El río en las Amazonas es negro como el café

El río en las Amazonas es negro como el café y en el atardecer el contraste con el sol brillante amarillo, naranja, y rosado fue uno de los atardeceres más impresionantes que he visto en todos mis viajes. Regresábamos en el barco pequeño, para seis personas, muy contentos porque acabamos de nadar con los delfines. Había más o menos seis delfines a 20 pies de nosotros, y el guía me había dicho que nadara como un delfín para atraer los delfines, y funcionó. Cuando nadaba subiendo y bajando los delfines se me acercaron un poco más.

También vimos un delfín rosado con su hijo al lado. Los delfines rosados son unicos y casi misteriosos. Hay muchos mitos sobre ellos como que los raptan a las chicas del pueblo o les embarazan. Creo que una razón por eso es que es muy difícil tomar una foto de ellos porque no pueden saltar tan alto como los delfines grises. Tienen el color rosado por los vasos de sangre cerca de la superficie de la piel. Cuando ellos se están moviendo mucho, están felices, o tienen miedo, su color se vuelve más fuerte. Entonces los delfines rosados se sonrojan como los humanos.

Cuando estuvimos caminando en el bosque y viajando en el barco, vimos otros animales aparte de los delfines, monos, micos perezosos, serpientes, ranas venenosas, e incluso caimanes. 

La cosa que más me sorprendió pasó en un pueblo indígena donde nos quedamos una noche. Ellos se cazaron un caimán, un mono, y un jabalí. No pensaba que fuera legal cazar esos animales y nuestro guía nos explicó que los indígenas son los únicos que pueden cazarlos y solo para consumo personal porque es una parte de su cultura. El opinión del guía fue que incluso si hubieron leyes prohibiéndolo no dejarían de hacerlo.

La mañana siguiente comimos caimán frito por el desayuno. El sabor es como pollo pero es más masticable. Lo comimos con arroz, patacones, y un pimentón picante. Si alguien me dijera que había comido caimán por el desayuno en el las Amazonas pensaría que fuera una broma. Tampoco, nunca pensaba que dormiría en una casa de pilotes en el Río Amazona y amanecería para comer caimán.

Además comimos mucho pescado incluyendo piraña. Por supuesto comimos muchas frutas, la más común entre ellas se llama la copa azul. La gente del pueblo hace jugos, helados, y deliciosas paletas con la fruta, la cual tiene un sabor entre guanábana y algo amargo.

En primer lugar viajo para conocer otra gente y otras maneras de hacer las cosas. En segundo lugar para la experiencia de probar la comida y en tercer lugar para ver y hacer cosas interesantes. Si conocería gente como la de las Amazonas, comería cosas, y haría cosas tan increíbles y sorprendentes que cada viaje, sería lo mejor.   

Jeep! Jeep!

Una silla, una bicicleta, los pollos en la jaula, algunas hoyas para la sopa, el radio, la linterna, los platos con flores, mis botas de la lluvia, el grande foto de Jesús en un marco de oro, y….ya estamos listos! El fin de semana pasada fui al desfile anual de Yipao en Armenia. Los jeeps que están en Armenia estuvieron importados por el ejército Colombiano después del segunda guerra mundial. Aunque, pronto la gente en el eje cafetero le dio cuenta que son muy útiles en las carreras de barro en las montañas y ya los jeeps transportan:

Fruta

Flores

Gente

Cada cosa de la casa que puedes imaginar

¡Y por supuesto-el café más rico del mundo!

Porque iba a llover, y además tuvimos sed, mis dos amigas y yo nos sentábamos en la sección cubierta de antioquena, el aguardiente de Armenia. Nos regalaron unos bonitos collares de flores y chupas, y estuvimos contentas. 

Todas las familias, los viejos, y las parejas estaban tan felices para mirar el desfile y estaban aclamando y chiflando con entusiasmo ¡No hubiera podido imaginar que el ambiente estaría llena de tanta excitación! 

Me encantaba el orgullo que tuveira la gente de Armenia de sus campesinos y sus productos. 

Además, los colombianos deben ser orgullosos. Colombia es el tercero en producción del café en el mundo (antes de Brazil y recientemente Vietnam) y es considerado como unos de los productores de la calidad más alta. 

