Week 7 - Winter Tribute Festival, Luxembourg !

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5/3/2012

Im really starting to love Mondays. I mean, obviously nothing tops the relaxation and freedom that comes with a Sunday (along with the many delectable treats that Sonia brings back for Sunday morning breakfasts). But In terms of comparing my Mondays to a typical Monday, having the rotary meeting to just break up the day into two manageable pieces, along with the physical comfort of a massive lunch, just makes Mondays so much easier. So at 11:30, off we went once again, Myself, Eliza, Chris, and Morgan headed off the long way to meet my councellor Bruno at the normal bus stop. Then followed a nice as lunch, time to chill, and then back to school again for 3 classes. Whats been the sitch recently, is that as Chris and I have no time really at all to go anywhere after school before French classes on Monday, we just end up bumming around Verviers for around an hour. This particular time when we were strolling around, we ran across some bong-looking things in a shop window. I thought to myself, how exactly could they sell these here and not get raided, or investigated by the police or something ?. Turns out they weren’t bongs, but Shishas. I then learned that there are Shisha cafes all over Belgium, and that they’re a lot more common than one would expect them to be. Apparently you buy flavoured tabacco, a drink, and a pipe In a bunch and go do it. Crazy.

Anyway French lessons went well, and Kate and Jess were angels, and brang homemade nutella biscuits, maltesers and fine Belge chocolate. This sparked the birth of the food sharing Mondays at French classes, and is just another reason to not hate Mondays being a Belge exchange student..

9/3/2012

This Friday, Chris and I decided that we would go to a concert in a nearby town of Malmedy (about an hour in a bus). There were cover bands for Nirvana, Muse, Ac-Dc, and Deep Purple that were playing there, and I had to go check out the Nirvana one especially. So after school we bought some supplies for the concert and worked out a timetable for ourselves, so we woudn’t miss any busses or anything. We got on probably the fullest bus yu’d have ever seen in your life at La Gare in Verviers. Seriously, this thing had all the seats full, and people standing right up the ise, along the windows and basically covering all possible available room. There were heaps of these girl scout looking girls probably off on an adventure somewhere, but they had their backpacks which didn’t help with the room either…

Anyway, we got into Malmedy around 7, and with the concert starting at 8, we went to go look at the outside and see what it looked like. It was in a massive big storage shed, and when we got in, there was a really big stage with a full sounds set up and everything. The first band was deep purple, and Smoke On The Water just rocked out… Nirvana was next, and it blew my mind. The frontman, who was of similar height, and asthetics to Kurt Cobain, could also play the guitar really well, and had a quite similar voice. He also wore the same glasses and sweatshirts that Kurt used to wear. The attention to detail in both the music and the visual aspect was crazy. We went crazy for all the songs, and lost my voice nearly completely by the end of it, and they played all the favourites. Smells like teen spirit was the encore song, and it went off. Its weird though, Belges (or the vast majority) at this concert didn’t really rage that much. There may have been a slight abundance of older people, but there were a few yung’uns that weren’t probably as excited a they should have been. I dunno, it was easy to spot when you were there and it stuck out to Chris and I that it was kinda unusual.

Muse was awesome too, the frontman of this was a talented multi-instrumentalist, and could play both the piano and guitar up to an awesome standard. During Muse, this dude taps me on the back and shouts something in another language. I shrugged and told him in French that I didn’t speak French. He said something else. I repeated the fact I couldn’t speak French. I thought he was telling me to calm down or something, after jumping around like crazy to Nirvanas whole set. I turned back around, But he must of noticed I looked like a foreigner and tried speaking English. Turns out this guy (who was a stocky 40 year old German) wanted me to put him on my shoulders. I don’t know how he expected this to happen easily, but I tried it and despite a temporarly sore back, it happened, and I fulfilled his teenage dreams of shoulder riding at a rock concert. I thought this would be enough, but he kept asking all throughout the concert, but he only got one from he, as I needed my back to be sweet for tomorrow, LUXEMBOURG !.

