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Published: September 5th 2009
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Bonjour,
I arrived back from Madrid at 9am, and as I mentioned before, it was frightfully cold at 13 degrees in Brussels.
I got my stuff back to my place, and then went out chocolate shopping for gifts for people back home. After stalking up, I went to visit my favourite ice cream place and my favourite durum place one last time.
For dinner, I met Claude and two of her friends, whose names escape me right now, and we went to Skievlat Sablon, which is a restaurant that Anne had found randomly on the study tour. It became my favourite restaurant in the city and it was where I wanted to go before I returned to Vancouver. We had dinner and then went to Grand Place were we met Monica and Dirk, Cris could not join us as she was ill, and bought waffles. We enjoyed the waffles and then we grabbed a couple of beers and watched the lights show on the buildings in Grand Place. The language they started off with was Swedish, for whatever reason, and the last song they played was “The Final Countdown”, which had been the song people were signing during
karaoke on our first party night in Hachenberg on during the Study Tour. Monica, Dirk and I went to Delirium afterwards for a drink, but I was so tired, having been awake for 39 of the last 40 hours, I almost fell asleep standing up! We then headed back to the house.
The next day I mostly spent packing. I had to be ruthless because of those stupid new rules that limit allowed luggage weight to 23 kilos per bag. I managed to throw out enough stuff that I was able to get it low enough that I wouldn’t have any issues. I then lounged for much of the rest of the day, but then I had a little get together with my room-mates at night. We had wine and talked about our time living together. It was quite enjoyable and I’m going to miss Monica, Dirk and Cris, the room-mates who were there at the end, quite a bit. We all said goodbye and then I went to bed because I had to be up at the crack of dawn the next day.
I woke up at 330am once again and caught a taxi. He tried to
talk me into paying double and getting a ride to the airport but I firmly assured him that Gare Central would be best. The elevator was not working at that time of the morning for some reason, so I had to lug my luggage down the stairs. Fortunately, no one was there to take it. I checked in at the airport, 3 kilos overweight, but they let me on without charging me extra.
I flew from Brussels to Amsterdam, which is so short a flight it’s not even funny. Seriously, I think we rise just high enough to clear the steeple in Antwerp and then we touch down. I made it through the Amsterdam airport, suffering only a minor issue with carry-on items, but it was sorted out so I could board my flight to Seattle without any hindrance. The 9.5 hour flight was easy, especially after flying to Australia the year before. I arrived at SeaTac, dreading American security and customs, but it was completely painless. In fact, it was probably the easiest airport transfer I had the whole trip! I boarded my little Horizon Air flight that whisked me the 40 minutes up to Vancouver. It only took me 20 minutes to get from the plane, through customs and to pick up my luggage, which I think is some sort of record and then I was home.
116 days after I had left the city, I was back in Vancouver. I enjoyed my time away, but it was good to be home.
Bye for now,
Peter
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