En honesto, fue una dia bonita para vivir en el eje cafetero y estar parte de la atmosfera tan comunitaria.

Familia

I stayed with a host family with two adorable girls. Illa is 6 and Chami is 5. They go to a bilingual school, and they had an english spelling bee one night. Illa spelled Zebra wrong and spelled Sunday and Monday correct. Chami couldn’t remember any of her words. The girls reminded me of my cousins in the US. In the evenings they watched the disney chanel, and they were going to different activities after school almost every day-karate, soccer, and sewing class. I'm actually most sad that I lost the photos of the girls.

Lots of the extended family live nearby, and were always stopping in for a chat or food. Which is very much like my parent's house.

Liz, the mom, made all meals from scratch including the sauces and juices like watermelon and chicha and pina (purple corn and pineapple). My favorite meal was a whitish yellow sauce that had potatoes and cheese curd in it and was served over rice with hard boiled egg and olives. I think it is called huancaina sauce.

Peru is greater than Machu Picchu but Machu Picchu=Awesome

Machu Picchu is awesome in the truest sense of the word. One of the magical and intriguing parts about Machu Picchu, is that no-one knows exactly why so much effort and time was put into building it. Some say it was a religious pilgrimage site or a vacation home for Incan royals. Hiram Bingham, the Yale professor and explorer who found Machu Picchu in 1911, hoped it was the lost city of Vilcabamba where the Incas fled from the Spanish with some of their sacred posessions. However, Vilcabamba has still not been found. A more recent theory is that Machu Picchu was a private university for Incan elite.

Some other aweome things about Machu Picchu:

• Machu Picchu is on top of a mountain that is encircled by the Urubamba River, or Sacred River.
• It is aligned with sun in many ways to create things like a compass on a rock. Also the rising and setting of the sun lines up with religious mountains during solstices and equinoxes.
• The stars align in certain patterns on rocks to signify planting seasons.
• There are lots of colorful flowers all over, which is not what I expected next to the stone building and terraces. And 3 new types of orchids were found in the area last year.

It is thought to be such a spiritual and sacred place that Wayna Picchu was built soley to view Machu Picchu. We climbed Wayna Picchu, and it was a really steep climb, where we were pulling ourselves up with our hands at some points, and crawling through a small cave on all fours, and walking down steep, steep, small stairs. The best part was when I climbed up this ladder, through huge rocks, and emerged to a view of Machu Picchu in front of me.

 

R-O-C-K (very ancient rock)

What is this? Limestone. What is limestone? It is a rock. R-O-C-K. Do not forget. Why is there no no roof here? The Incas would look up at Venus. And what else? Mars. And what else? The stars. S-T-A-R-S. This was the rhetorical question-spelling bee-style tour my Sacred Valley tour guide thought was the best way to make ancient Incan history come alive to foreigners. I did not learn that the terraces, the the ones in Pisac below, were built by the Incas to create mico-climates in order to grow a variety of crops, and that is one of the reasons they have something like 80 varities of potatoes in Peru. I was told the terraces were for erosion and decoratin, which is partially true, but not the coolest answer. I learned alot of neat things about the Incas later in Machu Picchu.

Plaza Mayor

Drinking Cusquena, the local watery beer, and eating tequenas, fried bread/small tocish with cheese in the middle and guac on the side I observe from a balcony above Plaze Mayor:


Traditional dancers in front of the cathedral, flute music, women in bright cloth hoop skirts holding baby lamas and charging tourists for photos, taxi cabs, hippies with no shoes, fountain with a gold statue, whistling taxi drivers looking for passengers, northface store, police officers with white gloves, white helmet and orange vest, men selling paintings in cardboard folders, Starbucks, giggling school girls in navy jumpers and white knee socks, men selling sunglasses, men selling flowers, statue of San Cristobal glowing on the hill like in Rio, stray dogs, American study abroad students wearing bright baggy textile pants.

Chicha is sort of like beer

I’m not usually a tour-bus type of traveler. All of the on-the bus-off the bus-30 minutes here for shopping-welcome to this jewelry store my uncle owns-here is another market for shopping-eat at this really expensive restaurant. Not my thing. However, sometimes it’s necessary in order to see what you want to see in a timely fashion, especially when traveling alone. I took a tour like this to see the Sacred Valley when I was in Cusco. When life gives me shopping opportunities I don’t desire, I try to meet the locals.

