Alex at GTL Summer 2007

Roma

2007-07-17T11:41:41Z

Rome was a blast! I got to see so much stuff. We got there around 10:30AM Saturday and dropped our bags off at the hostel. By the time we got to the hostel and got everything taken care of it was about 11:30. We headed off to Palatine hill which is where the old roman forum is and where Romulus and remus were said to have been raised and founded rome. There were lots of old ruins dating back several thousand years. It was very impressive and possibly one of my favorite places to visit. It was truly amazing what they could build without engines or electricity! After that we trucked off to the Coliseum! It was just down the street from palatine hill. Again it was truly amazing what they could build 2000 years ago! After that we grabbed some panninis from a street vendor and walked to the circus maximus where they used to have chariot races. Kind of weird because this was just a park now with people running and sunbathing, still a few ruins left though. After that we trucked off to one of the top 5 gelato places (we got to visit all 5 at least once over the 2.5 day trip). From there we took a tram to the Pantheon which was stupendous!! The dome in the top was incredible! After the Pantheon we got some more gelato and walked through the shopping district with all those fancy stores (I don’t know what ones were there I didn’t pay attention) and to the Spanish steps, why they are called the Spanish steps I don’t know really… I guess they were built in the Spanish style or something. After that we walked up to the Bourghese Art Gallery where we bought tickets to see it on Sunday (you have to buy tickets 24 hours in advance). After that we went back to the hostel to clean up a little bit. After cleaning up we went to a cool pizza place and got some tasty pizza. After pizza we went to the trevi fountain and hung around that area for awhile (there are tons of bars, and gelato places there) after awhile though we decided to walk to Saint Peters Basilica (about 2 miles away but you could see it from the fountain) We walked all the way there and saw some cool things along the way, like a neat street festival and the Roman TV awards… We were then told (incorrectly) that the Metro was closed by the Police so we ran to find a bus and got on the first one we saw, not really knowing where it went, it went to the train station and from there we caught the metro to our hostel… go figure.
The next morning was a little more relaxed than the other days had been. We went and saw the Capitoline museum (lots of really cool sculptures). After that we went to the Piazza Navano which is a famous square in Rome and where 2 of the top 5 gelato places are located. So we had some gelato and lunch and then headed off to the Bourghese museum and the park that it is in. We walked around the park for a long time and dipped our feet in a huge refreshing fountain. Then we went to the museum. It was incredible, there were so many paintings and sculptures in this little museum, it was very impressive!! After that it was dinner time and the guide book recommended an Indian restaurant only a few metro stops away so we did that, the food was amazing!! Some of the best I have had and cheap too!! (A huge plate of curry, rice, naan, beer and 2 samosas was 10 bucks!) Top notch! After that we went back to Trevi fountain and got more gelato and then headed back for the night.
Monday there was a little miscommunication in wake up times got a little confused (I was in charge of making sure everybody was awake at 7 but I thought it was 7:30…) Needless to say we got to the Vatican a little late… And paid the price. We waited nearly 2.5 hours in line!!! But the wait was worth it! The Vatican Museum was amazing!! Think of all the paintings that could be bought by one of the richest groups in the world (the catholic church) over a span of roughly 2000 years! It was amazing! At the end of the journey was the Sistine chapel. It was truly something else! We spent almost 1.5 hours in the room looking at the paintings. We had a great book that explained each one in detail. After the Sistine chapel it was off to Saint Peter’s! I had seen it on TV plenty of times but it is just soooo huge and soooo amazing!!! There aren’t even words to describe it. We went up into the dome and then on top of the dome and had the most amazing view of the city!! After that we went and grabbed our bags and headed to the train station. It was really cool, in our couchette were two teenage aussi girls and their dad and a guy from Wisconsin and then us so we all spoke English and had a blast on the way back!!

