American Girl

Hi everyone! I don't have much to report on about today or yesterday... pretty much typical school day here in Brussels. So I thought I would bring you a post detailing some of the differences I've noticed of late and some of the things that I'm missing about the States. (Sorry in advance because I'm sure most of them will be about food for now.)

First off, I have been craving Mexican food like nothing else. At this point, I would probably give my left foot for a taco. Although Brussels has just about every type of food you could ever want (from Turkish to Lebanese to Japanese, etc.) there aren't any Mexican restaurants.

An interesting food thing I've learned while over here is that European foods have a lot less preservatives than foods in the US. Consequently, food (especially fruits, veggies, and bread) goes bad much quicker. This is probably why most of the people in the grocery stores are not buying all that much food. It seems like most people only buy a couple days worth of food and go to the store much more often. I always feel ridiculous with my full basket walking down the aisles... me and my silly trying to shop for a full week! Going along with this topic, the European Union has banned any genetically modified foods. (Just an interesting fact I thought you might want to know.)

Most grocery stores over here now charge you for plastic bags, so most people just bring their own. This is one thing that I'm behind 100%, even though it's a nuisance sometimes to have to go back and get a bag to carry groceries in, the end result is worth it. (Sorry Uncle Bob... I had to put some of my liberal opinion in there.)

On a completely different topic, dryers are not very common in Europe. Almost everyone just air-dries everything, which is probably a smart thing to do since gas prices over here are so ridiculous (yes... even more than in the States! You should be grateful it's only $4 per gallon and not $7 or $8 like it is over here.) Having to wait a day or two for your clothes to dry can be rather irritating though (especially when you have as limited a wardrobe as I have!).

People here in Europe walk everywhere. If you go to the grocery store, you walk down to the one closest to you and pick up what you need and walk back. I think it is the reason why you don't see any obese Europeans. The diet here consists of a lot of breads, cheeses, and meats, yet most people are slim and trim. Along these same lines, apparently the term "diet" has a bad connotation here so everything is "light" instead of diet (ex: Coca light, not Diet Coke). A very different mindset and lifestyle.

Well, that's about it for now. I'll try and include other little idiosyncrasies that I notice along the way in future blogs.

Love to all,
Courtney

All My Loving

Hi Everyone! I hope you're all having a great weekend!

First off, Happy Father's Day Dad! I love you and wish I was there to help you celebrate or better yet, that you were over here with me!

Yesterday, we continued our tour of Brussels. We went to the Belgian Royal Museum of Art, which is only about a ten minute walk from our apartment. The museum is composed of a couple different sections, with a modern art museum, a collection of older stuff, and then they had a visiting exhibit from Britain. The modern art collection was wonderful. I especially loved the Chagalls and the Magrittes. There was also a Picasso, which was small but pretty neat. The exhibit from Britain had some neat Rubens and Brueghels and there was one van Gogh which was from one of his earlier periods. Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend much time looking at the regular collection of art that they had because the museum was closing. In rushing through I did get to see some giant Rubens paintings and David's Death of Marat which was really cool because we had talked about this in my art history class in high school. I would like to go back and spend more time in that wing, but I guess I'll have to see how much time I have here. Maybe I'll go one afternoon when I don't have to much reading to do.

After the museum, everyone was tired so they went back and took naps and I went exploring on my own. It was really nice to get some alone time since I haven't really had much of it since arriving here. I went over to Parc de Bruxelles, which is across from the palace and used to be part of the land where the kings of Belgium would hunt. The park is fairly big and there are a couple of big fountains in the park. There were a bunch of people just strolling through the park, some joggers, and people sitting on benches enjoying their Saturday afternoon. I walked across the park and came upon the Palais de Nation, which is where the Belgian parliament meets. After exploring the park for a while, I walked back to the apartment.

Today I am just spending the day relaxing and recovering from the weekend. I'll probably do some reading for class and maybe go out and enjoy the rare Brussels sunshine at some point.

