Today was the start of our long weekend! A group of nine of us had spent the week planning our trip to Brussels, Belgium. We got a fairly early start to head to the Delft Train Station to buy our tickets to Brussels. After asking the information desk about 50 questions to make sure we had the right tickets and stops, we made our way down to the platform to catch our train. The train into Brussels from Delft requires you to first take a train into Breda and then transfer onto the Belgian train line. From there, it is about an hour and a half train ride to the Brussels North station. To pass the time, we watched the only movie Nolan had downloaded on his laptop, which was Crazy Rich Asians, but it did turn out to be a really great movie.
Since we didn’t have metro cards for Brussels yet, we made the 40 minute trek from the train station to our hostel in North Brussels. The neighborhoods we walked through to get to our hostel were predominantly low income and filled with people of color. It was my first indication that there were some clear signs of gentrification happening in Brussels, which was similar to what we saw in certain areas of Amsterdam as well. People were drying their clothes in the park and the buildings were incredibly run down. After walking for about 20 minutes, we crossed the bridge across a canal and almost immediately we noticed that the racial makeup of the population was quite different and that the area was significantly less run down. The area of town we were in was a little less historic and looked much more like a big city, somewhat similar to what you would see in Seattle.
With only 5 minutes left in our walk to the hostel, it started raining completely sideways. By the time we made it in the door, all of our clothes were completely soaked through. Checking in is always a slow process, but it felt like it took an eternity while all of us were completely soaked. Kletia, Talia, Rachel, Megan and myself had booked out a 6 person dorm-style room on the second floor of the hostel. Brian, Jack, Zack and Nolan were booked into a 4 person dorm-style room on the first floor of the hostel. Our room was huge, which was great since all nine of us could fit into it to work on planning out what we wanted to do for the rest of the day. Our first plan was to walk down to the metro station at the end of the block and purchase 24 hour metro tickets so we could head into downtown Brussels to begin exploring.
This area of Brussels seemed to be predominantly French speaking. Having taken about three years of French, I have some comfort level in reading it, but trying to listen or speak it is really difficult. When we went to purchase our metro tickets, the woman working only spoke French, and trying to figure out how to ask for the correct ticket and pay the correct amount was frustrating. This is really one of the first times on this trip I have encountered someone who didn’t speak any English, which makes it a lot harder to communicate since I don’t speak French. For me, this was a good reminder that having an expectation that everyone will speak your language isn’t correct and that there are other ways of communicating besides verbally. It is also a reminder of the privilege that we have as native English speakers where we can travel to another country without even needing to know the language and can be assured that we will still be able to communicate just fine.
By some miracle, we managed to take the right metro the correct direction into downtown, which so far we haven’t done in any city that we visited on our own. Getting to downtown requires transferring trains, which in Belgium is really just chaotic. The trains race into station and slam on their breaks before abruptly taking off again, and the signage for which metro goes to what area is really not all that helpful. There were also so many different gates to tap in an out of with your metro card while you were trying to transfer trains, which definitely added to our confusion level when navigating around the city. After a transfer and about 15 minutes on the metro, we emerged from the station in the middle of downtown Brussels, but not before someone tried to pickpocket Zack’s phone on our way out of the station.
Now, for some reason, I would say about 75% of the restaurants in Brussels are Italian food, which is great for me since I would eat pasta for every meal if you let me. Naturally, we settled on an Italian restaurant where at this point in the day it was half lunch and half dinner. I had a four cheese pasta that was baked in the oven that I think to this day is the best pasta dish I have ever had. After our meal, Nolan, Jack and I stopped in at H&M downtown to pick up a couple of extra t-shirts for the remainder of the trip before meeting back up with the rest of the group at St. Catherine Cathedral in the heart of Brussels. We ventured inside the very old cathedral to admire the beautiful stained glass windows and medieval architecture.
We began to make our way North towards Brussels Park when we stumbled along another cathedral that was breathtaking. We headed inside to discover that it was St. Michael’s Cathedral. The space was absolutely massive and there were stained glass windows in every direction with light pouring through them. In the Catholic faith, it is traditional to light a candle for someone you would like to pray for or someone who has passed away. I lit one for my Grandfather, who passed away in 2014, since I know he would have been so amazed and proud that I was spending my summer studying abroad. We all sat in the front of the cathedral for a while admiring the space and ornate architecture that filled the church.
Just a short walk from St. Michael’s Cathedral was our final destination for the day, Brussels Park. We spent some time walking around the park checking out the fountain and the old carousel that had been converted into a gazebo. We finally found a grassy spot in the middle of the park and a soccer ball that had been abandoned nearby. We spent some time messing around with a soccer ball before we all plunked down on the grass to play Heads Up on Kletia’s phone. After a few hours, the group consensus was that it was time to find a Belgian Waffle shop on the way back to the hostel. Brian and I split a Belgian Waffle that was covered in strawberries, Nutella and whipped cream and it was honestly amazing. We made our way back to the hostel so we could sit down and plan out our next day before we all threw ourselves into bed for the night.