Holidays! Holidays!
Another long weekend, another big trip.
This time I was going to Brussels where one of my best friends is
spending her year abroad. Her time hasn’t
been as smooth as mine, and I really wanted to make sure that she really was
ok, as well as to explore another new place, and this time another country. I flew out from Madrid to Charleroi on Friday
evening, and returned the Tuesday morning.
This gave us three packed days in Brussels.
I took the bus from Baeza to Madrid
at half past nine on the Friday morning.
Bus travel is the most efficient way to get places from here, especially
since I don’t have a car and the nearest train station is a 25 euro taxi away! I met the first Baezan of the day here,
Clemance (or Lemon to the Spanish), who was heading to meet her French friends
in Madrid. So I had company for the
bus. I don’t mind bus travel so much
here, but I do get travel sick sometimesL. We stopped after three hours for a fifteen
minute bathroom break at a “service station”…not at all like the ones in the
UK, these are bar/motels which look like something from the Old West. Everyone piled of the bus, queued for the
loos and some people bought a coffee, then we all piled back onto the bus and
drove the last hour and half to Madrid.
From the bus station to the airport
didn’t take as long as the metro map said it would. It had estimated an hour from Mendez Alvaro
to T1, but in reality it took only around half an hour, including the transfer
from Line 6 to 8. So I got to the
airport in plenty of time to walk the ridiculously long way to T1 from the
metro station. Blah, blah, airport
stuff, blah…bumped into two more Baezanites who were off to London…blah.
I
got into Charleroi airport a little after 8, and as soon as I landed I sent a
text to Chelsea. But I didn’t tell her
that I needed to wait for my baggage, so she ran to the arrivals, and then had
to wait for ten minutes…sorry…when I got out she was pacing up and down the
line. We headed for the bus and she kept
presenting different food items from her bag.
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| Chelsea at the airport |
Charleroi is
basically a room. It reminded me of
Standford airport in Florida, which opened its shops whenever there were passengers,
and security takes all of three minutes…
Also it is miles and miles away from Brussels (essentially Prestwick). The trip back to Chelsea’s house took about
two hours and involved two buses, a train and the metro. When we got back we were the only people in
the house, and so we went straight up to her room. On my bed were bottles of Belgian beer and
chocolate...Thank you Chels! We
spent a while chatting, and then I learned that you never move violently in her
room because if you do then you are bound to meet certain death when her empty beer
bottles come crashing down onto your head.
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| Beds, beer and chocolate :) |
On
the Saturday morning we got up and breakfasted before heading out for, what
turned out to be, a very busy day exploring Brussels. Brussels is huge! It just occupies so much space. Spanish cities are much smaller, even in Madrid
it only around an hour to walk from one side to the other. That isn’t an option in Brussels. Public transport is reasonable in Brussels…and
it is easy to do it all for free…Chelsea has a card which gives her unlimited
access to the city buses, trams and metro and it costs………102 euro a year! My railcard is more than that for only ten
weeks! For a single ticket it is 2.50,
which adds up but as I said before…you don’t really need one, if you’re sneaky.
We started
off by going to the MIM – musical instrument museum. This was literally the only thing, aside from
the Manneken Pis (or as I thought my mum kept calling it The Man Who Can Piss)
and the parliament which I knew about.
It cost four euro to get in and for me this was worth it. You get given a headset which you plug in to
hear the different music, or sounds created from all the different instruments
from across the world. Some of the
noises were horrendous…juex de flutes I’m looking at you, and some were just
strange. Unfortunately the information
was only given in French or Dutch (the two official languages of Brussels)
instead of having the English (strange given that this is such an international
city and that English is more likely to be someone’s second language) but it wasn’t too hard to read, and
when I got stuck, well I had Chelsea. I
found it interesting how various instruments, usually things like flutes and whistles,
have been created by so many different cultures. Even the most Scottish instrument, the
bagpipes, has been discovered and exists in so many different cultures (I
already knew about some of these, such as in Northern Spain). We spent a while wandering around so by the
time we were done, it was lunch time. We
headed to my first ever Greek restaurant.
This lunch was the only break we had the whole day.
After
our Greek lunch we headed to the Manneken Pis.
