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Published: March 1st 2007
Hello again, everyone. After being in classes for a solid four weeks (during which time I visited a friend in Angers and started my internship) IES decided it was high time for a break, so I just got back from a weeklong trip to Belgium.
At IES, I have a course in French Cinema and one about the Middle East. At the Nantes University, I have a history course about the 5th Republic (France’s current system) and I have a sociology course about immigration. I was lucky enough to find an internship with a satelitte office of the Nantes Mayor’s office. My host father knew I was having trouble finding an internship with local government or social services ; and so he asked our next-door neighbor if he would be interested in having an intern at his office. Nantes is divided into 11 districts, and our neighbor is responsible for facilitating the communication between citizens, organizations, and the mayor in two of those districts. I mostly just sit in on meetings and conferences, but it is very interesting and I have really learned a lot. Plus, everyone at the office goes out to this amazing restaurant for lunch. Its a
school for people learning hotel services (like hostessing and high-level cuisine), so every Friday they offer a spectacular 5 course meal that is cheaper than lunch at any other restuarant.
At the end of January, I had a free weekend and I went to Angers to visit Ally, a friend of mine from last semester who was then studying in Tours. It worked out really well since Angers is right between our two cities, and I was able to bring her some of her luggage she had left in Nantes. We visited the castle and saw the amazing tapestry collection (which I had seen in December with my host family), and then we walked around the town just seeing the sights and talking.
Belgium! A few weeks before the vacation, I and two of my IES friends realized that we needed to start making travel plans fast. So we researched possible trips and finally settled on Belgium because it had the cheapest train fare. After we bought the tickets, we started researching cities and hostels and possible activities. So before leaving, we had reserved all the hostels and made some tentative plans.
On Jan 17, Anna, Alexa,
and I set off for Paris (you generally have to go to Paris first because there aren’t many direct trains from Nantes to anywhere interesting) where we caught the metro to a different train station and got on our train to Belgium. We came into Brussels, and after a short period of staring at a map that only vaguely represented the area around the train station, we found a main boulevard that took us straight to our hostel. During the 25 minute walk, we saw many different neighborhoods of Brussels plus some of the tourist sites. We checked into the hostel, which was very nice and furnished entirely with IKEA products (like most French homes). Afterwards, we set out to find lunch and look around the town. We went to La Mort Subite, a restaurant recommended by one of the IES staff, where the narrow room was filled with long tables and tons of old posters and gilt mirrors. There, we tried on of the famous Brussels beers, a Kriek, which is cherry flavored. After lunch, we followed our map (distributed for free by Belgium tourist offices and geared towards young travelers) to cool sites, and we also filled in
the gaps with a « Waffle Walk » guide I had brought from one of my guide books. We saw a huge indoor shopping area with pricey boutiques, the cathedral, the amazing city square (with ancient buildings and awesome decorations and details), and Mannekin Pi’s (a fountain with a little boy peeing water that is a major tourist site/curiosity). My waffle guide gave us the best places to find waffles, and let me tell you, American Belgian Waffles are nothing like Belgian Belgian Waffles. There are Brussels Waffles (what we would recognize) that are light and fluffy : we had one with strawberries and one with whipped cream and one with straticella (chocolate flakes) ice cream and chocolate sauce. There are also Liege waffles that are of a heavier dough and have little pockets of sugar baked in : we had plain Lieges and one with chocolate sauce. That night we made our own dinner at the hostel (because we all miss cooking), and we had a light meal of pitas and hummas.
The next day (after spending the night with a mean-spirited radiator in the hostel room), we got up and checked-out of the hostel. We went to
see the biggest tourist attraction of Brussels, the Atomium, a huge statue of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. There was a really nice park right beside it, so we spent some time wandering around the paths. We saw these parrot-type birds flying around the woods, and figured that someone must have set a few free, and they’ve been able to survive the weather. We took the metro back into town, and went to a cheap Vietnamese restaurant for lunch that was really good. While waiting for the check (which always takes a while) we had some really good discussions about creationism and evolution. Then we headed to the train station. We bought 2 Go-Passes, which allow 10 train rides each for travelers younger than 26, and multiple passengers can travel on the same pass. So with these, we were able to go to our 5 different cities while saving 50% off the regular price. We caught a train to Brugges, which took about 40 minutes. We arrived and discovered that the internet directions to the hostel were terrible, and we made our way there with landmarks instead (namely, the huge tourist office that looks like a Pizza Hut
that we were able to keep in our sights). We arrived finally and checked into another really nice room. We tried to make it to the grocery store before it closed, but the guy at the desk gave tricky directions (probably the same guy that wrote the internet hostel directions). So instead, we took our time and walked around the streets of Brugges, which is absolutely beautiful. There is really old and characteristic architecuture and tons of canals that intertwine with the streets and sidewalks. We went to a traditional Belgian restaurant for dinner : an excellent Minestrone-like soup and a thick beef stew with fries and chocolate creme (kind of like a very thick and rich pudding). We went back to the hostel to look at the common room (tons of old antique-looking things, but also very fun and community-like) where we struck up conversation with a guy we had already met, Aaron from England. We had talked to him a little in and around the hostel, but we had some really great conversation together, and we stayed up really late just talking.
