Waffles and Fries and Chocolate... Oh My!

I don’t even know where to begin with how the last week, specifically how the last weekend was. I was part of a group of about eight (7 when we went to Brugges) international students who ventured up to Belgium. Careful, this post could be a long one.

The venture to Belgium started early Friday morning, a little too early for me. Anyways, arriving in Brussels train station it was cold, wet, and pretty much miserable. This did not look like anything resembling any European city should look like in any of our minds. In fact, it reminded most of us of a set from a Cold War-era movie and we felt like we were in Soviet Russia. Pretty depressing. After walking around for about an hour we somehow made it to Grand Place, which is absolutely stunning. This was the Brussels I had wanted to see. This is what the “Capital of Europe” should look like. The rest of that day was spent mostly wandering around the Grand Place area and seeing the major sites before going and trying to find out hostel in the freezing rain and strong winds. It was not fun— we were all cold, wet and cranky, but the hostel was pretty nice and exactly what was needed.

The following day was the complete opposite of the first day in Brussels, pretty warm (for winter), blue skies and sunshine. This was the day where we tried to go see the city and the sites as much as possible. I did so much walking on Saturday, I’m still sore from it. There may not be as many well-known sites as like Paris, Rome or London but there is plenty to see. Since a decent majority of us are political science majors, we all decided to visit the EU headquarters, but we manage to stumble across some fairly large monuments within the city. One of the most impressive was La Palais de Justice. It is this absolutely huge building sitting on top of a hill overlooking the city. It was such a powerful site to see and very symbolic. Of course the entire time we were there it was hard not to mention why Belgium had the money to build this staggering building. Most of the larger buildings of the 19th century and early 20th are tied in very closely with wealth gathered from the Belgian colonies in Africa. It was always in the back of my mind. This was such a good day, exploring the city and actually getting to be tourists.

On that Sunday, we all left for Brugge (Bruges). This was such a beautiful city and there really isn’t any other way to describe it. It is very easy to see that the residents take pride in the city because of the lack of graffiti as well as lack of litter on the ground, even in the large tourist areas. The highlight of the day was climbing the winding staircase of the clock tower. The view from the top was magnificent and you could see all around. We even got the treat of having to hear the bells go off for what seemed too long. I can definitely tell you it was working. This was then completed by the very “Belgian” meal of fries with mayonnaise and a Bicky burger. The vendor was actually shocked that I ordered it when he realized I was an American. I think he may have thought I would have gone for the more “safe” choice, but I’m glad I didn’t. We ended up discussing politics and it seems like many people (or at least those who know I’m an American) love mentioning the fact that they approve of Obama or are glad he was elected. They definitely love him over here. (You can even buy a shirt in Brussels that says ‘Brussels’ with a picture of Obama on it—go figure).

Now for a quick (and more boring subject). I have managed to survive my classes. My political science classes are going to be my hardest ones since they are mostly in French and are dealing with some pretty difficult subjects in the fact that we’re discussing philosophies and questions of politics. It’ll be interesting to see if I can keep pace with all that is going on. It is very weird not having any reading or syllabus to follow and only meeting once a week—very, very weird. I won’t even complain about not having classes on Fridays. One of my favorite classes is shaping out to be American Foreign Policy (surprise, surprise), which is filled with a lot of French students, two of whom were exchange students at SNC last semester. We’re not covering anything too new to me so it’ll be my “fun” class. The history classes, either in French or in English, are just basic history classes though the one that’s for regular French students is way more interesting than the one for international students.

That was only a summary, and not a very brief one at that, but this week is shaping up to be a lot less busy. I’m starting to plan out my winter break trip to Barcelona and Rome (I think) as well as a couple of other shorter trips for the weekends.

Yum Yum: Belgian waffles DO taste better, in my opinion