Roma remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Swiss Extravaganza

2007-07-06T11:39:47Z

We left for Switzerland around 5 Thursday night. We got to Interlaken around 10 on Thursday night, we had this great hostel which is the oldest private hostel in Switzerland called Balmers. We had canyoning planned for Friday at 8AM so we just went to bed but the other people in our room had other plans for us and came back at 2 and kept us up FOREVER Needless to say we woke up tired and cranky Friday morning but SUUUUPER excited for canyoning. Canyoning was CRAZY fun. You take about an hour bus ride up to the start where it is a 20 minute hike to the canyon. They go over all the guidelines with you which pretty much scares the crap out of you, they pretty much say do exactly as I tell you on each jump, and one little mistake could kill you. The first jump was the biggest, you take a 65 foot drop off a waterfall!! After that the fun started because after you jumped the largest jump of the day everything else seemed easy enough. One of the hardest of the day was a 5 foot jump to a slide where you slid down. Another was a slide called the corkscrew which literally flips you over and if you don’t put your arms just right it breaks your nose (I avoided the broken nose and took a nasty bruise on my arm). After awhile you started to have fun with it doing some twists and turns on the way down (being 6’3” prevented me from doing some of the flips like the other people) about ½ way down we got to do a 183 foot rappel (rope assisted descent) over a waterfall. This was truly amazing because you were in freefall for about 100 feet until they started to brake you from the top. We spent a little over 4 hours going down the canyon and it was truly amazing. At the end they gave us some beer, bread and cheese, just what the doctor ordered! After the drive back we walked back to the hostel with a guy from UNC and U of M (GO BLUE!) changed and went down to the main square in the town (after eating a couple of tasty kebabs of course). The weekend we were there, there was the Nissan Outdoor games which consisted of every awesome sport that I dream of doing! When we got to the main square they had a bouldering (rock climbing short technical courses without ropes) contest and warm up runs for the mountain bike jumping competition. This was really impressive because these guys weren’t just doing a little bar-spin, they were doing backflips, 360’s on full blown mountain bikes (not that little trick bike you had when you were 10). I pretty much stood in amazement until my friends pried me away so we could see the airshow. On the schedule it showed there was an airshow but we had no idea what to expect. Well it starts out with two base jumpers jumping out of a helicopter and starting LITTLE ROCKETS ON THEIR FEET!!! They shot across the sky like little bullets doing little tricks!! This was incredible! There were also paragliders doing flips and spins as well. It was crazy. After that we went back to the hostel to watch a rugby game… or so we thought, it ended up being Saturday night not Friday… but it took us an hour to figure that out. So we went into the lounge of our hostel. Now this be noted, apparently our hostel was the place in town, not just for tourists either, locals even came there to party, there was a bar down in the basement and a lounge on the ground floor. We all grabbed a few beers down at the bar then came up to the lounge where somebody was rockin out on the piano and we all sang along until they kicked us out at 11 and we went off to bed because canyoning kind of killed us. The next morning we “slept in” until about 8 and literally went off to the races. We decided to watch the whitewater kayaking in the morning and this was a great decision. We got right up next to the kayakers as they paddled between the rocks and over a nice “little” waterfall(in comparison to canyoning it was small). After we had seen enough around noon we decided to catch our shuttle bus back into town, which was a 6 mile drive away. Well little did we know that the last bus left at 11:30 and no more were coming until 1:30 and at this point we were starving and wanted some tasty food. So somebody told us there was a train station just a little ways (it ended up being about 2.5 km) down the road. So we hiked to the train station and caught the next train back. All in all we got back about 30 minutes faster than if we would have taken the bus… Lunch was tasty again (more kebabs) and we went and sat next to the lake and took a little nap. After our naps we went to go watch some more mountain bike jumping before the rugby game. We hung out and watched mountain biking for awhile and then headed back to the hostel bar to check out the rugby game. They created a new happy hour for the rugby game so of course we had to indulge, for about 1 US you could have a pint! Tasty! The game was great because it was the Aussies vs the kiwis (Australians vs new Zealanders) and the bar was 50/50 split between the two and it was just one big party. After dinner we were in the mood for some kebabs so off we went and then after kebabs we went back to the main square for the video competition of the outdoor games, they were amazing! After that there was a little party with lots of drunk outdoor people so I had a blast! Since there is a countrywide noise curfew we had to shut down at 12 and we asked one of the trashed locals (note at this point I was truly 100% sober) where the party was going to? His response “ BALMERS, the party is at BALMERS MATE” So we went back to Balmers and we stayed in the bar for a bit, then piano for a bit then off to bed by 1. We got up the next morning at a glorious 7:30 am to catch a train up into the swiss alps to do some hiking. It took one transfer to get all the way to where we were going but the view was spectacular!! We really enjoyed the hiking and atmosphere in our little swiss town. After a few hours of climbing up the mountain we headed back down to Interlaken for our departure from that amazing city. The city must have been just as sad to see us go as we were to see it go because it started to pour just after our departure from the station. The train back was uneventful and we got our last kebab of the trip in Strasbourg.
It is necessary to add a few foodie points about Interlaken: 1. Yes I had lots of Kebabs but this is because they were the best kebabs I have had in all of Europe. 2. The water in interlaken was to die for! They had ‘water fountains’ that were what we could just a fountain and they were all over and this was straight from the mountain springs and 100% safe to drink!

