20.4.10
Belgium: waffles, fries, chocolate, and Bruges, which is NOT "a shithole"
Okay, let me just say, I love Belgium. Despite the gauntlet that it was getting there, it was a really great weekend. We started in Brussels, and even though our very first impression of the city was Shana getting pickpocketed on the metro, the weather (sunny, warm, PERFECT) and the city itself really helped keep us in good moods. The coolest thing, I think, about at least big cities in Belgium is that they mix so many languages; in Brussels, we spoke English and French, plus people spoke Dutch and German and Spanish, and usually one or more languages were mixed together on signs and stuff. We were able to walk from the train station to the hostel through the financial district, which later was cool to compare to the historical city center. We used "2 Go 4," which has multiple hostels in Brussels and throughout the major cities of Europe; overall, they were really helpful and professional and their hostel was clean and well-located, all for a reasonable price; I would recommend them to anyone. We had to wait for our keys since we were supposed to check in the night before, so we walked around the city some. The awesome thing about Brussels is that it's small enough that you can walk to most places in about 5 or 10 minutes. We walked to the "Bourse" (a.k.a Stock Exchange), which is the center of things, and ate lunch, which was delicious (but no fries yet). We then walked to "Grand Place," which is like the old square with 4 of the most beautiful, ornate buildings on each side. We had a map done by locals for "young travellers" that ended up being really helpful; it recommended getting a free view of the city from some random parking garage, which was so cool. Then we saw the Manneken Pis, which really was much smaller than expected, but still cool to see (I'm not a fan of them dressing it up though because it just looks ridiculous haha). We went back for our keys, used their internet to get back in touch with the world, and headed to our hostel, which ended up being right off of Grand Place in the best location I could have imagined. The room itself was so cool, and much nicer than expected for the price; Shana and I were exhausted, so we took naps before heading out to meet our new-found friends at Delirium, one of the really popular bars in Brussels. We were at the main part of the hostel when we met Josh and Ravi, both of whom were stuck in Brussels trying to get back to California and the UK, respectively. We ended up having a pretty fun night just talking and trying some of the 2,000-something beers at Delirium; we also went to another bar where I got somewhat peer pressured (okay, not really) into trying absinthe...which is legal in Europe and which also didn't do anything because it was just one shot haha the next morning, Shana and I headed back to the train station to go to Bruges; despite some confusion at the ticket counter with the "retour," we got everything worked out and to the train in time. We met this couple from the UK who were going to Bruges (as a lot of people seemed to be) on the way to get a ferry back to the UK, since flying wasn't an option for them at all and trains were all booked up. It only took an hour to get to Bruges, and once we got there, the owner of the bed and breakfast where we were staying came to pick us up from the train station. He and his wife own the B&B just as a hobby, and they were both such amazing people. I could rave all day about "Jaak and Rose" (Titanic anyone?). The house that we were staying in was really awesome too, and in a great location; we were staying there with a Finnish couple and a French couple, and it was nice to get to interact with them, however briefly. It was only noon, so we walked up to the main square of Bruges (the former market), and were immediately enamored with the city. Seriously, I love Bruges. We got some fries from a stand with some kind of sauce that I can't remember the name of but that tastes like curry and mayonnaise (a.k.a good). Then we climbed the 366 windy, skinny stairs to the top of the tower; it was pretty different from how it was depicted in the movie "In Bruges," but it was still a really nice view. After lunch, we walked back to the bike rental shop we had passed earlier and rented bikes for the afternoon/evening; there was supposedly a trail that would take us to the beach, and even though we ended up getting lost and not taking that trail, what we did see was absolutely enchanting. We were pretty tired after about 3 hours, having climbed the tower already, so we turned our bikes in, grabbed some food, and headed home. The coolest thing about Bruges was how quickly even I learned my way around; if you don't know, I'm really directionally challenged, but I learned our part of Bruges really quickly. Bruges doesn't have much of a nightlife so we spent the night in watching "In