Je parle français encore!!

This is going to be a rather long post. I think I'll split up Brussels and Ostend into two different posts. Throughout the entire trip I had to keep reminding myself that I was in Belgium. Because I was speaking French, my mind automatically assumed that I was in France. The Belgian landscape is quite plain - lots of green pastures, cows, and no hills.

Once arriving in Brussels I was please to be able to find my hotel without any hassle at all and to later find out that it was extremely centrally located. I didn't have a city map the entire time I was there, so getting there was sort of a miracle and then getting around the rest of the two days was just chance. General observations about Brussels would be that people are very polite and friendlier than I would expect from Europeans or French-speaking persons. It's very dirty and much of Belgium seems to be under construction but as pointed out in one city guide, Brusseliers love the fact that a modern building can be put up right next to an old one. The basic feeling I had when in Brussels was one of comfort, quiet, but randomness. Probably the most exciting thing the whole weekend was the fact that I actually used my French most of the time. I not only checked in at my hotel in French (which gave me such a high, I'm still on it) but I managed to get most people to speak French back to me, when I spoke to them. Saturday was spent mostly walking around following some signs and ending up in some random places and going in odd circles. Brussels, like Aachen, seems to have no order, but it does indeed have some. There are certain districts, radiating circles, and the main buildings are built in a straight eye-shot as they should be.

This is St. Michael Cathedral, the first thing I ran into on my walk. I went there for Pentecost mass, choosing to go the earliest mass, which was in French and Dutch. They had programs of the mass parts and readings. One reading was read in Dutch, written in French in the program, and the gospel was read in French, written in Dutch. (They only do one reading in Europe, not two) They also had Gregorian chant and used Latin for most of the mass parts, which was thankfully in the program. Their spoken Latin is clearly not classically spoken, but much more forgiving than the ecclesiastical Latin of the US. I don't know what I would have done if I didn't know French, German, English, and Latin. I seriously think I used all of them throughout the mass. It was quite an incredible feeling and made me feel completely justified in all the language decisions I've made the past few years.

Brussels is a huge fan of flea markets. I ran into quite a number of them. You wouldn't believe all of the random things that some people were selling. Seriously, you name it, I could probably tell you that there was someone there selling it. I went with some friends to Brussels, but as you can tell didn't spend the whole time with them. We managed to come on a great weekend though, because the city was having a three day jazz marathon. We spent all of Saturday evening drinking and listening to great music; the night was kind of rounded off with rock music.
In terms of trying Belgian beer, I would definitely recommend trying Chimay, Duvel and then another one that starts with a K, that's kind of fruity. I'm too lazy to look up the name. I managed to see most of the important monuments in Brussels, though I didn't go to the comic book museum. They love comics in Belgium, e.g. Tintin, and this is actually the year of the comic there. There really isn't much to do in Brussels, but it's a cozy city, especially if you know someone there and just want to hang out. It helped that we had incredible weather. Saturday night a friend convinced me to check out the gay scene there, which is could be considered important as May was gay pride month there and my minor is focused on LGBTQ studies. That was the first time that I had ever been in a primarily gay area/night. It was amazing. Not only was it fascinating to see the types of guys there, but I have never had more fun dancing - no disgusting, creepy guys trying to dance on you. Everyone leaves you alone and just kind of watches you or the guy you came with and the music they play is great.

Brussels just seemed to have a lot of old mixed with new, vintage with modern. Watching people was great fun. I have never seen so many pregnant women in one place at once. It was very odd. I of course tried the obligatory waffles ( all three kinds in fact), french fries, beer, and chocolate. I'm pretty sure I consumed nothing healthy all weekend and am now going to try to combat that. Belgium seriously is the land of sugar. With all the waffles, candy shops, chocolate shops, etc. it easily trumps Germany, though Germany probably has better bakes goods. The following photos are just the effect of stained glass in a church, me walking in a park, me drinking, me with the friends at the jazz festival.