Act I Finale, Part 2: Brussels

*Continued from Act 1 Finale, Part 1: Culture Shock, below*

Having returned to Oxford on Monday morning of last week, my first order of business was - aside from a nap - to meet the warden, the outgoing JCR President and the outgoing MCR President. Thus the subsequent week has been full of interactions, organizations, and transitions, beginning to step into my new duties and responsibilities. On Friday night, I was even asked to say a few words at the term's final President's Port. I chose to recite a favorite William Carlos Williams poem:

The Red Wheel Barrow

So much depends
upon

The red wheel
barrow

Glazed with rain
water

Beside the white
chickens.

I think people were confused (especially Glen, my Wolfpack compatriot), but hopefully they appreciated the effort... I suppose I will need to pick a slightly more substantial poem for my next President's Port (recommendations accepted).

Aside from stepping into Presidential duties, the week also provided my first opportunity to submit some research work: I finally submitted an abstract to present at a conference in Los Angeles in February. If I'm accepted, I will have a paper due in September and I will need to assemble a poster and presentation to boot. The topic will be on patterns in lateral gait forces. Hopefully I will get in!

But what transpired beyond the MCR and academic world? Well, Jenna and I had originally planned to go to Cornwall for her last weekend in the UK, but after analyzing the situation, we realized it would be faster and more exciting to go to Brussels, Belgium instead. So on Tuesday, we planned a Saturday trip to Brussels... because you can do that when you live in the UK!

If you've read Jenna's blog as of late, you'll also notice that before we could travel, we had to take care of many last things. Our last dance (Viennese Waltz to the Harry Potter theme), our last tea night (which, as of late, have not actually involved tea because we couldn't be bothered to make it), our last baking session (square pie!), and other things. I also helped her pack up her bags and agreed to give a caring home to many of her untransportable goods, including a mini fridge, pots, pans, Glad ware, a tea kettle, etc. At last, she had packed for home everything except her nerves (which were, I admit, a little scattered and tangled) and we were ready to take our diversion to Brussels.

With an early Saturday morning - yes, the sun was already well up when I walked to the bus stop at 5 am - we hopped on the X90 due for Baker Street, London. After a quick jaunt by Tube, we checked in at St. Pancras International Rail Station and giddily prepared for our Eurostar to Brussels. In fact, we were so excited that after some brief planning, Jenna read and I slept for the entire two hour train!

"Hey Dan - we're in Brussels!!"

These were the words Jenna exclaimed as we stepped onto the platform at Brussels-Midi Station. Indeed - we had both perked up and had become legitimately psyched for three days of sightseeing. After going through customs, we embarked on our long walk along Anspach - the diametric downtown artery - from the southern end of the ring to the northern end. There, we dropped our bags in the hotel and immediately set off to take in the city. Thus began an epic amount of walking. We walked - via a mussel statue ("mussels in Brussels! woo!") - to the EU headquarters, stationed on the east side of town, where we noticed that the government center was really quiet. In fact, the city in general was rather sleepy that morning until we made it to the adjacent Natural History Museum.

Perhaps it was no Smithsonian, but the museum was really nice. We admired the gems for a while before moving to the main attraction: a series of complete iguanadon skeletons! Now Jenna had been extremely keen to go to to this museum to see the iguanadons, and I - a former dinosaur enthusiast - had no qualms with her preference. It was only while we were standing there on the upper level, face to face with a bony iguanadon that she looks at me and I look at her. She says (paraphrase)...

"An iguana isn't the same as an iguanadon... is it?"

Well no, no it's not. I can see where she would make the mistake however: one's 25 feet tall whereas the other is 0.25 foot tall. That's practically identical! ;-) Even with sharing a good laugh, we were both awed by how impressive the dinosaurs were. It was cool how the 6 or 7 skeletons were in 2 giant glass cases. We took pictures imitating some dinosaurs (Jenna makes a fantastic T Rex, I less so an iguanadon) before stopping by the whale exhibit en route to the exit.