Bruges" (Shana's first time seeing it after I had been quoting it obnoxiously all day haha) and drinking the beers we had bought in Brussels (I bought cassis beer since cassis is my new favorite flavor...but not in beer haha). It was, once again, a great movie, and it was really cool to see places we had been; p.s the B&B we were in was where the film crew had stayed when they filmed it...holla! We were tired from the combination of tower-climbing, biking, and beer-drinking, so we went to bed after a quick chat with the Finnish couple (who were totally adorable and the girl looked like Marketa Irglova from "Once"). The next morning, Rose came and made breakfast for us (like a real, huge breakfast, not the French idea of breakfast), so we ate with the 2 couples (I'd like to reiterate that as much as I love Shana, we are NOT a couple. Though I don't know that everyone quite understood that haha) before we all went our separate ways. Shana and I still didn't know for sure when and how we were getting home, but the trains we had seen online were for around 4 pm from Brussels, so we had a couple of hours still in Bruges. We decided to do a boat tour through the canals, which ended up being a great idea; it was so beautiful and the weather was, once again, perfect. We were on the boat with French-speakers so opted to not be the only ones to ask for the tour in English (because that's so obnoxious and "American" when we understood in French anyway). We were reminded so many times this weekend how, even though we aren't fluent in French, we can understand the tours and information given to native French-speakers, so we should be pretty proud of our progress. We had to leave Bruges and the B&B much sooner than I would have liked (definitely going back there because it's so charming and small enough without being too small). Not a "shithole" like they say in the movie :) so my assessment of Belgium (or at least Brussels and Bruges) is that it's small but really diverse in the best way possible; we didn't try any waffles, but the fries are good and the chocolate is amazing, which might have swayed my love for it a little ;) I want to go back to Belgium and see more of Brussels and Bruges (since we only had one day in each), but also to see other cities and some of the countryside. Despite the hell that getting there and back was, Belgium was totally worth it, and I'm so glad we went!
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
By the end of the weekend, Shana and I had utilized every major mode of transportation (well, apart from planes, which was the problem in the first place): train, bus, car, bike, boat, trams, and on foot. I'm just going to comment on the "adventure" it was getting to and back from Belgium this weekend, and I'll save the next post for Brussels and Bruges :)
So our flight was to leave Lyon at 4 pm on Friday afternoon, which would have given us plenty of time to go to class in the morning and take the 1-hour bus ride from Grenoble to the Lyon airport. However, on Thursday night and Friday morning, we were hearing all about the volcano canceling flights, and even though we kept checking our flight status online (which always said "operating"), we wanted to go ahead and get to the airport so if it did get canceled we could get a train or something before everyone else on the same flight did. We skipped class and left Grenoble at 10 am Friday morning. Remember that time. We got to Lyon and immediately went to the EasyJet terminal to see what was up. We kept checking the boards and they all said that the other flights for Brussels (including one 5 minutes after ours) were canceled but that ours wasn't; weird, I know. So the guy told us it wasn't canceled but to come back in 2 hours (since that was our original check-in time) and see. So we went back up to the main part of the airport and had coffees and lunch and just killed time. When we got back to the EasyJet terminal, the boards still said our flight was operating, so we thought we were in the clear. Finally, 1 1/2 hours before we were to leave (after we had been checking it since 6 am the morning before, btw), they told us it was canceled. At this point, Shana and I decided we still wanted to try and go since we had already paid for the hostels and would be getting refunded for our flight. But in order to do so, we had to take a bus to the Lyon train station. We got there amid a huge mess of people and were able to get a train to Brussels through Paris leaving at 5 pm, arriving in Brussels by 11 pm. Now, may I remind you, that every train we arranged, negotiation we made, etc. was at least partly in French until the person switched to English if they spoke it. I don't mean to "toot my own horn," but I'm pretty freaking proud of myself for not only figuring out to get there and back, which you will see was way more complicated than necessary, but to do so in a foreign language. Anyway, we were