We slept in really late the next day, and finally went down to breakfast. We
Chocolate Fest
Anna, Alexa, and Me eating poor Aaron's chocolateswent out to the city again and followed a walking tour that Anna had found on the internet. Aaron joined us and we had a great time just looking at all of the buildings and canals. There is a beautiful city square in Brugges as well, where there is also a huge cathedral. We stopped at a chocolate shop, where Aaron bought some chocolates for his mother, and the rest of us just looked at the chocolates. We bought lunch stuff at the grocery store and made spaghetti with sausage, and talked for a while after we ate. Aaron realized that he had to catch a train, so he left for the station. As we were leaving the hostel again, we noticed that Aaron had left his mother’s chocolates under his chair…leaving us with a moral decision to make. It was too late to take them to the train station, so we took them with us, and (after seeing more of the city) we sat down at a cafe to make our decision. We weighed the options of our different choices : finding his address and mailing them (kind of creepy and more expensive than the chocolates) eating the chocolates
ourselves (practical and delicious, but leaving some sort of moral obligation)… We finally made a choice : we would eat the chocolates, but give 8 euro (the cost of the chocolates) to a beggar. So, that night we made nachos and then had a wonderful Belgian chocolate tasting session between the 3 of us.
The next day, we got up early to catch a train to Brussels and then to Binche (a tiny little town, that throws a huge Mardi Gras festival). We got to the city and followed the crowd to the main drag of the city, where we found and followed a children’s parade. The kids were very cute with pastel colored costumes with pointed hats. They were accompanied by drums, and they made their way to the local convent where you could see old nuns smiling out the windows. The kids actually went through the convent to wish all the nuns a happy Mardi Gras. After that, we found our way to the main square. As we went, we saw groups of Giles roaming the streets : the Giles are men who live in the village and where these ornate traditional costumes with barrel shaped bodies.
Giles
Giles with a colored hat and his basket of oranges At the main sqaure (more of a main drag), we found the huge crowd, all waiting for the 3:00 parade. Along the parade path, all the windows had been covered with fencing because during the parade, the Giles (and others in traditional costumes) come down the road throwing blood oranges. As we waited, we ate lunch from a food stand and walked up and down the parade route. At 2 :00 we staked out a place along the road and started waiting. In true European style, the parade didn’t getting going until 4:00, but there was plenty of entertainment because all of the local kids (plus a lot of teenagers and some adults) dressed up in Halloween-like costumes. When the parade started, we saw that the Giles were all now wearing this huge hats that looked like mushrooms made out of feathers. Some of them were brightly colored, but most were white, and they looked really cool when the Giles walked. First, the kids came through. There was the group in pastels, but also a purple/green jester group, and a group of boys with blue costumes and white ribbon hats. Then came the groups of Giles. Each group had about
20 Giles (firing oranges with a vengeance) followed by a small band. There must have been at least 15 groups of Giles, and the parade lasted for a fairly long time, and we ended up leaving before it was over to catch our train to Brussels. But a lot of people had the same idea because it was terribly crowded, and the 3 of us sat on the floor. We then caught a train to Ghent, took a city bus to the hostel, and got checked in to a more dormitory-like hostel for the night.
