In case you haven't noticed, as the semester has gone on, I've gone from being kind of irregular about updating my blog to being downright terrible. The last time that I posted something was right before Armistice Day/Veteran's Day weekend in early November, which I took advantage of to take a trip to Madrid. In the mean time, I went on the spur-of-the-moment trip to Porto, Portugal during the week that was officially set aside for studying as the semaine de révision (because what the hell, why not?), took final exams for the first semester (which generally went really well. Better than expected, in fact. But again, I said GENERALLY. More details on that later), spent Christmas and New Year's with friends in Germany with a couple days in Prague for good measure, began courses for the second semester, made fun of all of you poor bastards in the US who have been dealing with a foot or more of snow at times, and took a weekend trip to Brussels a few days ago with some of the other Americans.
Whew. Uh, yeah, I'm really behind. The problem is that there was already so much to tell about Madrid that I didn't feel like writing about right away with finals approaching, and with every following trip or update, it just got a little bit more overwhelming. Good problems to have, I suppose.
First thing's first, let's talk about what's still fresh on my wind. For the second time this winter, I decided to travel NORTH for fun (because I'm clearly not 100% there in the head) and spend the weekend with some of the other Americans in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and center of the European Union.
(For those of you who speak French or know the film Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, c'est le nord...et en fait, c'est au nord du Nord... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZpkYcIYlDc , here with English subtitles, because I couldn't help but think of the old guy at 0:30)
None of us really knew much about what there actually is to see in Brussels, but since the airfare was cheap (just 20€ for the way there, and only slightly more expensive for the return flight!), we just went for it. As I'll explain later, I ended up in a similar situation to what happened in Porto in that I booked my ticket after everyone else in the group, meaning that the price had gone up quite a bit for the planned departure date and I decided to take advantage of my long weekends to tack on an extra day to my trip and fly out on Thursday instead of Friday. This way, I'd get the benefits of traveling alone for one day (and go see whatever I wanted that the rest of the group might not get around to doing) while still having quality group time/better group rates for the rest of the weekend.
I left sunny, relatively warm Marseille around 2:00 in the afternoon and landed in Charleroi, Belgium, close to 4:00 in a weird mix of fog and snow, since it was right at freezing. GREAT. I then had to take an airport shuttle from Charleroi (in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium) to the actual city of Brussels which cost almost as much as my actual flight. Occasionally, Ryanair uses more isolated airports instead of the main ones that virtually every other airline uses. Oops.
I've clearly been in Provence for too long, because the French spoken here registers as "normal", even if I still notice strong Marseillais accents, and I apparently spontaneously yelled with actual anger, "JE VAIS DÉFONCER CES PUTAIN DE PARISIENS!!" (I'm going to beat the sh#@ out of those f@%$#!g Parisians) while drinking with several of my French friends last week, much to their amusement - there were not actually any Parisians in our vicinity, fortunately. It's the moments like that that show that you're becoming integrated, not being able to flawlessly order a baguette at the boulangerie or go through a whole jar of Nutella in three days. Ok, maybe...
The reason that I mentioned all of that was that I haven't traveled outside of the southeastern part of France, so I was somewhat surprised when a few of the people I talked to at the Charleroi Airport had accents that sounded like less exaggerated forms of Ch'timi (the accent that they made fun of in the movie I mentioned above) to my untrained ears, even though I shouldn't have been. I didn't get any pictures of the landscape of Wallonia on the way due to inopportunely placed fences or poles (or just not paying too much attention), but there were a lot of quaint old stone cottage-type houses and old churches scattered in the rolling green hills. Very peaceful looking, although I didn't have the chance to poke around any of it.
I arrived in Brussels later that evening and relaxed in the hostel where I stayed for my first night for a little bit before going out for dinner. The people in my room at the hostel didn't speak any French or much English, apart from one Filipino guy, so being the only American in there was interesting and the people in the hostel lobby were all very much in their own groups, so I ended up just going to grab dinner alone in a friterie with some kickass chicken sandwich (called durum, I believe. I was the only person in the place apart from one table who was not speaking Arabic!), and of course, fries! I walked around the city for awhile, but since it was really cold and I was totally wiped, I went back to the hostel to crash early and save my energy for when the rest of the group would arrive the next day.