feeling pretty good because the lady at the SNCF (train) counter was super nice and patient with our French, and we were feeling in the clear as far as getting there at a reasonable time. We got on the train and got to Paris, no problem, but our next train to Brussels required us to go from the Paris Nord station to Paris Gare de Lyon in only 45 minutes, but the nice lady at the ticket counter had assured us that was "suffisant"; luckily my mom had texted me that we just needed to take the RER, so we thought we would be totally fine. What we forgot was that France is in love with strikes. After buying our tickets and standing around for 15 minutes (we weren't the only ones though), we discovered that we weren't actually going to have an RER train to take us to the airport because they were too busy whining about some probably insignificant social matter (for example, in Grenoble they went on strike for pregnant women's rights; don't get me wrong, I think they deserve rights, but they already have the best in Europe if not the world in France. Strikes for them are unnecessary). We already knew we had missed our train but took a taxi from one gare (train station) to the other to see what our next move was; once we got to Paris Gare de Lyon, we looked at the board and saw that the next train to Brussels was at 6 am - 8 hours from then. We talked to the lady at the ticket counter, explaining that the strike (and France) screwed us over, but she was less than sympathetic ("what were you doing for an hour that made you miss your train?") and couldn't do anything but put us on a train in the morning and give us an unhelpful suggestion of where to stay for the night. At this point, Stephanie has yelled so many obscenities about France, trains, the world, volcanoes, etc. (not at anyone though) and simultaneously laughed/cried at the situation we were in. Shana too is upset, but has learned to handle her emotions better haha there were a million hotels by the train station, so we were just going to ask around and try to find a reasonable price (which, for Paris, we expected to be like $150/night). Luckily, we found one for 35/euros per person (about $100/night), that was owned and run by the cutest Frenchman (who thought we were Dutch?). It was a really frustrating situation, having already paid for the hostel for that night and having to pay for another place, but it was hard to be too angry when we were in Paris, which I dreamed of going to for 15 years, and we could see the spotlight from the Eiffel Tower :) the next morning, we got up early to catch our train at 8 after much-needed coffee and breakfast (pain au chocolat!). While huddling for warmth on a heater in the train station, we met some American ex-pats living and teaching in France who had driven back from Morocco; everyone we encountered throughout the weekend had it way worse than we did, so that helped put things into perspective. We were in first class on this train because with the student discount it was cheaper than second class, which didn't offer a student discount; first class? Oh darn ;) but that did mean that we got breakfast, and food is always something good to not have to pay for if you can put some bread or something in a napkin for later, which I did haha the train was only an hour and a half, putting us in the Brussels train station around 9:45 am, almost exactly 24 hours after we left Grenoble the day before. We knew how to get to our hostel from the Brussels Midi station, but we were in the Brussels Nord station, so we "just" needed to take the tram a couple of stops down. Shana and I both had limited amounts of change left, but we had just enough to get our tickets for the metro; unfortunately, we've gotten spoiled with Grenoble being so safe and had kind of gotten absent-minded about pickpockets. Some guy took Shana's wallet out of her bag, and we tried to follow him and get it back, but what can you do? Some (possibly crazy) Belgian lady was telling us to wait for the police so we could get it back, so we waited for like 15 minutes with no police. And then, the weirdest thing of all, the guy brought the wallet back; he had taken the cash, but left the credit cards. So weird. The lady was badgering us to call the cops, but I figured there was nothing they could do since he 1) gave it back and 2) looks like every man walking down the street. Shana needed to call her bank, which wasn't open because it was like 3 am West Coast time, but we still decided to go to the hostel and regroup/use their phone (because I can't call from mine outside of France and Shana's was 1) on low battery and 2) really expensive), however, we no longer had enough change to buy 2 tickets for the metro, and the machine wasn't taking my card or bills (and there are no change machines in Europe even though everything takes nothing but change). After having a little bit of a temper tantrum (this will be a common theme for me throughout the next days. I'm not proud of it, but whatever, I think I'm allowed to be a little upset), we were able to get change for my 5 euro bill (the last cash that I had) to buy our tickets. We got on the train, in such a fluster, and realized we were going the wrong direction. At this point, it was just funny. We got off and ran across the tracks (sorry mom) to the other side; an hour and a half after leaving the one train station, we got to the other haha luckily it was a beautiful day, but more on that later :)
