Brussels - Day One

Friday Night
I packed pretty light for my class. I stuffed 10 days of clothes into a carry one with room to spare for souvenirs on the way back. Alright, it was more like three days of clothes that I planned on wearing three times each, but it did fit into a carry on. Considering that I brought two sport coats and planned on dressing up every day, I thought that it was a brilliant display of packing.

I dropped Ace off at some friends' house and got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Despite wanting to feel well upon arrival in Brussels, I went ahead and had a beer at the airport bar. The flight left at 9:00 pm, so I boarded at 8:55 and stayed awake long enough to eat dinner. Shortly afterwards the six dramamine set in, I fell asleep, and stayed that way for the next 8 hours. I awakened over England and felt lucky that I'd only had to be awake for 30 minutes of the flight. There was only an hour layover in Amsterdam, but I got to the gate in plenty of time. Brussels was about 45 more minutes away.
The instructors said that the taxi to the hotel was 40 euros, so I took the train instead. It was two euros... I thought I came out pretty well. On the train ride into town I could see the atom/molecule thing on the horizon.


I had a print out of the hotel location with me, and it said that the hotel was a three minute walk from the train station. It didn't specify in which direction, so I tried to grab a cab. The cabbie tried to explain that it was too small a fare for him to lose his place in the cab stand, but I stayed stubborn and got in the cab anyway. I really should have seen this one coming... he must have memorized all of the construction zones in the city because he turned the two euro fare into a six euro ride. And in the end he dropped me off two blocks from the hotel and told me to walk. Later, I realized that he dropped me off at about the same distance away from the hotel as the train station had been, only I was now on the other side. Oh well. It still wasn't that much money. The hotel was nice, had a concierge (sweet), and had a great atrium. A lot like an Embassy Suites but without the happy hour. The room was small but nice. The only weird part was that the beds two micro-twin beds were about six inches apart. Oh well, when in Belgium... my roommate was going to be a guy named Kirk, but he didn't arrive until Sunday, so I spread my stuff out, watched some TV, and relaxed.
In the afternoon I got a tourist map from the concierge and hit the streets. The hotel was right by the St. Michel cathedral.


There was a service going on so I couldn't really walk around inside. All I could tell was that it was big and unlit. Also, the weather was awesome. The concierge had also pointed me to the Grand Place, which is pronounced "plah-sah". I had a hard time not calling it "place". To get over there I had to walk through a covered mall, which a tour guide the next day claimed was the first covered mall in the world. I'm skeptical about that one.


I saw a student from orientation, Bridget, by the mall and she told me that the other students that had arrived a day early were all meeting with the instructors to go out to dinner at 6:30. Perfect... I now had a purpose and an appointment. No more aimless wandering! Except for the next three hours, in which I aimlessly wandered around town.
Grand Plah-sah was beautiful.


It's a cobblestone square surrounded by guild houses built in the late 16 hundreds. They were all build within the same two years because a French king (I forget the name and the number after it) had laid seige to it with cannons and almost completely flattened the square. The only building left standing was the city hall.


According to the legend, as the city was burning the king of Belgium brought his son to Grand Plah-sah, and his son was so scared that he wet himself. After that, the fires diminished and the guild halls rebuilt the houses around the square to show the French that they still had power and money. The king's son is now commemorated by the Manneqin Pis statue, and the statue changes clothes at least once a day. He was a sailor when I say him.


I also bought a deck of card with him in 54 different outfits (counting the two jokers). The guild halls include the bread guild, the grease guild (a staple in the 17th century diet), the carpenters' guild, the archer's guild, the sailor's guild, and the merchant's guild. The meat guild's building is now a Manaquin Pis costume museum, the beer brewer's guild is a restaurant called the "Blanche Rosa". I'm not sure why I memorized all of the information, but I did.
We went out to dinner on the Grand Plah-sah at the Blanche Rose. Our group was about 12 people... a good showing. I tried a cherry beer that was too sweet and a Trappist ale that was excellent. I also had some awesome escargot that pretty much wrecked my breath for the next 24 hours. Potent stuff. After dinner Mark and I were the only two wanting to go out for some more drinks


We wandered off the square and bar hopped a few times. We talked mostly about the Kagen book on foreign policy that we had read for the class. At one little bar Mark asked me, "When you're greeting people here, when are you supposed to kiss on the cheek and when are you supposed to kiss on the lips?" We realized we both had seen the same two guys kissing. And when we started to think about it we determined that the last time we saw a woman was three blocks away and maybe that disco bar called Homo Erectus had some meaning behind its name. We finished our beers and started looking for a new watering hole.
A few blocks away we found a three foot wide alley with a sign out front that said Cabaret. Sounded good to us. We had to walk back about 30 yards into the courtyard and there were a bunch of Belgians (presumably) standing around a closed door speaking French. Mark asked if it was a private party and it was clear that they had the same fluency in English as we had in French, so we barged our way into the cabaret. At the front of the room was an empty stage and the long room could seat about 30 but had about 60 packed into it. Mark started trying to negotiate for two chairs while I ordered up two beers from the sweaty housewife looking woman behind the bar. I imagined she had been talked into turning their rec room into a cabaret by her 20 year old son who still lived at home and she wasn't all that happy about the situation. Mark was never able to break trough the language barrier so we took our positions along the side wall where we had a short run to the exit in case anything should go wrong. It took Mark about two minutes to drop his beer and spray liquid and glass across some people (including myself) but based on everyone's reaction I think it's a pretty common occurrence. Eventually the lights dimmed and a woman came out and started speaking French into the microphone. After some light laughter the crowd cheered and a man from the audience got up and climbed the stage. Great. An open mic night. He sang a heavily accented version of a British pop song that wasn't all that bad. After the song he stopped and started speaking French. Then everyone in the audience turned around and looked at us. And just kept looking. What was happening? Finally, somebody called out, "Where you from?" and Mark yelled, "Minnesota." Then the musician said something into the microphone and everyone laughed, said something else and everyone cheered, and then started playing a French song that everyone sang along with. Staying close to the door turned out to be a great idea and we bolted out of there.
Our final stop for the night was an outside bar at the Grand Plah-sah where we met an Irish group: two women and a man. I can't remember what we discussed, but I do remember that one of the girls claimed to have four children and their names were one, two, three, and four. Fascinating. We finished off the night there and, in hindsight, stayed out way later than we should have. Despite the time zone change we got home at a respectable 2 a.m. Welcome to Belgium. So far so good.