Brussels Weekender

I apologise. It has been a while since I wrote my last blog. I did promise myself when I first started this thing that I wouldn’t fall behind and it seems that I already have, and I’m only 3 weeks into my stay.
Well obviously given the title, in this blog I will talk about my quick trip to Brussels. Which was two weeks ago.
In our first week of studies we were given our timetables and discovered we had the first Friday off. My initial reaction was to plan a trip somewhere and make the most of my long weekend. And it turns out Kate had much the same idea. We decided to plan our trip together and go somewhere a bit far away, given that we had the time to travel.
I mentioned Brussels, as it was on my to do list and I knew it was only a few hours from Paris. Kate agreed and we booked our tickets. A few days before leaving we both went to the station with our Swedish friends to get a 12-25 card. This was a special discount card that gave up to 60% discount to those who were between the ages of 12 and 25, which we both fitted into nicely. The card costed 49 Euros (100AUD), which our friendly bank would late refund us for.
So we got our magical 12-25 cards and a day later we booked our tickets on the Internet. It wasn’t an extrememly low cost trip, but the tickets we did book were the cheapest available. We booked tickets from Caen to Paris and then from Paris to Brussels with about 2 hours stopover in between.
We managed to book ourselves into the last available dorms in the city. We booked at the last minute so it was extremely hard to find somewhere for 3 nights. We found beds at Vincent Van Gogh Youth Hostel, for me they had a bed for all 3 nights but Kate had to change to another dorm on the 2nd night and the change back on the 3rd.
We left on the Friday at about mid-day. Which was a convenient time and was also the cheapest train available.
I learnt a lot from just that trip there. 1. Was to make sure you eat lunch before you leave as I was starving the whole trip. 2 is to eat lunch as well as pack a baguette or something to eat as I ended up buying a single baguette roll with ham and cheese at a café in the Paris station which costed me 4 Euros (8AUD)! That’s right 8 bucks for a baguette!
In Paris we had to change stations. We arrived at St Lazarre station and had to leave from Paris North, this was task was done through the ever so complicated Paris Metro, which Kate was a gun at so we changed stations just fine. And made our way to Brussels. We managed to get ourselves those sort-after seats with the table in the middle. Which was fun and Kate and I enjoyed taking random photos of us.
I should mention that Kate is a great photographer and takes some amazing photos. When I find out how I will put a link to her blog on this sight. But for now you might just have to look her up yourselves. Kate Paneros is her name. Well Kate Panero to some, but that’s another story which ill save for a later blog. Don’t worry its really not that interesting. Anyways… Kate has a great digital camera, it’s a Canon SLR, which I would love to have, but costs a fortune.
So we ended up arriving at Brussels Midi Station where we were faced with another bloody metro we had to catch to the Hostel. We were given some pretty simple directions though and got there just fine.
It was a pretty decent hostel with some nice facilities; it had nice bathrooms (for a hostel), a bar, a kitchen and best of all it served breakfast. Whilst checking in the friendly girl at the desk gave us a terrifically helpful map, which was later used throughout the whole trip. I asked the friendly girl at reception for some nice places to eat, she pointed out some and soon after Kate and I went searching.
Well I wouldn’t say we found any ‘nice’ restaurants. I’m not too sure if we ended up finding the ones the friendly girl at reception pointed out but we came across a bussling street in a busy area filled with restaurants with every European food available. Each had its own salesmen at the front trying to entice us in by yelling out the specials, which didn’t really work in their favour as it made us walk further away. In the end we gave up on trying to find a cheap Belgian restaurant and settled on the first French restaurant we saw. Shocked at the prices, which were on the menu they first gave us, we went to walk out until they stopped us and gave us another menu, which had 2 course meals for 12 Euros. We ended up sitting down and eating. They had snails on the menu, which we decided to try. They weren’t bad, just had a bit of a slimy texture. Probably wouldn’t order them again. After dinner we made our way back to the hostel. We were shocked that there was not one waffle stall open, considering it was the capital of Belgium which is like the freaking home of waffles!
On Saturday morning we set off to spend the entire day in the city and looking at all the places, which were mentioned on the cool map that the friendly girl at reception gave us. The map was quite colourful and had highlighted all the tourist attractions of the area. It also had other attractions, which locals had suggested. The map was filled with suggestions from locals about what to see and do. Kate and I went around looking at all the interesting churched, museums, castles and palaces. We went to see the Pissing boy. Which is a statue of a Pissing Boy, funnily enough, which they use as the city’s emblem. Must admit it is quite overrated. It is a tiny little statue in the corner of a street. Every so often they put a costume on the Pissing Boy to mark any special occasions. During my brief visit he was wearing this Chinese looking costume, which I assumed was for Chinese New Years, which had ended the week earlier.
After the statue visit we made our way to The Comic Book Museum. Which was suggested on the map we had. It was pretty cool museum and was great to see something different than the usual castles and churches (which after a while start to all look the same). Belgium is home to many Comic Book artists and is where Tin Tin and the Smurfs come from. I was a big fan of Tin Tin when I was younger and all the adventures he went on, I dreamt of travelling around like him fighting all the bad guys, I probably still do…
After the comic book museum we looked around the city a bit more before making our way to the main shopping strip. We ended up having our first actual Belgium waffle from a street vendor before continuing do some shopping. Its pretty strange though as really shopping in Brussels was the same as shopping anywhere else in the Europe. They had the same shops and the same clothes. We entered our favourites, which were H&M, Zara, and Benetton, which had clothes we could afford as well as all those stores, which had clothes, we couldn’t. Zara was having their end of winter sales.
Kate and I ended up coming across a pretty funky vintage store, which was recommended in the map. It had all sorts of cool nik naks. Kate bought a Vinyl Record of Tin Tin as a Valentines gift for her boyfriend Danny. I should mention that that day was actually Valentines Day. For me, I didn’t think much of it being single, but I suppose it would have been quite strange, and a bit upsetting for Kate spending Valentines Day in Brussels with Me. From the funky vintage store I found some leather gloves, which were 8 Euros, which I bought. BARGAIN! They were pretty big gloves so the previous owner must have had some pretty big hands because the gloves were even a bit lose on me. Well you know what they say about big hands… big gloves… After buying them I was able to return the pair, which I was borrowing, from Kate. She had bought a new pair when she first arrived in France so I was borrowing her old ones, which I think she prefers more. Kate two has some pretty big hands. (No innuendo intended there at all FYI)
After the shopping spree we tried once more to find the nice places to eat which were recommended to us. But once again couldn’t. We found a street, which was lined with Thai Restaurants and thought we would eat some Thai as we hadn’t eaten any Asian food for a while. I ended up just ordering the Vegetarian Tom Yum as I wasn’t that hungry. It really wasn’t that great and actually just tasted like tomato soup as it had an overly bearing tomatoey taste. In the end I had to order water, which costed the same as my soup.
Over dinner we decided that we would leave Brussels the next day, As we had already seen a lot that day and wanted to save on the extra nights accommodation and eating out expenses. After we had arrived back at the hostel and Kate checked into her new dorm we used the ever so expensive Internet to book the tickets home. We then discovered what a bastard it was to book tickets on the Internet. We first checked the prices for the Brussels to Paris trip which were at the reasonable price of 35 euro (70 AUD) we then found a train at a good time and price from Paris to Caen which we booked but when we went back to book the Brussels to Paris train it had gone up to 80 Euros (160AUD), which was definitely out of our price range. We ended up having to book a train, which left quite early in the afternoon and which meant we had a 4-hour stop over in Paris.
After our ordeal with the Internet booking we concluded we were both still a bit hungry and went out to explore the surrounding area and find somewhere to eat. The surrounding area was quite ethnic, and by ethnic I mean Eastern and by Eastern I mean… well you know… I say this because one day I mentioned the word Ethnic to lady who stopped my in my tracks and said ‘ Well honey, we are all ethnic!’ but I'm sure you who are reading this know what I mean. Anyways… we stopped at a nice restaurant and shared a pide. After this we made our way back to the hostel and went to sleep.
The next day we woke up had our complementary breakfast, which consisted of a hot chocolate, 5 slices of bread, a bowl of cornflakes, a slice of cheese, an orange ‘juice’ (pretty much orange cordial) and a selection of spreads. We checked out of our dorms and did some more exploring. We first though we would make our way back to the city to do a bit more shopping.
This plane came to a quick halt when we discovered that shops don’t actually open in Brussels on Sundays!! I don’t know about you but I was pretty surprised when I discovered that Brussels, the capital of Belgium… the country, also regarded at the capital of Europe… the continent, had no Sunday trading. I myself think that shops should be shut on Sundays as this is the day people should be spending with their families but I also do find it convenient having shops open on a Sunday, especially when there was a particular wallet I wanted to buy that I had discovered the day before… talk about buyers remorse…
As I just mentioned Brussels is claimed to be the Capital of Europe and I can understand why. First there’s its location, located in the middle of northern Europe it’s only a few hours from France, Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg, England and Switzerland. There’s also the fact that everyone speaks both French and Dutch. The whole atmosphere of the city was very European as it sort of encompasses both the traditional Europe with its many churches and places and Modern Europe as it also has many skyscrapers and modern buildings. So its no surprise that the EU made it the home of their Headquarters and Parliament which we went to see that day.
The European Headquarters is a bit of an eyesore. It’s a tall modernish looking building with no interesting features. The Parliament was designed a bit better, it also had a modern architecture but had a more distinctive design and a pretty cool look. After Kate and I checked out both these buildings we went to the station to catch our train.