Heading back towards the center of town, we raced through the Musical Instrument Museum before their 5 pm close; this was ok with me given that I had been before (see: Paris 2008). Dr. Bassett of NCSU Franklin Scholars fame will be pleased to find out that they have a Ben Franklin Glass 'Armonica, but I was also excited to see a giant music box and hear some excellent samples. I definitely bought a book... very unlike me, but with the consummate reader by my side, it seemed like a good idea. Anyway, we proceeded south along the ring road, passing through a pair of churches before meandering through the Place du Grand Sablon (worth noting here that everything in Belgium is written in both French and Dutch. They spoke too much of the former for my liking, but at least Jenna knew the language), picking up our first gourmet chocolates and macarons (little amazing sandwich cookies, not to be confused with blobs of shredded coconut) of the weekend.

From there, we meandered further into the lower town looking for a place to eat. Quite by chance, we ended up on a quaint and lovely cobble stoned street (ok, they're all quaint, lovely, and cobble stoned) at the Easy Tempo Pizzaria. It seemed extraordinarily local and as you would expect, the authentic thin crust pizza was truly delicious. The cheeky lemoncello wasn't bad either ;-)

Alas, what would be a European weekend without a bit of rain? After we casually finished our meal, we made a dash from awning to awning in the middle of a spontaneous shower, winding our way towards the famous Grand Place (which I apparently mislabeled as Grand Market in my previous experience). The rain stopped just in time as we reached the plaza, which looked beautiful with its gilded  buildings under a breaking blue sky. Naturally, we grabbed a waffle (mine with whipped cream, strawberries, and chocolate; Jenna's with a Belgian favorite, Speculoos) and meandered from the Grand Place to the Mannekin Pis statue... and all around the city center!

We had such an amazing first day, compounded by the fact that sunset was at 10:30 local time, meaning that our cobblestone-led wanderings proceeded well into the night. Technically we still went to bed by midnight, but it just didn't feel the same given the short amount of time the sun had been set. Just to think, we had been on our feet for almost 11 hours straight! What a day!

And guess what happened next! Sunday came! (Yeah, anticlimactic, I know...)

We awoke at the reasonable hour of 9:00 and proceeded to grab breakfast at a place called Exki. I agree that it's a weird name for a cafe, but at least the food was fantastic: deliciously fresh croissants and pain au chocolat accompanied by yogurt, fruit, and other continental-style goodies. I particularly admired how biting into their croissants resulted in an ear-splitting crackle and a shower of flakes. I was a happy camper.

Where our first day of adventure had been fairly focused on hitting as many crucial sights as possible, our second day was much more relaxed. From breakfast, we proceeded back to the Place du Grand Sablon (note: theme developing...), making a quick pass through the Grand Place, where we soaked in the morning sun and I acquired a painting from an artist who had set up camp. Upon reaching the Place du Grand Sablon, however, we procured some obligatory chocolates and meandered through an interesting antiques market.

Now in the US, it is highly likely that most 150+ year old items end up in museums and private collections. Here, however, I was impressed to find that one could purchase an old fireplace-heated iron for a mere five Euros. Now I do not know the actual age of these irons, but I have only seen such irons - the ones with a thick metal block feebly attached to a removable wood/metal handle - in places like Colonial Williamsburg. Lest I find out that my grandparents or (hopefully not) parents used such items in their youth, I think I should stop digging this hole, but it did seem like some really old (by US standards) and historical (again by US standards) items were being sold for quite cheap.

From there, we aimlessly wandered to the south, where we came across the Palais du Justice. Unfortunately, it was all covered in scaffolding and apparently there was nothing to see inside, so we took a cool pedestrian bridge to a lift to go down into the (literally) lower town. There was a little plaza at the bottom of the lift and we pulled up a couple chairs at a cafe while listening to some of the many street performers we would hear during our visit. In this instance, there were three accordionists, a guitarist, and a fantastic upright bassist. Given that it was Father's Day in the US, I also took the opportunity to borrow some free wi-fi to attempt to play "Where's Dan-O?" Sadly, in addition to leaving my red and white striped jumper at home, dad was out on a camping trip and mom had trouble getting Skype to work (updates + old computer = sad), so "Where's Dan-O?" was somewhat of a bust. Nonetheless, mom and I discussed Brussels for a bit while Jenna dozed happily in the warm glow.

