Belgium!!! Days 1 and 2.

Heeding some advice from a friend, I am going to write this blog entry in English first. She feels like my entries could use some emotion or creativity, which as an engineer I already have trouble with, and writing in Spanish just adds to this. Now don’t worry (Diego) I will still write in Spanish too, but I will probably be more in depth or maybe relay some of my humor through the English version, but all you Spanish speakers will have to deal.

So as you probably know, if you are an avid reader of my blog, which I am sure most people are, I visited Belgium this past weekend. Yes, Josh and our Austrian friend Alex headed for the land of waffles, chocolate, beer and fries to spend five cold days exploring the capital of the European Union and a city probably most famous for being interesting to only people who are slightly retarded and grew up on farms.

Day 1: Santander > Charleroi > Brussels

We rushed out of an evening class to the Santander Airport. Not enough time to walk to the bus station and take the bus, so we had to spring for a taxi. Let me say this is indicative of the costs of Belgium compared to Santander, I just had to prepare to spend my money. Anyways, we made it to the airport with time to spare, about an hour and a half before the flight (essentially I missed the flight in my mind) and the Austrian was hungry so we hung out outside of security so he could eat a sandwich. With 30 minutes until boarding I started to get nervous. We were still on the other side of security and the line was growing, snaking back and forth. I made the Austrian shove the rest of his food into his mouth and we made it through security just in time to… stand in line to board the plane for about another half an hour. Well, better safe than sorry.

After having advertisements for Ryanair’s fresh food or electric cigarette or whatever else they were trying to market to me, we touched down in Charleroi, or “South Brussels.” We took an hour bus ride to Brussels’ south train station and then a metro ride up to around our hostel.After what was basically a three hour trip, half plane, half public transportation, we arrived at our hostel. I have only been to five hostels in my life as of yet, but I can easily say this place was one of the nicest hostels I will stay in. The beds were comfortable. The kitchen was well equipped. The lounge was decked out with flat screens, great local art, a modern fireplace and a bunch of computers. They even showed Wisconsin football and Iron Man on the TV.

We dropped off our things, and despite being tired from travelling, we headed out to Grand Place, the main square in Brussels. Pretty much all roads lead to Grand Place, and we pretty quickly made it there. To quote my friend Jamie, I really had a “Wow, I am in Europe” moment when I got there. The place was seriously beautiful. It looked exactly what I thought a European square should look like. Every building was perfect, fitting in with the Gothic, neoclassical, or whatever style architecture style (help me out Adrianne) that permeated the area. We sat down to soak in, I don’t know, the “European-ness” of the square for a moment before heading towards a bar. Everything was pretty much closed, a huge change from Spain. We ducked into the first open bar we found, had a beer and went home.

Day 2: Brussels > Bruges

We headed to Bruges pretty early in the morning. We took an hour long train from the north station to Bruges and headed to the hostel. If you have never seen “In Bruges” before, you probably didn’t catch the reference I made earlier, but the movie starred Colin Farrell and was about how he hated being in Bruges. He stated had he been retarded or grew up on a farm he could have liked the city. I loved the city. I am not sure how much this speaks to my mental capacity, but I didn’t grow up on a farm.

Anyways, the city is so picturesque, with canals and bridges throughout the city. We explored the city pretty easily on foot and walked into different chocolate shops, over dozens of bridges and found the best waffle place that we visited in Belgium. We returned to the main square and went up the belfry, basically a tall clock tower. The views were amazing from up there. You could see the entire medieval town from up there, but the climb was a bitch. It was 366 steps. The way down was actually worse. I felt like I could fall down 40 stories with one false step. But check out the view!

We ate dinner at our hostel’s restaurant and drank some beers we picked up in a store and then headed out with a guy we met in our room. He was from Seattle and was travelling Europe while working for a wine company. He was a pretty cool guy and came to a Celtic bar with us to hear this band belt out 90s ballads and then to another place close to our hostel where the bartender brought me a banana flavored beer in a half coconut cup. It was delicious, but I felt kind of like a woman after it. Oh well, no worries.

Oh, I forgot. Before we tried going out that night we went to a few theaters in Bruges to see if they were showing Harry Potter because it came out early in Belgium. We found out that the only theater showing HP7 close by was actually out of town, so we decided we could wait to see it in Brussels. I was okay with this, but it would have been nice to see it earlier than the Cornell girls who went to London to see the movie. They are far more obsessed than I am and it would have been ironic had we gone to a non English speaking country only to see the movie before them.

Days 3, 4 and 5 to follow.