I hope you all enjoy your Sunday!

Love to all,
Courtney

These Boots Were Made For Walking

Happy Friday Everyone! Hope you all had a good week.

Today was sight-see Brussels, part one. We started off by grabbing some lunch at a cafe nearby our apartment. I had a wonderful panini with mozzarella, tomatoes, and pesto, which was delicious. Then we got on the metro and rode out to the outskirts of Brussels to see the Atomium. For those of you who don't know, the Atomium is a large structure made to look like an atom that was built for the 1968 World's Fair that was held in Brussels. The structure was a lot bigger than I had expected. We spent some time taking pictures, but found out that it was closed and that we could not actually get in. This wasn't too big a deal, but I had heard that there is a nice view of the city from the top. I'll probably try to get back out there one of these days to actually go inside. After the Atomium, we rode the metro down to Grand Place, where there just happened to be some sort of concert going on celebrating cultural diversity in the EU. It's always fun to stumble across these things when you're not expecting them. The concert was mainly percussion, but it was fun and interesting and we stayed for a couple of songs. Then, we went out in search of the Mannekin Pis. Again, for those of you who don't know (don't feel bad... I had no clue before I decided to come here), the Mannekin Pis is a fountain of a little boy peeing, which has become a symbol of the city. There are several stories behind the statue (most of which aren't really true), but my favorite is that the little boy diffused a bomb that was meant for Brussels by peeing on it and thus saving the city. Apparently, the statue is very popular in the town because there are little Mannekin Pis trinkets everywhere. Also, the town dresses up the statue for different celebrations (he has over 500 outfits, each with a strategically placed hole). He even has an American soldier's outfit to celebrate D-Day. Anyways, we found the Mannekin Pis, which is actually very small, and took lots of pictures there as well.

Afterwards, we stopped at a restaurant and had some dinner and then wandered home. I guess we went the wrong way because we took a very roundabout way to get home. We basically went a giant circle, but we eventually got home and we got a lovely tour of Brussels along the way. While we were wandering, we saw a big parade of inline skaters being escorted by police, kind of like a parade. It was very interesting and made me realize that roller blading on cobblestones is probably not the best idea (we saw a number of people fall, but they had a bunch of paramedics and doctors on the scene). We continued wandering and eventually came across the same group of skaters again.

Tomorrow we plan to do some more sightseeing, which should be fun. There are a couple museums that I definitely want to go to at some point and this weekend would probably be the best time to do it. I will keep you all updated and I'll try and post pictures either tomorrow or Sunday.

Love to all,
Courtney

PS - Some other items of interest: The Euro 2008 Football (Soccer) matches are heating up across Europe. Today we saw a number of cars driving by honking, with people hanging out of the windows holding flags (we later figured out they were Romanian flags). The matches are on at all the restaurants and cafes around town and everyone seems to be watching. We also spotted some Frenchmen and Dutchmen taunting each other in the Grand Place (which I didn't really understand because France had just suffered a big loss to the Dutch). It's neat to see how this sports phenomenon has swept the entire continent.

Also in the news a disappointing blow to the EU today with the Irish vote against the Lisbon Treaty. It's funny how after only a few weeks of EU classes that I can be so ardently supportive of the EU now and how disappointing seeing this set back to the further development of the EU is.

3 X 5

Bon soir tout le monde! (That's good evening everyone en francais in case you were wondering.)

Not much to report on since my last blog except that I had my first exam yesterday. Basically I spent Monday studying as much as possible and Tuesday decompressing from all the nervous anxiety that exams bring with them. But, it is over now and I actually did a lot better than I had thought.

After the exam, Dr. Kreppel took us to a really neat cafe in a part of town we had never been to before. Dr. Kreppel is flying out tomorrow morning and we will have a new professor for the rest of our stay here in Brussels so this little party was a farewell for her. The cafe was really neat because it was in the art nouveau style, which Brussels is famous for. Buildings here are not all done in this style, so you have to keep your eyes open and be on the look out to spot it. The cafe was on a whole street of art nouveau buildings which was really neat and beautiful.

