Trip to Belgium
I just got back the other day from my trip to Belgium. I had a great time, I went with another exchange student Phil for our 1st of 2 spring breaks. We flew with Ryan air to Charlerloi, which is a city about 40 minutes south of Brussels. We stayed our first night with Phils friend Laurelei, the picture below is at her host families. Her family was typical belgian, and had a very hard time speaking english which was not surprising because they speak french. They were very welcoming to us, and made like 5 pizzas for us and made sure we were hungry. They were nice enough and drove us even to the train station, which in Europe is very nice. Most of the time people without a car or travelling are expected to take the public transport. I learned some French while I was with them, but I dont know how to spell it so I cant show all of you.
We took a train to Mont Saint Guibert, which is also just outside of Brussels. Most cities in Belgium you can get to very quickly, it takes an hour to get from one side of the country to the other by train I heard. We met my friend Alice, that was the girl that we were going to be staying with most of our trip. She was an exchange student in Phoenix last year, so it was nice to see her again. She has a fairly large house, so she had some other friends over from different parts of Europe. They were from Germany, Switzerland, and France. Most of them were exchange students last year and went with her on her US train tour. It was fun hanging out with all of them. We had a very unique Belgian dinner the first night with Alice and her friends. We had Belgian fries which were great, they were homemade and I would suggest them to anyone. I had a Fricandell for dinner, which is like a sausage sort of I guess.
On Sunday we went to Brussels, it is a very nice city. The only thing was that I was sick. I had a fever and a sore throat, and my sickness would plague me for the rest of my trip. I didnt do much most of the week because I was sick, but it was ok to just rest all day because I was still on break. In Brussels there is this little man statue who pees and is very famous world wide I guess, its called Manneken Pis. Below you can see it, with me standing near it. There were a lot of people taking pictures of it, and surprisingly it was a very nice day in Brussels. Everytime I hear about Belgium I hear about rain and how it rains all the time. Most of our trip it was pretty nice weather. It snowed, rained, and was sunny in a very weird pattern. But when we were in Brussels it was very sunny for part of it, and then really cold which was probably half due to my fever.
I was also lucky enough to be able to try Belgian waffles. They are the BEST waffles I have ever had in my life. Yes dad!! They are even better than yours, I never thought that would be possible. I had my waffle with extremely fresh strawberries and powdered sugar on it. That is another thing the belgians are known for. One thing I did not know about Belgian was that they were home to the writer and creator of Tin Tin. I use to watch Tin Tin like crazy when I was a kid, I use to be its #1 fan. I went to the TIn Tin store in each city I visited in Belgium, they had them all over.
My friend Alice told me that this structure is also supposivly(that is definitely spelled wrong i think) famous around the world. It is called the Atom, or something like that. It did not appear to be that big when we were far away, but when you get close it is really big and very random. It lights up at night and looks very pretty, and you can go inside but we go there too late to go up. There is a restaurant at the very top that you can eat at, but we never got to see it either. Instead we had a milkshake at a nearby place. We went back late that night to Alice's house.
Mostly during the week I just took it easy. We went to her university and met some of her friends. They are really nice and it was cool to meet some more people from around the world. On Friday we went to Brugge, which is the Flemmish(or you might know it as Dutch) part of Belgium. THe northern part of belgium is Dutch, the southern part is french. It was a beautiful town, its known as the Venice of the North. It has canals of water going through the city, but not as many as Venice. The square below was really beautiful. We were there in the winter and it was a beautiful city, I would imagine it would be absolutely beautiful in the summer. THis trip to Belgium made me really excited for Euro Tour in the summer, I think everywhere will be really nice!!
Well I am now down to only 138 days now, which is less than 5 months!!! That is crazy to me, I have almost been here for a year now. I will be travelling and will have a ton to do, so my time here in Sweden is coming to a quick end. Its kind of sad though, I am really going to miss it here in Sweden. I have made some really good friendships here, and I will have to travel back to visit a lot. It will be weird, I think I might even miss the food. When I first got to Sweden I really missed the american food like Subway, GOldies, drive thru with my car, panda express, and cheap Pizza hut. When I go back it will be nice to have all of that, but I am going to miss my swedish food like sandwiches and meatballs. Well that is all for now. My camera broke on this trip to Belgium, so I have to send it back to the US for repair. HOpefully I get it back soon, if anyone is good with a camera tell me and maybe you have some ideas on how I can fix it.
