
Afterwards, we went to Cantillon Brewery, which makes a really fantastic kind of beer known as lambic (the beer is exposed to "wild yeast" to ferment - specifically, the yeast that party way too hard for their own good). I went on a brewery tour and tried some of their beers, which easily qualified as the best beer I've ever had. We also grabbed some lunch nearby at a really great SomeKindOfHalalSomethingOrOther restaurant called Art Food, which had a TV broadcasting the Hajj.
Next stop: Leuven (pronounced "Lovin'" or "Lowvin" or "Loervin" or "Lois and Clark" or "I don't know how to pronounce you, so I'm gonna say La La Land"). I really enjoyed Leuven/La La Land. My time there can be best described as a mix of high-quality beer tasting with pleasant sightseeing and good food interspersed, all in good company (Matt and his girlfriend Odette were fantastic hosts - thank you guys!). I tried a wide array of famous beers, including Westvletern 12 (the #1 beer in the world, as they say). I also tried something called advocaat which is essentially a pudding (I got pistachio flavored) mixed with some type of alcohol (strangely enough, advocaat is Dutch for lawyer - which explains why it's filled with alcohol). Some of the places I saw were the Stella Artois factory (didn't go in - their beer sucks), the most spectacular City Hall of all time, Beetle on a Needle, Pater Damiaanplein (where apparently the hand of the Leper Priest is housed inside of this granite-looking box thing we saw) and the Beguinage (UNESCO World Heritage Site). Did I mention we moved a large, heavy cabinet across town by hand? Also, this:
Anyways, on the last day of my trip, I went with Matt and Odette back to Brussels. We took a pleasant, casual stroll to do a little "window shopping"...through the Brussels Red Light District. It wasn't at all what you would expect, so long as you weren't expecting makeup-caked scantily-clad prostitutes hanging out in windows. This was all just to get the delicious Turkish food nearby, I swear. From there, we walked around parts of Brussels I had never seen even on my study abroad trip. We stumbled upon a block party with all sorts of children's activities, as well as a very nice city garden. Since Brussels has a Dutch (Flemish)-speaking population, of course we witnessed a bike accident along the way. A little boy who was riding his bike alongside a parade of kids on bikes wiped out as they were going down a VERY steep road. But he must have Dutch blood, because despite his fall (and I imagine painful scrapes) he popped right back up without complaining at all and refused help from an adult. We also stopped into an English-language bookstore, where I found my new favorite book: Fifty Shades of Chicken.
To make the transition back to the Netherlands easier, Brussels even gave me the perfect Dutch send-off: a bike festival or race or celebration or ritual sacrifice or something to that effect. Basically, there was a lot of bike action covering entire city blocks, so I knew it was time to go.
In the interest of time, I'm going to end this post here, and catch up on everything since then in a separate blog entry...
Today's Dutch lesson (aside from advocaat): lopen (to walk). As in, Ik liep te veel (I walked too much).
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