So this is it. When your trip is happening right now. You plan months and months in advance, and even when your flight is in two days, it still seems so far away in the future. But I've reached this present moment where every passing hour is already part of the afventure. It's 2.29 and my Thalys train from Brussels is at 7.52. That means I'm leaving the house at 6.30, means waking up at 5.30. Means I got three hours left to get everything right. My bag is half packed, most of what I need to take is lying on [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody, How's things? Hope everything is fine and/or dandy. From Berlin, I've headed south to Munich, but not before a short stopover in the small town of Wiemar. Weimar was an unscheduled stop, but one I'm very glad I did. Weimar ended up being a stop for a bit of inspiration and reflection. Weimar was inspiration because it was one of the cultural centres of Germany, which boasts former residents such as Goethe, Schiller, Bach and Liszt. I visited the Goethe house and museum (Goethe wrote 'Faust' and 'the sorrows of young Werther'), and judging from the residence I thin [View Full Entry]

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Belgians are weird, they put mayonaise on their fries and charge people to use the restrooms. They at least did Brugge right. It's a town straight from Walt Disney fairy tale. With towers and turrets, ivy covered old walls, swans swimming in the calm river that meanders through town, stone bridges, and windmills at the edge of town. I wouldn't be surprised if I had bumped into Cinderella, having lost her glass slipper yet again. During the day hordes of tourists fill its narrow streets and alleys, in the cool evenings the locals and tourists alike bring their children to the [View Full Entry]

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We flew to Brussels, Belgium yesterday. The moment we stepped out of the train station we knew for sure that we've left Greece behind. Venerable, art nouveau-ish buildings surround us instead of the modern, concrete, boxes that is Athens. The food here costs a night's accomodation in Greece so we've been surviving mainly on leftover marble cakes, bagel chips, and Pizza Hut when we decided to splurge last night. And everybody speaks English (except for the toilet cleaning lady in McDonald's), and it feels great for a change! Belgians speak French and Flemish. Our useless phrase book has no sect [View Full Entry]

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I did quite like it here even though it is not the most exciting place in the world and has a bad reputation in Europe for being a bit of a hole. I spent most of my day up in Heysel which is on the outskirts of the city but has a nice large park, and Brupark! which is a complex that has a water park, cinemas and Mini-Europe which is quite possibly the tackiest thing I have ever seen. It has all the major landmarks of Europe but at 1/25th of the size. My camera ran out of batteries while [View Full Entry]

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Belgium! Quite a shock to the system after Barcelona, the people speak English, they don’t try to run you over as you attempt to use the crosswalk, and instead of leers and whistles from 70 year-old men with canes you hear “Bojour” or “Hallo”. So refreshing. Friday as previously stated was rainy and miserable and Britt and I were exhausted so we stayed in Ghent and nothing too exciting happened. I met our wonderful hosts Emily from Kenya and Wim the Belgian and baby Bran. Saturday was better weather and the trains in Belgium are buy one-way get return f [View Full Entry]

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Well, just wanted to let everyone know that I was not in London this morning. I was on a train from Paris to Brussels. The trains were delayed a bit this morning and all the ones coming from London Waterloo were cancelled. I now know why. Brussels is interesting, but I am probably moving on to Amsterdam tomorrow, then in to Germany. Don't worry...I'm fine and will be home in a week or so. Brandon [View Full Entry]

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It was the semester break for our studies in Florence, Italy, so myself and my roomate, Lindsey, decided we would take advantage of the opportunity and head to Brussels, Amsterdam, and Berlin for the week! Brussels was a stop-over for us because ultimately it did not cost much more at all to fly into the area (Charleroi airport) and then take a train into our intended destination of Amsterdam, than if we had just flown straight into Amsterdam. Who were we to complain about the opportunity to see an extra city/country! The arrival airport was a small one, and after a [View Full Entry]

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I knew it would be a bummer have to work on the 4th of July and miss all the regular Independence Day fun, so to make up for it, I took my 4th of July holiday on Friday and headed out to a 4-day music festival near the Belgian city of Werchter on Thursday afternoon with a bunch of Shell buddies. Not much for fireworks (except for Rammstein, of course), but what could be more American than rock n' roll? Yeah, ok, so apple pie and baseball come to mind, but cut me some slack here k? We invented rock, so [View Full Entry]

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Even kijken of alles werkt zodat we met een gerust geweten kunnen vertrekken naar Laos. [View Full Entry]

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