Neighbor Creepin’

My room has a wonderful, tall window that overlooks the courtyard connecting the two Erasmus student houses. I’ve grown to love this view, and have seen the trees change from snow in the winter, to buds and flowers in the spring, and now fresh green leaves, blocking the far colorful houses from sight. This view lets me shout hello to friends coming and going between houses, or eating outside on the picnic table just outside our kitchen. It also lets me creep on our neighbors!

Families live on either side of Moulin- I’ve never actually met them, but I see them all the time, especially now as the weather has gotten warmer. The neighbors on my right planted a garden- now the daffodils have come up and other vegetable plants are sprouting stalks and leaves. They seem to have a pretty big family, and I love how they are always outback, often cooking a massive dinner barbeque on their charcoal grill. I’m pretty sure another grilling is happening tonight- I can smell the smoke from the grill drifting up to my window! They all sit outside, eating together, the younger kids playing and generally getting in the way. Very similar to what happens in my family when we all get together. It’s fun to see how similar families in completely different cultures can be, halfway around the world.

Both families, to my left and my right are immigrant families- that’s what Saint-Josse, my neighborhood, is known for- but I’m not sure where from. I hear different languages, but honestly, I’m not that good at picking out Turkish from Arabic unfortunately.

The family that lives on my left seems to have some sort of menagerie. Today they brought out different cages of birds (parakeets) and other animal contraptions, plus I’m pretty sure they have a cat and maybe a dog. I love their backyard though- ever since the weather got slightly warmer, they’ve been fixing things up: repairing windows, trimming hedges, pruning vines and trees. It’s a lovely little garden there, and everyone is always outside in the nice weather helping fix things up or playing with a soccer ball.  My family does the same with our garden, fixing it up outside, or just laying out on the grass, me messing around with a soccer ball, my parents in the garden, my sister painting.

That’s probably enough spying on the neighbors for now, but I wanted to give you a pictures of some of the family life here in Brussels. All different kinds of families live here, speaking loads of different languages, and eating different foods. Despite that, it’s cool to see how some things are just the same as back home. Wherever people may be in the world, we all still love being outside and enjoying a beautiful day.

My courtyard through the seasons:

Snow dusting!

Courtyard in the rain (this happens a lot)

Spring! Flowers on the trees!

Now- slightly warmer, leaves on the trees!

Misty Mountains: Italy Adventures II

Day three in Italy was Padova! Padova (or Padua in English spelling) is completely different from Verona and Venice- it’s not built for tourists, but for students! There are universities all over town, and things are student-priced from renting a flat to cafés. Another fun fact is that nearly all of these old universities are housed in palaces. So, when you are a university student in Padova, you go to a palace for class. Not too shabby. Downtown Padova contains the very impressive, large Herb and Fruit Squares, which as you might guess, are markets!  They are situated on either side of the Palazzo della Ragione, the bottom two stories of which continue the market in a covered area.  Besides being a university city, Padova also gets to boast about having the largest open squares in Italy, maybe one of the biggest in the world! It’s called Prato della Valle:

Markets! Fruit Square

More markets!

A lot of the impressive things to see in Italy are generally cathedrals and basilicas, which can get rather boring after a while. However, they also sparked some really interesting conversations in our mini group of international travelers. We got into some cool discussions on religion and Catholicism having the perspectives of a devote Muslim, a Muslim, a Christian (me) and a strongly raised Catholic who has turned away from the Italian church. It was really interesting to listen to everyone’s opinions and beliefs.

My other favorite thing about Padova was the Botanical Garden. Not really on the list of things to visit in the city, but I loved it. Only one euro to get in, and then we could lose ourselves in the garden, splashing in green all around and only the sounds of a bubbling fountain. All spring break, I suddenly became utterly content and happy when I found myself in a garden or a park or a forest. I think I’ve been going through nature withdrawal living in Brussels- even in our few parks, you can never forget that you’re in a city. So I had to soak in the greenery whenever I could!

After trying the famous Spritz drink in Padova- white wine mixed with Aperol and sparkling water, which everyone was drinking at nearly every single café or bar in Northern Italy- it was time to visit Illy’s home town of Brescia!

Spritz!

There was a graffiti artist in Padova that was really cool- he always has this guy with a top hat and a cat in it somewhere. I made it a kind of scavenger hunt to find them

Brescia is a small town, but beautiful, surrounded by those green misty mountains again; crowned by the Castello that gives a spectacular view of the city and the mountains. I got to meet her kind parents, and have some more simple and delicious Italian food for lunch and dinner. Brescia was a resting sort of day, which was fine for us!