This is a small fountain that is shaped like a peeing boy. They dress it up every day in different
clothes, and there is even a museum dedicated to these outfits called the Manneken
Pis’s Dressing Room…Oh Belgium! After taking
the obligatory photo of me and the fountain we wandered through the streets
around the Grand Place. These are full
of chocolate shops and waffle stands.
The smells are amazing. There was
even a shop with chocolate statues of the Manneken Pis…a tad more impressive
than the fountain…but we were saving waffles for another day. We bought some postcards and one of these was
“24 hours in Brussels” and showed a picture of an oriental pagoda. We set off in search of this, at the other
side of the city. We ended up in the
middle of a park, with no real idea about where we were going…but in the end we
found it, and after some skilful crossing of the road manoeuvres, we got in…just
as it was shutting. We took some photos
and then we headed back.
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| Mannekan Pis |
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| Me at the Mannekan Pis |
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| Chelsea and I in the Grand Place |
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| Chocolate statues |
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| Me at the Oriental palace |
Our next stop was the Carrefour, to buy the chicken for the
dinner and to buy…wait for it…IRN BRU! I
brought some back to Spain, and I’m sorry but none of you are touching it…you
can watch me drink it, but until I find it somewhere in Spain…I need it. Otherwise the little Scottish part of my
blood will disappear. It’s not even that
much more expensive, although you could only buy cans. We got home around half eight, after my first
experience of impatient tram drivers…he drove straight past the main stop and
then all the passengers got a bit annoyed.
The man next to us pulled the emergency stop and the driver mumbled some
half-hearted apology.
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| IRN - BRU |
Chelsea made our dinner, very nice I must say, and we spent
the night chatting and drinking some of the beer. I opened one, tried it, and thought it tasted
of vomit…Chelsea enjoyed it…I’m not a beer person but Brussels has made me able
to stomach it. The fruit beers (more of
that later) were my favourites. If we’d
had any energy left we probably would’ve went out, but we were shattered so a
night in the lovely warmth of her bedroom was what the doctor ordered. Chatting and hilarity ensued.
When we got downstairs for breakfast, Chelsea’s Iraqi room-mate Nazir was sitting in the kitchen.
I had now met the two people that she lives with, apart from the
landlord, as Sabiha had arrived back the previous night. They both seem like lovely people. We ate our cereal and then headed to the
market at the bottom of the hill in search of Neeps, we were having a very belated
Burns supper. This prompted an
interesting dilemma…what on Earth is the English word for Neeps…Swede, Turnip? Something different? We bought navee, which is what it should
translate as in French, but these neither looked nor tasted like Neeps…for a
start it was white, and watery, not orange, and secondly both Chelsea and I
hate Neeps, and yet liked this thing, whatever it may be.
I love how these markets are a staple part of people’s
routines. They go and buy the
vegetables, meat, fruit, and cheese etc. here often for the same or lower prices
than in the stores. And because of the
area that this was in, there was no tacky tourist stuff just a different way of
life. While we were waiting for our
number to be shouted a woman came and blatantly nicked a turnip, or rather the
thing that the Belgians are claiming to be a turnip. We
dropped off the veggies and then we were off to the Parliamentarium. That’s not easy to say.
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| Parliamentarium |
The parliament was very interesting. It’s safe to say that you could easily spend
three or four hours reading everything and watching all the videos. It was a little bit of an information
overload. The parliament is free to
visit and worth going to. In order to
present the information in each of the twenty three official languages of the
EU you are given a fancy-schmancy headset with a screen that when you pass it
over certain things brings up audio, pictures and information about everything
you are seeing. The top floor is about
the history of the EU, how all the countries joined and how the world wars, and
civil wars influenced the need for pan-European legislation. It moves you through the decades, and into
the future, highlighting the most important/relevant events. The downstairs part was mostly broken when we
were there, but from what I can tell it is about the MEP’s. The part that was open was an interactive
map, you push a console around and over ‘hotspots’ which prompt videos about
various things vaguely related to things that the EU are doing. For example, the North Sea links you to a
video about GPS…
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| When at the Parliamentarium...become James Joyce |
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| Or Pablo Picasso... |
After the Parliament we went to get a crepe for lunch. I got one with chocolate and almonds and
Chelsea got one with white chocolate.
