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Published: August 6th 2007
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Manneken Pis
I never actually realised that Brussels is where this famous little pissing baby comes from!!! Once upon a time (in July 2002), two young girls met in Paris at Alliançe Française. Karolina and Susin, two international students; one from the Czech Republic, one from Australia, became friends. This is the story of the reunion five years later….
Yes, it finally happened. My first reunion with one of my friends that I met while overseas oh so many lifetimes ago. Karolina and I have kept email contact with each other ever since our month together studying in Paris, and just this week I got to see her again in the flesh for the first time in almost five years!
Just like me, Karolina is doing a study abroad program but hers is in Belgium, one of the other French speaking European countries. She lives in a little town called Louvain-la-Neuve Ottignes, just near Brussels where I went to visit her earlier this week.
It was a pretty amazing trip. I have to admit I was a little nervous to be jumping on a train to see someone who, let’s face it, I hardly know very well. But as it turned out there was nothing to be nervous about - as soon as we saw
Grand Place
The beautiful buildings in the historical centre. each other it was like the last five years hadn’t passed. She looks exactly the same as she used to and we picked up our conversation right where we left off on our last email. It’s an amazing thing that some friendships last and that some don’t; and that there are some that last decades which break off never to be seen again, and that there are some that live underneath the skin, hibernating, easily reignited.
The first night I arrived we just spent time catching up, having a drink in her small town which is basically just a university campus. But the next day we hopped in the car to go to Brussels, which turned out to be one of the most beautiful cities (other than Strasbourg) I’ve seen in Europe so far.
Basically we just walked around the city; the shopping district, the historical centre, had coffee, had Belgian waffles, had baguettes and drank wine. Pretty much everything one person can do while spending just one day in a new city! And it’s such a beautiful city, it’s really hard to compare it to anything else I’ve seen. Its architecture is breathtaking - lots of ancient
buildings painted with gold detail, it’s huge, it’s busy, it has a great atmosphere. It’s definitely somewhere I would recommend on the visiting list.
The funniest thing for me was being alone once again. It’s been a long time since I’ve been alone and I’d forgotten how much fun it was to travel by myself. Once I hopped on the train I pulled out my book and settled into the solitude like it was an old friend - it was fantastic! The only thing was that now I had to be 100% sure of myself so I was checking that I had my train tickets and passport over and over again every 10 minutes or so. I don’t know where I really thought they’d disappear to between checks, but something made me wonder if they were still where’d I’d left them last time I’d checked!
I also had another very fearful moment when we stopped in Luxembourg for about 10 minutes. When we arrived I’d been travelling backwards and after we departed I realised that all of a sudden I was going forwards. The five minutes of panic between when the train left the station and when the
driver announced that we were on our way to Brussels seemed like a lifetime! But that’s the best part about travelling alone, I think, doubting yourself only to find that you were going the right direction after all. I mean, if your heart’s not racing a million miles an hour somewhere up in your throat then what’s it all for?
Apart from this little adventure, nothing much has changed in the land of the Strasbourgois. It’s not that nothing interesting has been happening, it’s just that not much has changed since the last time I wrote. We’re all still partying like crazy, drinking like it’s going out of fashion, and basically living life like we’re professional socialites! It’s pretty great, I have to admit that there’s not much to dislike about the student life, especially the exchange student life. But, I’ll have to study a little over the coming week as next Friday I have my first visitor to Strasbourg, Janna (yay!), and after that I won’t be here for a while so I’m going to have to complete that last assignment for Sydney before I hit the road. Oh, my poor brain, it’s not going to know what’s
hit it when I ask it to concentrate and.. gulp…. READ! AHHHHH!!!
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Kristian
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Lamps
I look forward to your upcoming calendar- 'Lamps of Europe 2008' ;-P