When the accordionists were replaced by a clarinettist, we decided to dawdle onward. Moving southward again, we came upon the end of the lower town's Sunday flea market. The large cobblestone square was absolutely jam-packed with blankets, tables, and boxes, all showing off a variety of useful and useless trinkets. At the entrance (a poor choice of diction for sure; there was neither a proper entrance nor exit), I was caught by a collection of coins in sleeves. Each coin was labeled by year and country of origin. I believe the oldest one I saw was dated c. 1726 (selling for 45 Euros) but there were many coins even from the late 18th and 19th centuries. The diversity of the collection also made it's presence at the flea market interesting. The coins came from all across Europe, and some even commemorated specific events such as past Olympic games.

Aside from the coins, the next most interesting collection was TV remotes. This particular seller had myriad remotes from several companies of origin, probably dating back into the 1980s. There were some fine specimens indeed...

After a good 30-40 minutes of perusing (I'm guessing that Jenna's description will include the wooden squirrel sheath w/ blade... the Topflight golf ball... the wedding dress... etc.), we finally gave up on the fleas and started to meander back north. We were quite hungry for food by this point, so we found a frites stand and procured some tasty pitas and a tray of the savory fried potatoes. As my sauce of choice (they had over a dozen), I went with Brazil sauce. What's Brazil sauce? Neither Jenna nor I had any inkling, even after the guy in the frites shack described it in broken English... which is probably why I went for it. In hindsight, I would say it reminded me a lot of Chick-fil-a's honey roasted bbq sauce: an opaque, creamy, golden sauce with various spices and a smokey flavor. It was really good. Now to look up a recipe and see what the secret is.....

... ok, I lied. I can't find a recipe. The secret remains safe with the frites vendors. :-(

By this point, it had been entirely too long since our last helping of chocolate, so we proceeded back to the Grand Place to visit the Chocolate Museum. There, I geeked out over the chocolate production process, and talked Jenna's ear off about how little the museum addressed how the beans get from the living plant to the processing plant. Naturally, I inserted commentary from my Belize trip about how the pods are picked and the beans fermented and dried on a small scale before distribution. I also noticed the stark difference between the aged, well-off Eurocentric crowd in the museum and the younger, scraping-by, generally undernourished small scale farmers we met in Belize. While it was great to indulge in the delicious end product, I am glad that I previously took the time and paid the sweat to understand first-hand some of the local costs of producing the world's chocolate.

Dan-commentary included, the museum took less than an hour to get through, so we were soon back in the Grand Place, realizing how it looked different at each time of day. Since we needed to regroup and develop an evening plan, we casually strolled back through the cobblestone streets back to the hotel. Upon reaching the hotel, our first course of action was to conduct independent, silent brainstorming. We both found that this was best achieved in the prone position with our eyes shut: a 30 minute nap proved the perfect motivation for our evening out. We decided to continue our daily pattern by wandering aimlessly until dinner called out to us. Believe it or not, we ended up in what we coined as 'Little Thailand' (fitting given that we had already passed through 'Little Morocco' and 'Little Greece') and a place called Fanny Thai. I had some chicken green curry and my counterpartner (see what I did there?) went for fried tofu and steamed veggies. We sat out on the street since the weather was beautiful and - in spite of my allergies - had a very nice meal.

To end our day, we continued our wandering back through the heart of town and the Grand Place en route to the Parc Boutanique. This took us past a stunning church and through some quiet cobblestone lanes to the north end of town. In the park, there was a large glass visitor center by day/bar by night that we passed through to get into the gardens, which were closely manicured into labyrinthine hedges. I really liked the patterns, but as Jenna suggested, they didn't seem particularly natural. After a bit more ambling around, it was finally starting to get dark due to the approaching 11 pm hour, so we made for the exit and headed back to the hotel for another solid night's sleep... after eating a couple more chocolates, naturally!

