we felt like shaking things up a bit

so we crossed that border

11.10.2007 49 °F

I don't know what all these excessive buttons and advertisements are on here. They weren't here when I started and I sincerely apologize for their unsightly presence. Now that I have gotten that off of my chest, moving on.

So what I didn't know when I posted last was that later that night I would find myself in Brussels. Yup, that's right, I finally crossed the border that is maybe 20 minutes from where I live and headed on over to Belgium. On a whim. This is how it happened:

After an intense game of 3 on 3 football (soccer) during which I scored twice, David mentioned that his friend Tim from Ireland was having a birthday extravaganza that evening. In Brussels. He said that he was going to take the train at around nine if we wanted to join him. This was at about 6 pm. There was no way that we were going to pass up an opportunity such as that, so, we met downstairs and set out for the train station. David, Ben, Lena, Toni and I bought our tickets for the 9 o'clock train.

Not thirty minutes after we left, we were outside, trying to decipher a Brussels tram map to get to a place that had a Flemish name. And we were admiring the advertising. March of the penguins, anyone?

Ben and I continually exchanged looks of "we just went to Brussels on a whim" all night long. Crazy.

We met up with this Tim fellow, bought him a drink for his birthday, as seemed to be the preferred method of gift-giving that evening.

We hung out with him and his other Irish friends, his friends from Brussels and some other random ERASMUS students. (ERASMUS is essentially the exchange program within Europe) So we went out all night. I'm talking 3 bars (not including the one repeat and including one that claimed to have 2,004 varieties of beer), 2 kebab stands and no sleep. And it was a blast, really.

David, noting that the glass bears the name of his hometown.

We wandered around town some too, seeing the main square.

The next thing I knew I had danced until 5h30 with a very random group of people to a combo of bad eighties pop and good rock songs. On the way to the second kebab place a guy was hanging around a fountain and asked us for a minute of our time. He wanted us to sing " I love alexia " to the tune of "I love rock and roll" up to a window. We quickly agreed, thinking that it would be a fun addition to the night. He proceeded to fill in all the lines between with some pretty clever lyrics and we left after exchanging handshakes and "bonne chance"s. We never got to see this Alexia, but I hope she appreciated it. Or at least heard it.

After the stop at the kebab place to refuel (not me, as somehow I had managed to leave Lille with all of 3 euros in my pocket, 2 of which I had spent on a pint of beer) we headed to the train station to catch the earliest eurostar back to Lille. We lounged around exhaustedly for thirty minutes and then we were ready to board our train.

Turns out they needed a passport from the two Americans to let us on the eurostar.

Now I had mine (always a good idea for that whole international travel thing, yes?) but Ben had managed to leave his. The lady asked if he had enough time to go back and get it because the next train that didn't require a passport wasn't leaving until noon. He kindly explained that the problem was that his passport was in Lille, because the French somehow let him out of the country without it. The lady kind of laughed and said that he'd have to take a different train. I offered to stay with him, sort of in the same spirit that David had stayed at the concert for me and the fact that Ben had helped me drag around my luggage on our voyage over here. Plus, I thought it would be kind of crappy to leave a friend stranded passport-less in Belgium at 7 in the morning without sleep, a phone or a plan.

So we went to have out tickets changed, with the same guy that had sold us the originals. He looked at us and said that there was a train that was leaving in 5 minutes, did we want that one? "Oui, bien sûr." "Voie 16, à votre droit." ("yes, of course." "Track 16, on your right.") And so we ran. Once up the escalator, we were greeted by.... nothing. No train. I turned to the only other person standing there and asked for the train to Tournai (the changeover station for us on this new ticket) and she said, " oh, ils ont dit que maintenant c'est voie 21" "21? merde!" ("oh, they said that it is now at track 21." "21? —insert favorite exclamation here—!") We took off again, sprinting full speed, back down to the terminal area, then back up. We saw that the train was still there (hooray!) and then we tried to open the doors. I don't know if they had been closed on purpose or if we just hadn't been told the secret handshake, but we couldn't open them. Ben saw the conductor fellow at the end of the train and ran. At this point in time, I would like for you to keep in mind that we had essentially been out ALL NIGHT. Not very much of said night had been spent sitting down. None of it had been spent sleeping. I was tired. And Ben was fast. I ran like I was. We asked the guy if this is the train to Tournai and he says "Oui, montez, VITE" ("Yes, get on, QUICKLY") and slammed the door behind us. We collapsed into the nearest seats and caught our breath as we handed him our tickets. We commenced laughing as soon as there was enough air in our lungs.

Our new train was commuter train -like thing. Meaning, we went through what seemed to be a lot of obscure countryside and made quite a number of stops. It also means that it was incredibly beautiful to watch the sunrise over the Belgian scenery. Ben and I spent several contented minutes of silence just watching as the fog was eaten away by the sun. Stunning. I tried to take a picture.

Here is the station where we had our change of trains.

And here is the station that signaled we were home.

A wonderfully random evening/night/morning that required a little catching up on sleep, but all in all was well worth it.

The Sunday I spent hanging around downtown, mainly because it looked like this:

That's the fountain right outside of the Palais de Beaux Arts. I think I miss the Hendrix fountain.

The sign basically explains don't drink this and don't bathe in it either.

The cool thing about the first Sunday of every month is that all national museums are free! That includes this one.

I saw a few Monet's and some Rodin. The Van Gogh that they have wasn't available to the public, but Napoleon was there:

There was also this lovely statue that made me think of Marksville, with the whole broken wheel thing. So I took a picture.

Coming back I ran into a Braderie. It's as if everyone in a city decided to have a garage sale at the same time. It started at this metro stop at Marbrerie: