A Good Old-Fashioned Puppet Show

Thursday night I did one of the most interesting things I've done in Brussels yet; I went to a marionette puppet-show!

The theatre was right near Grand Place, and has been there for ages. We had to walk down a narrow alley to get there and then climb a large amout of stairs to get to the theatre in what was pretty much the attic (downstairs was a pub, and the middle floor was a tiny museum which also had a bar). The theatre itself was small, and there were marionettes hanging all around the walls and from the ceiling. I was glad we went in a group because it was a little bit frightening! It really felt like we were in someone's attic to watch a little puppet show, it really wasn't big and over the top like we're used to shows being nowadays.

The show was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so also a little bit of a frightening story, but it was really entertaining! Even though the mouths of the marionettes didn't move, because of all the hand gestures they did it actually seemed like they were talking. I recommend you go (it's called the Toone theatre) if you're ever in Brussels. Oh yes, but the shows are in French. I think they do the occasional English one though.

Hurricane in Paris (Part 2)

The windiest part of the trip was the day we went to EuroDisney.

Leaving the hostel in the morning I almost got blown off the sidewalk a few times, and by the time we reached Disneyland Paris it was full on wind and rain. Most of the rides were closed due to extreme weather conditions, so we had 7 hours to pass in a half-closed theme park. It turned out there was still quite a bit to do, of course we probably spent more money on food and hot drinks than we would have had it been sunny. It was nice in a way to not have to rush from ride to ride just to wait in lineups, and we got to leisurely walk about and check out every single gift shop looking for a specific character from Up for Gabrielle. We never did find it, the only store that sold him was sold out.

Even without many rides we got to enjoy the Disney experience, with Sleeping Beauty's castle and tunnels under Adventure Isle. Disney just adds the perfect touch to everything, they pay attention to all the little details. So basically, though I wasn't convinced at first that I would enjoy Disneyland as an adult, I found it a really impressive and happy place even during an intense storm!

We did get to go on Pirates of the Caribbean and the Star Wars virtual reality ride (both indoors), and they were both really cool! It was weird to hear pirates and robots speaking French.

And the day just kept getting better, first the wind stopped, then the rain, so Space Mountain reopened and I got to go on it for the first time in my life! I remember being too little when Lisa and Dad went on it at Disneyworld. Needless to say it was the best ride of the day. Actually I think it was the last, too, because I didn't get on Big Thunder Mountain during the brief time it was open (the weather relapsed).

But it was great to see Disney come alive during the sunny break, and all the floats came out for the Princess Parade. We also got to watch some of the first Mickey Mouse cartoons in the indoor cinema, which was really cool.

So, overall, it was a fast-paced weekend full of dramatic weather changes and interesting things to see. We got to see both Paris and Disneyland in every type of weather except snow, and only when we got home to Brussels did we find out that hurricane-speed winds had been recorded in France!

Hurricane in Paris (Part 1)

So I had a whirlwind weekend in Paris and EuroDisney, complete with hurricane-speed winds!

Of course it was beautiful and sunny when we arrived Saturday morning, and I decided to leave my jacket at the hostel and go around for the day in only a sweatshirt. We tried to hit most of the highlights for Gab and Angie who had never been to Paris before, and along the way we discovered just how insane Paris' transit system is! Metro lines crossed each other everywhere but the stations never seemed to overlap. So trying to get to the Eiffel Tower we decided to walk from a station that didn't look too far on the map... So we had a nice stroll through an expensive looking district of Paris (or maybe it's all expensive), all the while trying to see the tower over the tops of buildings. For such a monstrous tower it hides itself pretty well! When we got to the tower I was extremely confused because I couldn't find the place I'd stood to take a picture only a few years ago! I would think a large, flat space of dirt would be easy to find...

We decided to try and find a metro stop closer to the tower so we could head back towards the Louvre, and we ended up at something called the RER. Not quite a metro or train, because Paris has separate lines for those, the RER was some other kind of underground rail transport that somehow needed to be called something different. And it drives on the left hand side, as we discovered while waiting on a platform expecting it to go the other way.

Just before going in to the Louvre, we stopped at Angelina's, a place my mom recommended we go for hot chocolate. It was a popular place! We waited in line on the sidewalk for ten minutes before going in, but it was worth it. Our waitress wasn't particularly friendly, but the chocolate was amazing! (And so were our desserts!)


At the Louvre we split up to go see the exhibits we were most interested in. I went through the section of works from Iran and Syria (Mesopotamian, Akkadian, Babylonian sculptures and things) which was cool for me after having touched on cuneiform and akkadian writing in a linguistics class at UVic. I also really liked this lion, because it's made from separate brick-shaped sections and it's formed so the lion is 3D coming out of the background. Hard to explain, but I thought it was really cool.

