Vamos a Madrid!

Since my last post, Thanksgiving has come and gone. I went to an American bar with Furman kids to celebrate that glorious holiday, and despite the fact that it just WASN'T the same, we still had a great time. Early Friday morning, though, I got up to catch a flight to Madrid, Spain. I didn't know what to expect out of Madrid, or how it would compare to Barcelona, but since this was my last BIG trip out of Brussels, I was really excited to make the most of it.

I arrived in Madrid around midday on Friday and checked into the hotel before making my way to meet up with Emily, Ginny, Seufer and some other Furman kids. Furman has a different study abroad trip in Madrid, so we spent a lot of time on Friday and Friday night hanging out with those people, which was so refreshing and made me even more excited about getting back to Furman. Friday I walked around through the Sol area of Madrid with everyone, and then went to the Prado art museum. I saw a ton of paintings that I remembered from Art History at Furman, which was way cool.

Friday night, after a stop back at the hotel to grab a jacket (the weather in Madrid was much warmer than Brussels during the day but chilly at night), we all went to dinner (a group of 15) at a Tapas restaurant in an area of Madrid called the Chueca. Apparently this area is also home to alternative lifestyle bars as I will soon tell you. The dinner was delicious, and even though Tapas aren't exactly conducive to sharing with a group our size, we had a great time at dinner. After dinner, we went out on the town. Madrid is much more of a partying and late-night culture than Brussels where it practically shuts down at midnight. Since we had such an entourage of people, it was fun at each different bar we went to. We accidentally ventured into a Gay Bar, but had ordered drinks by the time we realized that was what it was, so I can definitely say I was exposed to alternative cultures this weekend. One of my roommates even had a lesbian hit on her! So needless to say, we didn't spend more time there than it took to finish those drinks. We made it back to the hotel around 3:30 am, which is the norm for spaniards.

Saturday we slept somewhat late, stopped at Starbucks and then went to check out the Real Madrid Football (Soccer) Club stadium. They have a tour that you can go on, even on days when there are no games. I wish we had been able to actually attend a soccer game, but alas the schedule was against us. Still, as you can see in the picture above, the Stadium was more reminiscent of an American Football stadium than an American Soccer stadium, considering size etc. It was really cool to be there. Plus we got to see lots of pictures of David Beckham, a very ATTRACTIVE soccer player =). We walked around Madrid some more on Saturday, had lunch at another Tapas place. Saturday night we had dinner in the Chueca area again, but came home much earlier than Friday night.

Madrid was so much fun, and kind of made me wistful both for Furman, where you see people you know everywhere you go (unlike Brussels) and also made me wish I had done a study abroad in a city like that. Brussels is OK, but Madrid was just such a cool atmosphere, much more suitable to college kids. I feel like Brussels is geared toward young professionals, about 4-5 years older than me.

Back here in Brussels I am starting to be doing the LAST things. The LAST paper will be turned in on Thursday, my LAST day of work is next Wednesday. My LAST day of class is next Thursday. My LAST final is a week from Tuesday. I think I may go to Paris for the day this weekend, but Madrid was the LAST time I will go to the airport before I fly home.

So, I'll be seeing you on American soil in about 2 weeks!!
-DH

Visit from the Parents...

I am back in Brussels after a whirlwind week of activity. My parents flew into Brussels last Thursday morning, early, and I met them at their hotel. True to what I predicted, my mother immediately went to bed (the WORST thing you can do to overcome jetlag) and my dad and I went out for some breakfast. I then took some time to trade out items I had asked them to bring me with items they are taking home for me, before we went to the Grand Place for some lunch after my mom finally woke up. They were both pretty wiped out that first day, and Brussels isn't my favorite city in Europe so we decided to keep it low key, the only sight we saw other than the Grand Place was the Atomium, which is the LAMEST thing ever. We equated it to the Gaffney peach of Europe. We went to bed early because we knew there were a lot of things planned for the weekend to come.

Friday morning the activities began, we took a train from Brussels to Amsterdam, and checked into our hotel there. We stopped and had some lunch at a traditional Dutch restaurant, which was delicious! My parents got their first taste of the European style of customer service, meaning none. We then went to the Anne Frank House, and walked around the Dam and some of the main streets of Amsterdam. We went back to the hotel to meet up with Michael Seufer and Emily who were accompanying us to the highlight, and reason for our trip to amsterdam... the VAN MORRISON CONCERT!!! We had to take the tram and metro to the Heineken music hall. The show was good, but it was my favorite when he played the songs I knew like Brown Eyed Girl. Then my parents took Seufer, Emily and me out to dinner near our hotel and it was delicious. We had a short but good trip to Amsterdam.