The next day, I had to awkwardly tow around my suitcase until the other Americans arrived, and I decided to wander over to the neighborhood of Marolles, a working-class part of town that's albeit undergoing gentrification. I planned to go try some beers in a couple of the estaminets that I'd read or heard about in the area and report back to the crew on my recommendations for what to try later, but I ended up at a flea market (where I sincerely regret not picking up a 1-euro copy of "Les Stroumpfs", the Smurfs) and then, after not finding the place I was looking for, walked into a random bar to warm up where there mostly some older folks drinking beer already at 11:00 in the morning. Fantastic, I'm not going to look like an alcoholic freak!
I plopped down into a seat right next to the heater and got first a normal Jupiler pilsner and then a glass of kriek (cherry in Dutch) lambic, which was interesting but sweet, not really having much of a beer taste at all.
Anyway, this little hole-in-the-wall was kind of a fun little place, because all of the middle-aged and not quite middle-aged, but almost there locals were curious who the newcomer was and where the hell he was from. My accent wasn't as strong as the Spanish woman who had been living in Brussels for awhile, but they could still tell that I wasn't from around there, even though they didn't believe it when I told them I was American. Anyway, we started chatting about a bunch of stuff for about an hour: beers, local politics, etc, half of them all started dancing and singing (this was all before noon) and it was an unexpected nice start to the day. After that, I decided to kill a few hours at the René Magritte Museum, since I really enjoyed the exposition of some of his (seriously) paintings that I got to see in Chicago less than a week before I left America and Brussels was the city that he spent most of his life in. It turns out that, as a student, I could either go to just the Magritte Museum for 2 euros, or hit up three separate art museums for 3 euros, so I opted for the latter one and indulged in the haute culture that I certainly didn't partake in Barcelona or Prague.
The Magritte Museum in Brussels appeared to be less intent on being responsible for causing small children to have nightmares than the Chicago Art Institute, because some beauties like Le ciel meurtrier (the murderous sky) and Le Viol (the rape) were not present...although this picture doesn't do justice to the actual painting, which is creepily beautiful in person, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about.
And he claimed that seeing his wife eat a strawberry inspired him to do this. Bullshit. So much bullshit
Instead, I got the chance to browse a lot of things that had to do more with the personal life of Magritte, and some paintings from his constantly reappearing theme of pigeons, in paintings like this, which I technically wasn't supposed to be taking a picture of, so I did it very quickly
And then this one, which I didn't take a picture of, but rather did a Google Image search later.
Afterwards, I visited the Belgian Fin de siècle (End of the Century, so late 1800s and early 1900s) Museum, which was full of interesting art of different styles, as well as the more classical wing of the Belgian Royal Museum of Fine Arts, but at that point, it was time to return to Belgian stereotypes: waffles and beer. After getting a waffle at one of the vans selling probably about 95% of them to tourists, I walked back towards the center of town to see THE icon that Brussels is known for, an elegant statue summing up why the rest of the world has...certained preconceived views of Belgium.
You...you can't be serious. THAT'S IT?!?
There you go fellas. I had that picture that I took blown up nice and big so that you can behold the beauty of Mannekin Pis (Pissing Boy), the statue of a small child holding on to his schlong and pissing into a pool below that is somehow a major tourist attraction in Brussels. And one of the rare objects for which the replicas are often larger than the actual thing. Oy. All I can say is that the confused, disappointed reactions of the other Americans when they saw it the day after I did made the trip more than worth it! As did popping into the estaminet (tavern) that was literally right next to it which I'd read about in a guide book, the Poechenellekelder (Puppet cellar, if I'm not mistaken?). At this point, I knew that I only had a little time before the other Americans arrived, but I decided to try one or two of the local beers in the meantime, and I wasn't disappointed. Even though I figured there would be a lot of tourists there, it seemed like a pretty balanced mix of tourists (the English-speaking ones) and the tables where French or Dutch were spoken. I ordered a nice wheat beer that I forgot the name of, and then decided that, since I had a little more time to kill, I'd get one of the seasonal beers (called Winterkoninkske) and some kip-kap (head cheese), neither of which disappointed. The Winterkoninkske was honestly probably the best dark beer I've ever had...it was rich and, well, dark, with maybe a slight caramel taste, an 8% alcohol content, and not much of a bitter aftertaste.