The return trip was significantly less eventful, though it still took a lot of effort to negotiate each leg, and because we had already paid for tickets from Bruges back to Brussels and from Lyon back to Grenoble, we didn't want to pay for those twice, so we had to arrange the trip from Bruges to Grenoble in kind of a weird way. The problem on the way back was with money; Shana had been able to use her card in some places, but for the most part, I was paying for 2 people's tickets and things, plus the hostels, plus the $450 I had already paid for our plane tickets. Because people are assholes and want to make a profit off of others' bad situations, the prices for trains had been jacked up, so we ended up paying to get home what our round trip plane tickets had cost, after already paying more to get to Brussels. It was really stressful, and I still don't relish the thought of how much freaking money I spent this weekend, but I am still glad we went (more on that later too). We took the train from Bruges to Brussels and had to go from Brussels to Paris, again going from one station to the other with the RER. Once we got there, we found employee and made sure there wasn't a freaking strike ("Est-ce qu'il y a une grève aujourd'hui aussi?"), but she was really helpful in helping us go the right way. Once again, Shana had no cash because the ATMs weren't taking her card, and I had cash but no change for the ticket machine, (well, I had enough for one) so we both just ran through the turnstiles on my ticket; normally, I wouldn't condone it, but we had no change and no time to get any, so thank God no one saw us. We got on the RER (which isn't any more impressive when it IS running; that was the hottest, stinkiest public transportation I have ever been on). We did work, navigated the metro, and got to the other gare in plenty of time; once again, I'm proud of us because 3 months ago, I don't know that I could have done that as quickly and efficiently. Or in French. The train from Paris to Lyon was uneventful, but once again, we were at the Lyon train station and our bus tickets back to Grenoble left from the Lyon airport; that meant another ticket to buy and another bus to ride on. One cool thing though was that there were a couple of guys from Turkey (with no option but to rent a car and drive home. Holy crap) who didn't speak French, so I served as a translator between them and the bus driver. I have to say, even though it wasn't perfect, it was a really cool thing to be able to do that. We got back to the airport at 9:35, missing the 9:30 bus and having to wait for the 10:30. At this point, that was just par for the course, so instead of being angry, we took advantage of the airport being nearly empty (because it was shut down) to have a little singing session haha we FINALLY got back to Grenoble at 11:30, and by the time I walked to Victor Hugo, got a taxi, and got home, it was 12:30, meaning it took us 12 hours to get home; not the 24 it took to get there, but 36 hours of travel for a long weekend? Craziness. All in all, it was extremely frustrating and expensive, but I do think we learned a lot, and I am pretty proud of us and of myself for doing as well as we did. And I'm also glad we still decided to go because now we don't have to wonder what could have been :)
So our flight was to leave Lyon at 4 pm on Friday afternoon, which would have given us plenty of time to go to class in the morning and take the 1-hour bus ride from Grenoble to the Lyon airport. However, on Thursday night and Friday morning, we were hearing all about the volcano canceling flights, and even though we kept checking our flight status online (which always said "operating"), we wanted to go ahead and get to the airport so if it did get canceled we could get a train or something before everyone else on the same flight did. We skipped class and left Grenoble at 10 am Friday morning. Remember that time. We got to Lyon and immediately went to the EasyJet terminal to see what was up. We kept checking the boards and they all said that the other flights for Brussels (including one 5 minutes after ours) were canceled but that ours wasn't; weird, I know. So the guy told us it wasn't canceled but to come back in 2 hours (since that was our original check-in time) and see. So we went back up to the main part of the airport and had coffees and lunch and just killed time. When