Belgium

This past weekend, we had the last of three four-day-weekends in the month of May, and took the chance to head to Belgium.  We packed two cities into the trip, Antwerp and Ghent, and both were quite different than what I had expected.  I thought Belgium would be a bit like Luxembourg, and the southern, French-speaking area, might be. We, however, were in the northern, Dutch-speaking area, and it was like a grittier, non-touristy version of the Netherlands.  There were definitely beautiful sections, but both cities felt very “real.”

Our train tickets for the entire trip – there, back, and one day from Antwerp to Ghent – were quite inexpensive, in part because being under 26 years old in Belgium has a lot of advantages, one being ridiculously inexpensive (in comparison to Germany) train tickets.  Young people under 26 can travel between any two cities in the country for only 6 EUR, even on higher-speed trains like the ICs.  Museum entry was also always just a single euro, which was great as I visited two and Jarrett managed to pop into at least five. 

Aside from museums and walking around seeing the beautiful squares and churches, we spent a lot of time eating and drinking.  The waffles and fries from street vendors were just as delicious as we expected them to be, and Belgian beer is truly different and exciting.  While I found a lot of the beers too sweet, I also had some excellent hoppy ones that were very different from American beers – and very very very good.  We also unfortunately discovered the absolute worst beer any of us had ever tasted before, Delerium Tremens.  I’d heard of it before and later read that it’s considered one of the greatest beers in the world, but we all frankly thought it tasted a bit like vomit.  Sorry for the unpleasant image there, can’t win them all! 

Yesterday, it was back to school, where I talked about American High Schools, read a Shel Silverstein poem with the little ones, discussed Macbeth with the 11^th graders, and finished off the day with a nice chat with my other group of 11^th graders. 

And, FINALLY, the sun is shining in Lippe!