Saturday morning my parents and I parted ways with Emily and Seufer and took a train from Amsterdam to Paris. The train ride was four hours long and it was sort of a drag, but then we arrived in a stricken (no pun intended) Paris, all the metro and RER trains were on strike for the duration of our time in Paris. Luckily for me, trains to Belgium were minimally effected. Saturday afternoon my dad's fraternity brother Mark came and met us at the station, and then the four of us trekked through Paris for a few hours, we went to Des Invalides (the war museum) and it was closing early due to the strike so we only had a few minutes there. Then we went to Musee D'Orsay, which was completely closed by the time we got there, again due to the strike. We met up with the rest of Mark's family at a fancy restaurant in Paris for a delicious dinner before we all went back to their house in Crespieres (a town outside Paris) to go to bed.

Sunday morning we slept late, and then went to a cute antique store on the way to le Chateau de Roche Guyon, a chateau, part of which dates from the 100 years war, where Rommel (one of Hitler's henchmen) was stationed during the German occupation of France. It was the coldest day ever. We then had a long drive to the French farmhouse in Normandy of Julie Foyer, an American friend of my parents who now lives in Normandy with her French husband and 5 kids. We (my parents, Mark, and I) stayed in their guesthouse which is a former Cider press. It was the coolest building, and it was very fancy. We had dinner with their family and got some suggestions for Normandy D-Day sights to see the following day.

Monday we saw the Museum at Arromanches in Normandy, which was cool because it told about the articifial harbour created by the Allies at Arromanches after the landings at D-Day. The Allies had to create the peices of the harbour and tow them over from England. Some of the giant concrete and steel blocks they used as waterbreaks are still out in the water creating a circle around the Beach at Arromanches. That museum was so interesting because it was completely innovative, and even showed a memo from Winston Churchill where he said "If we can't capture a port city, we will build our own. Don't argue it." We also saw the smaller museum at Pegasus bridge, before making our way to the German gun structures at Longes, and then the American Cemeterary and Omaha Beach. Some of this was a little boring to me because I had gone to Normandy with the Furman group a few weeks before, but my parents were really interested in all of it. We stopped in Treaville for dinner at a Creperie before making the drive back to Mark's house in Crespieres.

This morning, though my parents were not leaving for the States until tomorrow, I pretty much got up and went straight to the train station at Paris Nord. The strike made it so that only 1/3 of the trains going to Brussels were actually going. I managed to get on a train at 12:55 and made it safely back to Brussels. It was a fun week with my parents, and now the countdown is ON until I get home! 23 days from today!!!

In the meantime, we are still going to Madrid this weekend, and then Maroon 5 in Antwerp on December 9!!! YAY!!

Hope all is well in the states, I'll be back soon!
-DH

My first European Snow!

I apologize for my tardiness in blogging this week, but it has been a hectic past few days. Taylor Hall, Emily, Ginny, Seufer and I went to Vienna, Austria this past weekend. It was the coldest weekend I have had yet! It was rainy and snowy the whole time we were there, with a high winds advisory! Despite the less than stellar weather, we had a great low-key weekend. Though we probably didn't cram in as many sites as we have in past travel weekends because of the poor weather, I feel like we really enjoyed our time in Vienna.

Vienna reminds me most of America of any of the European cities I have been to so far. It is spread out between the buildings, the streets aren't crammed into each other, and the buildings are beautiful modern architecture. We arrived in Vienna on Friday night, and after checking into our hotel, we went out exploring all bundled up in ski gear. We saw an advertisement for a TGI Fridays, and we just HAD to go there for dinner. After walking through the beautiful city center, we made our way to Fridays and had an interesting mixture of delicious American food and delicious Austrian beer (Patton--Eidelweiss tastes JUST like Hefeweisen and it was SO good!). We then trekked back to the streetcar and back to our hotel to turn in for the night.

