The week has been very slow, yet very tiring. Nothing going
on in school that is interesting yet but I have been getting to know my
classmates well. I think that I have made a good impression and I don’t dislike
anyone so that’s always a good thing for long trips like these where you are
with the same group of people for long periods of time. Hopefully, these
relations will get better as we continue through the coming months.
Apart
from that, I have been going to the gym with Jackson in the afternoon and it
has been nice to get back to some sort of activity, where I can focus on
bettering myself both mentally and physically. I am hoping for an Arnold body
by the end of this trip!
Something
interesting happened with the “planned-trip” to Interlachen and that
interesting thing is that we decided to not go. After Matt, our TA, had done
the pricing and given us the total, it seemed like too much money to spend on
one trip to go kayaking and hiking. Now, that is not to say that it wouldn’t have
been awesome to visit Interlachen, but I would rather go to a cheaper city that
has more history. That new city happened to be Brussels and so with a group of
the girls we decided to head over there for our first week out of the country.
In the
end of the planning we ended up finding a hotel that was close to the center
for 30 euro a person a night and 79 euro for the roundtrip on the train from
Cologne. Once adding the cost of food and souvenirs, we assumed we would end up
spending about 200 euro total. This estimate was actually pretty close to the
money we would spend while over there which ended up being around 180 euro. However,
while over there, we figured out that we could cut the cost of travel by about
half if we bought an EURAIL pass which would be 15 days of travel in 2 months
for 400 euro, which at first sight seems like a lot but after doing some quick
calculations, we would spend that much in the first 6 train rides. So, that is
an option we are looking at as of now – still need to talk to Rike.
Brussels was beautiful and is
probably one of my favorite cities so far. The people were wonderful, the beer
was amazing – more on this in a little, the food was great, and the
architecture was out of this world. It was like seeing a very, very, very small
Paris in terms of the city being setup very nicely and pedestrian friendly. On
the note of it being architecturally beautiful is the amazing gilded buildings
in the center. The buildings were beautiful in the morning but at night, it was
something completely different. The way that the light would shine on the
building was amazing and it made me want to sketch it right there.
On the
term of the beer, we had an interesting time with that. Nothing bad happened and
it was the opposite. The beer was amazing! None of the beer that I tried was
bad except for the gluten-free ones that I tried – no clue how Peyton does it. On
the Saturday that we showed up, we ended the day with a total of 23 new beers
tried which was awesome to add to the beer list in my notebook. Now, this is
not saying that I myself drank 23 beers getting to a total of more than 4L. What
we did was buy flights of beer and then split those between 4 or 5 of us each
trying the beers meaning that it wasn’t that expensive.
As a
whole, this week was probably the most fun I have had and I can’t even begin to
imagine all the fun adventures I will have with this group of friends and even
some of the other friends I have made in class.
Hoegarden was awful too
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