Swiss Extravaganza remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Lyon and Annonay weekend

2007-06-19T14:12:26Z

This was my first two day weekend since arriving in France and I was feeling a little worn out from all the long distance travelling so I decided to take a shorter trip and go visit my friend, Travis, who was working in a small town of Peage de Rousillon and living in the smaller town of Annonay, France. He decided that there wasn't two days of stuff to do in Annonay so we met in Lyon on friday where we walked around and saw the town. That night he thought he was meeting his friend at a bar in Lyon so we waited for about an hour in this bar and sent numerous text messages to his friend only to return to the hotel and a text message explaining that travis was mistaken on the meeting date and time, it was saturday night. The next morning we went up to the large basillica on the top of a large hill in Lyon, went to a FNAC (a french version of Bestbuy) where we spent a good bit of time trying to find an electrical adapter for travis. Then we headed to Peage de Rousillon to get Travis' car, which is a manual delivery van with no rear view mirror (because there is no rear window). This was pretty fun to watch Travis drive since he still has not mastered the stick shift yet and it is in the Rhone Alps region in France where there is no shortage of large hills, round-abouts, and large hills with round-abouts. Needless to say there were a few stalls but we made it there safely. That night we walked around and got some tasty pizza before our night began. We decided to go do our own Annonay pub crawl. We had some really good and really bad beers, a very drunk bartender gave us some licorice flavored liquor, and a lot of funny or weird people. We of course never got drunk because we were too cheap to buy that much beer and spread this out over a course of 4 or 5 hours. The next morning we got up and tried to find a place where travis could throw away his trash and then we headed back to Peage de Rousillon where I caught my train back to Metz.

Lyon and Annonay weekend remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Marseille and Avignon Weekend