Saturday morning we got up and it was rainy. We went back to the city center and stopped for a little taste of home at Starbucks, and griped about how much we wish Starbucks would franchise itself in Brussels. After warming up with some hot chocolate, we went to the St. Stephen's Cathedral in Stephanplatz at the center of the city. It has a unique tiled pattern roof that is really beautiful. We then met up with Michael Seufer and his cousin and went to the Hofburg Palace, the home of the royal family of the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty, and saw the state rooms and the Sisi Museum that tells the romantic story of the reluctant Princess Elisabeth of Austria. Then we got lunch at Demel, a shop famous for pastries but which also had some delicious lunch foods. Ginny took a picture of a cake made in the shape of a Lipizanner stallion. Then we tried to take a tour of the Opera House, but there were none available until after we were leaving on Sunday. We went to a fancy restaurant for dinner on Saturday night and had some delicious food and wine.

Sunday morning we awoke to huge chunks of snow falling from the sky. It was beautiful. We went back to starbucks for some hot chocolate, and then went to the Lipizanner Stallion museum. We wanted to get tickets to see an actual demonstration of the stallions that morning but the ticket office was closed by the time we looked into it. Those horses can really do some amazing tricks, and they go through such a rigorous training and selection process.

We had a snowball fight in a park beside a cute restaurant where we had lunch before we had to make it back to the hotel and then head for the airport. The snow was so much fun! Our flight was delayed about 4 hours because of the weather, which we did not find out until we arrived at the airport. Then, on board the flight, I had not one screaming baby, but two screaming babies, surrounding me. One was in the row in front of me, the other was in the row behind me. There was also the sibling of the behind screaming baby who was poking me with something between the two seats. I was a little stressed to say the least. We finally made it back to Brussels at about midnight, and finally went to bed after 2 am on Sunday night. Needless to say, there was no time or energy for blogging at that point.

My parents arrive here in Brussels in less than 48 hours and I am so excited! I probably won't blog again until after their visit, so look for a synopsis of that sometime next week!

Amsterdam and Antwerp

First of all, I apologize to you, my dear readers, for my lack of posts in the past two weeks. I haven't been forgetting to post, I just really had nothing exciting to post about. I didn't have work, because it was a Strasbourg week and then Gawain was out of town the next week, my friends were all traveling last weekend in Italy and I chose to stay in Brussels to give my injured foot some rest and finish all my term papers. Though the time spent in Brussels was pretty boring, I am glad now to be done (except for editing) with both of my term papers. Now I have no schoolwork left to do except for study for final exams, which aren't even until December.

Speaking of December, it is NOVEMBER already! I can hardly believe it. I will be back in good ol' Greenville, SC, 6 weeks from today! And, in addition to only having six weeks left, they will be so busy with traveling that I have a feeling they'll fly by.

I just got back from the third and final Furman group trip to Antwerp and Amsterdam. We left Brussels early last Thursday morning, and stopped in Antwerp for a walking tour and some lunch before making our way to Amsterdam thursday evening. Antwerp was a cool, old port city, but definitely not very stand-out in my mind. Amsterdam was really interesting though. When we got to Amsterdam late Thursday afternoon, we were ready to get off the bus. After checking into our hotel, we went out exploring. It is sooo weird to see people just smoking marijuana in the streets, it's been so ingrained in my American mind to be so strictly NOT allowed. They have "coffee shops" everywhere that serve coffee, snacks, and marijuana. It is crazy to see. We went to an Argentine Steak house for dinner on Thursday night, after having walked around for a long while. It turned out to be a good find, despite our doubts. We then met up with Patton who was in Amsterdam with some of her Florence friends and went to a cute bar, where we drank dutch beer (heineken), and I realized how spoiled I am by good-tasting belgian beer.

Friday morning we had a planned walking tour of Amsterdam for 3 hours, and then went to the Rijksmuseum which has a large exhibit of Rembrandt paintings. After our planned tour and a stop for lunch, I was feeling the pain of having been on my foot all morning so I decided to take the tram back to the hotel for a nap while my roomates went to the Van Gogh Museum, I am going to go back to that one with my parents when they come in two weeks. Friday night we went to a great mexican restaurant with Patton, and then after a little bit of walking around Ginny, Patton and I went to see Atonement, because we were all tired of walking around.

Saturday morning, we got up and went to see the Anne Frank Huis (house). It was really cool to see after having read the Anne Frank diary as a kid, it's surprisingly big for a place that people were "in hiding," but it still was a tiny place for 8 people to live for over 2 years. It's also sad to think that Anne Frank died in a concentration camp a month before the liberation. Saturday afternoon we spent more time walking around the city, and Saturday night a group of us took a canal boat tour through the city which was really cool.

