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Published: February 28th 2010
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City overlook
From the Palais de Justice (Justice Palace), you can get a great view of the entire city - including the giant metallic atom structure that is like the city's Eiffel Tower. Yesterday, a group of us decided to take a day-trip to Brussels, Belgium to get out of Maastricht for a little bit. It was a nice break from schoolwork, & since Brussels is only 2 hours away by train, it made for nice & easy travel. We headed out of Maastricht-Centraal at 10 am, changed trains in Liege, and arrived in Brussels around noon to start our day. Kristina, a friend of Cenay, is currently working at the European Ombudsman so she has been living in Brussels for quite some time now. She kindly showed us around the city. I had been there once before in the Summer of 2007, but it was nice to get to see more of the city than just the very kitsch touristy parts. Of course, we started our day off seeing those tourist attractions - like the good luck statute off of the main market and Mannequin Pis. However, I didn't even bother taking photos of them since I already have them in my repertoire. haha. Mannequin Pis had a different outfit on this time, though. They change his outfits pretty regularly, & this time he was dressed in a blue uniform. Apparently it was
Garden in Brussels
Kristina, Cenay, Fay, & Adnan in a garden in the middle of Brussels. "National Scout Day" yesterday so I'm assuming it was supposed to resemble a boy scout's uniform.
We stopped in a typical Belgian cafe for coffee and drinks. It was a really nice place - very relaxing. Kristina said that at night it turns into a club of sorts which is also very fun. I just had a coffee, but Cenay & Kristina had mint-infused tea which was very cool. It was served in a regular glass & the mint leaves weren't in a tea strainer - they were just on the bottom of the glass. It smelled delicious.
The best part about being in Brussels for the day was that the city is bilingual. Belgium recognizes two official languages - French & Dutch. (There are strictly Flemish areas of Belgium & strictly French-speaking areas of Belgium, but Brussels is a bilingual city). It was interesting to see the interplay between the two languages. Street signs, advertisements, and billboards were all in both languages (including the signs on the train). I was overjoyed with the fact that I could understand what was going on (FINALLY) because people predominantly speak French. It was nice to be able to order food
in a language that wasn't English, haha. What was really interesting is the fact that Cenay, Fay, & Kristina (who are all native Dutch speakers) questioning whether they should use Dutch or try their best with French. They said that most people will understand the Dutch but are so stubborn & will only respond in French so they were doing their best not to offend anyone. The middle ground was for them to just speak English which I guess is less offensive, haha. It was quite humorous...
We primarily just walked around the whole city visiting different quartiers & truly taking in all that Brussels has to offer outside of the typical tourist stops. We even took a tram to a park on the outskirts of town. It was BEAUTIFUL. Not only was the weather gorgeous all day (sunny & warm & no rain), the park was full of people walking their dogs, pushing baby strollers, & kids playing. It was so funny to see this serene area just outside the bustling city center. What a nice escape if you lived in Brussels! There were even people riding horses through the park which I thought was so cool!
We ate dinner at a restaurant that specializes in seafood. Of course, anyone that goes to Brussels absolutely HAS to eat mussels at some point. There are several different options for the mussels - des moules marineres are natural mussles which only have a slight seasoning/sauce on them. They're very "organic." I had des mouls provencales which was very good. It was a sauce that had a lot of vegetables in it so it took on the flavor of the veggies. Fay had des moules garliques which were garlic mussels, & Adnan had spicy mussels. All in all, none of us were disappointed. The mussels were served with French fries which is another thing that the Belgians are famous for. (Not many people know that the food is a misnomer... fries were actually developed in Belgium, not France. So technically they should be called "Belgian" fries & not "freedom" fries or whatever we called them in the US for a hot second, haha). For desert, we hit up a street waffle stand. SOOOOOO delicious. Waffles are called "des gaufres" & you can quite literally get anything on top of it that you want - including bananas, strawberries, whipped cream, iced
cream, caramel syrup, chocolate syrup - you name it, you can get it. I had a waffle with chocolate ice cream & chocolate syrup. However, by the middle of it, it was almost too sweet, & I couldn't finish it. What a waste, haha. (But the 7,000,000 calories of it that I did eat were delicious, haha).
In all, it was a fantastic day, & we all had a great time. Our train left at 10:00 pm, so by that time & after walking all that time, we were all exhausted. My bed never felt so good as it did last night! haha We're going to plan a weekend to go see Kristina in order to be able to go take on the "nightlife" of Brussels so that should be a lot of fun. Round-trip tickets were only 18 euro so they were very cheap, making the trip very easy to do again!
That's all for my day-trip adventures!
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ilb
i love belgium
what more to do in Belgium: www.ilovebelgium.be