OK so like I thought I would be, I was pretty busy the last couple weeks and haven't had time to post. But never fear, I can recap.
The week after I last posted, I went to Luxembourg with my study abroad program and that weekend we headed to Oktoberfest. Luxembourg was very very beautiful. There is a ton of greenspace and it was really fun to just walk around. We visited the European Investment Bank which is like the EU version of the World Bank. They fund a lot of development projects around Europe and in the developing world. It seems like a pretty cool institution. Now I just have to see if they have summer internships...
We left for Oktoberfest very early Friday morning. I slept most of the way there (sorry Raph and Prosser) but from what I'm told there was lots of traffic so it took a little longer than expected. All I can tell you is that the German word for exit is Ausfahrt (haha fart). At first we just thought it was an unfortunately named city but then we realized there couldn't possibly that many cities with the same name. When we finally got to our campsite it was crazy. There were sooo many people there! There wasn't even room for the car so we had to park in a private lot down the road. When we got in, there was also not very much room for our tents. We ended up setting up in a "reserved for Trailers" only zone. When we left for the night ours were the only tents there but when we got back our area was flooded with them. We decided that trying to go to the festival Friday night was a little ambitious so we hung out at the bar at the campsite. We ordered three beer steins (which are massive, by the way) and sat down with some Australians. They were... interesting. Definitely fun to talk to but they got pretty drunk pretty quickly. We stayed out until around 11 and then crashed so we could wake up early the next day. Saturday we got an early start (made particularly jarring by the ice cold shower offered by the campsite).
Walking into the festival is something like walking into Six Flags with beer everywhere. The beer tents are massive and there are a ton of rollercoasters around the park. The streets are lined with food stands and souvenir shops offering the traditional leiderhosen, dresses, and hats (tout trop cher!) We got into one tent and ordered three more steins. This was a considerably more formidable task at 9:30 in the morning than it had been the previous night. We managed to finish 2 each over the course of 3 or 3 and a half hours. In that time, the sun had risen, we discovered that the family next to us did in fact speak fluent English, our tent and surrounding area had packed with people, there was a lot of German drinking songs, and several people had already passed out. Between our table and the bathroom alone there were three or four adults just passed out leaning up against a wall or sitting on a crate. By noon. It was absolutely crazy.
We walked around the festival for a little while longer and found some food. It was really beautiful outside all weekend so we just kept walking around and drinking in the sights of the festival (no pun intended) all afternoon. We headed back to the campsite on the earlier side so we could feed the meter for the car and take naps. We didn't go out any more after that, just dinner at a really cool outdoor restaurant that was down the street from the campsite.
The second day went pretty similarly to the first. That time we got into a tent a little later and met up with one of my roommates, Caroline, and all her friends from Brown. Since it was a little later in the morning, the beer went down a little easier than it had on Friday. In fact, some of the guys at our table (Raph and Prosser included) got up on the table and started chugging their steins. This gets you lots of cheers and applause if you can do it. If you fail, however, the crowd will throw, well pretty much anything at you. Luckily our friends had figured this out before their attempt and so they were well aware of what was at stake. They all finished to cheers rather than debris. We stayed in the tent a little later that day since we knew we wouldn't be able to get back into a tent if we left. We managed to smuggle out three beer steins as well. It's a good thing we drove because lugging a suitcase with a beer stein would not have been fun on train or plane. We spent more time outside that day and all ended up taking afternoon naps on a hill outside the park. We headed back to the campsite and got dinner from the same restaurant before absolutely passing out in the tents. We left Monday morning and had a much smoother ride back to Brussels.
All in all, Oktoberfest was... well a shitshow. It was really fun but drinks were really expensive and the beer was not nearly as good as Belgian beer. Definitely something I am glad I experienced and definitely a recommendation for any euro-trip but not something I need to go back to every year or anything.