2007-06-19T13:56:48Z

Sorry I have fallen so far behind in posting. The weekend in Marseille was awesome. Emily and I left on thursday night and arrived in Marseille early morning on Friday. When we arrived we went to the hostel with a "24-hour reception" which was closed. So we walked along the water for quite a long time. We went back to the hostel around 11 and they were open this time. They were very nice explaining that they had just finished renovations on the whole hostel at 3AM and since our train was late figured we weren't showing up until later and went back to bed. We rested at the hostel until my good friend, who is interning near Lyon, France this summer, met us at the hostel. After that we went down to the Vieux Port which has been a bustling port since the Greek empire. There is a vieux fort to go along with the vieux port and we got to go up into the fort and check it out. There was an amazing church on the top of a hill in Marseille but since we were feeling a little cheesy we took a little gas powered "train" (a gas powered tourist trap) up to the top for a couple euros each. We saw the church and got to ride the train with 50 obnoxious teenagers who were chanting something in French that we couldn't quite understand (despite all three of us speaking good french). That night we went out to dinner at a really cool tapas place that was suggested by the owners of the hostel. This hostel, by the way, was the coolest place we were all weekend. The staff was soooo friendly, they all spoke GREAT english and even helped us learn some new french and practice it. They also called the tapas bar to let them know that a couple of americans were coming over! After that we were exhausted so we just went off to bed. The next day we took a boat out to an island off the coast, about a 20 minute ride and spent the morning and early afternoon eating some mussels, walking along the beach and exploring the island. This trip had a lot of interesting experiences involved with it. The first was the first beach we found had about 5 or 6 dead birds washed up on the shore, we assume it was due to the high winds but we couldn't be sure. The next was my brilliant idea to pick up a piece of cactus. I carefully procured this piece of cactus from the ground, being careful to avoid the thorns, well the whole thing was covered in thorns so my hand became covered in thorns which Emily and Travis thought was hilarious. It was rather painful though. That night we went to a wine bar where we had some pretty good food and great wine.
The next morning we walked around Marseille for awhile until Travis had to catch his train and Emily and I went off to the beach. We spent the afternoon at the beach until it was time to head off to Avignon.
I finally had my dream come true on the train to Avignon, we got to ride a TGV (train a grand vitesse: train of high speed) which really was fast, on our "slow train" the time from avignon to marseille was about 1.5 hours, the TGV did it in 30 minutes. It was sooo smooth and comfortable. Our hostel in Avignon was nice and the first evening we were so tired from Marseille we grabbed some food and went off to bed. The next day we got up early and went to the Palais de Papes (palace of the popes) which is where the French popes lived for several hundred years during the church's more troubled times. It was spectacular how they managed to spend all of their papal money, mostly gold things or wars. After palais des papes we checked out the next door church and the walled part of the city, this pretty much covered everything in the city. At this point it was around 4 and our train didn't leave until midnight so we did what all smart people do in this situation, go to a movie, in french, without subtitles. We saw pirates of the Carribean 3 which was good but despite our impeccable french skills, I think we still missed a few things. After the movie it was dinner and then off to the train station where we played cards and chatted to other people from the Tech program before we got on our train back to Metz.

Marseille and Avignon Weekend remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Paris and Metz (week 3)

2007-06-05T14:21:54Z

So this last week and a half has been really busy!! Last week I had a ton of work plus planning for my Paris trip with Emily!!
Thursday morning I got done with class at 10 and ran back to my room threw everything into my bag and dashed off to the train station. I took a train from Met-Nancy which is about 45 minutes south of Metz (and no closer to Paris) and then a larger (yet somehow slower) train from Nancy to Paris which took about 3 hours. Once in Paris I took the metro(subway system) (which I am now the master at navigating) to meet Emily at the hostel. That night we explored our neighborhood and went to bed early so we could see more of Paris the next day. The next morning Emily wakes me up at 6AM to go explore the city!! We got to the Louvre just before it opened and there was only a short line. Since neither Emily nor myself are really big on art, we did the whirl-wind tour of the Louvre, we saw the basics: the mona lisa, madonna on the rocks, the venus-di-milo, etc etc. Interesting that there is much Italian art in a French museum. After that we walked through the gardens by the Louvre, to the place de la concorde and then down the Champs Elysee to the Arc du Triomphe where we climbed the 287 stairs to get to the top where there is a beautiful panoramic of the city. After that we ate at a cute little cafe on the champs elysee and went back to the hostel and went to bed. After waking up from a short nap we went to dinner at a nice little italian restaurant where the food was delicious, they treated us right and even gave us a free after dinner drink!! After that dinner we were stuffed and sleepy so we went off to sleep.
We got up early again and trucked off to Notre Dame!! After finding Notre Dame and taking all of its glory in we went to the hotel de ville and saw the architecture. After seeing the classic architecture of the Hotel de Ville it was off to the Centre Pompidou to see the "modern" architecture. There we were lured into getting drawings done of us by some artists. They were pretty neat looking so we paid them. After that I was hell-bent on finding this amazing ice-cream place we had when I was in Paris last time. After about 20 minutes of wandering the ile-de-la-cite we managed to find it and it was just as amazing as I remembered. After our ice cream I sent us out on a voyage, this was no simple voyage more like a journey like that from the "Odyssey" we walked through the Quartier Latin and we saw 2 Starbucks across the street from each other!!! In Paris!! Continuing this epic journey we walked to the Luxembourg Gardens where we saw the parisiens in their natural habitat (taking naps, smoking, floating little boats in the fountains, letting their dogs poop and not cleaning it up, writing existensialist poetry, etc) but this was no time for us to brush up on our Jean Paul Sartre, we had to continue our space odyssey. We headed to the Hotel des Invalids which is where napoleon is buried and there is an army museum, but our voyage to the Eiffel Tower would not afford such luxuries as to see the body of our beloved leader, we had to continue on, some men being left behind! We finally stumbled upon the champs de mars which is the park that leads up to the Eiffel Tower. After trying to track down somebody to take our picture we walked up to the beast. We waited in line for about an hour and a half to buy our tickets then another 1/2 hour to take the elevator to the second floor (there are three floors and 2 elevators one takes you to the 1st and 2nd floors and the 2nd takes you to the top floor) after taking a quick look on the second floor we jumped in ANOTHER line to wait for the next elevator to the top floor for another 1/2 hour or so. When we finally got to the top, the weather had turned bad and we only took a short look around before heading back down (and waiting in another 45 minutes of lines) to head back to the hotel. That night we just had kebabs and went to bed!!
The next morning we got up and checked out of our hostel. They let us keep our bags there while we walked around that day which was perfect. We jumped on the metro to the Sacre Coeur and the district of Montemartre it was wet and rainy so we just took some pictures, had some lunch, saw the "moulin rouge" (the place the film is based off of) and headed to the train station back to metz.