During the Sacred Valley tour, we stopped in a market in a town called Ollantomtambo, which is where the train station to go to Machu Picchu is, if that sounds familiar to any reader. When told to be back on the bus in 30 minutes, I decided this was good time to try chicha, the Peruvian traditional corn beer. I had heard that a broom with a plastic bag over it mounted outside of a door meant this was a Chicheria (place where they make chicha). So, as my bus mates tried to decipher if the sweaters they wanted to buy were real alpaca or not, I wandered the cobblestone side streets outside of the market in search of a chicheria. This adventure definitely reeked with an air of Harry Potter, Diagon Alley, butter beer, and I loved it.

It didn’t take too long to find my broom, and I peeked my head inside the concrete doorway to find two toothless men sitting on a bench in front of a multicolored mound of corn, and drinking yellow liquid out of oversized mason jars. Jackpot! “Este es una chicheria?” (This is a Chicheria?) I said in my sweetest- childish Spanish voice. The men on the bench looked at me, then at each other, then at me again with confused expressions. I tried again “Quiero probar chicha” (I want to try chicha). Though my childish Spanish sounds a bit rude and demanding, they were forgiving. They brightened and one of the men shouted a gummy “senora, senora” at a concrete room to the side.

A little old lady in a long gray skirt and white apron wobbled to the door and beckoned me in. She ladeled the foamy yellow liquid out of a huge black kettle, and charged me 50 centimos in soles, which is something like 20 cents USD. I gave her one sol, and when she reached in her apron to find me change, I said she could keep the rest for herself. Her eyes widened, and for a second I thought maybe she wanted more money, because this is about $2 USD, but her smile told me she was really happy to have this, and it also told me tourists do not frequent her “bar.”

The men outside had risen from the bench to greet their new drinking buddy. They told me their names were Louis and Alfredo, and we exchanged some normal first meeting in a pub type questions. They asked me where I was from, how old I was, do I like Peru. I like to give these questions back to foreigners to see what they say. I asked them where they thought I was from, and they said Scandinavia, which was a first for me (I’m not blonde). Louis and Alfredo were in their 40s, and have lived in Ollontomtambo their whole lives. They hadn’t met many Americans so they don’t know if they like them. I knew I was going to do my best to give a good impression for my whole country.

The men were eager to give me a tour of the chicha brewery. I picked up several heads of corn from the mound which looked like a patchwork quilt of purple, orange, red, and yellow and they told me that in Peru there are two types of chicha the yellow kind we were drinking, and the chicha morado-which stains your lips a purple-reddish color. Next to the pile of corn was a wheel barrel with the kernels of corn inside and drying out. And then there was a basket with some liquid and corn kernels inside which had sprouted plant-like growths. The men told me this is where the chicha germinates. It takes about a month to ferment, and they sell the chicha in the market and around the town of Ollontomtambo.

The chicha was room temperature and tasted like frothy, wet, dirty corn. The taste and the alcohol content were both mild and for these reasons I was able to drink almost all of a huge cup before shopping time was up, and I had to make a dash back to the bus. I explained that I had to meet my friends, and Louis happily received the rest of my chicha into his mug. I hope Louis and Alfredo also received as friendly a memory of Americans as I did of those in Ollontomtambo.

Peru is greater than Machu Picchu

Before I traveled to Peru, to me Peru was where Machu Picchu was, and so I wanted to go to Peru very badly. In Cusco, I lived with a host family and visited many of the volunteer projects that the organization I work for sends students. I talked with supervisors and children at schools, orphanages, hospitals, women’s shelters, animal sanctuaries, and more. In Cusco, I visited Incan ruins within walking distance of the city and touched the Incan walls that line the everyday work commute for locals.


After traveling to Peru, it is no longer just the place where Machu Picchu is, it is a place filled with warm people who are proud eager to share their culture.

It is a good thing Peru and Machu Picchu were not equated in my mind by the end of my trip, because at this time I had also lost my camera with all of my photos on it. There is exactly one photo of me at Machu Picchu that someone else took. I am more upset that I don’t have the photos of the sweet girls in my host family or the men from the chicheria I visited.

Can you have your culture and Starbucks too?

