It's been awhile!

February 17, 2010 10:00 p.m.

Hey everyone! I was getting harrassed for not updating my blog in awhile (I honestly didn't realize it's been this long!!) So I figured I would do it for everyone :). To catch everyone up to speed, life has been insanely busy lately. Besides Thursday-Sunday, I have been doing nothing pretty much but going to class and working on homework, trying to get things done. I have 4 papers due friday (only have half of one left!) And I had a presentation due today in Irish Drama. It was about deconstructionism, do not ask me what that is because honestly I couldn't tell you! As a psychology major, I find it almost impossible to think philisophically, but I highly admire people who can...luckily for me I had 2 friends who are English majors who were my partners phew. Today was really nice because Brantley and Corinne (my partners) and I went to a coffee shop early to work on our presentation. We then went to St. Stephen's Green park and ate our lunches. It was so nice out today. The sun was shining, no wind, the sky was beautiful, and families were out just strolling around the park, old ladies were feeding the birds, and dogs and their owners were playing catch. It was so wonderful just to sit and people watch with some friends. After class, Kristen and I went shopping for dessert and garlic bread for our roomate supper tonight. The Meghan's made lasagna, and Kristen and I made brownies, salad, and garlic bread. It turned out rather delicious if I do say so myself!!! Now, I am back in my room avoiding my last paper :).

But now for the fun stuff...BELGIUM!! Thursday morning at 4:40 a.m. I set out of the apartment with my backpack to meet the bus on O'Connell street, about a 35 minute walk. I only got about an hour of sleep the night before due to me being really excited about going, dreaming of chocolate and waffles I guess! I took a taxi to the airport and met Kristen G. who had slept there the night before. We both went through security, then dozed off for awhile. Our plane got delayed by 20 minutes or so due to it snowing in Belgium. After dozing for the hour and half plane ride, we stepped off the plane into the snow sprinkled, 22 degree ground. It felt like home!! All I could think of was Iowa, even though I am sure it is more snow covered than Belgium. We took a bus from the airport into Brussels and then took the subway to the city center. It was around 9:00 and we couldn't check into our hostel until one. At first I was not impressed with Brussels at all. It was big and busy and honestly, it kind of scared me. I did not realize that French was the main language spoken there, until I tried buying a bus ticket and the man looked at my blankly for a second before answering me in a heavy accent...Though, once we went deeper into the city and started exploring I realized that it was a place full of beautiful architecture and absolutely amazing food. We walked into the main square and both just stopped and stared for awhile. The buildings were paved in gold, and figures of saints and other characters were etched into the stone. It was beautiful with the snow gently falling onto the ground. After taking in the beauty we immediately found a waffle place, in which I had the most amazing waffle of my life. I don't know if I can ever go back to eggo waffles!! The waitress carried out our plates, Kristen's was heaping with strawberries and chocolate, and mine was heaping with bananas and chocolate AND whip cream. We were like two kids in a candy shop at that point. Mmm I didn't realize that I had not really lived until I had a Belgian waffle.
After stuffing ourself full, we picked up our backpacks and headed to the chocolate museum. Right when we walked through the door, we were handed a cookie that had been dipped in homemade chocolate. Right after my first taste of Belgian chocolate I knew I was in trouble for the rest of the trip. The museum was quite interesting. It told of the history of chocolate. Decorations, such as pure chocolate statues lined the walls. We were warned not to try and nibble on them because we would need a dentist afterwards. After reading the history behind it, we were taken into the kitchen where a grandma like lady explained how they made the chocolate and how each different piece was formed. It was so fascinating. We even got more free chocolate! After that we went upstairs in which there were more chocolate "artifacts" but the most interesting things to me was 4 dresses made entirely of chocolate. They did not look like it at all, but that's what they were claiming! Kristen is going to a ball soon, so I told her we should just make her a dress out of chocolate. I thought it was a good idea anyway!
