i know it's been almost a week, but things have been moving non-stop pretty much since last i wrote. the only downtime i had was when i slept, and it was not really very much time.
thursday:
we went to class. and to a classical viola/accordian concert put on by the language program we're in at the sorbonne. it was pretty fantastic.
friday:
we had language class in the morning (like always) and then took a walking tour of areas that exemplified haussmannization of Paris. Haussmann was a man appointed by napoleon III during the second republic to modernize paris. he made a lot of the large cut-through streets that are very much useful today (at the expense of many houses and lower-income areas, like the one that used to exist between the louvre and the tuileries) and had apartments built along these streets. the buildings were all very similar - there were pretty hardcore regulations about distance from the curb (which still exits), height of the building, and style restrictions dealing with the maximum amount a building could protrude, above street level, into the space of the road (balconies and such). all the architecture is almost identical, as was the mode of the time (mid 19th century).
friday night most of the kids on our program just hung out, which was nice. after some solid afternoons of work, a break felt really good. we walked down to la rue mouffetard, which i mentioned previously, where all the students go in the evenings, and had a beer. unlike the crappy bears i've tasted at home, this one was actually enjoyable, though i assume it pales to belgian beers.
saturday morning:
leah and i, along with four of the other girls who were going to brussels, woke up around five and left the foyer at six. our train left at 6.55. it was one of the bullet trains, so we got to brussels about 8.30.
this is where our adventure began, and i don't even know where to start. the people in brussels are all fantastic - after getting used to the mannerisms of parisians (which many people find... snobbish or rude, i guess), it was kind of nice to talk to people who never really switched into english like the parisians do when they realize you're not fluent. they were hugely helpful - we had trouble finding the hostel, as the streets in brussels are a bajillion times more convoluted than those of paris. we asked a woman if she knew where the street we were looking for was and she responds: "ah, l'hostel? vennez" which means we were to follow her. she went out of her way to take us there. so, a good first impression. we left our stuff in lockers at the hostel and ventured out.
the city itself is magnificent. the grand place, which there are pictures of, is beautiful, if a bit touristy. the buildings are old, the waffles are good, the chocolate is fantastic. very fabulous, very european. as in paris, you'd walk down the street and just sort of come across ridiculous things like statues in parking lots or a church down an alley. it still hasn't gotten old.
we waited around in the grand place (fyi, place rhymes with glass) for the other girls. abbey, who only went to brussels for the day, had come with us to the hostel while the others went in search of their hotel. we waited for quite some time and apparently they were late, looked briefly for us, decided we'd left and went to go eat. which ended up being fine - eating, or really, doing anything in large groups is kind of difficult and a hassle in europe. we met a bike tour guide who tried to get us to go on his tour because he only had one person signed up for 9am (usually they apparently have to turn people away. he thought it was weird). we didn't want to pay 22euro and leah doesn't remember how to ride a bike, but he invited us to listen to him talk about the grand place for free anyway. it was really cool and we learned a lot. apparently, there are only two things you need to remember about belgium: it is a kingdom, and it is the capital of europe (we assumed he was just being silly).
we ended up going and getting waffles and ran into the other girls, who were leaving. the waffles were great (there are pictures), and we were starving. then we wandered around some more and came across all sorts of awesome things. we also went to the comic book museum. brussels is apparently the world capital of comics, so that was pretty cool. we walked through the cathedral as well. pretty much, we walked everywhere.
we ran into allen, who is on our program too, and his girlfriend and we all went to get dinner together. i didn't try the mussels and fries, which brussels is famous for, though leah and allen did and loved it. i had pretty delicious spaghetti. dessert was maybe the most fantastic waffle i've ever had.
then we went to delirium (cafe), a bar serving over 2500 different beers. we sampled a few, and they were all good, except one that tasted strangely like wine. it was completely not sketchy, i guess because, for the most part, everybody there was a tourist. i think the belgians go out on other nights, and the tour guide had said most people's favorite bar had burned down a few weeks ago. anyway, that was cool, except my clothes were kind of bar-smelling after that.
then me, leah, allen and his girlfriend went to a discotheque and danced to less-than-recent american dance music, which was a lot of fun. we all walked back to our hostel after that for some sleep. the hostel was pretty fantastic. it's in a building that van gough used to live in, and was very clean and seemed recently renovated. that and free breakfast made for a pretty sweet deal - it only cost us 20euro apiece.
sunday:
we had to be out of the hostel by 10am (with the exception of our bags, which we put in lockers for the day - for free), so we checked out and jumped on the metro towards the atomium. the atomium is this huge atom-shaped building that was built for the world fair of 1958, which was in brussels. that was pretty fantastic. the pictures and captions pretty much say it all. except that i dropped ice cream on myself.
after the atomium we headed back to the grand place to shop around a little (we didn't end up buying anything, though). we ran into the tour guide again, and he told us about the free concert in the main park that evening and said we should go. we then went to the magrite museum only to be disappointed that they had sold out for the day. then we wandered around some of the other museum areas and ended up another park the guide had told us had free music all afternoon. we listened to this pretty interesting band for a while and then continued towards the big park. the guide had said to take the metro, but we ended up walking because we were still in awe of everything (and it was downhill and didn't take too long). we passed a lot of eu buildings, and a lot of closed stores. in europe, it is way harder to get things than it is in the US. stores are closed on sundays, and until the late morning, and are only open until early evening. tant pis (too bad). speaking of pis, we also saw the manneken pis saturday, which is a statue of a little boy peeing that is, for some reason, famous.
the festival in the park was amazing. we had some indian food and gelato for dinner and just wandered around and people watched. we sat in the grass and listened to some of the free concert, but then it started raining so we headed back towards the hostel.
we got back there early so we had a last beer, talked to some canadians and a guy from kentucky, and headed towards the train station. our train pulled out at 10.35, we got back to the foyer in paris around midnight and went to sleep.
some other random things we saw in brussels:
- a street performer singing american classic rock and some other random songs (like la bamba). he didn't know sweet caroline, but we stayed for a little while to listen. leah danced with a portuguese guy in the street.
- there were lots of weddings. we saw two brides arrive at the town hall while we waited saturday morning to meet up with the others.
- along with the weddings, there were lots of bachelor/bachelorette parties. the guys would dress the groom up in drag and parade him (loudly) around in the middle of the day, and the brides would dress up and wander around with their friends.
- a belgian woman on the subway said that belgian people think english is really pretty
- many belgians speak three languages: flemish, the language of flanders (north belgium), french, the language of wallonia (south belgium), and english (a vehicular language - socially it can be tense between the northerners and southerners, so in places like brussels, the capital, they generally speak english as well to keep tensions down and to avoid the risk of insulting somebody). we generally spoke french while there.
all in all, it was a fantastic trip, and worth the general exhaustion afterward.
last night we went to see the french ballet in the paris opera house. it was based on proust's novel, so it pertained to our seminar. it was magnificent, but more about that later. if you've gotten to this point in the post, you've read enough.
click the picture to see the pictures from the rest of last week and brussels! click the first picture after the jump to start viewing.
the first thing there is a video of our friend danielle performing part of a sketch from snl while we waited for the accordion/viola concert. i didn't put the slideshow here - you can just click through them in the album, and then you'll have larger pictures and the captions.
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