Weekend in Belgium

January started off as a pretty low-key month.  Everyone got back from their Christmas adventures, and we spent a few evenings in Dortmund hanging out, as well as making little Ruhrpott day trips to places like Arnsberg.  I started getting a little restless, and lucky for me my friend Alex, who I worked and studied with at Korbel, moved to Brussels to start an internship with the European Parliament.  So, we arranged on Monday to do a little Belgium tour for the weekend (how lucky am I that I can seriously email someone saying “want to go to Bruges this weekend?  Like how is this real?).  Fun fact: if you’re under 26, you can go from the German border anywhere in Belgium for 7.80 euro.  And once you’re there, you can travel from city to city for 6 euro.  It’s a GoPass 1 and it is awesome.

So anyway, I met Alex on Friday afternoon by the Bourse, and we grabbed a waffle and meandered through Brussels and took in all the sights: Grand Place, Manneken Pis and Jeanneke Pis (statues of children peeing that are major tourist attractions – humans are strange, you guys), the Musical Instrument Museum (awesome), Parc du Cinquantenaire (Brussels’ version of the Arc de Triomphe; we climbed the top and there were pretty good views of the city despite the clouds).  From the arc, we meandered back to Alex’s apartment, naturally stopping along the way to pick up some Belgian beers and some frites from a stand outside his apartment.

The next day we stopped at the market outside Alex’s place before we got on the bus in order to make the train to Ghent! We actually ran into a slight hiccup here, when the bus driver unceremoniously kicked everyone off of the bus at a random stop, and then the bus following that one drove away without letting anybody on.  So that was fun and also horrible.  One thing that made us feel slightly better about ourselves was that all the Belgian people around us were yelling “pourquoi” and shaking their fists at the bus.  So we just walked the 20 minutes to the train station and had another problem with the kiosk taking our money without printing our tickets.  But eventually we had the tickets, ran to the train, and made it just in time.  It was quite the morning.

Pro of the cold, snowy walk: we caught this view of Brussels’ city center

 

Anyway, we made it to Ghent and the skies were sunny and the city was super cool.  We were only there for a couple of hours.  Long enough to see the big church with the Ghent altarpiece (pretty cool) and mosey around the old town for a bit.  There’s a castle and lots of churches. It was a quirky little town, and I’m glad we stopped through on our way to Bruges.

Ghent

 

Bruges was AWESOME! We spent the afternoon orienting ourselves by just walking around the city, going to the main churches, and walking along the canals.  We had an amazing dinner at Bocca, which is a takeaway pasta place that was perfect and full of carbs and delicious. After dinner we kept walking around, seeing the pretty sights lit up at night.  We stopped at Le Trappiste just off the main square before heading back to our hostel for their happy hour!  The bar was actually quite hoppin with locals as well as poor backpackers trying to get wifi reception.

A view of the bridge in front of The Begijnhof, or the convent in Bruges. We learned for a tour guide that we just happened to overhear that it wasn’t really a convent, it’s just where a lot of unmarried/widowed women who didn’t have anywhere else to go. People accused them of being witches.

 

We started bright and early Sunday morning with breakfast at the hostel and then set off into the town.  We went to the Grote Markt and climbed up to the top of the Belfry to get some awesome views of the city.

Grote Markt

Artsy Belfry Views

After that we bought some waffles and fries and then went on a tour of the Halve Maan, which is the only brewery that’s still operating within the old town.  The tour was great, and after it was over we got a free fresh glass to enjoy the restaurant, where the food smelled amazing (however, we just stuck to the drinks).  We did some shopping, and made sure to stop by The Chocolate Line to get some snacks for the train ride home.  Noms.

Fresh from the tap

 

 

Dark chocolate with mixed berries. Y’ALL.

Herbstferien Part 1: Oktoberfest!

