Belgium - Great beer, chocolate, and waffles

Christian September 5th, 2008

   It was a short train ride to Brussels from Amsterdam.  Once we made it out of the train station, we found our way to our hostel.  When we walked into the hostel, we were suprised by how modern it looked.  It looks as if the owner has an in at Ikea.  We were staying in a four bed dorm room, but none of the dorm mates were in.  We only had one full day in Brussels, so we decided to make the most of it.  We grabbed our map from the hostel and ventured off into the city.  One of the first things we noticed was that all signs were written in two languages.  On the train ride in we wondered, “So what do you speak when in Belguim?”.  Apparently it is either French or Dutch.  Although, it seems that many people speak a ton of other languauges.  The first place that we went to was one of the main squares of the city.  The buildings in the square were very impressive and we hung out in the square for a while, taking in the sights.  There were also a few overpriced cafes in the square that we would have like to indulged on. 

Main Square of Brussels 

From the main square we navigated to one of the city’s parks.  It was pretty nice with a huge fountain.  There was some huge festival about to go on, so there were crews setting up stages and whatnot.  After all the walking to get to the park, we ended up sitting on the bench for a while people watching.  The palace is located on the end of the park, so we went to visit that.  Due to the festival, there was not a good view of the palace.  We then walked to the white cathedral.  It was pretty large and white with a lot of people going in and out.  After our whirlwind sightseeing tour of Brussels, we went back to the hostel for some food and drink.

Brussels' Park

Girl at Fountain

     After we found out that the hostel had a kitchen, we immediately ran to the grocery store.  We loaded up on Belgian Beer, Belgian Chocolate, and a microwave pizza.  The beer is super strong here.  The one bottle I bought was 9%, while the others were 8%.  They went well with the pizza.  A little too well.  After eating the first thing all day and drinking three beers, I of course find out that the vending machine at the hostel sells beer for 1 Euro.  A couple of more and I was ready for bed.  Luckily our dorm room mate was nice, a girl from Oz who we chatted with for a while.  Towards the end of our conversation, our other dorm mate came in, a guy from Germany.  We shut the lights off and that is when the fun started.

    The German in our room must have shouted German in his sleep 3 times, waking all of us up.  It was a bit disurbing, but part of the dorm life.  The next morning, we had to leave early so snuck out quietly trying not to wake up the roommates.  Once we got to the train station, I realized that I had forgotten a few things under my bed.  Casey went and changed our train to a later one, we ran back to the hostel and grabbed the missing items before heading back to the train station once again.  At least we had time to enjoy a Belgian Waffle while in Belgium on the way back to the train station for breakfast.  Brussels is a quirky city that seems to lack an identity.  It is super modern in parts, and very historic in others.  Maybe this is part of the reason the European Union has its home office here. We enjoyed our day in Brussels, but looking back a day in a smaller town would have been a bit more enjoyable.

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