we got back to the EasyJet terminal, the boards still said our flight was operating, so we thought we were in the clear. Finally, 1 1/2 hours before we were to leave (after we had been checking it since 6 am the morning before, btw), they told us it was canceled. At this point, Shana and I decided we still wanted to try and go since we had already paid for the hostels and would be getting refunded for our flight. But in order to do so, we had to take a bus to the Lyon train station. We got there amid a huge mess of people and were able to get a train to Brussels through Paris leaving at 5 pm, arriving in Brussels by 11 pm. Now, may I remind you, that every train we arranged, negotiation we made, etc. was at least partly in French until the person switched to English if they spoke it. I don't mean to "toot my own horn," but I'm pretty freaking proud of myself for not only figuring out to get there and back, which you will see was way more complicated than necessary, but to do so in a foreign language. Anyway, we were feeling pretty good because the lady at the SNCF (train) counter was super nice and patient with our French, and we were feeling in the clear as far as getting there at a reasonable time. We got on the train and got to Paris, no problem, but our next train to Brussels required us to go from the Paris Nord station to Paris Gare de Lyon in only 45 minutes, but the nice lady at the ticket counter had assured us that was "suffisant"; luckily my mom had texted me that we just needed to take the RER, so we thought we would be totally fine. What we forgot was that France is in love with strikes. After buying our tickets and standing around for 15 minutes (we weren't the only ones though), we discovered that we weren't actually going to have an RER train to take us to the airport because they were too busy whining about some probably insignificant social matter (for example, in Grenoble they went on strike for pregnant women's rights; don't get me wrong, I think they deserve rights, but they already have the best in Europe if not the world in France. Strikes for them are unnecessary). We already knew we had missed our train but took a taxi from one gare (train station) to the other to see what our next move was; once we got to Paris Gare de Lyon, we looked at the board and saw that the next train to Brussels was at 6 am - 8 hours from then. We talked to the lady at the ticket counter, explaining that the strike (and France) screwed us over, but she was less than sympathetic ("what were you doing for an hour that made you miss your train?") and couldn't do anything but put us on a train in the morning and give us an unhelpful suggestion of where to stay for the night. At this point, Stephanie has yelled so many obscenities about France, trains, the world, volcanoes, etc. (not at anyone though) and simultaneously laughed/cried at the situation we were in. Shana too is upset, but has learned to handle her emotions better haha there were a million hotels by the train station, so we were just going to ask around and try to find a reasonable price (which, for Paris, we expected to be like $150/night). Luckily, we found one for 35/euros per person (about $100/night), that was owned and run by the cutest Frenchman (who thought we were Dutch?). It was a really frustrating situation, having already paid for the hostel for that night and having to pay for another place, but it was hard to be too angry when we were in Paris, which I dreamed of going to for 15 years, and we could see the spotlight from the Eiffel Tower :) the next morning, we got up early to catch our train at 8 after much-needed coffee and breakfast (pain au chocolat!). While huddling for warmth on a heater in the train station, we met some American ex-pats living and teaching in France who had driven back from Morocco; everyone we encountered throughout the weekend had it way worse than we did, so that helped put things into perspective. We were in first class on this train because with the student discount it was cheaper than second class, which didn't offer a student discount; first class? Oh darn ;) but that did mean that we got breakfast, and food is always something good to not have to pay for if you can put some bread or something in a napkin for later, which I did haha the train was only an hour and a half, putting us in the Brussels train station around 9:45 am, almost exactly 24 hours after we left Grenoble the day before. We knew how to get to our hostel from the Brussels Midi station, but we were in the Brussels Nord station, so we "just" needed to take the tram a couple of stops down. Shana and I both had limited amounts of change left, but we had just enough to get our tickets for the metro; unfortunately, we've gotten spoiled with Grenoble being so safe and had kind of gotten absent-minded about pickpockets. Some guy took Shana's wallet out of her bag, and we tried to follow him