Brescia from the Castello! Mountains surrounded the city

Brescia's Castello

My last stop in Italy was Milan, and a small town just outside called Busto Arsizio. There, one year later, I got to meet up with some of my friends I met last year in Glasgow and spring break! It was so nice to see them again, and to just catch up a bit, meander around the slightly-familiar Milan and see a new sight or two as well. Plus, I had two Italian men cooking for me, which is fine any day.

Milan, Parc Sempione

Time in Italy flew by, and suddenly it was time to take the plane to Paris, France! Leaving Italy, I got once last glance of my misty mountains. Now onto France!

Misty Mountains: Italy Adventures I

The first part of my Spring Break was spent in Northern Italy! This was my second time in Italy, I went last year for spring break as well, but this time I was visiting some new cities with new friends- and then a trip to see some old, familiar faces.

 

As our plane was landing in Bergamo, Milan the first things I noticed were the mountains.  Huge, rolling mountains, covered in green trees with mist swirling around. Mysterious and beautiful. I was excited to be back in Italy.

I went to stay with my roommate Ily in her University town of Padova along with two other Erasmus students in our group: Jafar from Tajikistan and Rovshen from Turkmenistan. One of the very first things we did in Italy? Get a coffee! Granted, this was half because we were in Italy, and half because we had gotten maybe three or four hours of sleep and then spent the whole of the morning travelling and were dragging just a bit!

Morning mountains as we sipped our coffee

 

I visited five different cities in Italy: Brescia, Verona, Venice, Padova and Milan again. Each has a very different feel to it and their own sort of appeal.

Day one was Verona! Verona is an adorable little town, most well known for its connection to Romeo and Juliet. We generally just meandered around the town, discovering things as we came upon them such as Romeo’s house, a beautiful view of the river and the ever-famous balcony in Juliet’s house. Juliet’s house is the main attraction in Verona, and very nearly the only one (minus the Castello, but I’ll get here later). The outside greets you with a small plaque:

A small tunnel then takes the throngs of visitors into Juliet’s courtyard. The walls of the tunnel are completely covered over with writing- every kind of love note possible, couples’ graffiti, and hearts created using every color and all writing materials possible. Inside the tiny courtyard lies an iron gate covered with locks declaring couples’ love, and just to the right is a statue of Juliet, just beneath her balcony. If you feel like paying, you can go up to the balcony, but I’m a cheap and poor college student who didn’t care, so I settle for taking pictures. I loved the statue. Somehow the sculptor showed how young and naïve Juliet was, hopeful and in love. Poor Juliet however, gets molested by tourists on a regular bases because it’s supposedly good luck. Besides Casa di Guilietta, we got our first gelato of Italy in Verona! Always one of my favorite things about Italy. The other features of Verona are the arena that’s not really worth paying to go into, and the Castello. The most exciting part of the 1355 Castelvecchio is the bridge behind it, which goes over the river, providing a beautiful view of the city and the castle. We also randomly found a plaque for Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, our neighborhood in Brussels on the town hall in Verona. Strange. Verona was sweet, but we were dying by the end of the day from having carried our heavy backpacks around all day (mine was filled for two weeks of traveling). Since it was our first night in Italy, we ordered pizza for dinner! Delicious of course.

Juliet's balcony

Locks declaring people's love 

Juliet!

Verona, main square (arena in the background)

The arena- they are converting it into a theatre/stage area

Sweet buildings in Verona. I love Italian architecture

1st Gelato!!!

View of the city from the Castello Bridge

Proof that I was in Verona. Castello behind me!

Day two was Venice: the floating city. It was interesting for me to visit Venice after having already seen Amsterdam and Bruges now, two other big canal cities. Well Venice takes the canal bit to a whole new level. Venice is filled with criss-crossing narrow streets, alleys and canals- so to get around you can either walk, or use a boat! Note that I said nothing about cars- this was what my Italian friend pointed out to me. Later in the day it started to rain, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, we got to see Venice in all types of weather that day. But what was especially incredible in this floating city was how quiet it was. You could literally listen to the rainfall. We realized it was because there were no cars. The difference of having no cars in a city is incredible, then there’s just the falling of rain and gliding of gondolas in the canals. That was one of my favorite moments in Venice. It’s a beautiful city, turquoise water everywhere and gleaming black, luxurious gondolas. We took bets on how expensive a gondola ride was- I got the closest at 50€, turns out it was 80€! Not exactly in our budget. After seeing the famous Piazza San Marco and the impressive Rialto Bridge, we did lots of wandering around the city, and discovered a free museum! Even better for me- it was an exhibit on Antonio Vivaldi and making violins!