They were lovely. After the lunch
Chelsea forgot her insulin so we had to run back to her house, forty minutes
away, so that she could get it. Ooops. We chilled out in her house, tried to
convince the cat that showing us her sore paw would be a good idea, and waited
for the right time to cook our dinner.
Chelsea told Sabiha to be home for seven so that she could
try the haggis…she didn’t look that thrilled.
Although she later remarked that they eat worse things in Turkey. So I was in charge of the haggis and peeling
the tatties and navee (this is mainly because I don’t trust Chelsea with sharp
objects, she is want to cut/stab herself).
We put on some Scottish tunes, and she donned her tartan skirt. Smashing.
We washed this all down with our diet Irn-Bru and then finished off with
shortbread and Tunnocks tea cakes :D.
Yum, a taste of hame.
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After filling up on haggis we headed back into town to go to
Delerium, a big beer bar, where we spent both Sunday and Monday night tasting
the different beers, and adding bottles to Chelsea’s collection. The fruit flavoured beers are amazing. They taste just like fruit juice. My favourites though were the raspberry beer
and the coconut beer. Because these have
low alcohol percentages they don’t have a strong ‘beer’ taste…unlike the cookie
beer, or the Piraat. The banana beer was
something I had to try, mainly because it seems the most random. Delirium has a world record for the most
commercially available beers. We spent
ages looking through their giant book of beers, and mocking the pretentious
descriptions…I’m pretty sure I could be a taster…umm yes, hints of apple and
pencil shavings.
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| Chelsea and her Ninkenberry beer |
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| Me with my Raspberry beer |
We headed for the last bus, stopping off to buy some chips
(because Brussels is famous for them apparently) and ran to catch the bus…turned
out we didn’t need to but better safe than sorry. We sat chatting and munching and not paying
any attention to the bus, which only did a half route, and only noticed the
driver when he said for the third time “TERMINUS”…during the half hour walk
home we discussed a multitude of things and I think we have decided what
Chelsea’s kids will be called…
The next day Chelsea had to go to Uni, so I had a chance to
explore, and get lost, on my own. I went
down to the Uni with her and then she put me on a bus to the centre…without
telling me where to get off…and the only stop I recognised was the Parliament…and
as soon as I got off, I remembered that we took that bus further into town the
previous day…doh! So I wandered around,
found some embassies and eventually worked my way over to the Cathedral…just
about everything else is shut on Mondays.
The outside of the Cathedral was impressive. But inside, not so much. I lit a candle at the British soldier
memorial and went down to see the old foundations. Then I went shopping. Brussels has a lot of British high street
stores, so I went to H&M and then to New Look. How strange to be in a country, not speak the
language but the shops to be laid out exactly the same, exact same clothes and
the same music. Odd. I also wandered back up to see the Manneken
Pis who was wearing this rather funky outfit.
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| Yup..I have no idea what that's supposed to be... |
Chelsea and I reunited in the Grand Place at half seven, went
to the Greek place for dinner then went for our waffles. I may have slightly had one earlier that day
just to make sure I’d get one…but the second stand was even better. We both got melted white chocolate. Then we sat in the Grand Place, in the
miserable Belgian weather. Good
fun. As I said before we spent this
night in Delirium as well, it was packed…every Erasmus student seemed to be
there. We met Chelsea’s friend Luba
there and listened to her outrageous stories…one time she got drunk and woke up
in Amsterdam. She was hilarious. Beer highlights were the pineapple and of
course I reprised the raspberry. Luba
made Chelsea buy Cactus beer…this tasted very much like limeade, but was too
sickly. We headed home at a more
respectable hour since we had to get up very early (5am) to get me to the
airport and to get Chelsea to her Italian test.
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| Me at the Grand Place |
I was sad to leave Brussels, mainly because this was the trip I was looking forward to, and now that it has gone my time here is rapidly drawing to a close. I would never have visited that city if Chelsea wasn’t living there, so I am glad to have seen somewhere new. I want to visit other cities in Belgium in the future, but Brussels is done now, and unless I ever master French, I doubt I’ll be spending any time there in the future.
Countdown: 90 days until I finish at Santisima...no quiero dejar...I don't want my bubble to burst.
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