I’m back from my weekend in Belgium, which was amazing! We had Friday off of work, so I headed down with another intern to Brussels for two days and Bruges for one day. (We got Friday off for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr, yet didn’t get any days off for High Holidays. Gotta love the UN...) There’s a direct train from The Hague to Brussels, so it only took us about two hours to head down there. Traveling to and within Belgium is incredibly cheap if you’re under 26, so we took full advantage. I figure if I still have to put up with looking like I’m 19, I might as well reap the benefits, too...
Our hotel in Brussels wasn’t terribly impressive, but the location could not have been better. We were a block from the train station and a block from Grand-Place, the central square of the city. Over two days, we covered a lot, including: the Atomium (kind of like the Eiffel Tower of Brussels, if it were a nerdy science project), the Royal Museum of Army and Military History (with both Napoleonic and Nazi artifacts, and not much transition between the two), Arcade du Cinquantenaire (a giant arch that we climbed), the European Union headquarters (we work in international law, so we had to stop by), and much, much more. Mainly, though, we just strolled through the narrow streets in the center and hung out in cafes. The street-side cafes were definitely my favorite part of previous trips to Europe, so I was quite content to frequent them again for the weekend. We also found a bar called Delirium Tremens, which had 2,500 types of beer available (and matching glasses for most of them). I tried some very random beers, including cherry (kreik) and grapefruit, but I’m still not a fan of the taste...
Everywhere we went, the food was excellent. We didn’t each much traditional Belgian food, but had some very good Italian, Greek and Asian. Also, there were chocolate shops everywhere (literally every other store), which were quite lovely. And we bought a few waffles on the street, which were fantastic – they tasted like donuts in waffle shape. See above picture for one of the happiest moments of my life.
Everything in Brussels is written in both French and Flemish, two languages I should understand but don’t really. (Flemish is almost exactly like Dutch, but sounds more refined – like British English vs. American English.) I’m not used to seeing things in two languages and having neither be English, but between the two I could generally figure things out.
Bruges was one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. All the medieval streets looked too picturesque to be real – it was hard to keep in mind that it was all hundreds of years old and not created for tourists. We climbed the belfry in the middle of town as soon as we arrived, where we could see the whole city laid out. We also took a boat tour through the canals with our trilingual tour guide and saw a few of the catholic churches. One church had a Michelangelo piece (the only one to leave Italy in his lifetime), and another had a vial said to contain the blood of Jesus. It was an interesting town. Mostly we just sat out in the sun and tried not to think about returning to work the next day.
The trip back was not so easy, as we had to take four trains to get back from Bruges. On one train, there was a little kid in front of me who kept screaming and throwing things at me, while the bells on the train rang incessantly. We just kept cracking up, as the experience was so ridiculous. At any rate, eventually we made it back, and now I’m off on another trip on Thursday. Hello Midwest!
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