After the museum we walked around and looked at little shops. I kept seeing chocolate shops with carvings of a little boy peeing. I was so confused and slightly disgusted, until Kristen suggested we go see the statue of the little boy peeing. Weird I know, but it's a famous statue in Belgium of a little boy peeing into a fountain. Influential people such as Elvis Presley have come and donated clothes to the little boy, they are now on display in a museum. After taking in that sight...we decided to go find our hostel. We stayed in the 2GO4 hostel. It was really nice. They had free internet usage and a kitchen where we kept the bread, nutella, and apples we bought to live off of for the weekend. Kristen and I stayed in a room with 6 other people. I met 3 of them. One girl and her friend were from hong kong. Her name was Circle. She had been traveling for about a month and had been everywhere! She told me her favorite place was Switzerland, so I might have to go check that out sometime. Kristen and I also met Randy, another one of our roomates. He went out to a pub called Delirium with us that night. It was an interesting place. First of all, it took us a lot longer to find than we anticipated due to Kristen and I both being slightly map iliterate. I more so than she, but thankfully Randy was with us and knew how to read one! We walked in and everyone was speaking French, including the singers that night, but they opened with John Lennin's Imagine! And kept on playing American rock songs all night, they sang in perfect English but in between songs would talk to the audience in French...strange phenominon.
When we got home, we headed to bed in order to get up early the next morning for a full day of sightseeing. Randy came out with us again. We walked to the main square again, went to a vintage store, a really neat church, and the building that used to be the biggest building in Europe. It was really cold so we didn't stay out too long, and that night Kristen and I were to be on a train heading to Bruges.
At the train station, we had the worst time. We were planning on buying a weekend train ticket that would give us half prices on tickets. The old stubborn man we talked too refused to sell it to us, he refused in Flemish/French, I'm not really sure what. Then we went to a machine to buy it and it wouldn't take any of our cards at all and it did not accept cash. We were slightly panicking at that point, not knowing what to do. And while in the state of slight panic a man came up to me asking me if I had any tickets that I wasn't using that he could have because he collected them. Now usuually i'm a trusting person, but I wasn't falling for that scheme. I'm pretty sure the second i opened my purse he would have been all over my wallet...We finally found a ticket man who spoke English and he sold it to us. Grr, that cranky old man probably knew how to speak English he was just being difficult. I really wish I knew how to speak another language. I feel really selfish not knowing anything other than English, which forces people to speak to me in my language instead of me being able to converse with them in their native tongue. We caught our train finally and headed off the Bruges! We ended up getting off at the wrong station, the station before the one we were meant too so we did not have directions to our hostel from there. Therefore, we just picked a random direction and started walking along the highway with our backpacks. It was a true backpacking moment. I was kind of scared when I saw people with giant backpacks walking alongside the road in Iowa, but hey, now I was that person. I have a new respect for those people. After walking for about 40 minutes, getting directions from some nice strangers, and attempting to read random maps along the road, we made it to our hostel. This hostel was called the snuffelbackpackers hostel. We arrived around 9:00 that night, we walked into the main area and saw a ton of people, so after we dropped our stuff off in our rooms we headed down to the main lounge to look at a map and meet some people. It was a guy's birthday and he started talking to us, then invited us to sit with him and his friends. We met 3 people from Austrailia, one from New York, and one from New Orleans. The Austrailians were so funny, everyone was really fun. I was talking to the guy from New York, and he was telling me how his trip to Amsterdam cured him of smoking weed. He then complemented me, I think, by telling me that I didn't look like a weed smoker. I personally was glad to hear that...