During the week, I showed Emily around Metz while still staying on top of my work. Until thursday when we took off for Marseille...

Paris and Metz (week 3) remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Metz-Week 1

2007-05-20T12:38:12Z

My first week in Metz has been an eventful one. I arrived on Monday in the early afternoon. It was a very simple voyage and communicating with the taxi driver was simple enough (I pretty much just gave him the sheet of where I was going and he entered it into his GPS) After arriving, I checked in, a simple enough process. I got all my stuff sorted and folded and went to set up my internet, this is where the story got interesting. I had the group that runs the internet in the dorms (who all are majoring in computer science) set up my computer and they checked it downstairs and it worked fine. I went up to my room and alas it didn't work. After trying many different ideas, I returned, humbly assuming I had made some silly mistake. Another check and sure enough it worked fine downstairs, was it my cable? Nope we checked that. Ok this is when 3 of them follow me to my room. They run a series of tests on my computer, then on my outlet and ask eachother who was in my room last semester, aye now there's the rub, apparently this person had violated their internet code of conduct and they had physically disconnected the room from the internet (IE unplugged a cable) so they plug the cable back in, I try connecting the computer again and sure enough it works just fine. By that point I was too tired to deal with anything other than a quick e-mail and I went off to bed.

Day 2: Orientation: we had our orientation in the morning and then afternoon classes started. The first class was circuits and electronics. Taught by a "very french" teacher (think of any french person you have seen in a movie and thats the guy). A very nice guy but he underestimates our intelligence I think so the class will be "hard" but he plans on going really slow. The second class was history of rocketry, pretty much what it sounds like: the history of rockets around the world , the class was originally scheduled for tues/thurs 4-6pm but as most of our weekends start friday our teacher didn't want us to miss out on precious travel time thursday evening so we moved the thursday meetings to wednesday! That night we went to downtown Metz to take a tour and have a group pizza dinner. The city is gorgeous, lots of old buildings built in the same style stone (pictures to come soon, I have been way over my upload limit so I will upload those at GTL on monday) It is interesting to think of cathedrals built in the 14th century, before people knew the world was round! It is truly fascinating. The town itself has very little night life and everything closes at about 7! The restaurants stay open a little later (about 10) very interesting considering that most french people don't eat until 8.

Wednesday was the first full day of classes, they will be a significant amount of work but they all seem understanding of travel and travel plans, they aren't going to test us or have large assignments due on monday or tuesday when we have just arrived back in town! They are serious about attendance since we have so few classes it is important to attend class but this shouldn't be a problem since in Metz there isn't much to do other than study and go to class. The network limit should prevent the internet from taking up too much of my time.

