Starting with Brussels:
When thinking of this trip, I mostly thought of Brussels as "the city before Paris", someplace I never really had a desire to go to. It turns out that Brussels is a beautiful city-- granted, I didn't see much too far outside the center. It's a bi-lingual city, French and Flemmish (although I did research on this fact for the "study" part of this trip, and it turns out it's definitely more of a French-speaking city), and is the seat of the European Union. One of the first things I did when I got to Brussels was to get a waffle-- a Belgian waffle! It was delicious, one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. There is sugar inside the waffle, and they're made with dough, not batter, so they cook differently... and you put bananas and/or strawberries and/or whipped cream and/or chocolate sauce, or Nutella... wow.
The middle of the city is dominated by the Grande Place, a huge cobblestone plaza enclosed by elegant, ornate stone buildings trimmed in gold. The buildings include the Town Hall, a strip of chocolate stores and restaurants, the city's culture and history museum, and the beer museum. There are little streets leading off from the center of the Place, and down each are more restaurants, chocolate shops, waffle stands, and other little boutiques. If you follow one of these streets-- this one in particular which is lined with extremely touristy restaurants with the waiters standing outside trying to coerce you to come in-- you reach another alleyway, down which is the famous Delirium bar. They have the largest selections of beer available (please don't forget that Belgian beer is famous worldwide...), and it is always full upstairs and downstairs with tourists and locals. Everyone we talked to inside, if they were actually from Brussels, said that they loved the place even thought it was touristy, because the beer and the atmosphere are so great.
Alley off the Grande Place, home to Delirium and the Girl Manneken Pis.
The Grande Place at night.
"TUNISIE, ALGERIE, EGYPTE, 127-BIS... ICI COMME AILLEURS..."
Living history.
On Monday, our first full day in Brussels, we went to the headquarters of the European Union, where we listened to 3 experts speak about various EU sectors and operations. We have been to some amazing places-- even in Switzerland, we have badges to go to the UN and have gone frequently for lectures, as well as to the WTO and the ILO. All of these organizations that used to seem so far away and up in the clouds, I have been to and have listened to their employees and experts talk about what I had formerly only read about in textbooks. That being said, a lot of the times the lectures are on more basic information, and as international affairs students this is pretty frustrating, because we could be talking about more detailed issues or current events. They can't escape the revolts and demonstrations in North Africa and the Middle East, however... this situation has come up at almost every lecture, always in the context of, well we'll see how things will change now... This is an incredible time to be alive, let alone studying and working in the field where all of these changes are taking place. Seminars and events are popping up everywhere relating to the uprisings: there is an international film festival in Geneva for the past two weeks, and there was a film/discussion on the Arab Spring; I attended a lecture at the nearby Webster University in Geneva, after one of our guest lecturers at SIT mentioned he would be holding a presentation/discussion on the Arab Spring. Ok, I digress from my nerdy tangent...
Inside the European Union headquarters, Brussels.
Inside the Brussels beer museum... small, to the point, free sample at the end.
Brussels/Belgium is famous for it's waffles, chocolate, beer, and lace. There waffle stands everywhere, so it was easy to get our fix of those, and the same with small boutique-y chocolate stores and beer. There were lace stores too, but clearly things you can eat or drink are more interesting... We went to the beer museum, which consisted of the entryway where old beer-making machines and steins were displayed, and a room with modern equipment and a continuously running how-to film playing. This was the extent of the museum, and afterwards you could have a sample of house-made blonde or cherry beer. Those are both very popular and very Belgian, and the cherry is like cough syrup. In my opinion. We also went to the chocolate museum, where the history of chocolate is explained, as well as the regional differences and the different kinds of chocolate and sugar... you can taste the different components of the chocolate, like cocoa butter and chocolate nub-things, and can also watch a chocolatier-woman making fresh chocolate in molds at the demonstration. What a cool place.
Another quick Brussels trivia bit: the Manneken Pis statue, just off the Grand Place. There are a few versions of the story behind this tiny statue built in the 1600s of a boy peeing into the fountain-- the best known/most viable is that during a war in the 1100s, a baby lord was carried in a basket during a battle, and he peed on the invading troops. There is a female version of this little man in the alleyway of Delirium... Brussels is a fascinating city.
Manneken Pis, Brussels.
Chocolate statue, "La Tête d'Or", Maison du Chocolate.
Protestors for democracy in North Africa.
Our last night in Brussels, we went to a restaurant across from the Manneken Pis that we called the Marionette Bar, for lack of understanding its Flemmish name... It was a small place with three levels, and marionettes hanging all over the walls and ceilings. It was all made of and furnished with dark wood, and there were pictures of the Manneken Pis everywhere, as well as books on Belgian beer, and a poster of all of the Manneken Pis's costumes through the ages. We had a great dinner of spaghetti and beer, and enjoyed the night before waking up to leave for Paris the next morning.
Books on Belgian beer-brewing inside the Marionette Bar.
And now Paris:
We took the TGV to Paris on Wednesday, dropped our stuff off in our hotel (from which we could see the Eiffel Tower... continuation of dream-week), and went exploring. Three years ago as a senior in high school, I visited Paris for 5 days as part of an exchange program, so I was familiar with the top-of-the-Eiffel Tower, top-of-the Arc de Triomphe, climbing of all things climb-able, and wanted to experience some different, less immediately touristy things. However, the first afternoon I walked with some friends past the Musée d'Armée, then along the Seine, to the Musée d'Orsay, the Impressionism museum. I loved the Louvre the last time I was in Paris, but you really need at least one day to devote to seeing it, and it's exhausting. The Musée d'Orsay is more manageable, and is in an old converted train station which is in itself beautiful. It was a great entry into Paris. Later that night, we had a traditional French dinner with the program, and wandered around near the Latin Quarter trying to find places with jazz. We landed in this small bar with music playing that sounded live but wasn't, and a mean little Frenchman waiter who tried to pass his meanness off as funniness, which didn't work. Ah the Parisians.
