sethbc’s (infrequent) blog…

Well, I met my mom and her colleague in Bruxelles yesterday at 15:30 GMT+1, and we proceeded to drink our way through Belgium. I’m kidding Okay, we didn’t really drink that many beers, but between the four of us, we drank a substantial amount of completely different Belgian beers, and all of them were excellent. I had an amazing trappiste blonde ale, and an incredible kreik among others. I digress.

Basically, as soon as we got in we checked in at our hotel and decided to make our way to the center of town known as Grande Place. They don’t officially speak English here, but their three official languages are German, French and Dutch (Flemish?). Breaking out some of my rusty restaurant French before Paris was nice, but I’m sure I sounded just like the American I am. We had some adventures on the Metro, but everything worked out fine, and we got near enough to Grande Place to walk it easily.

To put it mildly, this pedestrian square is by far the most beautiful man-made place I’ve ever been. I’ll put some pictures up, but they really aren’t going to do the place justice. It really was just incredible. After taking roughly 80 pictures of Grande Place, we decided to head up Rue de Bouchers and grab some kitschy Belgian food and drink at a restaurant. Little did we know there were literally eleventy billion places to eat there, all of them as touristy as the next. Honestly, it felt a lot like Saint Michel in Paris. It may be kitschy, but I got Croquette de Fromage and Moules Frites, both Belgian specialties. The food wasn’t really wasn’t anything special, but it was kind of neat to eat their native cuisine surrounded by non-belgians . After our roughly three hour dinner (if you haven’t discovered it for yourself, dinner in Europe is an affair much like Quidditch, it can go on for months if it isn’t put to a proper end), we walked back to Grande Place and took another 80 night time pictures. We finished the evening off with a night cap or three at a bar on the square, and took the Metro back up to our hotel.

Today was another great day, with rain and bright sunshine intermittent. We took a bus tour, which was actually somewhat dissapointing. First, we realized that all the good stuff (except for the giant atomic molecule) is pretty much within walking distance. Second, the bus gave you absolutely no orientation. In other words, you never knew where the hell you were. Oh well, it wasn’t too expensive, and it did give us something to do for the first couple hours.

Now I must confess, I know nothing about Brussels other than the fact that Shearman & Sterling has an office there. Basically, I like Belgian beers, but that was pretty much all I knew. My mom informed me that they also have a thriving chocolate and lace industry. What I did not know, is that Brussels is pretty much the operating center of the European Union, and the biggest exporter per capita in the world. Learning this, while fascinating, only illuminated the fact that I am completely ignorant of about everywhere else in the world. Again, oh well. I’ll try and somewhat remedy that this trip around Europe.

Anyway, the rest of the day, we traveled around Brussels, ate Belgian food, and drank Belgian beer. I ate like a horse today, so half of the hundred pounds I lost is probably back (not really). Seriously though, I’m lugging a 40-pound pack around Europe, and I want to go for a run because I’ve been stuffing my face. I’m sure it’ll be better. A lot of the eating and drinking had to do with the fact that I was with my mom, and wanted a nice way to spend some time. The other half had to do with the fact that I love Belgian beers.

Well, I’m going to finish up now, because we’re arriving in London right now. I of course forgot to bring my camera cable, so pictures will have to wait. I’m really going to have to make sure I upload them as soon as I get back to Budapest though. I can’t really let the pile up the way I have in the past. I’ve got like 1954 pictures in my iPhoto library, another 130 on the camera so far, and uploading all of that at once was, and will be, a real pain. I have my photos on two services right now, but I’m liking smugmug much better than Flickr right now. My only gripe with smugmug is that I can’t hide individual pictures easier. There are some pictures I’d rather not be publishing (like a picture of a blurry flower, okay so the picture was blurry, not the flouwer), that I still want to save for whatever reason, but don’t want everyone looking at. Smugmug should realize that they operate as much as a photo archiving service as a way of presenting your pictures to others.

Alright, I’ve rambled long enough. I’ll writing something down on my way from London to Paris.

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