engineering around the world

More Friends in More Places

… still trying to catch up on blogging for the whole month of October!

On my way to the airport for my trip back to the US for the NAE Grand Challenges Conference, I made a one day detour to Bruxelles to visit Outi, who I met on the first weekend in Chamonix. She is originally Finnish, but her family moved to Belgium when she was three years old, so she has lived there for most of her life. Bruxelles is stunning, and getting to spend the day with a friend made the trip one of my favorites so far.

What did we eat?

Chocolate, chocolate, waffles, and more chocolate.

A true Belgium Waffle. No waffles anywhere else in the world even come close to how delicious this was!

Where did we go?

We started the day off eating lunch with Outi’s father at the European Commission, where he works. I didn’t realize the EC was located in Bruxelles until arriving there, but its the center for the executive body of the EU. Big deal! I felt so lucky to have the opportunity to get a visitors badge, walk around the building, and eat in the cafeteria amongst European commissioners. The whole experience felt very official, and I appreciated what a rare opportunity it was. Following lunch, we explored the city. The main tourist attraction is a bit strange, “Mannekin Pis.” It is a small statue of a young boy peeing. There are several legends associated with this statue, but the one Outi told me about was a story involving a little boy urinating on a fire in order to prevent the whole city from burning down. Very confusing, I know. But this statue is of great traditional importance to the city, and every week they dress him up in a new costume.

Mannekin Pis

I also enjoyed walking through the center of town and admiring the ornate architecture, much of which was decorated with gold. I didn’t take too many pictures of the architecture because I didn’t want to make Outi stand around while I was busy acting like a tourist, but its worth a google search. Better yet, its worth a visit! 

Later in the afternoon, we went to the Magritte museum, which was thoroughly enjoyable. We only had 45 minutes until the museum closed, and we didn’t realize when we bought the general admission tickets that you couldn’t see any of Magritte’s actual work unless you bought tickets for a special exhibition. We would have missed his work altogether, were it not for a very kind employee who let us sneak in anyway. Knowing the local language and being very polite definitely served us well in this case. Speaking of which - Belgium is very politically divided, so while French is the official language spoken in the South, it it taken to be nearly offensive if you try speaking French in the North!  
 

I enjoyed dinner with Outi’s parents in her house, where we discussed their work as engineers and the complexities of the Finnish language. For example, despite the fact that Finnish includes dozens of noun tenses, there is no distinction between ‘him’ and ‘her.’ This made it very easy for Outi’s mother to keep the gender of her expected granddaughter a secret from the rest of the family! They served a spinach pie, and I enchantingly asked if it was a Finnish specialty. Nope, just a pie!

After dinner, we met up with Outi’s friends at a place called Delirium, one of the most famous pubs in Belgium which serves over 2000 different beers. I didn’t know this before, but Belgium is the country of beer. With 2000 options, they clearly offered much more than typical beers, so the menu included drinks such as “cherry beer,” which I never even knew existed. The company was very enjoyable, and I was impressed at what an international crowd Outi hung out with! The people we were with were from Estonia, Portugal, and Sweden - we were also supposed to be joined by somebody from Switzerland. They all went to a European School together, which is filled with students from all over Europe. As proud as I was to be a Trevian when I went to Trier, I found myself wishing I’d gone to an international school that night. But at least I’m lucky enough now to have made friends in enough European countries that my semester is filled with trips to visit them all. While touring around with a group and staying in hostels is fine, it doesn’t compare at all to the chance to stay with friends and experience a city through the eyes of a local.