View from the street off our hotel, on a rainy Parisian night.
On Thursday, we went to UNICEF for a lecture on children and education, which was rather discouraging like the others. On the way back to the hotel, there was a farmer's market where we bought nuts and hummus and delicious bread, and I found an almond and fig cookie from an Italian baker that was delicious. The thing I really wanted to do this time around in Paris was to walk through the catacombs, very old underground quarries-turned-cemetary overflow sites which stretch through a considerable part of the city. We walked by way of the Cimetière Montparnasse, where large, elaborate, artful tombs stretched forever. It was pretty chilling, although it was interesting because famous writers and philosophers are buried there. The great Tour de Montparnasse shot up in the background, after a row of apartments right next to the cemetery, and made for a stark contrast of old and dark versus new and shiny and promising. We continued our walk to the catacombs, only to find the line around the corner down the block and the entry closing at 4pm. Not deterred, because it is Paris after all, we took the metro to the Notre Dame, and walked in and around there for a while. A few hours later as we were leaving, we walked past the Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, which had really fantastic old posters of Beat generation books and publications, and lots of signs from the famous City Lights Bookstore, as well-- the shelves inside were overflowing with books, and although it was still pretty tourist-infested, it reminded me a little of the Capitol Hill Books in Eastern Market, DC. This is an old town house that is literally made of books-- books fill the old kitchen, the old (still functioning) bathroom (they keep the language books in there...), and all along the staircases.
Cimetière Montparnasse.
Artist across from the Notre Dame-- Paris.
Poster outside of Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, Paris.
Notre Dame in the distance.
As it was still a little early for dinner, we went to a café called Les Deux Magots, famous for the philosophers who frequented it in the late 1800s-early 1900s. We sat outside as dusk came, and met our first genuinely nice, not too pushy or disgusted with our American-ness, waiter. We stayed until the sun set, then made our way back to the Latin Quarter. Earlier, on our way to the café, we had walked past a restaurant named, "Au Bon Couscous". Like all other restaurants in the area, there was a man standing outside trying to coerce people to eat in his restaurant. We stopped to look at the menu, and after he advertised it specifically as "moroccan couscous", I started talking with him in Arabic. He seemed confused at first and then very happy, and I said we'd be back. So we returned, and had the best service by everyone in the place-- our Tunisian waiter was very funny and said, when we said we were from America and studying International Affairs in Europe, "oh, so you want to take over Europe, too!" We had some interesting conversation with him, but he was the sweetest old man. He brought us free apéritifs and mint tea, and smiled when I asked for bread in order to eat my delicious lamb and caramelized onion/almond/raisin tagine. It wasn't the same as back in Morocco, but it was close enough to make me unreasonably happy.
Les Deux Magots-- café of the philosophes of the 1800 and 1900s.
The view once again
Bright and early the next day, I checked out of the hotel, stored by bags in the lobby, and went with a few friends to the catacombs when they opened at 10am. It was really cool at first, there was a little museum-esque room when you climbed down the bottom of the long staircase, and then you walk through the underground hallways that used to be quarries. Some of the hallways have street signs on them, and then we reached an area where there were elaborate scenes carved into the rock walls, which was completely unexpected. But as we walked further, we reached a point where the walls began to be made of bones... yes, bones. I guess in the 1800s, the cemeteries of Paris became so full, and they needed more building room, so they moved all the bodies that had been in the cemeteries underground. There are signs marking which bones come from which cemetery, and other signs with quasi-morbid quotations engraved on them built into the walls of bone. It was really chilling, literally at some points, especially when water dripped from the ceiling while we were standing in front of a tomb. We toughed it out and finished walking through, then climbed up another long staircase and found ourselves above ground, totally disoriented. Talk about seeing a different side of Paris...
Hallway in the catacombs.
Sculptures in the catacombs.
"Ossements de l'ancien cimetière St Laurent déposés en 1848"
"Skeletons of the old St. Laurent cemetery disposed in 1848"
Walls and designs made from the skeletons in the catacombs.
Altar-type structure in the catacombs.
Last but not least...
Rabat, Morocco.
Being in Paris, I was already halfway to Morocco, and just couldn't really pass up the opportunity to go. I had been following the independent news online since the uprisings in Tunisia, and Morocco wasn't in any real danger of following down that path, as we've seen. Since everything stayed relatively calm, Friday afternoon after walking through the catacombs in Paris, I took the metro to the airport and flew to Rabat. It was great to see my old host family-- my host sister's still as crazy and fun as ever, and coming back to my host mom's cooking was like I had been hungry this whole semester and was just then eating again. I went back to the café Nora and I always used to go to, and the waiter still remembered me; I saw a friend who has stayed in Rabat with the program for the year, and met my family's new host students. The across-the-hall neighbors and their son were still there and as nice as ever-- it was the strangest feeling to feel so at home there. Things I noticed-- there were police on every corner, looking attentive, at least, and only once on Saturday did I see a crowd of people in front of Bab al Had outside of the medina, but I don't think there was a single sign there. Everyone said that it was the weekend, why would anyone want to make any trouble? Kids were playing in front of the parliament building... this is really a very unique country, the social and political scenes just aren't the same as the other countries in the Middle East North Africa region, and it is still as beautiful as ever. What a shock to fly back into Paris, to the cold northern climate, after reverting back to the warm air, the lazy café culture.
Home sweet home-- the suburbs of Rabat, Morocco.
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