Anyway, I'm back in Brussels and getting ready for the week. This weekend I'm going to Vienna with some friends, next week my parents get here, the next weekend I'm going to Madrid! Then it will be December and hopefully we'll get to go to Maroon 5 in Antwerp on Dec 9. The countdown to the end is on!

aaaand I'm a little homesick...

Well, not really homesick, but spending the weekend with a family that wasn't my own did make me miss my own family. I just got home to Brussels from my weekend spent with good family friends who live in a village right outside Paris, France, called Crespieres. The dad of the family is MY dad's best friend from college, and they have two daughters, one twelve and one fourteen. I hadn't seen their kids in several years before this weekend, and it was fun to get to know them better now. The village they live in is so cute, right out of Beauty and the Beast. They know everyone there, and everyone goes to the same bakery, same butcher, same one restaurant, and everyone can walk everywhere in the village. The two girls both go to school (seperate schools) in nearby towns, that is how small the town is. Sonia, the 14 year old, goes to the same school that Johnny Depp's kids attend, and we drove down the street he lives on, though no one knows which house is his exactly. He doesn't live in their village, but the one right beside it.

It was sooo nice to sleep in a real bed, a real big bed. My bed at SJR is a loft, and its a camp mattress. It's also frigid in SJR, because the heat has not yet been turned on. Mark & Nereida let me sleep until I woke up on my own on Friday morning, because Mark and I didn't arrive at their house from Brussels until about 11:30 Thursday night. I woke up at 11 am! Then, Nereida showed me around their cute village, and then we drove about 30 minutes to go to the Painter Monet's house and gardens. The picture I put up is the famous pond where he painted his lily pads. Then we went and picked up the girls from their schools, and went back to Mark and Nereida's house and watched Happy Feet, which was fine with me because I mainly just wanted a relaxed weekend.

On Saturday, we went to see the Maison du Van Gogh, which is the untouched room that Vincent Van Gogh was living in when he died. It is in another really cute village on the outskirts of Paris. We also went to the Chateau de Monte Cristo, which was the house owned by the author of the Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas. It was from the mid 1800s but has been preserved really well. Saturday night we went to the town's one restaurant, a Creperie, and had some delicious french stuff crepes. Yum.

This morning we went to another little town called St. Germain to go to their outdoor Sunday morning market. They sell almost everything, clothes, jewelry, food, chocolate, a lot of stuff. After walking around there and having lunch with the family one last time, I took the RER train from St. Germain to Paris Nord train station, and then took the high-speed train from Paris back to Brussels. It was a fun low-key weekend, but I am glad to be back at SJR somewhat early. This week might be boring for me at work, it's another Strasbourg week, but I need to get going on my second term paper so that I won't have to worry about it when my parents are here.

In other news, my mom so nicely called my foot-doctor from HOME to tell him about the foot issues I have been having, and I am getting a prescription and a probably really unattractive "3D walking boot" to wear. Though I will probably look less than cool with it on, I am so grateful because the regimen of prescription Ibuprofen and "trying to stay off my foot" has not worked so well since the Belgian doctor suggested that plan of action, after walking around this weekend my foot hurts just as much as always.

Well I hope all is well with you, my faithful readers =).
-DH

Another "first" in my Belgian experience...

For the past few weeks, I have been having some problems with my left foot. We walk pretty much everywhere we go here usually on uneven ground like cobblestones, and I thought that my foot would just be tired after a long day of walking. Then it progressed to hurting even after a little bit of walking. Then it progressed to pain even when I hadn't walked at all and just woke up. Shoe inserts and avoiding walking as much as possible (which is IMpossible) didn't seem to be doing much, so after some discussion with my parents, I contacted the US embassy for a recommendation for an English speaking doctor here in Brussels.

I went to Dr. Ortiz, from Spain but who lives in Brussels, yesterday morning. Her office could not be MORE different from an American doctor's office, and the experience in general was like night and day as well. First of all, the building her office was in is an old townhouse near the European Commission. It took me a little while to find the building, and when I walked in, she said "Your late." Scary. There was no waiting room, no receptionist, no staff of any kind other than the doctor herself. Another different thing, they don't use the paper sheet on the examining tables, it's a real cloth sheet.

As soon as I walked in, I walked into her office (the former dining room of the townhome) and sat down. She took my medical history in her broken english after asking me if I had Belgian insurance. The answer, of course, is no, at which she did not look pleased. She examined my foot and prescribed some anti-inflammatories, but stressed that I should probably do my best to suck it up (my phrase, not hers) until I get back to the United States, because without Belgian insurance she said that any X-rays or tests would be really expensive.

