We went to Brussels, Belgium for the weekend and it was fun. While you see a lot of sausages being sold on the streets over here in Bonn, over there in Brussels you see a lot of waffles. And they are delicious! I went with the mentality to not come back until trying them and I did: a plain one with some glacing feeling and a warm one covered in chocolate. Anyways this is the story of what happened:
Our first adventure was pretty scary. We met at five in the afternoon at Bonn Haupftbahnhof in order to catch a train going to Koln and then catch our train over there to Brussels. We bought a ticket for five people which permitted us to get on any train going to Koln, except an express one. Little we knew how to differentiate between the express and non express train that we ended up boarding an express one. When the lady checking our tickets saw our tickets and told us we were on the wrong train, the first thing that came to my head was "OMG we are going to get fined!". Fortunately, the lady was nice and allowed us to stay on the train. Not only that, but she explained to us how to differentiate an express train from a non express for the next time. We ended up arriving at Brussels at around 9pm. We had a lot of things we wanted to do the next day, so we decided to sleep early in order to start our day early.
The next day, first thing we did was to get an all day pass that would permit us to get on public transportation and enter some museums for free. We went to Magrite's museum and saw some of his paintings. I am not a big fan of art, but I have to admit his paintings were pretty cool. Most of them were hard to interpret, but the ones I could or at least think I could had a deep meaning. I ended up buying post cards of those paintings I understood. After Magrite's museum, we got a taste of the history of Brussels. I hardly new anything of Brussels, so most information was new and interesting to me. After that, we visited an old palace. In between our visits, we tried some hot chocolate with rum and it was nasty! Our day ended with a visit to a famous bar/restaurant called Le Corbeau. I had an omelet with ham and mushrooms and I tried duck for the first time. To accompany my dinner, I tried Chimay beer (a Belgium beer). The beer was so strong I started feeling tipsy with just the first one. After dinner, I tried several flavor beers (strawberry,peach, apple, coconut, and rasberry) and they were delicious.
The second day was more productive than the first one. As soon as we woke up, we purchased another transportation pass and we headed over to see the atomium. After taking silly pictures with it, we went inside a planetarium and watched a show they had. It was pretty scary hearing them say a giant asteroid will be hitting Earth in 2036 killing everyone but at the same time I thought all the information they gave us was pretty cool. I would love to learn how to see the constellations in the sky because they can be very helpful if you are lost. I have made that one of my goals. After the planerarium, we visited the famous Cinquantenaire Arc. I was surprised to read this arc is not as old as what people might believe. It was constructed in the late 19th century, and we thought it would of been from the 1700's. We were pretty hungry by that time so we decided to go to the Grand Place to find a restaurant and look for souvenirs in the stores around. I bought a pocket knife for my dad, some post cards for my sister, and a Belgium flag for my collection. After shopping, we went to Hard Rock Cafe and enjoyed an expensive but huge and delicious dinner. I had the special Hard Rock Cafe hamburger: the patty marinated with brown beer and cooked medium well with goat cheese and funny looking onions. It was one of the best hamburgers I have tried.
Sunday was important for me. I woke up early in order to locate the St. Michael Cathedral and attend mass at 10am. It was not hard to find, so I had some time before mass to walk around and take pictures close to the cathedral. Mass was in two languages, something not new to me (I have heard mass in spanish and german at the same time before) but the languages were new. I have listened to French before but it was my first time listening to Dutch. After mass, I walked around the church and took pictures of the inside. Then, I went to Grand Place to meet with everyone else at 1130am. We took some last pictures and then headed to our next destination: Liege, Belgium. We had to be there by 615pm in order to take our train back to Koln. We decided to leave early to Liege in order to visit the city, but once we were there we decided to stay inside the train station because it was really cold outside to walk around. We had a cup of coffee and ate Subway while we waited for our train for like three hours. After getting on our train, it took an hour to finally be back in Koln. Once there, it took us 45 minutes just to buy a ticket back to Bonn since we did not have enough change to buy the ticket. We had to buy a pastry using a 50 euro bill in order to get the change. Half an hour more and we were finally back home!
This trip was, without doubt, a lot of fun. I did not only enjoy the sight of a new city but I also got to learn more from my friends. Next stop: Vienna, Austria!
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