Other than that, there isn't much to fill you all in on. I do have some good news however... I have finally gotten a chance to post my pictures from the trip thus far. Some of them have descriptions (if you have time to read them), which tell you what things are, what's going on, etc. I don't have all my Amsterdam pictures up yet though because the first day I was incredibly stupid and left my camera in the hotel room. Luckily, one of the girls on the trip was nice enough to take pictures for me so I'll get those up as soon as I steal them from her. The link to my pictures is: http://photobucket.com/courtchiles. To see the photos, you have to click on the albums to the left on your screen. There should be ones for Amsterdam, Bruges, and Brussels. I'll try to put up new pictures as often as possible and I'll try and tell you when I do so you can go look at them.

I hope everyone is having a great week so far and I hope you all enjoy my pictures. (I'm trying to get myself to take more and get more with people in them so that is my assignment for the next couple weeks.)

Love to all!
Courtney

Life in the Fast Lane: Amsterdam

Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend. I've had quite a weekend so far, and it's not even over yet!

Thursday night (our weekends start on Thursdays because we don't have school on Fridays) all the girls in the program decided to have a girls’ night out. We all went to the movies to see Sex and the City, which was a lot of fun. Movies over here are fairly similar to those in the States except you have to pay to use the bathrooms (not exactly a perk). The movie was shown in English with French and Flemish subtitles and they seem to have even more previews/ commercials over here than they do in the States, which I was surprised by.

Friday morning, we woke up early and made our way down to the train station. We boarded the train and rode the roughly 2 1/2 hours to Amsterdam. The train ride was nice and relaxing. I am really starting to believe that trains should be utilized more in the States. They are so efficient and you get to see all the countryside as you go without spending a ton of money on gas. Anyways, we arrived in Amsterdam a little after noon and we walked from the train station, which was a beautiful old building, to our hotel. It was quite a trek because we didn't really know where we were going and we took the longest way possible, but we got a nice walking tour of the city. We finally found our hotel, Hotel de Paris, and checked in. The hotel was really nice for what we paid and ended up being fairly convenient. We dropped off our bags and split up into smaller groups to go our separate ways. First on my agenda was the Van Gogh museum. We had some trouble finding the museum until we asked someone for directions and then we were there. We came upon the Rijksmuseum and decided to go to that first since it closed earlier (the Van Gogh museum is open until 10pm on Fridays for anyone who’s curious). Rijksmuseum (no I have no idea how to pronounce it either) has a bunch of paintings by Dutch masters, including Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, and Steen. The museum was really great with little stories about each of the paintings/ artists on display next to the work. My favorite was Rembrandt's Night watch, which I learned about in my art history class. It was so cool to see it in person and was much larger than I remembered. After that, we made our way to the Van Gogh museum, which was one of the best museums I have ever been to. The museum was laid out perfectly with paintings by artists who influenced Van Gogh on the first floor, actual paintings by Van Gogh divided into the different periods of his life on the second floor, and then paintings by people who were influenced by Van Gogh on the third floor. The museum has the world's largest collection of works by Van Gogh, including his most famous Sunflower painting, self portrait, and Wheatfield with Crows. It was interesting to see the progression of his work and his style throughout his works. The museum also interspersed the history of his life and different quotes and things from his friends, colleagues, and from his correspondence with his brother Theo, which was wonderful because you are able to not only see his works, but know the history behind the different periods as well. The works on the third floor by artists who were influenced by Van Gogh were impressive as well, with works by Monet, Manet, Picasso, Seurat, Gauguin, and many others. The whole experience was incredible. I loved it because Van Gogh is one of my all-time favorite artists. I spent a good two hours in the museum just enjoying all the works and being enthralled by the intricacies of the paintings and the brush strokes. After the museums, our group headed back to the hotel where we rested for about half an hour and then met up with the rest of the group for dinner. We walked down to a plaza which led to a big shopping street and ate at an Italian restaurant there, which had decent food. After dinner, we wandered around the town until we came upon the Red Light District. I was curious to see this area of town since everyone always talks about it, but one view was enough for me. I was surprised by how clothed most of the women were… most were more covered up than I had expected. The area was crowded with tourists, the majority of which were men. We walked up and down the street and it was kind of depressing to me to think of those women selling themselves. Afterwards, we walked back to our hotel because we were all exhausted from the day’s events. I fell asleep as soon as I climbed into bed.