I'll stop there on my explanaition of what I saw at the Louvre because I don't want to bore you all if you're not interested in art. All in all I loved it and am looking forward to going back sometime later to see the other sections.


Just before returning to the hostel to get our room keys (and my jacket, as it was starting to get cold!) we hopped over to Notre Dame. It was a bit of an easier trip than getting to the Eiffel Tower. There was a service going on, so it felt really awkward being a tourist in there. I was surprised they let people in to look around during a service. And there was a souvenir shop inside! It was kind of disappointing.


By the evening it had started to rain, and we set out to Montmartre to see the Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur by night. We found a little cafe to go for dinner and realized it was 10:30! So we had a super later dinner, but it was delicious. Then it began to rain even harder as we puzzled our way through the metro to get back to our hostel, where we all slept like logs despite the creaky, shaky bunkbeds.


Since this is a pretty long post I'll split it in two and continue on to the real hurricane part of the trip.

Out and about in Brussels

Although the rest of my week may seem somewhat uneventful after the Binche experience, I actually did some pretty cool things in Brussels. Friday was a free concert, the Antwerp Gipsy-Ska Orkestra, which was quite something. They blended a gypsy sound with just about everything you could think of: ska, reggae, hip hop, punk, funk, and just about as many languages. Many of the songs were in English, but I was also told they sang in the gypsy language (maybe it's called Roma? I'm not sure). Either way, sometimes I understood, sometimes I didn't. The lead singer spoke to the crowd in what a friend told me was probably Dutch, and at other times he spoke a mix of French and English in the same sentence. Overall it was a great show, really lively, and as long as I didn't try too hard to understand I got the general idea of what was going on.

Saturday day I visited the Coudenberg museum with the exchange group. It's an archaeology site of the basement rooms/foundation of the old royal palace and cathedral that burnt down when they were making candy for a party. Oops. Not having enough money to rebuild it as it was, they built the new palace on top in a completely different architectural style. The museum was kind of neat because we got to go underground through all of the rooms that remained and had just been buried for awhile.

That night I went to see a film at an anime festival. I thought it was curious that I saw my first Japanese anime film in Brussels, but I guess that's the way things turn out sometimes! It was a compilation of five different short films, all by different artists and directors, and most of which didn't make sense. It was a great experience, and I saw some really cool animation, but I left really puzzled about what had just happened, since the last film especially had no sort of connecting chain of events or plot line to follow.

As for today, my friend Angie and I visited a weekend market where I bought some dried kiwi (never heard of it before, but they're actually really good), and then Angie, Gabrielle, and I started planning our Easter break adventures... it's looking like Oslo, Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague, and Vienna. Exciting!

I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to write next, as it took me a couple of days to get around to writing this post, but I'm wishing all the best to everyone at home and I miss you all and the Vancouver mountains and ocean so much!

Carnaval et "Mouvement Social"

After a rather tame weekend of going to a movie (suprisingly difficult to do if you're not familiar with the fact that this particular theatre is in two different buildings, one where you pay cash and one with credit) and the comic book museum, I spent today celebrating Carnaval. We had a school holiday today, specially for Carnaval, so we went to the (somewhat) nearby town of Binche for the festivities.


It started off with a bit of a journey, as trains were detoured because of yesterday's head-on collision between two trains a little outside of Brussels, and the regularly one hour trip became two and a half hours. That was well enough, we arrived with plenty of time to join in the various tiny parades around town where men in costumes and clogs marched around with a drummer and dropped off some of their likewise costumed friends at their houses (we guessed so they could have some lunch). We then lined up along the streets to wait for the bigger parade, where they all returned with large feathery hats and baskets of oranges. There was confetti everywhere, children with silly string, and a few interesting hats and costumes scattered through the crowd.



At first the paraders lightly tossed oranges to the crowd as they passed, but after awhile they full on chucked them into the air. All the houses lining the streets had cages over them just for this event, because, as a couple of my friends found out, oranges are rock hard when they hit you.

So the parade part was pretty neat, and I'm glad I got to experience a bit of Mardi Gras celebration, but the real adventure started on our way home.

At about 3:30 we decided to go back and catch a train home. We were prepared for it to be complicated and involve a couple of transfers at different stations, but that was fine. Of course we arrive at the station and there's absolutely no one there, just a sign saying that, due to the "mouvement social," there will be no more trains today. Great, strike.


