Orientation (cont'd), housing, bars, beers, etc.

Wow, so I said I was gonna post more but here I am a week later with too much to say. At least now, I have unlimited internet :)

The rest of Orientation was fun. More touring around Brussels and meeting lots of people in the program. We started Orientation for my actual school (Vesalius College or VeCo) on Wednesday. Their equivalent of OPAs are VeCo Buddies. Mine was pretty cool and started off our campus tour with a visit to the campus pub. I must say, I think I would have been a much better OPA if I could have taken my group out for a beer before the start of every program. The campus bar has Chimay (one of Belgium's famous Trappist beers that are brewed by monks) on tap but I have never received a beer with more foam in my life.

*Beer side note: Foam is much less frowned upon here than in America. Most beers have their own glasses (similar to America but here they actually care about serving the beer in the right glass) many of them are substantially larger than the quantity of beer that is to be served in them to allow room for foam. That being said, I still think the campus bar ripped me off. The foam started well below the line marking the amount of beer I was supposed to have. This actually creates quite an interesting dilemma: enjoy beers on tap because they are tastier and trust to the skill of bartenders or stick with bottles to ensure that I get the right quantity of beer? I guess I'll have to continue studying...

Anyway, the rest of the tour was good although I will be getting lost a lot. VeCo itself is all in one building but many of the classes are at VUB (the free Dutch university in Brussels) which is much larger and all of the signs are in, you guessed it, Dutch! It's a beautiful campus though and I am sure it won't be too hard to find my way around (just start from the bar!)

Thursday I took my French placement test. I placed into 103 (Intermediate I) which technically I have already taken but it is much harder here than at UMBC and they said that it is usually not a problem to convince most schools to accept the credit as a higher level french. Thursday, I also had an interview at Fulbright Belgium and was offered an internship for the semester. I am still kind of deciding whether or not I want to take it. It sounds like a really cool job but I am not sure that is how I want to spend a lot of my time abroad. I think I am leaning towards taking it (partially because it allows me to drop a Military approaches to Security class that sounds pretty awful) but I have to decide by Tuesday so I will keep you posted.

Friday I registered for classes. The system here is super inefficient. It's all done on paper and so many people register simultaneously that it seems like it would be impossible to keep track of add/drops, waitlists, etc. Luckily all the classes I wanted/needed are open. So in addition to my French and required Belgian Culture course, I am also enrolled in Development Economics and The European Union as an International Actor. Should be a good semester :)

My housing turned out great. I am in a house that has been converted to 7 different apartments with 8 people. I have a single apartment with a big living area and a lofted bed. The kitchen, laundry, and bathrooms are all shared with 6 of the housemates so it can be a little tricky. 5 of the people living here are in my program and 2 of them share the apartment on the ground floor (floor zero in Europe) and have their own bathroom and kitchen which we used last night to make a house dinner (some gourmet grilled cheeses and lots of wine). I live on the first floor and have a balcony (EXCEPT THAT I CAN'T GET TO IT BECAUSE THE WINDOWS ON THIS SIDE OF THE HOUSE DON'T OPEN!) The bathrooms also leave something to be desired. The showers are quite small and the shower head is not high enough to get my head. All in all though, I am very happy with my housing. I like that I am living with other students and the other people in the house are European and have been living in Belgium for at least a year so we have some of the inside scoop.

*Housing side note: Going on a tour of our house, our landlord says, "All of the books and things in the rooms have been left by previous residents to anything left behind is yours now." The last person who stayed in my room left half a bottle of vodka. Win!

Our neighborhood is very nice but we are still getting our bearings. Yesterday one of my housemates and I went to a grocery store and on the way home found a grocery store that was much closer. Would have been nice to know so we wouldn't have had to drag groceries as long but everything's a learning experience! We are very close to Avenue Louise which is kind of like the 5th Avenue of Brussels. It's really nice but absolutely out of my price range. Luckily there are some nice discount stores in the area too so it shouldn't bee too bad.