The next morning, I woke up and had breakfast at the hotel. I was surprised that they had breakfast there because that’s not always a given in Europe, but the breakfast was good with a large assortment of items. Then, we all head over to the Anne Frank house. Along the way, we passed some beautiful houses and streets. We walked along a canal road and we got to see some of the cute little houseboats. We had to stand in line for the Anne Frank house, which is not unexpected since it is one of the biggest draws in Amsterdam. We didn’t have to wait long though before we went inside. They did a really nice job restoring the building and putting up display cases with different items and videos. Along the route, there are quotes from her diary written on the wall. The whole experience was very moving and made me thankful that I never had to live in such a way in such a time. After the tour, we found a nice café and had a delicious lunch. After lunch, we split off into smaller groups again. I wanted to go to the modern art museum in Amsterdam because I had read it was one of the best in the world, up there with the Tate Modern in London and MoMA in NYC. When we got there though, we found out that the permanent collection was not there. Apparently they are in the process of moving and they are transferring the pieces across town. I was incredibly disappointed because the museum was one of the things that I really wanted to do while in Amsterdam. I guess I will just have to go back at some point to see it. So we left the museum and just wandered around town, going into different shops along the way. It was really nice because we wandered into a less touristy part of town, which was beautiful and a lot more like the Amsterdam I had pictured in my head. Then, we walked back to the train station and headed out back to Brussels.

We got back into Brussels late and the weather was cold, grey, and misty… not the most pleasant greeting. We were all exhausted from such a long two days so we all parted ways and rested for the rest of the night.

On the whole, I was left with a pretty good impression of Amsterdam. It is a beautiful city with canals cutting through it. There are bikes all over the city and you always have to look out when crossing the streets and walking around. The weather the whole time we were in Amsterdam was beautiful… clear, blue skies and perfect temperatures. However, there were a lot of tourists, mainly Anglophones, who I think are drawn to the town by the coffeehouses (where you can’t get coffee by the way, or so I hear) and free society which Amsterdam has to offer. Despite this though, the city was great with a lot of culture to offer visitors.

Today, I am recovering from the exhaustion that is traveling and studying/ reading for my upcoming exam on Tuesday (everyone wish me luck!). The sun is out in Brussels, which is a nice surprise considering that when we got off the train last night the weather was awful… cold, misty, and grey.

My apologies for the length of this post… I hope it didn’t bore you too much.

Love,
Courtney

Union!

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been a little lax lately in posting on the blog, but not much exciting has happened in the past few days. I wanted to have enough to write about without boring you all to tears so I saved up (plus I've been pretty busy with actual school work!).

Saturday was the first day that we've been here that I was actually able to sleep in which was wonderful! I spent most of the day enjoying just lazing around our apartment and trying to catch up on school work. Caitlin (one of my roommates) and I went out for a walk in the afternoon and we just wandered around town. We stopped at a little cafe and had some coffee, which was very pleasant. We then wandered back home, which turned out to be a lot closer than I had previously thought. That night, we went out to celebrate Audrey's birthday (one of the girls on the trip with me), which was a lot of fun.