Thursday I only had my 9:15 class so I had lunch and then went to Metz with some friends. We went to the train station and asked about reservations on the trains we were going to take that weekend, since we didn't have much time to plan, we decided on day trips out of Metz to Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Nancy, all less than 2 hours by train from metz. I was able to communicate in French to the people at the train station, it was very successful. After that we walked around Metz and got some dinner. We were taking some pictures of the cathedral when I tripped on the cobbles, as I went down I heard (and felt) a pop in my knee and realized I had sublexed it (a minor dislocation) this happens to me about every 6 months due to an abnormal knee and typically is no big deal. I got up and rested for a few minutes, trying to walk it off. Walked around for awhile more and then took the bus back. I figured everything would be fine the next morning but to my dismay I woke up and it was still swollen and stiff. I decided not to go to strasbourg and let my knee heal and potentially go to the doctor. I went back to bed and woke up at 4pm that day!! I guess I was tired. My knee seemed to have improved drastically so I opted out of the doctor that day (not really thinking about it) After walking around the dorm that night I realized my knee wasn't as good as it looked. Realizing that I had no hope in getting to a doctor until monday I took the weekend off. Doing homework and going to the grocery store to buy some food for my meals. It was a very restful weekend. Hopefully tomorrow I can get to a doctor. The swelling has gone down significantly but it is still not back to even 90% so I am pretty sure I need to go to the doctor after class tomorrow.

Metz-Week 1 remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Brussels to Metz

2007-05-14T20:54:23Z

I am on the train right now to Metz! I got up at the crack of dawn to catch my 7:00 train (I had no idea how long it was going to take me to check out, walk to the train station and find my platform. Finding my platform was a bit difficult because according to my schedule the train was supposed to be labeled to St. Louis but it was actually labeled to Basel since its final destination is Basel. Very confusing, I am assuming I am on the correct train, hehe. I have been really enjoying my time in Europe so far! Brussels was not as impressive as I had hoped. It probably would have been more spectacular if I wasn’t jet lagged and the weather was better. Don’t get me wrong I did really like it but my travel to “major” cities in Europe has been cities like Paris, London, and Amsterdam all which have several million people and are huge, Brussels was much smaller. That being said, because it was smaller I got to see everything in two days and it was very easy to navigate and you could walk anywhere in the city in less than an hour. I really did like what I saw but don’t feel the need to go back anytime soon. It was also tough walking around by myself all day, it gets a little lonely and I don’t plan on repeating that anytime soon. Now it’s off to Metz!!!

Brussels to Metz remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Brussels Day 2

2007-05-14T20:54:40Z

Today was my last full day in Brussels. I decided, since I had seen all that was important to see to visit some places that weren’t in the guide book. The first place I went was the Basilique du Sacre Coeur. I had seen it from the Palais du Justice and it was all by itself on the other side of town. I walked there first thing in the morning, it was much farther than it looked. When I finally found out what it was, I was unlucky enough to discover that it was closed to visitors during service. After this I walked back to the center of town to check a few things out. I walked through the botanical gardens, which were rather plain as the weather still hasn’t warmed up here enough. I walked around town some more and was off in search of some lunch when I saw an arch in the distance, now I don’t know how this thing was not in my guide book. It was magnificent. I am still not exactly sure what it was but it was attached to the museum of royal arts (closed on Sunday) which was a nice structure as well. There was a park around the arch and I laid there for awhile and took a rest since I had been walking around for almost 4 hours straight. After laying there for awhile I headed to a grocery because I was too tired to go out to dinner. I bought a sandwich, some petit ecolier(those biscuit cookies with the chocolate kid on top), some thai sweet chili lays and a big bottle of Evian. I discovered the ease of the metro and took that back to my hotel. I laid there and ate my dinner in my room and now I have to go to bed because I have to get up at 5:30 to catch my train to Metz!

Brussels Day 2 remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Brussels Day 1

