Franktfurt
Paris
Brussels
Luxembourg

I had a better time in Brussels than I did in Paris. True story.

We arrived in Brussels around 8:15pm, on Monday, November 7th (how long it’s taken me to finally get around to this). The hotel in Brussels was fine, I remember little about it. I do remember we did have trouble finding it however. It was right next to a church, and every morning, at six or seven, the church bell would begin ringing — a deafening sound in our room, waking us up. It was apparently rung by hand, since it was uneven, and even worse was the fact that it seemed to ring until whoever was in charge got tired. The first morning in Brussels, it had to of went on for five minutes!

I was only rooming with one guy in Brussels, and he was a cooler head than my previous roommates in Paris. That Monday night I was feeling a bit better than I did in Paris, so I went out and walked around. Nothing memorable, the hotel was in a tiny Asian section of town, so I ate some Chinese, bought a bottle of wine, and headed back to the room. We watched TV, called it an early night.

The next day was Tuesday, November 8th. We had to wake up early, for meetings at NATO headquarters. We had three meetings here, and two of them were actually excellent. The first was informative, who presented a lot of valuable info (he was “an American, but representing NATO, not America”). And the third turned out to be a fairly conservative diplomat (”representing America”). He was fairly provocative — the first speaker left his personal opinion out of it, whereas the third’s presentation was full of it. There were three or four Germans in the room, and he ruffled their feathers quite a bit. But the guy made me want to come back, take the Civil Service Exam, and work for the government. He was smooth.

This was one occasion where a sort of cultural difference appeared, which was interesting to watch. While the American students were relieved to meet someone who wasn’t full of officious bullshit, the Germans in the room were offended with his casual, opinion-laden style of presentation. The two different groups had hugely different reactions to this guy. It’s possible that the age difference came into play — although one of the Germans was one of our teacher assistants, who was in his mid-twenties. I mark it up to cultural differences — the sort of difference that makes “outsider politicians” like Bush winners in the US, while career politicians like Schroeder and Merkel earn Germany’s top spot.

After spending awhile at NATO, and having an hour lunch break, we traveled to the US-EU Mission. And these two meetings were a complete waste of time. The first women treated us like preschoolers — I felt dumber after leaving the room. While the second person, who was soon about to be transferred to the diplomatic mission to Kazakhstan (or some other backward -stan country (big freaking deal)), kept the self-important attitude of the US diplomat at NATO — without any of the charm, intelligence, or information of the former.

After this, we departed for a city tour of downtown Brussels. The tour was pretty good; the guide was nice and informative, although she recommended a really crappy restaurant that a friend and I tried and were totally disappointed with. We got a nice historical overview, and an explanation of all of the official buildings. Brussels is a city of bureaucrats — and that’s not said in any sort of disapproving manner. Brussels is the center for three or four governments and major organizations (Belgium being a heavily-federalized country, I believe both the national and state governments are housed in Brussels).

I can’t really remember what I did this night, since it’s been such a long time (damn it, half of the reason of blogging all of this was so I’d have a place it was all written down). I believe I just walked around downtown Brussels a bit with the roommate. We bought a bottle of wine, and sat on a park bench drinking. We had dinner somewhere that was unsatisfying (I swear, I didn’t have a single decent meal on this entire trip) and probably called it a fairly early night.

Wednesday, November 9th, we had a light program at the European Commission. I can’t remember anything remarkable about these lectures, so I imagine they were just marginal. Originally, we were suppose to have a meeting with Greenpeace, to see how an NGO interacts with the EU. But those plans apparently fell through, and we didn’t get to go. One I was actually looking forward to too.

This night I do remember, because it was sort of a let-down. In the morning, I checked the cellphone, and found a message from someone — alerting me about a nearby bar which had one Euro pints. Damn, we missed out. But a lot of people were going back again, so after doing the requisite wandering around trying to find food with my roommate (he was one of the other few vegetarians in our group, so that problem was shared), we headed to the place. It was sort of early, nine or ten I think, and we only caught a few people that we knew there. After a few drinks, we split. Later on, I heard about another couple of friends who showed up later, and had an absolutely crazy night in Brussels. If only we had stayed a bit longer.

Thursday, November 10th was our last day in Brussels. We met with the Council of the European Union early. Another unmemorable time. A lunch break, then we met with a representative of the European Anti-Poverty Network. This meeting was really bad. Absolutely nothing remotely interesting or informative. We left Brussels and headed towards the last leg of our journey, Luxembourg, at about five in the afternoon. Brussels was actually quite a nice city, and I would have loved to explore further. Maybe I’ll get another chance someday. Pff.