Since I'm technologically challenged and can't get the two side-by-side on the same line, just pretend they are
And finally, it was time to meet up with the others at the lodging that we'd booked with Air B&B, which turned out to be on the third story of a building relatively far away in the north side of the city above a Dutch-language kindergarten (?) which the six of us had to ourselves for the three nights that we were there. We went out to eat in the neighborhood which we all noticed looked strangely like Chicago (except for the fact that, you know, the signs were in French) and then, after poking around the neighborhood a bit and walking to the Atomium, we tried to find a bar in the area and were all horrified when Maria decided that she HAD to go to the bathroom in some place that was jam-packed with sweaty, dancing old people. We spent what was probably the most awkward three minutes of 2015 so far waiting for her to get out before bolting and running into two more bars that looked similar (lots of dancing old people) and one with suspicious looking hearts in the window and just about all men in there (we didn't take any more time to find out what it was, ahem). Eventually, realizing that most people were probably further downtown or at home, we went and got drinks at a neighborhood bar free of sweaty, dancing old people and went home to get ready for a day exploring Brussels.
On Saturday, we went downtown by hopping on to the back of the city tram (since it's easy to sneak into the back and get a free ride, unlike with the bus), briefly looked around a flea market, and then did a tour of the Museum of Musical Instruments, because why not? It was only two euros for students, and it was actually a really cool place. I won't go too into depth about it, because if I do, I'll never make it to the end of the description of the weekend, but after that, we got some lunch advice from the people working at the museum desk, so we walked down the hill and I got me some stoemp, a rather unimpressive-looking and simple but delicious dish with spiced meatloaf and mashed potatoes with carrot purée.
With more Belgian beer. Shocker.
I then had an idea to keep going along with the beer theme that we would cross town to visit a brewery where traditional Bruxellois gueuze and lambic are produced. The building was so nondescript that we thought it was closed when we got there, but then a flock of tourists with an English-speaking guide approached. We latched on to the group, walked into the brewery with them, and essentially got a tour of almost the entire brewery before a couple people in our group got too close to the guide, who ever so politely (like, "Canadian police officer apologizing for inconveniencing you by pulling you over" politely) reminded us that this tour was only for paying customers. Which means that we got to explore what was left of the brewery ourselves.
Tragically, there's only so much that you can fit into a carry-on bag with Ryanair, so this all had to stay behind.
We then had a couple glasses of the good stuff at the bar and noticed that...uh, gueuze doesn't really taste like what we had in mind for beer. It's interesting, but it's sour and...good, but different. Apparently, you're supposed to drink it like champagne. We tried a couple different varieties while warming up next to the wooden stove. In the future, I'll stick to other beers, but it was cool nonetheless.
After that, we headed back home, because the next morning, there was going to be something which my mother probably hates me for being able to go to: an enormous, touring exhibition of chocolatiers from around the world which just happened to be in Brussels on the same weekend as us - le salon du chocolat. For a pretty small entry fee (8 euros, I think?), we ate more damn chocolate than any of us planned on, in addition to seeing weirder things like people getting chocolate massages or - this was funky - chocolate bath salts. I didn't get a whole lot of pictures here, but I know some of the others in our group did. We sadly missed the (I kid you not) models walking in chocolate dresses, which happened later in the afternoon, but we had consumed way too much suger and wanted to see a little bit of the rest of Brussels before taking off.
We spotted a dude selling escargot from a street vendor after that, had an amazing dinner that we negotiated the price down on (which I could have sworn that I got a picture of, but apparently not), and went out to some bars later on that night before heading back for a couple hours of sleep and trucking it back to the airport in Charleroi. That, by the way, was quite an event in itself, since I had already paid for a return shuttle ticket and refused to waste my money and take a taxi with the others. Since our flight left Charleroi before 7:00 AM, and Charleroi is about an hour south of Brussels, that meant that I had to be on the bus by 4:30 AM if I wanted to give myself enough time at the airport. Problem: Our kindergarten was way on the north side of the city, and public transportation shuts down in the city shortly after midnight during the winter, apart from on Fridays and Saturdays. This meant that at 3:00, I had to start hoofing it to the train station on foot. Fortunately...VERY fortunately...I didn't get lost and the others were willing to carry my suitcase to the airport, so I managed. All while getting one last photo of the serenity of this canal in downtown Brussels at 4:00 AM.
It was a great weekend - hard to believe that it was already a month ago (I started writing this blog post soon after the trip, but never got around to finishing it until now)! I'll try to write about my recent trip to Morocco for you guys before another month passes by. Also coming up before my wallet ends up empty and I decide to do some more low-key stuff here in Provence: Florence (with the International Student's Association at Sciences Po, March 13-16) and Paris (meeting up with German friends for a couple days, March 19-21).