and get it back, but what can you do? Some (possibly crazy) Belgian lady was telling us to wait for the police so we could get it back, so we waited for like 15 minutes with no police. And then, the weirdest thing of all, the guy brought the wallet back; he had taken the cash, but left the credit cards. So weird. The lady was badgering us to call the cops, but I figured there was nothing they could do since he 1) gave it back and 2) looks like every man walking down the street. Shana needed to call her bank, which wasn't open because it was like 3 am West Coast time, but we still decided to go to the hostel and regroup/use their phone (because I can't call from mine outside of France and Shana's was 1) on low battery and 2) really expensive), however, we no longer had enough change to buy 2 tickets for the metro, and the machine wasn't taking my card or bills (and there are no change machines in Europe even though everything takes nothing but change). After having a little bit of a temper tantrum (this will be a common theme for me throughout the next days. I'm not proud of it, but whatever, I think I'm allowed to be a little upset), we were able to get change for my 5 euro bill (the last cash that I had) to buy our tickets. We got on the train, in such a fluster, and realized we were going the wrong direction. At this point, it was just funny. We got off and ran across the tracks (sorry mom) to the other side; an hour and a half after leaving the one train station, we got to the other haha luckily it was a beautiful day, but more on that later :)
The return trip was significantly less eventful, though it still took a lot of effort to negotiate each leg, and because we had already paid for tickets from Bruges back to Brussels and from Lyon back to Grenoble, we didn't want to pay for those twice, so we had to arrange the trip from Bruges to Grenoble in kind of a weird way. The problem on the way back was with money; Shana had been able to use her card in some places, but for the most part, I was paying for 2 people's tickets and things, plus the hostels, plus the $450 I had already paid for our plane tickets. Because people are assholes and want to make a profit off of others' bad situations, the prices for trains had been jacked up, so we ended up paying to get home what our round trip plane tickets had cost, after already paying more to get to Brussels. It was really stressful, and I still don't relish the thought of how much freaking money I spent this weekend, but I am still glad we went (more on that later too). We took the train from Bruges to Brussels and had to go from Brussels to Paris, again going from one station to the other with the RER. Once we got there, we found employee and made sure there wasn't a freaking strike ("Est-ce qu'il y a une grève aujourd'hui aussi?"), but she was really helpful in helping us go the right way. Once again, Shana had no cash because the ATMs weren't taking her card, and I had cash but no change for the ticket machine, (well, I had enough for one) so we both just ran through the turnstiles on my ticket; normally, I wouldn't condone it, but we had no change and no time to get any, so thank God no one saw us. We got on the RER (which isn't any more impressive when it IS running; that was the hottest, stinkiest public transportation I have ever been on). We did work, navigated the metro, and got to the other gare in plenty of time; once again, I'm proud of us because 3 months ago, I don't know that I could have done that as quickly and efficiently. Or in French. The train from Paris to Lyon was uneventful, but once again, we were at the Lyon train station and our bus tickets back to Grenoble left from the Lyon airport; that meant another ticket to buy and another bus to ride on. One cool thing though was that there were a couple of guys from Turkey (with no option but to rent a car and drive home. Holy crap) who didn't speak French, so I served as a translator between them and the bus driver. I have to say, even though it wasn't perfect, it was a really cool thing to be able to do that. We got back to the airport at 9:35, missing the 9:30 bus and having to wait for the 10:30. At this point, that was just par for the course, so instead of being angry, we took advantage of the airport being nearly empty (because it was shut down) to have a little singing session haha we FINALLY got back to Grenoble at 11:30, and by the time I walked to Victor Hugo, got a taxi, and got home, it was 12:30, meaning it took us 12 hours to get home; not the 24 it took to get there, but 36 hours of travel for a long weekend? Craziness. All in all, it was extremely frustrating and expensive, but I do think we learned a lot, and I am pretty proud of us and of myself for doing as well as we did. And I'm also glad we still decided to go because now we don't have to wonder what could have been :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