We took a train to Mont Saint Guibert, which is also just outside of Brussels. Most cities in Belgium you can get to very quickly, it takes an hour to get from one side of the country to the other by train I heard. We met my friend Alice, that was the girl that we were going to be staying with most of our trip. She was an exchange student in Phoenix last year, so it was nice to see her again. She has a fairly large house, so she had some other friends over from different parts of Europe. They were from Germany, Switzerland, and France. Most of them were exchange students last year and went with her on her US train tour. It was fun hanging out with all of them. We had a very unique Belgian dinner the first night with Alice and her friends. We had Belgian fries which were great, they were homemade and I would suggest them to anyone. I had a Fricandell for dinner, which is like a sausage sort of I guess.
On Sunday we went to Brussels, it is a very nice city. The only thing was that I was sick. I had a fever and a sore throat, and my sickness would plague me for the rest of my trip. I didnt do much most of the week because I was sick, but it was ok to just rest all day because I was still on break. In Brussels there is this little man statue who pees and is very famous world wide I guess, its called Manneken Pis. Below you can see it, with me standing near it. There were a lot of people taking pictures of it, and surprisingly it was a very nice day in Brussels. Everytime I hear about Belgium I hear about rain and how it rains all the time. Most of our trip it was pretty nice weather. It snowed, rained, and was sunny in a very weird pattern. But when we were in Brussels it was very sunny for part of it, and then really cold which was probably half due to my fever.
I was also lucky enough to be able to try Belgian waffles. They are the BEST waffles I have ever had in my life. Yes dad!! They are even better than yours, I never thought that would be possible. I had my waffle with extremely fresh strawberries and powdered sugar on it. That is another thing the belgians are known for. One thing I did not know about Belgian was that they were home to the writer and creator of Tin Tin. I use to watch Tin Tin like crazy when I was a kid, I use to be its #1 fan. I went to the TIn Tin store in each city I visited in Belgium, they had them all over.
My friend Alice told me that this structure is also supposivly(that is definitely spelled wrong i think) famous around the world. It is called the Atom, or something like that. It did not appear to be that big when we were far away, but when you get close it is really big and very random. It lights up at night and looks very pretty, and you can go inside but we go there too late to go up. There is a restaurant at the very top that you can eat at, but we never got to see it either. Instead we had a milkshake at a nearby place. We went back late that night to Alice's house.
Mostly during the week I just took it easy. We went to her university and met some of her friends. They are really nice and it was cool to meet some more people from around the world. On Friday we went to Brugge, which is the Flemmish(or you might know it as Dutch) part of Belgium. THe northern part of belgium is Dutch, the southern part is french. It was a beautiful town, its known as the Venice of the North. It has canals of water going through the city, but not as many as Venice. The square below was really beautiful. We were there in the winter and it was a beautiful city, I would imagine it would be absolutely beautiful in the summer. THis trip to Belgium made me really excited for Euro Tour in the summer, I think everywhere will be really nice!!
Well I am now down to only 138 days now, which is less than 5 months!!! That is crazy to me, I have almost been here for a year now. I will be travelling and will have a ton to do, so my time here in Sweden is coming to a quick end. Its kind of sad though, I am really going to miss it here in Sweden. I have made some really good friendships here, and I will have to travel back to visit a lot. It will be weird, I think I might even miss the food. When I first got to Sweden I really missed the american food like Subway, GOldies, drive thru with my car, panda express, and cheap Pizza hut. When I go back it will be nice to have all of that, but I am going to miss my swedish food like sandwiches and meatballs. Well that is all for now. My camera broke on this trip to Belgium, so I have to send it back to the US for repair. HOpefully I get it back soon, if anyone is good with a camera tell me and maybe you have some ideas on how I can fix it.