We assembled for breakfast a tad later the next morning given our busy couple days of walking. Grabbing a quick yogurt and pain au chocolat for take away, we boarded the metro system to take us to the Atomium. Now I quite like to compare city metro systems so I apologize for the following analysis. The Brussels metro seemed to have a certain ruggedness about it, similar to the El in Chicago, likely its closest match. Its ticketing system was fairly easy to figure out once you read the unimposing sticker at the top of the machine instructing you that the 'Ok' button was also a sneaky knob by which to scroll through menu choices. The stations - like the city streets - weren't the cleanest I have seen, but certainly not as bad as other places. They had fancy gate-style turnstiles which reminded me of Paris, although one had to realize that an unlabeled orange ticket scanning box stood next to only one of the gates for the use of single-trip passengers (the others had smart chip-based card readers). Finally, the trains themselves were reasonably efficient, speedy, well laid out, but sufficiently vandalized. Overall, I would say the system was worse than Vienna, London, Paris, on par with Chicago and Boston, and better than DC, New York, Prague, Nanjing, and Budapest.

By the time I wrote that dissertation on subways, we finally reached the Atomium, site of the 1958 World's Exhibition. While other activities exist at the site, the centerpiece is a giant molecule-like gleaming silver structure. The structure consists of nine two-story spheres which are each connected via either the central elevator shaft or a series of tube-enclosed staircases/escalators. The exhibits inside the Atomium structure were rather lame, but the outside view of the structure was impressive to say the least! No, the real value of visiting the Atomium came with our admission to "Mini-Europe," a small park with 1/25 scale models of structures from each of the EU countries. It also came with a nifty guidebook that provided facts and trivia about each of the countries and the models depicted. I was excited to see models of the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Parliament/Big Ben, Budapest Castle, and other places I have visited in the past. Many of the models included moving parts with sound, such as the Brandenburg Gate which featured a bulldozer taking down a section of the graffitied Berlin Wall. Each country's models were also accompanied by a signpost of basic figures and a button which, when pushed, proudly played the country's national anthem.

Sadly, our time swiftly came to an end. We hopped on the metro back into town and - with a few spare minutes - grabbed pitas in Little Greece, hit up the Place du Grand Sablon for more chocolate, and stopped by the Grand Place for embarkation waffles (bananas and chocolate on mine; strawberries and white chocolate on Jenna's). Unfortunately we failed to anticipate that the miniature plastic tridents the city food vendors distributed as "forks" would be essentially inadequate for dense waffle consumption while walking. Therefore, we stopped outside some random grocery store, wolfed down the amazing Belgian morsels as best we could while tickling them with the minute plastic prongs, and scurried on our way back to the hotel and then across town to the Eurostar.

The trip home was uneventful aside from the depression/anxiety that set in (depending whom you talked to) over the realization that Jenna would soon be departing Europe for the US. Indeed, back in Oxford, we grabbed some basic sandwiches and ate them rather quietly. The next morning, I made a last trip across town to Jenna's accommodation to help her get her massive bags to the bus stop. All too soon, we were forced to exchange final hugs and she boarded the bus to head home.

Without getting too sentimental, it has been an incredible - albeit challenging - first school year in Oxford. While the year has allowed/forced me to reassess my worldview and cultural norms, I have met an incredible new best friend in Jenna and many amazing friends in the lab - such as Christelle and Chris -  and in Keble - including my new roommates Sam, Dave, Liam, Ellie, and Rebecca among many others. I coped with hardships such as the passing of my grandfather and the suicide of a friend by expressing a new passion for ballroom dance and an old passion for playing cello. I explored new opportunities by running for MCR President and traveling to destinations including as London, Brussels, Paris, Disneyland, Dublin, and Bath while reconnecting with old friends including Kalli, Kayla, Sara, Kaitlin, Kaylee, Mr. Watters, and (just tonight) Dr. Bassett from the Franklin Scholars program. Indeed, I have a full summer ahead before I have reached a full year in Oxford but as Trinity is ending, the time is rife with reflection.

So thank you to all who made this year possible and all who have been diligent in reading my blog. I cannot do it without your continued support! Here's to a fantastic first summer (aka prolonged winter) in Oxford!!