Last night the VeCo student government sponsored a bar hopping event (take notes UMBC) and it was pretty fun. Kind of hard to manage because there are a lot of new students but still a good time. I went out almost every day last week except for Wednesday (since I had a busy day on Thursday). I've been trying a lot of different beers and trying to get all of the Trappist beers. Chimay is a pretty popular one and is pretty tasty. I think the best value I've found is the Westmalle Triple. It's another Trappist beer that's about the same price as the others but a 9.5% and very good. I think I tried an 11% beer the other night but it was a little strong for me and I think the Westmalle is a good union of alcohol and quality. Beer is soooo cheep in the grocery store so I think we will be practicing pre-gaming a little more in the future to save some Euro. All in all though, the beers at the bars are really not that bad. I've just heard not to order beers at clubs at all. Seems like an average night is going to bars to pre-game and then maybe going out to a club later.

Tomorrow, I head to Waterloo with the program and then classes start Monday (I only have one class Monday and nothing on Thursday or Friday). This weekend, Josh and his uncle will be here and the Belgian Beer Festival will be going on around the city. Not quite as exciting as an earthquake followed up by a hurricane but it's not too bad I guess :D

Ok that seems like enough to keep you busy for now. I am going to go switch my laundry and then work on posting pictures. Happy Trails!

Orientation

Ok, I only have 20 minutes before I have to be at Orientation Day 2. Orientation is pretty boring (there are no OPAs and no fight song!) A lot of sitting in a really hot room but today there is a brewery tour so that should make things a little more interesting. There are about 40 people in my program so I am slowly but surely learning everyone's names. Eight of the boys are in the same room (three cheers for bonding!) at the hostel.

I went out to bars with people from the program on Saturday and Sunday night. Both nights were fun, lots of bonding over drinking games. Yesterday we ordered a beer for the group that was served in a huge tube that looked just like a bong (or so I've heard). It was pretty cool.

The internet costs money at this hostel so I will probably not get a chance to post pictures here but I move into my permanent housing on Wednesday (thank goodness!) and should have steady, free internet access.

Till then... Happy Trails!

Brugge, Amsterdam, and Paris

Well, I’ve now learned that I will need to post much more often because so much has happened since my last post that it is unlikely most of you will stay awake to finish this one. Since my last post, we have spent more time in Brugge and visited Amsterdam and Paris. We are en route back to Brussels now for another day and a half before mom leaves and my program orientation starts!

The second day we spent in Brugge, we went to the frites (French fries although they were actually invented in Belgium) museum, the chocolate museum, the City Hall museum, the Brugge Liberty Museum, a gothic artifacts museum, and the Belfry tower. The Belfry was amazing although it was a treacherous climb (for someone as clumsy as I). It was a very overcast day again so the view wasn’t as spectacular as it would have been on a clear day but still great and well worth the climb. I stayed up in the Belfry for about an hour just enjoying the view, listening to the bells, and laughing at all the obnoxious tourists that ventured up throughout the morning. The City Hall and liberty museums were both kind of disappointing. There wasn’t too much to see and most of the explanations were in Flemish (which, by the way, is one of the most ridiculous languages I have ever seen and heard). I think we missed a bit of the City Hall museum because there was a private wedding (which we almost walked in on :/) happening in one of the exhibit rooms. The frites museum was very informative but I had no idea that there was so much to learn about the history, biology, and frying of potatoes (for example, Belgian fries are so special and unique because they are cooked twice… that’s about all I remember). Following the trail of free samples, we sniffed out the chocolate museum where we were able to “research” the best chocolate makers. This trip was necessary for background information in preparation for our chocolate walking tour of Brussels tomorrow J. We got some groceries for dinner and I picked up a large bottle of Delerium Tremens, another great blonde beer. This one is distinct in that it has a higher alcohol content (8.5%) than the other blondes I had been sampling but it was just as delicious. I’ll wait to give a rating until I try it on tap at the source.