The week in between Germany and Spain was extremely hectic. 2 days of class, a huge event for my internship Wednesday evening and a paper to finish (read: start and finish) before I left. It felt like I didn't stop moving for three days. Everything turned out great and I even got to walk around with the American Ambassador to Belgium for a while at my work event. Prosser and Raph left Thursday morning and that evening I was off to Spain straight from work! We thought we were going to miss our flight because it is quite a bus ride all the way to the cheap airport from the city center. We were running through the airport in Brussels only to realize that our entire flight had still not boarded the plane and that Ryanair definitely lies about their gate closure times...
It was a pretty short (and rocky) flight to Barcelona. Once we got to the city, I got settled in my hostel and went off to meet my roommate Carolyn's (yes, my roommates are named Carolyn and Caroline) friends who are studying in Barca. We went out to a few bars and a club that night and had a blast. The next day, we did a lot of walking. I went on an adventure and found the bus station that I would be leaving from the next morning. I met up with my friends for lunch and then we were off around the city. It was a great tour! We walked all over the place through this huge outdoor market, and down to the port, past a lot of the old ruins in the City, and then over to Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's famous cathedral. It is an absolutely stunning building. We got there 20 minutes after closing so we couldn't actually go in but just the outside was just outside was astounding.
We ate dinner at a nice little Tapas place and then went out for the night. I found good boxes of wine for 50 cents!! It was really good wine too! We went to a couple bars in Barcelona and then to a club on the beach that was about 20 minutes away. The club was really cool and there were a ton of people there. The city was packed with tourists that weekend because it was the same weekend as Sensation, this huge rave that happens in a lot of major cities in Europe.
The next morning, I stopped at another Gaudi Museum on my way out and then took the 8-hour bus ride from Barcelona to Madrid. Fast forward 8-hours that I should have been studying for midterms and I was in Madrid! I stayed at this reallllly nice hostel that had lockers in the rooms and a full kitchen and was in a great location, right off of Puert de Sol. The first night, we just went to this Irish bar close to our hostel and then got some late night churros with hot chocolate sauce (soooo tasty but I'm very glad they don't have this in Brussels). The next morning there was a tour of the city that left from our hostel so we got a great 3-hour free walking tour. We walked all over the city and heard a lot about the history and politics of Madrid and Spain. I got really good paellas and sangria for lunch and then we went to the Museo de Prado, a really nice art museum in Madrid. The museum was a little overwhelming and I felt too tired to really appreciate it.
During the day, someone tried to break into my hostel room. Apparently, the guy at the reception desk thought something was up with this dude that walked in and so he locked the dude in the room he was trying to steal from (my room) and called the police. I had to go back to the hostel and make sure all my stuff was still there but I was very impressed with the service at the hostel! Saturday night we didn't really sleep since our flight was at 6 in the morning and we had to catch a bus to the airport. We went to dinner at my friend's friend's house. She was in a homestay and her house mom invited us all over for dinner. She was a really sweet woman and the dinner was great. We explored a little more of the city that night but got kinda tired and went back and hung out at the hostel until our flight. A much less eventful trip to the airport (surprisingly for 4:30 in the morning) and we were off. Unfortunately, airport security confiscated the corkscrew I bought as a souvenir in Madrid! Coming back to Belgium was pretty sad. I slept the entire flight but as soon as we walked off the plane we realized that it was cold and rainy and not the beautiful 80 degree weather we had in Spain. We got back to the city and I slept most of the day.
Midterms this week went pretty well. I don't know for sure about all the tests I took but I didn't think any of them were impossible. Last night we were planning to go to Leuven (the student town in Belgium and home of the longest bar in the world!) but people were pretty tired from midterms week and didn't want to stay out all night so we just went out in Brussels. Still had a great time! Tonight I think we are going to go out a little but I need to come back kind of early because I have an event for work tomorrow in Antwerp so I have to catch an early morning train.
So, that's all I have to report for now. I am glad to be staying put in Brussels for a weekend. I loved all the traveling I did but I was definitely a little overwhelmed and started to miss having a home. Antwerp should be really cool tomorrow and next weekend my study abroad program takes us to Normandy! Time to storm some beaches!
Happy Trails!!
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