Empire State of BXL

So, after being inspired by the blogs of a few friends of mine (namely the fabulous Katie Barrett and Dani Martines, whose blogs you should totally read as well :) ), here's the first entry of my Erasmus year blog.

As I have just arrived in Granada, Spain, I feel its only fitting to give my first placement of Brussels, Belgium a proper tribute, so forgive me if this entry is particularly long and rambling. Brussels certainly made an impression on me, as most of you will be able to attest to! I've decided to list the top 10 best and worst things about my semester there to try and make it a bit more organised. So, on with the 10 Best Things About My Time in BXL:

1-Living in the same country as Saskia

Saskia is a lovely, kind, funny and all round just amazing person who I met in my second year of uni at Heriot-Watt, while she was doing her exchange there. She is also Belgian, and when my original accommodation plans fell through, she offered me the chance to stay with her and her family for a few days in Antwerp, a city aroundabout 45 minutes by train from Brussels until I got myself sorted, which was just really nice of her. I really appreciated her hospitality and the week that I stayed with her in Antwerp (which I was soon to discover is one of my favourite places EVER) was so much fun, even with all the stress of flathunting in another language .

After I found a place in Brussels, I was still able to spend quite a bit of time with her- there was her birthday night out in Antwerp which was officially one of the most fun nights out I've had despite my not drinking, my first proper guided tour of Antwerp, cocktails at 4pm with her and some of my friends fron BXL who had made the trip, the Christmas market and the teary last visit to Antwerp a couple of days before I left the country. Antwerp is definately one of my favourite cities in the world, such a great mix of the old and the new, and I love the fact that even in the city centre you can just turn a corner and find a little garden. Well worth a visit, and made all the more special because of Saskia, who is officially the best tour guide and Belgian friend you could ever ask for :)

2-My Brussels Friends

One of my main worries about moving to another country for 5 months was making new friends, as I am, by nature, quite shy and quiet (until you get to know me. Then I never shut up and will genrally just be irritating :p). But I needn't have worried one bit, as I made some great friends in Brussels who provided the fun and kept me sane throughout the whole semester. I will probably go into more detail about the various things that we did later on, suffice to say they are all amazing people and I am missing them all greatly now that I have left- bring on the Northern Reunion!!

3-My trip to Cologne

As a bona-fide Christmas freak (I love it! I actually do wish it could be a wombling merry Christmas every day), the European Christmas markets have always been something that appealed to me, so when I realised that Cologne in Germany, which is among one of the biggest and the best of the lot, was only a 2-hour train journey from Brussels, there was no question about it: I HAD to go. This was also my first visit to Germany, and on both counts, it did not disappoint. Cologne is such a beautiful city with its massive cathedral and gothic architecture and the people were all very nice to me, and nobody even passed comment on my terrible German. The Christmas markets themselves were amazing, I went a bit crazy buying decorations for when I went back home for Christmas and returned to Belgium in the mood for doing nothing but singing Christmas carols and eating Berlinners (German donuts), which came in handy when I had a 5-page Belgian literature essay to write, let me tell you :p . Definately one of the highlights of my stay and I definately plan on going back to Cologne one day.

4-The Christmas markets in BXL

A bit of a repitition, I know, but Brussels' Christmas market deserves a mention all of its own. I went there with a few friends for an evening, and we ended up not only going ice-skating (all of us) and breaking a coccyx (just me), but also finding a stall selling British cheeses. It goes without saying that this made us very happy, seeing as British cheese is hard to come by out there, and something that we were all missing. There were also the usual suspect type stalls and the general atmosphere was so festive and welcoming, and I also ran into an old friend of mine Helene, who did an exchange at my secondary school around 4 years ago which was great :)

5-Trip to Ypres and the WW1 Trenches

As I'm interested in the history of the 2 World Wars, this was a trip that I knew I wanted to make when I got to Belgium. Ypres is quite a small town in the Northern, Flemish-speaking part of the country, and is also where a lot of the fighting took place in WW1. One cold December day, I went there with 2 friends from uni, and it was well worth the 2 hour train journey. We started by having lunch at the Ypres Christmas market, and then took the bus a bit out of the town to walk to the trenches. If I'm being honest, the museum was not anything particularly great- it is obviously run by this family who don't seem to care much about it: it is basically a few rooms full of helmets, guns, etc, which in itself is quite interesting, but they let their cats run around all over the place and some of the mannequins they have lying around just seem a bit disrespectful to me at least. However, the trenches outside made it all worth it- a very eerie atmosphere, and as it had been raining in Brussels that week, the mud gave us an idea of the horrible conditions the soldiers had to live in. After heading back into town and having dinner, we went to the Last Post memorial that they hold there every night at 8 to remember those who died, again a very touching moment.

6-The food!

You can't expect someone to write a blog entry about Belgium without food coming up! I will be brief here and simply say that everything you've heard about Beglian food is true: The fries and chocolate are second to none, and everyone should have frites with sauce andalous at least once in their life.

7-The 'odd' monuments

Brussels has a fairly earned reputation as being a bit of a confused city, what with the linguistic and political divides in Belgium, this also seems to have spilled over into their monuments. Arguably the most famous is the 'Mannekin Pis', a small statue of a boy peeing, along with the slightly less famous and infinitely uglier 'Janneake Pis', a small statue of a girl squatting and peeing. Up until fairly recently they were joined by a statue of a dog peeing, but that seems to have disappeared sadly. You really have to admire a city somewhat for having so many peeing statues in it...

8- The Beer

As a non-beer drinker, I was interested to see whether Brussels could tempt me with its beers, and, to an extent, it has. While I still prefer spirits over any type of beer, the price of said spirits in bars is enough to put anyone off, and the wide choice of beers make up for it: my favourites were Kasteel Red, a cherry beer, Pecheresse, a peach beer, and a cactus beer whose name I have forgotten, but not the oddly addictive taste.

9-The Language

I'll show my language nerd credentials here in full force, I chose Belgium over France as my year abroad placement mainly because I thought it would be interesting to study French from a non-French perspective, and on this Brussels did not disappoint. There are quite a few differences between French French and Belgian French, which amused and interested me no end. I think I have to say though that Belgian French, on the whole, tends to be a good bit more logical...it will be hard to go back to 'soixante-dix' and 'quatre-vingts-dix' once you have gotten used to 'septante' and 'nonante'.

10-The Grand Place

Anyone who has been to Brussels will know the Grand Place, the huge square in the historical centre of the city. I had heard that it was stunning, and I have to agree with everyone who said that- you almost feel like you are not in the middle of a city when you are there, and the buildings are just beautiful.

So there's the Top 10 Best Things about Brussels...soonish, or at least when my dodgy Spanish Internet permits me, I will post the Top 10 Worst Things about BXL-prepare for a lot of hating on the Belgian Capital!