Sunday was more of the same... sleeping in, catching up on reading, and such. That night, some of us decided to be decadent and go out to dinner. We went down to the Grand Place and ate at one of the incredibly touristy restaurants down there. I doubt we will ever eat in that area again. From now on, if we go out, I think we will look for more local fare. We walked home from the Grand Place and passed some of the beautiful Brussels spots all lit up for nighttime. It was wonderful.

Monday, I went to class and did homework. Definitely not exciting. Before coming home though, we stopped at an electronics store where we bought a wireless router that we needed for the apartment and I bought a skype headset, so if anyone wants to call me I'm ready now!

Today was a bit more exciting. Instead of going to Dr. Kreppel's class, we took a class field trip to the European Commission, which is basically the bureaucratic sector of the executive branch of the European Union. I was expecting something like a tour similar to the one given at the UN (if anyone has ever done that), but instead the building was just a regular old office building. Instead of a tour, two British men who work for the Commission talked to us about enlargement of the EU and the EU's neighbor policy, which was all very interesting, but not quite what I was expecting. We still had to go to our other class so we made our way over to Vesalius after the guys were finished with their presentation. After class, I went home and did more homework (I know... a recurrent theme here. SO much homework!). Then, the guys on the trip invited all of us over to their apartment for dinner, which was very delicious, especially since I didn't have to cook.

In other news, I forgot to mention in my previous post that while in Bruges I was fortunate enough to have some real Belgian chocolates, which were deliciously sinful. They are very rich and thick and, I'm sure have no calories whatsoever. Also, in Bruges I got some real french fries. If you don't already know, french fries were not originally made in France, but in Belgium. The French just took the credit for the invention. They were, of course, delicious. However, Belgians seem to think you need sauce with your french fries. These sauces are usually mayonnaise based and a little overpowering for the french fries, which I thought needed nothing else.

Well, better close for now and get my nose back to the grindstone.

Love to all,
Courtney

Day Trippin'

Hi everyone! Hope all is well with you all.

Today, we took a group day trip to Bruges, which was really cool. We took an hour long train ride from Brussels to Bruges. Bruges is a small town about an hours train ride away from Brussels to the north, which means that it is part of Flanders, where primarily Flemish and Dutch are spoken. Bruges is famous because it is a very old town, dating back to medieval times, and for the fact that it is one of the oldest towns which was not hit by any bombs during both World Wars. All the buildings are really neat architecturally and because they are so old. There are a series of canals running through the town, making Bruges kind of like a Northern European version of Venice.

When we got into the train station, we walked up to the city center. When we got there, we walked out onto the Grand Markt, which is basically like the center of town in most European towns, although it depends by where you are what they are called. It's usually the center of town. One of the sides was a city hall which was centuries old with a belfort (bell tower). Some of us decided to climb up the bell tower, which was about 330 stairs. From the top, we got a great view of the whole town of Bruges. Once we had climbed down the spiraling staircase, Dr. Kreppel gave us an hour to explore the city. I just meandered down the streets and looked into some shops along the way. Afterwards, we met up again and all went to lunch together. We ate at an Italian restaurant and since the whole excursion was covered in our fees, we didn't have to pay for anything out of pocket. The food was very good and I ate almost my entire pizza and then our table split some tiramisu (sp?) and ice cream. After lunch, we went on a boat ride through all the canals, which was really neat because it gave you a whole different perspective of the town. We passed a lot of really neat, old buildings.

After, the boat ride, we headed back home to Brussels. While we were at the train station, we went ahead and bought our train tickets for next weekend, when we plan to go to Amsterdam. We are planning to travel quite a bit while we are here, going to Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin, and possibly either London or Madrid, all of which should be really fun. So, if anyone has any tips on any of these places, let me know!

Tomorrow is our first actual day of having nothing required of us. I'm planning on going out and doing at least some sightseeing tomorrow, hopefully if I don't have too much homework to do. I'll update you and I'm planning on posting pictures at some point in the near future.

Got to go for now. Love to all!