So Sonia came and picked us up at around 1, and looking back, it was an awesome first concert experience in Belgium.

10-3-2012

Today I head off to Luxembourg !! with all the rotary exchange students in my district in Belgium, a day that I’ve been waiting for for a long time. It started with a 6o’clock wake up, and a bit of a rush to get to the train before we caught the 7:20 to Leige. From there, about 75% of the students met in Liege, and we hopped on the bus and started making our was south down to Luxembourg. The bus ride was cool, and it allowed us to catch up with everyone we hadn’t seen in some time, and especially some of the oldies we met on our first weekend here in Belgium.

The first stop today was a brewery. That’s right, we went on a Rotary trip to a brewery. This place is awesome. The Bofferding Brewery is in Luxembourg Ehlerange area, and is a massive building that is where all the beer is actually produced, labelled, bottled and shipped from. It started with a tour of the brewery, and exactly how the brewery came to be, along with the actually beer-making process which was pretty interesting. The highlight however was at the end of the tour, we went and had a beer and a schnapps at the on-site brewery, which was a cute little old-style bar. Had some great pics of the fam there, and all sorts of talents were on display, such as one dudes ability to blow smoke-hearts (at what cost though…), and another ones was to open a beer bottle with his teeth. Actually, upon consideration due to hindsight, I’ll call them abilities. So after a few ‘Bofferdings’, which was actually a deliciously refreshing and lively brew (after mainly having the local classic ‘Jupiler’) and I couldn’t help myself but to buy a few mementos, that I’m sure will be put to great use soon.

So after that, we drove right into Luxembourg, and we’re allowed to spend the rest of the day wandering around the city. It is such a beautiful place, and once we made it to the centre of the city, it’s was just so evident it was crazy. Running through the middle of Luxembourg is a massive deep ravine, filled with lush grass, massive trees, and even an artificial stream. There’s a bridge that spans from one side of the city to the other, and from where we were standing, the picture was amazing. We then made our way down into the ravine and took some photos from the bottom, which was equally Amazing, as just seeing the sheer height above us the platform we took photos off before was breath-taking. It really is just so picturesque. So from there we went back up to the main city, and made our way into (what I heard) was the shop with the best hot chocolates in Europe. Well, this was definitely not going untested. We found the shop, and checked out what it had. They had a completely unique way of doing things. You didn’t just simply buy a hot chocolate here. Firstly, there was a complete wall FILLED with almost any flavour combination from chocolate brownie (my choice) to Specialoos (think Starbucks caramel waffles in a cup), to candy, to regular coffee, and everything between. They were little packets containing a spoon embedded in a little gourmet square of chocolate, that you bought by the packet. Then, You could either buy them like this, or buy a steaming hot cup of milk. This was the real way. You got the cup full of hot milk, and put the chocolate lump in your cup and wait for the chocolate to naturally melt in the cup.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I’d try invent a scenario for you to try and envisage the sheer chocolaty deliciousness, but I really could not do it justice. It was just so freaking nice, and I was in some ways happy I didn’t reside in Lux, as I’d be a heck of a lot bigger than I am now I’m sure. Danm…

Anyway, outside the shop was one of those guys who wear the big hats and march in the same line all day !! No one else wanted to do it, but when I saw it I couldn’t resist. I’m sorry Mr Guard, you must get it all the time…. Check out the video.

The rest of the day we checked out some of the clothes shops which were ridiculously nicely laid out, and had the most awesome clothes there. Of course the catch was that you in very very good finances to be able to afford these clothes, something exchange students are renound for NOT doing so well in. All in all it was a fantastic day, and the 3^rd Country I’ve visited so far !.

11/3/2012

Today I wasn’t actually as knackered a as I would have thought, and getting up for Eglise wasn’t too much of a problem. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a Sunday morning sleep-in just as the much as the next person, but I can’t resist a two hour jam sesh. So off Sonia and I was again, and another church session took its course.

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