Once Upon a Time...

There lived a girl named Emily who lived in a castle in a far off kingdom called “Brussels”…

Okay, maybe that seems a bit much, but honestly that is how I feel about my house and my study abroad experience thus far. On Friday, after the entire taxi ordeal we arrived at our beautiful home in the commune “Schaerbeek” in Brussels and met our landlords Stephanie, and her two beautiful children Edmund and Olympia.

The house is a beautiful old four story home that has been restored. The family lives on the first two and a half floors, and we leave on the top two. Given how difficult it is to find nice short-term housing in Brussels, I feel so incredibly spoiled. Each of us has our own bedroom, and we share a fairly large kitchen and living room area. The kitchen was fully equipped with many pots and pans, and they even included an iron (so don’t worry Deb!) and a hair dryer. In order to be democratic, we drew room assignments out of a camera case. We moved all of our stuff in, gushed about how nice it was, took about a thousand pictures, and then set out to find dinner.

The House from the outside

We live here! Roomies in front of the house.

The Kitchen

The girls chilling in the Living Room.

Kitchen from another angle

My room before I unpacked

My Room :)

Determined not to spend any more money on eating out, we walked to the nearest food store, which just happened to be the convenience store of a petrol station. We grabbed food, and headed home to make dinner.

We had 7:30 as the time to meet up with our landlords, and I expected that they would use the meeting as an opportunity to tell us the ground rules. When they came upstairs, however, I realized that they would be a lot more laid back then I had expected. They brought up a bottle of champagne, and a few glasses. They went over the laminated list of Emergency contacts, the laminated map of the neighborhood with labeled point of interest for us, and pointed out the fire extinguisher and fire blanket (Their organization rivals even Deb).

Some of you might think that living above a family is awkward, and to a certain extent it is. We do have to worry about our volume late at night, and such. Overall, however, I think we really get an awesome fusion between having host family and having a landlord. We have the independence of living on our own and enjoy the luxury of having our own space, but we also have the resource of close proximity to a local. Our landlords offered up their experience and encouraged us to contact them when we wanted to travel somewhere so that they could give us travel tips.

Saturday morning we went on a historical tour of Belgium. We got incredibly lost on the way there, and ended up meeting up with the group late. Still, it was a wonderful tour and a good way to see some of the sights. Unfortunately my camera batteries died in the middle of the tour, but I intend on going back to see some of the sights.

Memorial to the Great War.

Palais De Justice (Palace of Justice)

Today was my first day of class, and my professor spent the entire time going over the syllabus in a meticulous and painstaking way. Hopefully the class will get more interesting. I also called my intern coordinator today and set up an interview with her for tomorrow at 11 am. I am pretty nervous about that, but I am also optimistic. She said that they were quite busy, so hopefully they’ll have stuff for me to do.

A couple of observations about living here in Brussels.

1. The trams lines are just about the coolest things I have ever seen in my entire life. I live very close to a tram line, and while at first I was disappointed that it wasn’t part of the metro line, it’s actually pretty sweet. They travel above ground, for the most part, so it’s a nice way to see the city. Plus, they just look so pleasant cruising around the city. Yay for trams.
2. Going grocery shopping can be tough. Most things are fairly obvious, and look similar to the product, but we have had some mix-ups with the languages. So far, the roommates and I have mistaken sour cream for cottage cheese, and buttermilk for milk. Some things are really difficult to find. So far I have not been able to find alfredo sauce, pretzels, or tortillas. Additionally, I have had a hard time finding frozen chicken breasts. I contemplated buying fresh ones, but I would have to talk to the butcher, and the language barrier combined with the high cost of meat drove me to pick up a couple cans of beans to get my protein. Additionally, they don’t refrigerate their milk (Weird!) so that was tough to find, and was responsible for the milk/buttermilk confusion.

3. Okay, maybe Americans are just overly concerned with appearance, but I do have a few grievances about the appearance of the city (Maybe my friends who have also traveled abroad can explain this to me.) Brussels is a gorgeous city but there are a few things that are bringing it down, namely the Graffiti and the massive amount of dog poop that litters the sidewalk. Most of the city is beautiful, but there are parts where the Graffiti is way out of control. I have no idea what most of it says, but it is everywhere, even on historical monuments! While trying to enjoy the arch the other day, we were startled to see swastikas spray painted on the back of the concrete slabs supported the gate of the part. And today a classmate and I joked about how walking through the VUB campus felt like we were in Warsaw in 1939. I couldn’t help but wonder how the administration at the U of R would react to Graffiti. It just seems so accepted here that there is not even an attempt to clean it up or scrub it off. I have to admit I really don’t get it. Okay, so now onto the dog poop. Apparently the concept of cleaning up your pet’s feces is a uniquely American idea, because there is dog poop everywhere. Its not really that big a deal, but it does get irritating when you can’t completely soak up the view of a city because you are constantly watching you step.

Au Revoir for now!

Em