The Land of Beer and Waffles

This weekend I went to Brussels and I loved every second of my trip (except for the traveling part). Brussels is a beautiful city, the food is great, the beer is amazing and cheap, and the people are really nice. Originally Brussels was just an inexpensive city to visit with my friends Emi and Shira. I knew they had great beers and good food but that was about it. Getting to Brussels from Florence is an adventure in of itself, since I chose to fly ryanair which leaves from Pisa. Of course my flight was late taking off. The pilot was mediocre and the landing was incredibly turbulent, slightly terrifying and rather sickening. Eventually I did make it to Brussels. One of the first things to catch my attention was how multi-cultural Brussels was. Despite doing my best to keep in touch with the outside world through the newspaper, I'd forgotten that people other than Europeans, Americans, and Asian tourists ever came to Europe. Despite a slightly rough start to my trip I quickly began to enjoy my time in Brussels.

Emi, Shira, and their friend Jen are all studying in Geneva. The four of us started our night at the Grande Place, which is an absolutely beautiful square in the city center. Here you can see my failed attempt at night photography.

After wandering around the Grand Place and the surrounding neighborhood we decided we were ready to find to things: the famed Mannequin Pis and some waffles. In case you can't guess from the name the Mannequin Pis is a statue of a little boy peeing. Apparently it is also a symbol of Belgium and has been compared to the Eiffel Tower in France. Personally I don't see the similarity. One of them is a very large tower, the other is about the size of an American Girl Doll and it pees. While underwhelming the statue is at the same time rather funny. And the Belgians seem to love it as they reproduce versions of it, in chocolate. Anyway, the four of us got our waffles and enjoyed their amazing deliciousness while contemplating the bizarre phenomenon that is the Mannequin Pis. After finishing our waffles we felt ready to take on another crucial facet of Belgian culture, the beer. Our first stop on our journey of discovery into Belgian beer-land was a bar called Celtica (because what is more typically Belgian than an Irish Pub?) While their selection of beers on tap were primarily English and Irish, they did have a large selection of bottled Belgian beer. I began the night with 2 euro bottle of Duvel. For those of you familiar with Duvel you know that in the States a bottle costs around $10. After our first round of drinks we decided to move on to another bar, preferably one showing the France-Wales Rugby game on tv. After search for about 15 minutes we found shockingly another Irish pub. This one was called O'Reilly's. It was backed with fans of both the French and Welsh teams. My friends and I decided we were content to stay there and watch the game so we settled down, got a round of drinks, and watched a fantastic game. The first rugby game I ever saw was in England freshman year, Wales won. That same night was the first time I tried Strongbow. I decided it would be appropriate to come full-circle and order a Strongbow to enjoy the game. However this time, the Welsh team did not do so well. They were scoreless the first half of the game. While they had a fantastic comeback in the 2nd half (when the French team got lazy) they still lost. Watching the game was so much fun. Both the French and Welsh fans were prone to singing which made watching the game even more fun. I also started talking to a French student studying in Brussels while watching the game. It was really fun to talk to someone who wasn't American. When France finally won the match the fans started singing the Marseillaise. It was a fantastic moment in my life. After the game Emi, Shira, Jen, and I went in search of frites. We found a shop that basically just sold frites and split two huge packets. The guy asked if we wanted sauce and we said yes what's the most typically Belgian. When we found out the answer was mayonaise we asked for the 2nd most popular sauce. He told us it was Andelouse, a spicy sauce so we decided to try that and it was absolutely fantastic. After finishing our frites we returned to the first bar for another cheap round of 2 euro drinks. This time we tried a Belgian cider. While it wasn't my favorite drink of the night I still enjoyed myself. After leaving the bar we tried to get home, I say try because we failed at reading the tram schedule and thereby discovering which tram would get us home. Once we got that minor detail sorted out we got home while only being minorly creeped out by a guy lurking in a doorway.

The next day we decided to start with mini-Europe and the Atomium. Now I imagine mini-Europe is something like Epcot but I wouldn't actually know since it was closed. However the Atomium was really cool. It's a giant replica of a molecule that was constructed for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. After that we went to the EU campus, the Cathedral, a bunch of parks, the Grand Place, the Palais du Justice. We saw so many things I'm not even sure what we saw. I'm going to skip talking about dinner, it was nice but unexceptional. After dinner we went to a bar called Delirium Cafe and drank more yummy Belgian Beers. We all tried a beer that tasted like Gingerbread. It was a little strange but good. We referred to it as the cookie beer since the name was Flemish and therefor unpronounceable. I rather liked the cookie beer but at heart I like my Belgian Trappiste Ales.

Now Midterms are over (thank god) and I'm off to Aix-en-Provence, Madrid, and Lisbon for Spring break. Over the next 10 days I plan to eat my weight in chorizo and shrimp. When not eating I'll go to a few museums and do a bit of shopping.