2007-05-14T20:52:41Z

Today was my first full day in Brussels. I woke up a little too early, about 7 and promptly ate breakfast at the hotel and left before 7:30. I decided to walk up to where all the sights that I wanted to see were, it was about 1 km. I used the Palais de Justice as my guide as it was on top of the hill in Brussels and had a distinctive gold roof. On my way I walked through the grand place on the way. One of the original squares in the town, it houses the town hall and other administrative buildings, many of which date back to the 1400’s. At this point the grand place was totally empty because it was only 8AM and nothing opens until 10 on the weekends. I then continued on my way to the Palais de Justice. I walked around it… But you couldn’t go in. After this I marched around the area for awhile until I found the Parc du Bruxelles where I walked around for a little, not as pretty as it would be in the sun but still quite nice. Surrounding the park were several old buildings (note: all buildings in Brussels are old as most date before 1700). The coolest looking of the bunch was the Royal Palace, unfortunately the current king and queen do not reside there but it is quite the place, again it isn’t open to the public until later in the year . After this I walked around the marketplace area where I found a neat little waffle shop and got my first real Belgian waffle!! It was delicious. As it was still raining I went and found the Musee des Beaux Arts (Directly translated: Pretty Art Museum… sounds better in French). It had an interesting mix of paintings. As I know very little about art my description probably does not do it justice. The paintings were very interesting. I have seen dutch paintings and many of the paintings were similar to the dutch masters paintings which are dark and creepy looking but many of the paintings were a mix of dark and light styles. As I said my descriptions do not do the paintings justice but I really enjoyed them. After discovering the Museum I went and grabbed some lunch at a traditional Belgian restaurant. I had some good sausages with “stoemp” which is some sort of mashed potatoes with some sort of squash or sweet potatoes mixed in, very good, especially when mixed with a nice Belgian beer. After lunch it was off on another adventure. I walked and found the city cathedral and the Parliament building of the European Union. Both were very impressive!! After this I wandered around by the Grand Place for awhile and stumbled upon the Belgian GLBT festival and walked around that until I felt too uncomfortable to enjoy the music anymore. On the way back I found the Manneken Pis which is kind of what it sounds like. It is a fountain with a statue of a boy peeing (yes the water comes from his wee-wee/dong/whatever you want to call it). There are many legends of why this fountain is what it is but nobody knows for sure. The cool part is on many days of the year, he gets dressed up in an outfits to take on the day. Today he was in a bright orange rain suit. After seeing the manneken I headed back for a good night’s rest. But before I got to sleep I got trapped into the Eurovision song contest on TV. For those who have never heard of it, you are lucky! It is basically a battle of the pop-stars between all the European countries. It was on every channel in every language on the hotel tv. After each country performs there is a ½ hour to vote for the “best” group. The trick is you can’t vote for your own country. At the end of voting they go through each country and announce how the votes in that country came out, the top 6 or 8 score points (12 for 1st, 10 for 2nd and so on) after this happens for nearly an hour, the group with the highest score wins. The best part is how the countries vote. The voting ends up being in blocks. The top votes in the eastern block countries go to their fellow nations, ie Serbia gives its top points to Russia, Bosnia, etc. This was particulary amusing because there were only a handful of western European countries in the final and they all finished in the bottom ½ because nobody voted for them. This was unfortunate because some of the better groups like Finland and England scored almost no points.

Brussels Day 1 remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Arrival in Europe!!

2007-05-14T20:51:21Z

Today I arrived in Europe! It took two flights: Seattle to Copenhagen and Copenhagen to Brussels. Both flights went very smoothly with almost no turbulence. Passport control was easy, it consisted of the customs man asking me why I needed a visa and stamped the passport. Customs was even easier, after grabbing my bags, there were two exits: one for people with an EU passport and one for non-EU passports. As I walked towards the exit I realized that there was no guard or checkpoint, I just walked out. It was very easy! After “customs” I walked downstairs to the train station, pretty easy. I got a “free” ticket (my rail pass covered the train) and only had to wait about 10 minutes until the train came. Taking the train to my station, Gare du Midi, should have been really easy, however I was unaware that the signs at the train stations are ½ French and ½ Dutch (Belgium is bilingual) so I read the Gare du Midi sign as Gare Zuid (Apparently Zuid is Midi in Dutch) and promptly realized my mistake after pulling out of the station and seeing a French sign indicating Gare du Midi. I was able to get off at the next station and along with two German girls who made the exact same mistake as me, managed to get on the next train in the other direction. After getting off the train I found my way to the hotel, only backtracking once. I checked into the hotel problem free. After cleaning up and resting for a bit, I went out in search of dinner. I found a neat little “snack” place about two blocks from my hotel. After that I came back and went to bed!

Arrival in Europe!! remains copyright of the author alexpetkus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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