So my inner orchestra geek came out. I was fascinated. I’ve played numerous Vivaldi concertos over the years, and had no idea that he lived and worked for years in Venice! It was pretty cool to learn about the history of the city a bit, and how it used to be a huge musical capital of the world; apparently people came from miles around to hear the musicians in Venice. This was definitely highlight number two for me in Venice. Venice is an extremely touristy city (you can buy masks and Murano glass anywhere there), but when you get more towards the edges, towards the sea, things calm down. I loved seeing all the boats coming and going in the bigger canals of the city. That’s about all for Venice, but now I really want to see the movie “The Tourist” again and point out all the places I’ve been!

Photo tour of Venice:

The Rialto Bridge, close to Piazza San Marco

Piazza San Marco! Never go here if you hate pigeons.

Gondolas by the sea

They literally lined most canals, like they do here

I loved how houses went right into the water- even their steps!

Vivaldi exhibit!

Beautiful Venezia

Over Halfway

Clearly it's been a while since my last post, and while I apologize for the crazy delay, there have been some...interesting complications. First of all, I am, and have been for the past four weeks, laptopless. Alas, tis a tragic existence, and it also made a whole lot of things a lot more difficult like registering for classes next fall at McDaniel, making sure I got housing at McDaniel, general online schoolwork and papers, and of course, being able to blog! The plus side is that for two of those four weeks I was romping around Italy and France, and for the other two weeks... well I've been dong a whole lot of reading for class, and realizing what generous, caring friends I have.

With so much that has happened, I don't want to bore you with one ridiculously long post, and I also have no access to any of my pictures at the moment from my trips, so I'll divide up spring break and this week into three different posts, and elaborate on those shenanigans later! For now, suffice to say that I'm over halfway done with my study abroad in Brussels! A really strange and crazy fact for me to acknowledge.

I've come to realize that while my French, primarily my speaking and reading skills, have improved a lot, in order to really master the language I need more time! A year would better, several even more so; you really have to immerse yourself in a language, studying it, being forced to use new vocabulary and make conversation, in order to really become fluent. That being said, I did get a little too excited the other day when I spontaneously used an adverbial pronoun in a sentence. As soon as I realized it, my French-Canadian friends cracked up at how happy I was. It's the little things in learning a language.

Saint-Louis, my University here, has a very different system regarding its final exams than McDaniel College does. It's more similar to my studies in Glasgow, but here I'm taking a whole lot more classes and I still have no idea when nearly any of my exams are. This would be one thing I really don't like about the system at Saint-Louis: they don't tell you your exams dates until the end of April. Thus, travel plans and flight tickets are rather tricky to make.

So with the lack of a computer in my room, I have actually been to the library! In all honesty, I've been terrified of working in the library. I was never sure of how the system worked (you're supposed to leave your student ID card at the desk when you go in, but since mine was stolen with my wallet, I've just been sneakily going in...), and there are not a whole lot of computers to use or any printers, so I generally avoided it. Plus there was some rule about no backpacks. However, now I seriously needed the computers, so I entered the library! It's pretty small, and divided a bit strangely in some sort of labyrinth of stairs and levels between real floors. Floors are separated by department, so law books are all together, social sciences are separate as is philosophy. That makes is sound a whole lot easier to navigate than it is- its all kinds of easy to get lost! Despite the limited number of computers (I think there are maybe ten total spread out throughout the library), I've always been able to get on one, and struggle through typing English on the French keyboard.

Essentially, the entire group of Erasmus students has been buckling down a bit this week, realizing that we did nearly no studying over spring break, and really have to get on it now! It was nice to come back 'home' to Moulin (what we call our house), and slowly have it fill up again with friends exchanging stories of trips all over from Moscow to the south of Spain. I think we all realized that we missed each other over the break, and it was so nice to get back into our routine of cooking dinner and eating together, talking in a mixture of languages as usual. Since I just got back from France, I've been in the habit of only talking in French (I'll get into that more on my France post), so it's been easy to converse with people in French. That being said, I was talking French straight for a week, with no English at all. So the day after I came back I was craving being able to speak English with a native speaker from home. Unfortunately, this hasn't exactly worked out (see how this no computer problem extends on so many levels?), so I'm waiting to finally Skype with my family and friends for the first time in over a month next week!

I mentioned that I've been discovering how kind my friends are in the past couple weeks, and it's absolutely true. Everyone has been so generous and helpful to me here since things got rather messed up with not having any money with my debit card being stolen and no computer. People have been loaning me money, lending their computers for a few hours, and even making me dinner on occasion. The friendships I've made in the past studying abroad, and these ones now really become strong ties for life. Being thrust into another culture really brings you together, making a pretty unique bond. So a thank you to everybody that has been helping me, or checking in on me. It's good to be back in familiar Brussels again, (despite our schizophrenic weather of sunshine and rain) and get back in the routine of classes and the occasional drink out in a pub with friends.

