Top of the morning to you, I might be at the bottom of a Guiness, as I'm in Dublin right now. Why go to Dublin for the weekend you ask? Well, because I can. Chris, Phil and decided that we wanted to get out of Belgium for the weekend and we decided that Ireland would be a great place to go. We bought our tickets on Ryanair, on which I had never flown before so I didn’t really know what to expect. We also made a reservation at a hotel that was located 1km south of the Liffey River that splits [View Full Entry]

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Hallo, I got up at the crack of dawn after socializing the night before at the outdoor party at Montgomery in order for me to arrive in Ypres in time to catch my tour. I got my first taste of Belgian wildlife on the way there as I saw rabbits, quails and a pheasant from my train window. I don’t usually do tours but Ypres is special. You see, Ypres was one of the major sites of conflict during World War I. Numerous battles were fought in the area as the Germans pushed towards the French Channel ports and the allied [View Full Entry]

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Bonjour et Hello, Hello et Bonjour, So my first day of work was June 1st. It was a holiday. I love Belgium!!! I finished unpacking and then cleaned up some more stuff before heading back to Uccle to pick up some stuff I had left out there. Afterwards, I followed Elaine’s suggestion that it was only a 10 minute walk back to town. It was not a 10 minute walk to downtown. Try a 30 minute walk! It was a sunny day, so I didn’t mind it too much. I was wandering around, and two streets met (I’m not ripping off [View Full Entry]

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Bonjour, The Study Tour is now over and I have begun the process of adjusting to life in Brussels, which will be my home for the next 3 months. I packed my bags, checked out of the hotel and began my quest to reach my new home. My metro journey wasn’t that bad, but the escalators at the stop I got of at weren’t working so I had to lug my stuff up the stairs. Now, I’m not saying all Belgians are selfish and inconsiderate, but almost everyone I met that day was. People just wouldn’t let me walk up the [View Full Entry]

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Bonjour, I have managed to lose this thing twice, the last one being a truly epic loss, so I apologize for it's lateness. Monday: Once again, we travelled back to Infocentre for another round of talks. I’m sure you’re as sick of hearing about the place as I am in going to it! I don’t think I have provided a description of the pace yet, so now I will attempt to. It is located right in the heart of the EU district across from the Berlaymont building that houses much of the European Commission. On the second floor there are many [View Full Entry]

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Hallo, Katrina was still in town, so we decided to do another day-trip. This time, we headed to Gent. The city is halfway in between Brussels and Brugge and is by-passed by most tourists as a result. We caught a train, which turned out to be of the slow, milk-run variety and took double the amount of time to arrive at the city as was anticipated. Never-the-less, we arrived in the city and walked towards the Old Town. It was a bit of a hike, so we stopped off at a sandwich place en route. The sandwiches were fantastic! I didn’t [View Full Entry]

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Hallo and Bonjour, Friday was cool because Katrina, who was visiting from Denmark, met up with me. We went to the Cantillon brewery, and went on the tour. The brewery is over a hundred years old and is family run so it's really atmospheric. You can wander through all of the machinery, view the bottling process and most importantly taste the final product. We then met up some other people and headed out to a little bar called Delerium. Delerium is a quaint, quiet bar that is just off the Grand Place. When I say quaint and quiet, I actually mean [View Full Entry]

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Hallo, We bussed up to Antwerp in the morning. En route, we passed a town called Boom (I'm not kidding). Lonely Planet talks about Antwerp being a pretty city but I prefer Milan's description of the city: "It looks like all the residents set their houses on fire and then went back inside to wait it out." None of us found it particularly pretty. We wandered through some of the Old Town, and then the Red Light District which was somewhat busy for a Thursday morning before 10am. There were women in the windows like Amsterdam, but it just felt dirty [View Full Entry]

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I don't even know how to say hello in Luxembourgerish so I'm not going to try, I should have probably added some of this on the last one but we did some stuff in Strasbourg in the morning before we left for Luxembourg. We visited the Council of Europe, which is an independent body from the EU and still has some role, I don't know how to explain it really because it's ridiculously complicated and no one wants to hear me drone on and on about the inner workings and compositions of EU institutions and their competencies. With it's extravagant wood [View Full Entry]

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Bonjour, Arrival at Strasbourg was less than scintilating. We crossed the Rhine from Germany into France, singing "Vive la France" as we entered. I'm still not really sure why we sang, but it seemed mildly entertaining at the time. However, we were not at the hotel quite yet. That step would take the better part of an hour and a half! We droved along one side of the canal lining the Grand Ile, crossed it, and reversed our any progress that had been made by driving back along the other side of the canal, all in a vain attempt to follow [View Full Entry]

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