A Closer Look at Where I Live

---

Since I've now been in Brussels for over three weeks, I'm getting pretty well settled in. I'm deep into my work at my internship and am pretty well settled into our apartment. This weekend was an off weekend for our travels so we just stayed in Brussels and got caught up on laundry, our directed studies and whatnot. In light of my rather uneventful week, I decided to give you a closer look at where I'm living now.

The first picture is of the street I live on, Rue Vandenbroeck (in French) or Vandenbroeckstraat (in Dutch). Brussels has two official languages so everything from streets to metro stops have two different names. It gets rather confusing at times as a lot of the names don't correspond as easily as the name of our street does. Our street is located in what's considered the European Quarter because most of the European Union institutions that are in Brussels are very close. It's really a great area and close enough to walk to work everyday, but unfortunately there are no metro stops close.

The next picture is of the building we live in. We've deemed it our Brokedown Palace because of a few minor things that had to be fixed when we got here and the fact that half of the address on the outside is written on the building in sharpie. We live on the 3rd floor which means we have to walk up six flights of stairs to get there. Great exercise, but not that much fun when you're carrying up groceries or luggage.

Next is a picture of the church I go to. Now, I have to tell you the story about my first time going to this church. Mass was supposed to start at 11:00 am, so I arrive at 10:50 am and there is no one there. I decide to sit down and notice that there is mass going on in another room in French, but I can't figure out why it's not going on in the main hall of the church. So, I sit and wait and eventually people start trickling in. They run all over the place and oddly enough, I see someone from the Mission, which made me feel even more awkward because I had no idea what was going on and wasn't even 100% sure it was a Catholic church. Finally around 11:20 am mass finally starts and there are children running around all over the place, a powerpoint running at the front of the church and people going up and randomly talking to the priest at all points of the mass. Then comes communion. There was no rhyme or reason to the distribution of the Eucharist. As soon as the priest came down to distribute, it was like a free-for-all. People started rushing towards the alter from all sides of the church, not waiting for it to be their row's turn. Then I see what looks like people pulling their own Eucharist out of the dish which I had never seen before. I'm so confused when I finally get up to take communion that I'm frantically trying to watch people to see what they're doing. Finally, I realize that people are being given the Eucharist and then are dipping it themselves into a chalice. I was so confused during the entire mass. I'd never seen anything like it.

The next pictures are of the European Union Parliament buildings. I get to have lunch there tomorrow and am very excited! We walk by these beautiful buildings everyday on our way to work. The buildings of the European Union, and most government buildings in Europe for that matter, are very different than government buildings in the U.S. You can walk right up to any of them without any problem anytime day or night. Very much unlike even our Embassy. There is a guarded compound around our Embassy and you have to have a badge to even walk on the sidewalk next to it.

For those of you that don't know much about the European Union, I'll give you a brief rundown so you have a better sense of what it is that I'm working with. The European Union is split up into 3 main components. The European Parliament, The Council of the European Union, and the European Commission. The EU Parliament represents the people of Europe and is composed of 785 members who meet like our House of Representatives or Senate would. The Council of the European Union represents the interests of the 27 national governments in the EU. The Council is made up of whatever ministers from each member state are responsible for the items discussed in each specific meeting. A few times a year the presidents and/or prime ministers of the member states meet as the Council. The European Commission represents the common interest of Europe as a whole. One person from each of the 27 member states represents a certain area ranging from Agriculture and Rural Development to Energy and Transport in the Commission. (Though they are of course all assisted by thousands of other people.) Each of these 3 entities work together to form a supranational government, the European Union. For the most part they work out of Brussels, Belgium and Strasbourg, France. It's obviously much more complex than just that and very hard to get a grasp on, but incredibly interesting and more and more important everyday. If this wasn't boring enough for you or you'd like to learn more the European Union has a great website explaining itself: http://europa.eu/abc/index_en.htm.

As if this blog entry wasn't long enough already, for those of you that are still reading I've left the fun stuff for last, the bars we've begun to frequent. We were informed that all former interns went to this bar (pictured on the farthest left) called Ralph's right next to the European Parliament building. Being the good interns that we are, we've already frequented Ralph's numerous times. It's a great place to meet people and we've met quite a few very interesting people there already that work in different areas of the EU. We have also been to a few other more popular bars around the city. Last Thursday we went to one called Delirium, which apparently beer connoisseurs come to Brussels just to visit. It has over 300 beers and as we very quickly found out, the alcohol content in many beers from Belgium is much higher than in the U.S. The name of the bar was a pretty good indication of how the night turned out...not too sure when we'll be visiting that place again.

Well, I hope that gives you a better sense of where I'm living now and what I'm doing. Next weekend all four of us interns at the Mission are going to Amsterdam for Valentine's Day and as Monday is President's Day, we get the day off so we'll be there from Saturday to Monday. I can almost guarantee my next post will be rather entertaining. 😉

Until then, take care and have a great week!

---

Photos

Rue Vandenbroeck
This is the street I live on!

My Building
Our building is the white one in the middle with the blue door. We like to call it our Brokedown Palace. Our apartment is on the very top.

Catholic Church
This is the church that I go to.

EU Parliament
This is where the European Union Parliament meets...part of the time. We walk by this on our way to work everyday.

Inside the EU Parliament
Here's a view from between the Parliament buildings. You can walk right up in between them as you please.

Ralph's
We have come to frequent these bars in Place du Luxembourg.

Comments

[Ann Anhalt]

Nice Job on the Blog
I've been reading your blog. I'm the person from Des Moines who is traveling to Europe (London to Nice) next month. You did a great job on explaining the EU and their function. Thanks much and enjoy Paris. Be careful!