After examining my foot and pressing hard on all the places that hurt to see when I said Ouch, she said that I either have soft-tissue inflammation in the ball of my foot due to walking often on uneven surfaces, or I have a small stress fracture in the ball of my foot. She said she would prescribe the anti-inflammatories, and if it's not a stress fracture, that prescription should help. But she said I should continue with the shoe inserts and try my best to stay off of my feet as much as possible, because she said as much as she hopes for my sake that the anti-inflammatories help, she thinks its probable a stress fracture or the beginnings of one, and there's not much I can do about that while I have to walk so often. Woohoo!

It was refreshing in a way to only deal with one person, the doctor, in making the appointment and arriving etc. But, it was SOOO different I felt kind of like I was in a daze the whole time I was there, trying to take in how different it was.

I am going to Paris again tonight after class to stay this weekend with good family friends who live there, and I am really excited to be around a family and in a house instead of a dingy apartment for a while. I love my roommates to death but our apartment is sort of blahh after a while. It will also be nice to be around a family. Hope all is well in the states!!
-DH

Touristing with Patton!

It's sunday afternoon here, and I am enjoying a lazy afternoon thoroughly. My good friend Patton flew up to visit Leigh and me here in Brussels for the weekend, and she had to leave at the crack of dawn this morning. Even though we only had 1 full day with her here, we packed in a lot of sightseeing. When Patton arrived on Friday afternoon, Leigh and I met her at the train station and then brought her back to drop off her stuff. Our roommate Emily's parents are visiting also, so the three of us went to dinner with Emily and her parents which was really fun! We also went to dinner on Thursday night with Ginny's parents, which was fun too. It's cool to meet everyone's parents on the Brussels trip because we have all spent so much time together it's neat to see where people get their characteristics from.

Saturday morning we woke up and first Patton and I went to the Cinquantenaire park here in Brussels, with the Brussels Arc of Triumph. The Cinquantenaire park was built on the 50th anniversary of the Independence of Belgium in the 1800s and it is beautiful. The weather was really nice also, and the leaves are just beginning to fall so it was a really pretty way to begin our sightseeing. After the walk through the park, Patton and I met up with Leigh at the Grand Place. We walked all through there and stopped at cute chocolate shops and lace shops, where Patton was able to knock out several Christmas gifts. We also walked down to the Mannekin piis, the famous statue of the little boy peeing, (see picture) but sadly he wasn't wearing a costume. On times near holidays the people of Brussels dress up the statue, and then instead of peeing water, he pees beer.

After we stopped at the statue, we continued walking around the area near the Grand Place and saw the famous St. Hubert galleries, the Toone Marionette Theater and the Beours (the stock exchange). Then we went to a Lace and Costume museum, which Patton really wanted to see, and it ended up actually being a retrospective of the fashion designs of one design Gerald Watelier, which was really fun for Patton who wants to do something in Fashion design post-college. Then we did go do a little shopping, we showed Patton Rue de la Neuve which is the biggest shopping street in Brussels, and she was happy because in Florence she says there is no real shopping at all, and it was nice for her to see some familiar stores. We also had Patton try a Belgian waffle with chocolate on it, and naturally she loved it because those waffles are so good.



After going back and freshening up, we headed out for some dinner. Since Patton is doing her study abroad in Italy, and all we ever eat here in Brussels is Italian food, we went to a Thai restaurant and it was really good, so I definitely think Leigh and I will bring other people back to it. It was so nice to not eat "Spaghetti Bolognese" which is usually the fall-back order when I can't read the menus. After dinner, Patton and Leigh and I went to a party at a bar near the European Commission where my boss, Gawain, was with several work friends and he had asked me to go for a little bit in honor of the Rugby world cup between France and England. I was glad that Patton and Leigh got to see what Gawain looks like and is like. After that, we met up with Michael Seufer and went to a bar called Delerium where they have 2000 kinds of beers. We met some cool and interesting Australian guys and sampled some of the beers specific to that bar before calling it a night.

Patton had to get up early this morning for her flight so I walked with her to the metro and then said goodbye! I think she had a really fun time in Brussels though, and I was glad that I had saved a lot of the touristy stuff for when she is here so then it was new to me too. Tonight Leigh and I are going to dinner with Emily and her parents, Ginny and her parents and Seufer and his mom... which will be funny and fun I think!