La Vie Parisienne: Coconut Dreams

Welcome to Brussels: The perfect essence of Belgian tourist food

This weekend was certainly not lacking in anything in the culinary realm – and really, is my life here ever? (except maybe peanut butter…)

We arrived in Brussels on Friday afternoon – this time we were at the train station about an hour early – but we had no problems with the trip so that was nice. I am really liking train travel around here – so much more convenient than the airport!

Part of the Grand Place at night

When we got to Brussels we followed our printed out directions to the hostel. The directions seemed to take us through the sketchiest part of the city, but I think that is mostly because the area around the train station is not particularly popular (at least visitor-wise). Nevertheless, after a walk through several rather disconcerting streets, we made it to the more central part of the city and to where our hostel was located. We stayed in Hostel Bruegel, which is affiliated with Hostelling International. It was very efficiently run, and in general was a clean and decent place to stay – for 20 euros a night you can’t ask for much more! I was traveling with four other girls, and they had put us in rooms with four bunks so three girls stayed in one room and the the other two of us stayed in another. I was in the room with just one of my friends, and we had two roommates both nights, but as none of them spoke English or French we didn’t do much conversing!

The Grand Place

Once we were settled in our hostel we headed out to check out the Grand Place at night and find some dinner. The Grand Place is truly one of the more spectacular things I have seen. Every building is slightly different and the style of the square comes off kind of mismatched, but in a very sophisticated way! The buildings themselves are very impressive, and since the square attracts locals and tourists from all over, it was fantastic for people-watching. For dinner we headed down one of the little streets off the square in search of some good moules frites (mussels with fries). We didn’t have far to go, and we ended up having a great dinner – all of us discussing how much it reminded us of Cape Cod!

My friend Andi and I with Moules Frites!

We topped of the evening with some Belgian waffles complete with whipped cream and chocolate – quite decadent!

Our after dinner waffles!

Saturday morning we ate breakfast at our hostel and then headed out to check out the EU buildings around the city. There wasn’t much to see since it wasn’t a weekday and we couldn’t go in them, but the really modern architecture was cool. The buildings were basically all glass and basically reminded me of Oz (except they were gray/blue instead of green)!

Welcome to Oz

European Parliament Building

On our way back to the city center we passed the Palais Royal, the big Cathedral, and also spent some time wandering through a big park enjoying the sun. We didn’t feel very hurried in the city since there wasn’t a huge list of things we wanted to see. We ate a late lunch sitting in the Grand Place and then went on an adventure in search of some chocolate. We vetoed a couple stores for either being too pricey or too touristy, and finally found one that let you make your own bag of truffles to try! Our favorite was a white chocolate truffle with toasted coconut on the outside and coconut flavored inside – we named it the coconut dream and for the rest of the trip we were talking about it!

In front of the Palais Royal

We spent the afternoon at the cartoon museum enjoying the French cartoons we had all read in high school learning French and of course the smurfs, or more accurately, the schtroumpfs!

Cathedral in Brussels

Saturday night during dinner we were ordering our food and our waiter complimented us on our French and asked where we were from. His first two guesses were Canada and Switzerland. Canada we understood, but we were so flattered by Switzerland! (Imagine someone actually thinking you were from a country where they speak French!!) When we told him we were American he was really surprised and told us that he had never met Americans that speak French as well as we do in his entire life. Possibly he was just vying for a nice tip (though less likely as tipping is not common in Europe), but we were surprised and flattered to hear him say that. We didn’t even say much more than the basics, so I guess it just goes to show that even learning a couple words of the native language where you are traveling can go a long way!

After dinner we met up with some other friends who were in Brussels for the weekend at a bar called Delirium – and let me tell you just looking at their menu (ahem, catalogue) makes you delirious – they have over 2000 types of beer there! Luckily we had some recommendations from friends to steer us in the right direction! We even tried one that was called cookie beer. It was supposed to be beer flavored with speculoos cookies – which everyone in Europe loves (or maybe just everyone who visits Europe…). However, since you do me the favor of reading my musings I will let you in on a little secret about the grand delicacy that is speculoos cookies. You know those cookies that they serve on Delta flights – Biscoff, I believe? They’re the same thing as speculoos! But shh. We’ll keep this secret to ourselves!

Sunday was a pretty relaxed day as well but as my entire goal of the trip was to visit the chocolate museum, I was thrilled when we finally found it Sunday morning. The museum itself was nothing to rave about, but they have a wonderful demonstration kitchen downstairs where a little old Flemish woman would give demonstrations of how to make truffles. She gave her demonstration in both Flemish and French and we were surprised how much Flemish we were able to understand. It is an interesting mix of French and English words, all with a Germanic twist. It’s fun to be able to compare all the different languages!

So Happy that we found the chocolate museum!

Sunday afternoon we decided to take a walk into a part of the city that is rather off the beaten tourist path and found ourselves wandering around a wonderful part of town. We found a lovely park where we ate some delicious bagel sandwiches (complete with Philadelphia cream cheese I might add!) and a really neat old church. It was nice to get out of the center of the town, and I am so glad we did, otherwise I would not have had nearly the same impression of Brussels!

Delicious Chicken, Tomato, Cream Cheese and Arugula Bagel Sandwich!

Considering this is one of their main tourist attractions, we had a rather odd first impression of the city:

Mannekin Pis

Despite the city’s odd sense of humor we had a great trip and I returned home to have a wonderful dinner with my host family – thankfully, after all I ate this weekend, we just had salad!

Last night at dinner with my host mom and sisters I told them that in my French class we had been learning French phrases that involve fruits and vegetables (clearly, this is important to my French knowledge).

My favorites include:

Mêle-toi de tes oignons = Mix your own onions (Mind your own business)

Avoir la patate/pêche = To have the potato/peach (To be fit/ Good looking)

Mi figue, mi raisin = Half fig, half grape (Neither one nor the other)

Avoir un cœur d’un artichaut = to have the heart of an artichoke (To fall in love easily)

These phrases caused much laughter among my host family, but it was fun to see which ones they know and use! I plan to try to insert them into my daily conversations and see what happens!

Last night we went to a play at the Comedie Françasie called Un Fil à La Patte. The play was fantastic and the actors were hilarious! There were a couple times when our row was silent because we missed a joke, but for the most part we were able to follow along!

Check out these photos to see the costumes:

http://theatre.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/01/03/avec-jerome-deschamps-retour-au-vieux-theatre-bourgeois/

When I came back my host sister was working on an assignment for her French class in which she had to come up with a plan for an essay that she would explain to her professor in class. My host mom mentioned that she was having a lot of trouble with it so I went in to see if I could help her and we were able to come up with a plan for her essay (luckily I had just learned the format a couple weeks ago in my own French class). It was a great experience to try and work with someone on an essay in French and speak totally in French. I have never been happier to be a writing fellow! Not to mention, I think it was a nice bonding moment for the both of us when we finally got something together! Great moments all around this week.

This weekend I think will be mostly a working weekend as I have a lot of assignments due before my spring break that is coming up in the second week in April. It is supposed to be nice so hopefully I will at least get to do some work on the Champ de Mars!