*Interesting beer side note in Belgium: You know how in America, Bud Lite is a pretty crappy beer so they try and make it more interesting with things like Bud Lite Lime? Well, they do the same thing here except their idea of a beer to do that with is Hoëgarden. I got mom a Hoëgarden Rôsée (raspberry) thinking she would like it (she didn’t but that’s beside the point) and it literally tasted like raspberry soda. In fact, I refuse to recognize it on the Beer List because I think it hardly qualifies as beer.

All in all Brugge is a beautiful city that looks frozen in time and it was a perfect place to spend a few days on our trip!

On Sunday, we debated about where we could go for one last day trip near Brugge. We considered both Gent and Antwerp but most attractions in those cities are closed on Sundays so we had to settle for Amsterdam (darn!).

Just leaving the train station gave us a breathtaking view. We picked up one-day city and transportation passes and set off for the Van Gogh museum. The collection was huge and just beautiful. Despite the crowds (this time of year, similar to Brugge, there seem to be more tourists than residents in Amsterdam), it was a great museum and we got to see some of his most famous pieces. It was a beautiful day so we walked across a small park to the Rijktsmuseum (sp?) to see some more beautiful artwork and artifacts. We hopped back on the tram to get to the docks of one of Amsterdam’s famous canals to get on a Canal Cruise around the City. Seeing Amsterdam via the canals is probably the best way to drink it all in (at least in the summer) but the Cruise itself was a little disappointing. It was very hard to hear the English recordings and it was pretty uncomfortable.

*Joke of the cruise: Just pass the gay district in Amsterdam, we went past some houses that were actually crooked because they weren’t built properly on the canals. Our Captain’s quote as we went by: “But it is hard to find anything straight around this part of town.”

After the Cruise, we didn’t have time for much else so we headed back to the train station. Amsterdam, its sights, its people, and its aromas were definitely another highlight of the trip.

*For all of you Song of Ice and Fire fans following the blog, I finished A Storm of Swords on the train home from Amsterdam. It was quite hard to contain my excitement in public.

Early the next morning we headed back to the train station for our trip to Paris. Our apartment was beautifully positioned (turn left from our metro exit and BAM! the Arc de Triomph) and we spent the afternoon walking around our neighborhood and enjoying some Paris shopping. That evening, we took a bike and boat tour of Paris. Considering that I hadn’t climbed aboard a bike in about six years, I did pretty well (I only ran into one guard rail along the way) and taking in Paris at sunset atop a bike is just an indescribable experience. No matter where you look, there is something beautiful to see. We cycled almost eight miles around the city. Part of the tour was a boat trip on the Seine (we were rewarded for our hard work on the bikes with some free wine). Cruising between the Louvre and the Musée D’orsay and floating past an illuminated Notre Dame while a breeze passes on a beautiful summer evening is definitely a nice way to spend your first night in Paris (just in case you were curious).

Our first stop on Tuesday was the Arc de Triomph. This time, I had a perfectly clear day to enjoy the view of Paris (I promise pictures are coming soon). Later that day we visited the Musée D’Orsay which is a much more manageable if not equally as impressive museum as the Louvre. It has a beautiful collection of impressionist and post-impressionist works that kept us occupied for quite a while. There is also a beautiful hall of statues when you first walk in but unfortunately there were no pictures allowed in this museum. Next we visited Notre Dame. We didn’t stay there too long because services were going on and there were hordes of tourists milling around the church that made it difficult to stay still for very long. The statues and stain glass (on the outside and inside) were just stunning and so impressive (even for Jews like us…lol). In the evening we walked around the Marais district and got dinner before heading back for a walk along the Champs Élysees to our apartment.