Halfway over. I'm going to miss the people here.

An interesting sort of week

This week has been two sided. Ups and downs, seeing both sides of Brussels, the good and the bad. We'll start with the good to cheer everybody up.

It's been beautiful outside! Literally all week the weather has been stunning- warm with sunshine and blue skies, sprinkled with a few puffy clouds. I love waking up in the morning to sunlight beaming through my wooden blinds. This means we've constantly been outside, enjoying the weather in Jardin Botanique right next to us, Parc Cinquantnaire, or even outside on the picnic table in the courtyard connecting the Erasmus student houses. This courtyard is also, unfortuantely, an extra parking lot (we still have no idea who for, maybe the hospital next door). So when we're out reading and eating on the picnic table, we also get a lot of strange looks, or "Bonjour!"s from complete strangers.

This past Friday night, I had the chance to attend a free concert! Last week, I picked up a flyer from MIM about "Nocturnes," a series of free concerts being put on throught March by the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. This week was my first change to actually go now that I knew it existed, and I was pretty excited. It was classical music, not everybody's cup of tea, but as I've been in an orchestra for most of my life and have now played violin for some twelve years, I can say that I definitely appreciate it! I went alone, since the other Erasmus students were either busy or not interested, running out of my last class of the day (which ends at 7pm on a Friday. ick.) to catch the pre-metro. I had already looked at the way and written down directions, but the easiest way to find the Conservatoire- find the Manneken Pis! This incredibly, weirdly famous statue of a small boy peeing is really not that impressive, but tourists flock to it all the time, and it serves as a good landmark. I found the building the concert was supposed to be in...and couldn't get in. Miraculously somebody inside buzzed me in, so I was able to open the door and sneak in the back of the auditorium as the show had already started.

It was fantastic. Mostly comprised of young people, the concert that night was exclusively Mozart. Three long pieces, one including two solo violins and one with a solo piano, were the entirety of the concert and the place was packed. I was really lucky just to get a chair. Plus we had a surprise visit by Mozart himself which was pretty hilarious. It's beautiful though, the French language, especially hear in a monologue performance. Now I want to go see a show in French! The evening was a great reminder of how many things there are to do in Bruxelles if you just keep an eye out.

So the concert was really fun, beautifully played and now I want my violin again. But onto the second fun thing of this week- I got to go see a movie! I may be one of the millions of people that have read The Hunger Games...and yes, I was pretty excited to see the movie. In Bruxelles, right next to the Atomium, is a massive cinema called Kinepolis which has every movie realised around that time, in every version. Thus, being in Belgium, you can see the movie in Flemish, French, or in the original version with subtitles. I'm a fan of originals myself, so that's what we went for, getting pretty decent tickets that only cost about $9 with a student pass. The theater was massive. Absolutely massive, and there weren't even that many people- probably because it was the original, English version of the film. Despite being the original version of the film, there were both Dutch and French subtitles the entire time. Usually I have a thing against subtitles, but since the screen was so huge, these were subtle and easy to ignore. Another strange thing about going to the movies in Brussels, there was an intermission! I was totally confused. I was all caught up in the movie, wondering what would happen next and suddenly... a ten minute intermission. Odd. I enjoyed the movie, plus, on the way out we all got a free Coke zero, and I'm definitely a fan of free stuff!

This however, unfortunately lead to the bad part of my week. First of all my laptop is still in the shop, so this week has been an interesting combination of using the schools computers and borrowing my wonderful friends' computers! Second, despite my being exceedingly careful, my wallet and phone was stole out of my purse on the way home from the movies. Put a bit of a damper on my evening, and the life lesson is always have your bag or purse in front of you. Unfortunately, quite a few people here have had things stolen- purses, phones, coats and now me with my wallet- all in different situations. Luckily I managed to get in contact with my family and through them my bank to cancel my debit card, so that's all taken care of. A hassel, but luckily nothing too important was in there than can't be replaced.

To end on a positive note- spring break is here! And tomorrow, or this evening depending on how you look at it, I leave for Italy! I can't wait to visit some new, beautiful cities, as well as meet up with some old friends from Glasgow. After Italy, I'm heading out to the Loire Valley in France, a beautiful stretch of the Loire River known for its beautiful châteaux. So there you have it: a topsy-turvey sort of week, but with the promise of Spring Break!