They invited us to go out with them, but Kristen and I decided to hit the hay instead. To get to our room we had to walk through another room. A room of 12 people, all from Spain who did not speak any English besides hi, what are you doing, and bye. Kristen and i were in a 4 person bedroom, but the first night we had the room to ourselves which was nice. The next morning we went down to the free breakfast, and at 9:00 a.m. rented bikes, we didn't return them until 8:00 that night...my legs and butt really hurt the next day!! It was literally like a fantasy though. We rode around on cobblestone pathes, next to a little brook with ducks and swans and beautiful trees. The houses were Victorian style and there were windmills dotting the hills. It was such a nice day too. The snow was gently falling and people were out walking their dogs, biking, or just strolling around. It was like something you would read about. We went to a second hand store and played around in there for awhile, we visited a windmill, and a neat art museum. We of course also stopped at some chocolate stores, Bruges is the chocolate capitol over the world after all! That night we went and ate spaghetti at a palce called Medards that our map recommended. At each hostel in Belgium we were given maps of the cities made by locals that had tips on where to go and how to save money. It was so wonderful and helpful. We had to have the bikes back by 8:00, so we headed back and played scrabble and ate apples the rest of the night. The next morning was Valentine's Day, and we didn't even think about chocolate stores being closed on Sunday, but we wanted to buy our roomates chocolate. We bought a bus ticket to the train station, and then headed out to try and find an open chocolate store. We were not having any luck and were about to give up, when we saw lights and people walking around inside a store. It wasn't one of the big name ones so at first we didn't think much of it, but we walked in and the woman gave us a free sample. SO GOOD...she then explained how they were family owned and handmade their chocolates. She then went on to ask if I knew Rick Steve's. "I only own about ten of his books!" I said. She pointed to her desk and it had 3 years worth of Rick Steve's family Christmas cards on it. "My mama was featured in his show too," she said. That had me right there. Kristen and I bought chocolate and then headed off to Ghent! We got on the train, and arrived in Ghent in less than a half hour. It was snowing like crazy there and super chilly. We took a wrong turn yet again, and ended up in the totally wrong direction than we were intending to go, but we really only had one thing on our list of things to do, so that was ok. We found the church we were looking for eventually, and thank goodness we did. It was so impressive!! The reason we went there was to see the "Adoration of the Mystic Lamb" alterpiece. I am going to just copy down what I wrote in my journal about it:
"Ghent was not as cute as Bruges, but it had it's own mideval charm about it, despite all the construction it was under. St. Bavo reminded me of the Westminster, very beautiful with a lot of history, especially in the crypt. The man playing the harp was a nice touch to set the mood. Kristen, I could tell was very anxious to get to the alterpiece though, she had been talking about it since last year. I honestly did not know much about it and didn't understand why it was such a big deal that people would spend four euro to see it, but then I saw it. An audioguide was included in the ticket price. It was a fifty minute long description, going over each of the 24 panels in great detail, explaining and pointing out different minute details that I know I would have never noticed no matter how long I stood admiring it. The last bit was the fascinating history of the alter piece. The 50 minutes went by shockingly fast. I was captivated by every description I was given. Jan and Hubert Van Eyck painted the alterpiece for many years, finally finishing in 1432. The brothers painted 24 panels, 12 on each side of the piece. The first and 5th panel show Adam and Even naked trying to cover up with fig leaves. The 2-4 panels show Mary, John the Baptist, and Jesis and God in the middle. As well as angels in ehaven singing and celebrating. Those 5 cover the first row. The 2nd row was filled with images of ordinary people to saints and apostles traveling towards the middle panel in which your eyes are immediately drawn to a lamb with a pncture in his chest and blood spilling into a chalice. Angels and the apostles are bowing down to it. On the back was different images of Mary and several saints. This huge alterpiece is encased in glass now, but throughout history, every panel had been cut up and sold individually, m any to German museums, saved from a fire, hid in salt mines from Nazis, put back together only to have 2 panels stolen. One was returned with a ransom note for the other piece. It has never been found and the thief is long dead. Now it is in Ghent in St. Bavo's church to be admired for its beauty. And it truly is one of the most beautiful pieces of artwork i have ever seen."
The church was really cold so afterwards, Kristen and I went into a waffle shop to warm up with some coffee and waffles. After that, we headed back to Brussels to a hotel to stay before flying out at 6:25 the next morning. It was Kristen's birthday that day!!!! I feel bad because I spent most of it sleeping on the plane, but when we returned back to Dublin we hugged and she headed off the Cork and I walked back to Blackhall.
I had felt like I hadn't seen my roomies in forever so that night we all ate supper together and caught up!!
Last night, my friends Kevin and Kate's mom was here visiting and invited everyone of our friends to go out to eat, with her treating at the Porter House. I was really excited because I have heard there food is really good. She bought 11 people's meals, desserts, and some people's drinks. She probably spent over 25 euro on each person!!! And she kept wanting to buy everyone more!!! She was such a sweetie. It was a lot of fun.....well that pretty much is my life so far!!! Tomorrow will consist of finishing a paper,and Kaitlyn Lewis is coming to visit tomorrow night with some friends so that should be fun. Saturday-Tuesday of next week I'll be in Barcelona, Spain with nine friends. That should be really fun!! I'll update my blog then I promise!!