The night before, we had seen the Ghent castle by night, and so we decided to visit in the morning. I really liked seeing this castle because all the castles in the Loire Valley are refined and fancy, but this one was a functional gothic defence castle with all sorts of defence structures and more gritty uses. We toured the castle on our own, but we didn’t get many good pictures because of the intermittent rain that day. While Anna went to check out a church, Alexa and I went to a free modern art gallery. After that we refered to our handy tourist
map, and found an awesome (and cheap) soup place for lunch. We also bought some traditional Ghent sweets : I liked two of them, but I just couldn’t deal with black licorice flavored cookies. We looked through the historic building district and then the cathedral (or should I say cathedrals) because there were 3 huge cathedrals right next to each other. At the main cathedral, they were housing a free art exhibit from the city Art Museum. We tried to find a cool coffee shop from the map, gave up, tried to go to an ice cream place on the map, found it closed, and finally got ice cream cones at Austrailian Ice Cream (where all the Belgians seem to get their ice cream). It was spectacular, I gotta hand it to the Aussies. We bought sandwich stuff at the store, and ate it at the hostel. Alexa stayed in for the night, and Anna and I went out to see Philadelphia Story in English (with French and Dutch subtitles) at a local théâtre. I would really recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
The next day, we headed to the train station and took a train to
Antwerp. When we arrived, we rented a luggage locker and checked out the area around the train station (which is in fact a really cool building). We walked through the small China town, and then went to the Antwerp Diamond Museum. Antwerp is the diamond captial of the world, where most diamonds will pass through at least once before they are bought. So, we followed an audio tour through the 3 story museum with info about diamonds, mining, production, and the industry. There were also tons of old pieces of jewelry. After the museum, we looked around the Diamond district of Antwerp where the diamond stores and brokers are. Then, we walked through Antwerp to get to our hostel. When we got there, we entered through the bar, and the staff was extremely laid-back and very helpful. It was called the Heksenketel (witch’s cauldron) and they liked to bring in folk-music groups in the evenings. We got settled in our room, and went back into the town where we looked at the buildings and architecture. For dinner, we went to a restuarant that trains underpriviliged kids the restaurant trade. We had an excellent split-pea soup and then ratatouille (a tomato
vegetable dish). Our waiter was not very experienced, but tried hard. When we got the check, there was a number on it we didn’t understand (we didn’t know if it was a tip or the built-in tax), and it turned out that our waiter spoke neither French nor English. So he called over his buddy (who also spoke only Dutch) to help, and this kept going until we had cleared the entire kitchen and had a group of Dutch teenagers trying to explain the VAT tarif with hand-gestures and slowed-down Dutch. Finally, their boss came over and explained it in near-fluent English. Since there weren’t any other diners left, we chatted for a while with the restaurant staff about our different countries (most of them weren’t from Belgium) using a few English words and hand gestures. After we left the restaurant, we walked around for a while and bought some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream (all over the place in Belgium) to finish off the night.
On Friday, we started the day by going to a Auction Market that was near our hostel. They had all sorts of things for sale, and the auctionneer just went around the building
auctioning everything off, and of course, he did it all in extremely fast Dutch (Northen Belgium does a lot of Dutch, and Southern Belgium is mostly in French). Then we went to the river and walked along the boardwalk. For lunch, we went to a Friekot (fries place) that also had a small museum of fry containers. Max Friekot is considered the best on in Antwerp and it refuses to deviate from the tradition of serving fries in a paper cones. They were very good fries, I must say. Then we went to the Antwerp Fashion Museum (Antwerp is a fairly large fashion center) where we saw all sorts of odd clothes. Then we walked around the second-hand shops in the fashion district. Since we had an available kitchen that night, we went grocery shopping (in an underground grocery store) and went back to the hostel to make a chicken stir-fry. We had the kitchen to ourselves, so we sang as we cooked up our food, and then we ate it in the bar.
The next day, we left the hostel and took a train back to Brussels. We checked into the same hostel we had used earlier that
week, and then went back to the same Vietnamese place. We had a really relaxing day of checking out the sites and the second-hand vintage stores (I got a really cute black skirt for 15 euro!) We also went to the Palace of Justice, which is simply immense. From there you also have a great panoramic view of the city. We found a grocery shop and bought the necessary items to have tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and made ourselves a great meal at the hostel. Then, we took advantage of the hostel’s movie selections to watch Ocean’s 12 on their great wide-screen with a stereo-system.
We got packed on Sunday, and checked out of our hostel. To kill the time before we caught our train back to Paris, we went to a matinee of Night at the Museum. Then we went to a resturant that served gourmet pitas (very different from the cheap ones they sell on the street). We had read the wrong time on our train tickets, but luckily Alexa spotted the mistake and we still had to time to make it to the train station, though we did have to run around to find
Statue + Cathedral in Antwerp
The Statue is of Rubens, a famous painter from Antwerp the right train car on the platform (you’d think they’d just put them in numerical order, but no, where’s the fun in that ?) When we got to Paris, we ran into another IES student who was taking the same train back to Nantes. Our train was delayed an hour, but we finally got into Nantes about 9:00 Sunday night. And sadly, I’m back in classes now. Actually its nice to get back into some sort of routine.
Thanks again for your notes and emails!
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Beth
non-member comment
tasty
Haha - your post takes me back to traveling around France with the TGV - I was responsible for my group almost missing a train twice because I'd start getting in a car, and it'd be the wrong one, so we'd have to run down the platform (like a 1/4 mile!) to get to the right one. There was one incident where it was almost about to leave, so we just ran into the closest one to the platform, and then ended up going through every single car until we came the second to last one (ours, naturally - why shouldn't we have to walk through 15 train cars?) I love how you pretty much ate your way through Belgium. Reading about all that food (especially the waffles...yum!) makes me really hungry. :) I have a few things to tell you about school, but I'll send it in an email. Or if I'm really ambitious, a letter. Toodles!