At the train Station we discovered we could not pick up our tickets! We had booked our tickets using a French website, using a French company which did not operate from the train station!! ARG! We did chose on the website that we were purchasing the tickets in Belgium. The company expected us to go to their one office located in the city, which was CLOSED on Sundays. And considering it was Sunday it made getting the tickets quite impossible. Our only option was to rebook the tickets and pay again. Luckily after we booked the new tickets, which were luckily at the same price I was able to call the company using by broken French and cancel the tickets so they wouldn’t charge my credit card… fewf…
So we ended up getting on an even earlier train from Paris to Brussels. At Paris we went to pick up the tickets to Caen, we asked at the desk if we were able to get an earlier train, the ticketer Lady said we were able to but it would cost another 7 euro each, which we were both happy to pay as it meant it would get us home earlier, at that stage we were going to face a 5 hour Parisian stop-over. So we changed stations to St-Lazarre and bordered the train to Caen where we caught the tram back home to Euro Residence were went both went to bed a bit early.

So that’s my Brussels trip… I apologise if it wasn’t adventurous enough for you. Don’t worry there are still more adventures to come. I’m still yet to write about this weekend's random adventures in Paris, which I promise I will write about soon.
I hope to return to Brussels in spring or summer, the city was very quiet in winter and not everything was open. I learnt a lot from this trip. I learnt things that would prepare me for my future adventures. In the future I will defiantly pack more food and book more in advance. I also decided that I didn’t really want to do much more travel until the warmer weather sets in. There wasn’t really any major reason for me to travel straight away. I had a whole year ahead of me and I want to see everything when it’s at is best. Which defiantly wasn’t during winter…