Wednesday (Mom’s Birthday!!) we went to the Pantheon and walked around the Latin Quarter, visited the Musée de L’Orangerie, and finally the Louvre. The Pantheon was beautiful and had some very interesting artwork depicting the history or Paris (works of St. Genevieve, the Patron Saint of Paris, and Joan of Arc chief among them). The Pantheon is also the site of the graves of some of the most famous Parisians including Rousseau, Victor Hugo, and Marie Curie. The Musée de L’Orangerie also had a beautiful collection but the easy highlight was two large ovular rooms full of Monet’s Water Lillies. Each contains four huge canvases that surround the admirers with Monet’s masterpieces. A walk through the Tuilerie Gardens brought us to the Louvre where we spent the last hour and a half of energy we had for the day. While we barely scratched the surface of the museum, we saw so much. We walked through four galleries of French, Greek, and Italian statues leading up to The Winged Victory. A walk around the corner led us to Mona Lisa and hallways upon hallways of paintings. We walked for as long as we could before throwing in the towel and finding a nice birthday dinner for Mom.

Well that brings us to today. We walked around a little bit more this morning before heading to the train station. We are about 20 minutes from Brussels and it looks pretty rainy. After we check in to the hotel, we are thinking a nice leisurely afternoon and maybe trying to find the Vesalius College campus for a sneak peak before classes start.

Hopefully you made it through that but if not, the picture book version is coming soon. Happy Trails!

A Beer and the Beach

Wow! What an insane 48 hours it has been! It is hard to believe that just two days ago we weren't sure if we were going to make it here because our initial flight to Philadelphia was cancelled and our flight to Belgium sat on the runway for an hour before we could take off! Well we made it and I am writing this from our beautiful apartment in the city of Brugge in northwest Belgium.

Yesterday after we arrived, we had quite the adventure looking for the Hostel where we could store our luggage but finally made it there and spent the rest of the day walking around Brussels unencumbered. We started our day with a cafe au lait and some famous Belgian waffles (which were amazing!). The Hostel is parallel to a very busy shopping street so we walked along that for a bit and got a cell phone. Then we headed to the spectacular Grand Place where there are a few museums and the Brussels City Hall. We walked around the Grand Place and up and down some of the surrounding streets to get a feel for the City. It is very crowded and very diverse. There are a lot of tourists around right now but I expect that will die down once the semester starts. We saw the famous Mannekin Pis and the monument to the Buls. We stopped at a little cafe and I got my first legal beer! Unfortunately, the fact that it was legal was the best part. It was called Primus and it tasted just like a Bud Lite... utterly disappointing.

We returned to the Hostel, found our way to the train station, and got on a train to Brugge where we are spending the next few days. It is a beautiful city populated with only 20,000 people! There are more bikes on the road than cars and more tourists than locals. Everyone is carrying a map and/or camera (which makes me feel better about doing the same thing). All the streets are cobble stone and all the buildings fit in perfectly with the 14th century churches that are the landmarks in the City. Last night we got lost again trying to find our apartment (Dutch is very hard to read and the numbers on the houses do NOT go in numerical order) but found our way there and lay down for a nice nap. The beer I had with dinner was much better; a blonde Olney which tasted a little like Blue Moon but darker and heavier.

This morning we learned the all important lesson of not underestimating jet lag and got a rather late start. We spent the day in Oostend, a city on the coast, and took the tram (looked just like the Baltimore Light Rail) all the way up and down the coast, getting off at small beach towns to eat and walk around. It was overcast all day but nice for walking since it wasn't too hot. The main takeaway is that beach towns all over the world are very similar. It was just like Ocean City (but cooler because everything was in Dutch)! I had a Leffe-Blonde (which was very similar to the Olney and equally delicious) while eating a crepe with strawberries and whipped cream and looking over at the beach... life here is very difficult.

Tomorrow we will visit a few of the museums and attractions in Brugge. There is a chocolate museum, frites museum, diamond museum, and brewery among many other attractions that should make the next two days great!

More to come soon, thanks for reading. Happy Trails!