I got SO MUCH TRAVELING done in my two week fall break, and today I will give you part one of my experience – Oktoberfest in Konstanz!  Fellow Fulbrighter Susanna studied abroad there, and she was so kind as to invite me along to visit her old friends and some family that live around the Bodensee.  Konstanz is a gorgeous town in the southern province of Baden-Württemberg bordering the Bodensee, the Danube, and Switzerland, and on a clear day you can look across the lake and see the Austrian Alps.  Definitely a change of scenery from the Ruhrgebiet!

Oktoberfest prep began the week before break began – my number one task was to head to T.K. Maxx and get a bargain-priced dirndl.  Susanna was the right girl to take with me, because she made a beeline for the Tracht and started throwing every dirndl she thought would fit me into my hands.  I’m not going to lie, we spent two hours in that dressing room.  So many dirndl.  So many.  But I emerged victorious and ready for my first Oktoberfest experience!

Let the record show that Susanna is a Dirndl enabler. Help.

We spent all of Tag der Deutschen Einheit traveling by train.  It was a long day.  But a nice thing was we went right through the Rhineland.  Truly beautiful.  We stopped for a two-hour break in the town of Koblenz, a town on the Rhine that was pretty much destroyed in World War II, but they reconstructed it to look almost exactly as it did before.  There’s also a lovely castle across the river and some very lovely churches.  From Koblenz to Karlsruhe, our train view was the gorgeous Rhine River, punctuated every couple of miles by a castle up on a hill.  Rhineland Pfalz and Baden-Württemberg are two of the most beautiful states in Germany!  Le sigh.

Koblenz: Where no one ever has to make any tough decisions

Once we got to Konstanz, we headed to Maddie’s apartment, our first host of the week – she lives in the heart of Konstanz in an adorable apartment building where a cat roams freely.  We pretty much went straight to bed after 10 hours on trains, but most importantly we made plans to cook a traditional weisswurst breakfast the next day to get us ready for Oktoberfest.  During said breakfast we reviewed all the important Oktoberfest songs like “Fliegerlied,” “Schatzi Schenk mir ein Foto,” and “Atemlos durch die Nacht” (check them out they are so German).  We had a few last minute errands to run for the coming week and to get ready for our night, and then we went to the apartment building next door to eat with Susanna’s friend Lena and her family.  Lena’s parents cooked us a delicious meal of Schwäbisch Käsespätzle. nommmmmmmmmmmmms.  Oh my gosh you guys I ate so well.

LOOK AT THIS BREAKFAST SPREAD, Y’ALL

After dinner we went back to Maddie’s to prep.  Maddie and Lena both work at Uni Konstanz’s international office, so in addition to some of their friends who met at Maddie’s place we also met a couple of international students.  Hair braided and decked out in dirndl, we headed to the beer tents.

Back of the beer tent during a brief and rare moment of [relative] calm

 Once we made it into the Hofbrau tent we scoped out a table (we got super lucky and found one where those who had reserved it just never showed up), grabbed our beers, and prepared for a night of singing and dancing.  Everyone in the tent was standing up on the benches, and after every song we all sang a little Prostlied.  Two very awesome Swiss ladies joined us at our table and were probably having a better time than we were.  That’s one thing I’ll probably remember best about my Oktoberfest experience – on every side we were surrounded by super happy, friendly people who did the dance to the YMCA with us and would always Prost with us.  The atmosphere at Oktoberfest is unbelievably fun and unlike anything else!

The thing I really liked about Konstanz’s Oktoberfest is it is pretty small in comparison to, say, Munich.  Konstanz only has two main beer tents – Hofbrau and Paulaner – and their carnival area was much smaller and less crowded (yes!  Oktoberfest is more than beer tents!).  The Konstanz Oktoberfest was also noticeably not touristy – it seemed like most people there were from the Bodensee area.  I’ve never seen Munich’s monster Oktoberfest for myself, but what I’ve heard is that it’s packed with lots of very drunk tourists and reeks of… well, you can probably figure out what it reeks of.  If you’re in Germany during Oktoberfest season, I’d definitely recommend going outside of Munich for your beer tent needs where entrance fees are less expensive, participants more German, but the atmosphere still as kitschy, exciting, and fun as you’d find anywhere!

Prost to Oktoberfest