Antwerp - Antwerpen

Congratulations, Belgium! You did it! You now hold the record for the longest time a country has gone without a government! Over 250 days… impressive. I’m glad I could be here to partake in this record-breaking extravaganza.

This past weekend I tagged along again with class to travel to another Belgian city, Antwerp. It’s just a short train ride away and it’s pretty cool! There are a lot of diamond stores there, and just stores in general! So some girls and I decided we’d head back there some day just to shop since Saturday was dedicated to museums and such.  We did the typical guided tour trek. Sometimes I forgot to listen to what the professor was saying. We walked around the city a lot, which was unfortunately very cold (unlike Iowa from what I hear! 60 degree weather? Unreal!). We went into some museums; saw some cool old paintings, books, statues and such. I ate frites and a kabob for lunch. We went into the church in Antwerp, too. It seems like every city has a huge church in the center of town. It makes it easy to find people if you get lost. Game plan: meet at the church!

One of the museums held the first two printing presses Gutenberg made as well as one of the first ever printed Bibles off of a Gutenberg printing press! Who knew Belgium had that? Not I! Antwerp is also the 2^nd largest seaport in Europe and the 4^th largest in the world! Belgium continues to surprise me. Speaking of surprising me! I just looked out the window and it’s snowing right now! Now that’s crazy. What odd weather the world is having this winter.

In Antwerp some girls and I were talking about the bells on bikes and we decided that the bell sound just doesn’t do the bikers’ rage justice. The cute, “ding-ding,” of a bell is more of a polite, “Hi, would it be okay if you moved over just a little bit so I could ride by? Please and thank you!” We think there should be an alternative bell sound; something like that of a semi truck so that bikers can express their road-rage a little better. It would send more of a, “Get out of my way or I’ll hit you!” type message. There could be different pitches for different ways the rider is feeling towards the people they are about to hit. Perhaps I’ll look further into this new bike bell invention. I’ll keep you posted.

Last weekend we also watched the movie, In Bruges. We were literally “In Bruges” the previous weekend! It was cool to see things in the movie we had just seen in real life! My host mom and I also finished the first season of 24. She purchased the second season online and it came today! Guess what we’re doing tonight…

Sunday I was also able to go to church for the first time! It was wonderful. I managed to find it after a tram, metro, bus ride there. It was small, maybe a 100-150 people, but very good. It was a two-hour long service. Those two hours consisted of worship, announcements, a time for people to share what God’s been doing in their life, coffee/tea break, something else and the message. During one song they sang the chorus in English, then Dutch and then French, which was pretty cool. Also, for the people who couldn't understand English, there were headsets that they could wear that would translate what people were saying! I also met two girls there who go to Vesalius, too! I hope to go back, but not this weekend because this weekend I’ll be skiing in the Swiss Alps! Woop!

I really like Belgian chocolate. I eat it a lot. The last couple of times at work my boss has had chocolate eggs. I usually have 1 or 2… or 5. I’m drinking hot tea and eating chocolate now actually. I drink a lot of hot tea, too. I’m afraid that when I return to America I’ll find my taste buds have adjusted to many things here and eating some foods at home (not my mom’s cooking though!) will be strange. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat Hershey’s chocolate again. We’ll see.

I’ve taken note of a couple of other things that I’ve found interesting about Belgium.

1.     There are no squirrels here. At least I haven’t seen any.

2.     Cafés and restaurants have tables outside all year around. They have little heaters out there too. No matter what the weather, you’ll usually find a couple people sitting outside. The heaters don’t help that much. I still haven’t figured out why people choose to sit outside when they can sit inside, but I can’t argue that fresh air isn’t nice.

3.     Sandwiches here are eaten frequently. In America we create sumo-sandwiches that have as many things on it that can fit like 3 kinds of meat, 2 different cheeses, lettuce, tomato, avocado, mayonnaise, etc. But here, they have the most basic sandwiches. They are fine with just salami or just one type of cheese on their sandwich. I always find myself wanting more ingredients. However, I’ve found that a meat and cheese sandwich is quite delicious.

4.     Oftentimes with dinner we have this spinach-mashed potato combination dish thing that’s so good. It’s called stoemp. You pronounce it like Shtomp. I just like saying that word.

5.     PDA in Belgium is more normal and accepted than it is in America. It happens at every level from holding hands to a little make-out session in the middle of a metro station. Generally it’s not over-the-top, it’s just the cute stuff. 
6.   It's common to see people who are riding their bikes or children walking around in bright road-constructionesque jackets so that they can be easily seen by drivers.
7.   Round abouts on the roads are quite popular here.
8.   They don't usually have street signs on poles at the corner of every road here, but rather on the side of buildings that are on the corner of streets.
9.   There are menus outside most restaurants and cafes so that you can see what food/drink the place has to offer and at what price before ever entering the restaurant! It's nice!