Luckily we were with Bertrand, the main organizer for our exchange activities, and he had a plan B: take the bus to the next town. But first we went back to the parade area to alert other exchange students so they could come with us if they wanted. We managed to find about 50 of the 100 of us that had come. So we had a giant group waiting for the bus which, after an hour or so of waiting, just never came. No explanation, the schedule said it should be there.


Ok, plan C: flag down one of the shuttle busses which had been driving by almost empty. That didn't work, all the drivers just honked at us and kept going.


By this point many people left to hitchhike their way home, or at least to Charleroi, the nearest city with a likely connection to Brussels. So with a group of 30 or 40 we moved to plan D: call for some taxis. They said no.


Then we tried a more desperate plan E: walk the hour or so it takes to get to Charleroi. We only got about 10 minutes in and some people found busses which may or may not have gone to Charleroi. The rest of us, now closer to 20, tried calling taxis again. This time they said they'd come get us in 15-20 minutes! But after probably half an hour of waiting, none came. Now crowds of people were coming from the direction of Binche, presumably after discovering there were no trains, and we were getting worried they'd take our taxis.


Finally, Bertrand got a number for a private shuttle company that could send us 8-seater vans to take us directly to Brussels for 20 euro each. Not too bad for getting us to a main station in Brussels. After that the trip home from Gare Midi by metro and tram seemed short and simple, and I arrived home at the lovely hour of 9 pm. Only 5 and a half hours after we'd initially tried to leave Binche!


So today I learned I can't rely on any sort of transportation here, and I got an orange.

Adventures of my second week of classes

My big adventures this week included trying all different kinds of Belgian beer (most of which are delicious!) and wandering all over the city to get to know my way better. I think I have a pretty good map in my head now!

Of course I did also spend a ton of time trying to sort out classes and textbooks, but that's much less exciting. As far as I can tell, most of my professors haven't printed their coursepacks yet, or there's no coursepack or textbook at all. However, I tried to find textbooks I knew about for one class, and the lady at the campus bookstore told me they were out and not ordering any more in! Wouldn't the campus bookstore make more money if they sold the books professors assign to their classes? I could by a travel guide to just about anywhere in the world, and all kinds of books about Brussels, but nothing for my classes. Bizarre. But one thing I'm beginning to notice about Belgium, or at least Brussels, is that making money is much less important than having a two hour lunch break, or better, the whole afternoon off. As my friend Gabrielle noted in her blog, if you wan't to get something done here, do it before noon, and definately not on Sunday.

For this coming weekend I'm deciding between going to Ghent or Leuven. I'll keep you posted how that turns out.

Saturday in Bruges

Express, the international exchange student welcome group here at ULB, organized an extraordinarily cheap trip to Bruges for us today. It only took a one hour train ride to get there, but that was enough distance for the weather to rapidly change from sunny to dense fog. No matter, the farm fields passing by in the train windows and Bruges itself seemed much more mysterious that way.

Bruges is a lovely little medieval town, with canals and buildings in all kinds of styles from gothic to gilded renaissance buildings. I'm no expert in architecture, but it's pretty interesting to see when they're all lined up together.

We did a bike tour that took us to a very nearby town called Damme, which is a bit closer to the coast (I still haven't actually seen the Belgian coast yet though). It was really weird riding a bike on cobblestone! Especially while trying to fit down a narrow street that's croweded with a strange mix of cars, pedestrians, cyclists, horse-drawn carriages, and motorbikes. I didn't hit anyone though, and no one hit me! It seems drivers in Bruges are a bit more willing to wait for pedestrians and cyclists than those in Brussels.

On our bikes we passed windmills and farm fields with furry clydesdale-like horses, although I didn't take pictures because we were busy zooming by. Next time I visit Flanders or the Netherlands I will get my windmill pictures!

A few of us decided to end the trip with some Belgian fries, and an assortment of sauces from curry mayo to a tomato-based provençale sauce. Next time I might try the samurai sauce; I'm guessing wasabi mayo. I didn't know what language to order in, since Bruges is in Flanders (the Flemish part of Belgium) and I'd heard French isn't appreciated too much there. Not speaking a word of Flemish, I opted for English which usually makes me feel like an ignorant tourist. But when I asked the guy at the fry place he said he can serve you in about six different languages, as can most other tourist places, because very few tourists speak Flemish.

So now that I'm back in my room in Brussels, I'm sore and tired from so much biking, but looking forward to my next trip, although I don't know just yet where to.

Monday I start my French course, and I have a few other classes to try out in this coming week as well. I'll see how that goes, and I'll update you next time I've got a good story!

All the best to everyone at home!