Since I was teaching English in Quito 4 years ago, the city has become much more modern. This is what everyone in Quito was proudly telling me. What I gathered this meant is that more pueblos have shopping centers and there is a Juan Valdez in the city center. The shopping centers do create jobs, and when the children on the streets come up to you trying to sell chicle from carboard boxes, it is obvious the economy needs help. However, there is a cost to the modernization, which I didn’t hear regular people talking about.

Over maracuya drinks, my Ecuadorian friend who is in construction engineering and heads the teams which design and construct these shopping centers, told me that this is great, it is progress, and it helps the people because they now have things to do like go to the movies or eat in food courts instead of drinking or causing crime. With a skepitical look only a friend can give to a local telling you these things, I ask him if he honestly believes that the option to see Madagascar 3 and then eat at KFC afterwards prevents drinking and crime in Ecuador. He thinks about this for a while, and does admit this is probably not completely true, but it’s clear that most people he talks with are in line with his ideas that the shopping centers and modernization are positive signs of progress for the country.

I explain in my basic Spanish my ethical and philosophical problems with the modernization everyone has been talking to me about. I explain that I believe the mentality that you need to buy things to be happy is not good or healthy for a society.

I recognize it’s easier for me to say materialism is bad, because while I fight my small fight by buying mostly used clothing and frequenting the small guy coffee shops, I also enjoy the ability to choose to go see the Oscar nominated movies in the theatre and get an iced green tea latte at Starbucks. How can I say, I can have it, but you shouldn’t. How can I say, I think your traditional culture, clothes, pace of life, and family values are beautiful and valuable and I think that shopping centers in your pueblos will ruin these things. I would like to come to your country, enjoy and maybe take some of your culture and values back into my own life, but have my Starbucks too. I can’t.

Otavalo Market Maze

The Otavalo market, about 2 hours outside of Quito, is a maze of colors, textures, patterns, sounds and smells. It is a lot of hola senoritas-pointing at a ceramic egg painted with a bright nativity scene, bonitos-pointing at a floral purse, un regalo-pointing at a leather belt, hello speak English-pointing at silver jewelry. And of course-todo hecho de mano y 100 por 100 puro (made by hand and one hundred percent pure wool or whatever you want it to be). You can get lost in the rows of texiled colorful MC hammer pants, ponchos, hammocks, paintings, blankets, and knit tiger finger puppets.

In stark contrast to the capital of Quito where everyone wears knock off American brand clothing like American Eagle and Ambercrombie scrawled across a plain white gym t-shirt. Here many of the women wear traditional clothing-the flexible uniform may be a dark colored felt hat, sort of top hat style and sometimes they stick a peacock feather in it, necklaces worn high on the neck made of tiny red or gold beads strung into rows to make it maybe as thick as your hand, and a long gray wool-like skirt. You can watch these women, with great patience and skill, create their art. Whether it is colorful bracelets, beaded necklaces, or handmade ponchos.

There are many people trying to preserve beautiful traditions in Otavol, but there are also lots of these traditions being exploited for tourists. Cheap bags, scarves, ponchos, hats, etc which are clearly machine made are overflowing in Otavalo. And the people are very eager to sell you this non-art for cheap, really cheap. You can get about 10 scarves for 10 dollars.

It definitely feels a bit strange walking around the market and feeling the same intense, hungry staring I have experienced at certain bars and clubs. Except these people really may be hungry in the literal sense of the word. I don’t really like to be followed after in the market if I decide not to buy something or taken advantage of in bargaining, but I also understand that $1 buys lunch here.

In the Otavalo market maze I felt a bit dizzy with the combination of awe for the beauty of the traditions being preserved and a sense of sadness that I can’t quite name.

We're not in Boston Anymore

I love airports. Not in the Love Actually, it’s heartwarming to see people who miss people and who have been missed kind of way. And I’m not talking about thriving on the anticipation of going somewhere new and exciting. I love airports in the same way I love planes. An airport is a place I can sit with a coffee and a book, and where I usually do not have the ability to wikipedia every fifth word in the book. I love airports, but until recently, it has been my world-wide experience that people working in airports, in any capacity, hate their lives.  Not in Idaho.

Spokane airport, Washington State (close to the Idaho boarder) 7am
Id checker/Boarding Pass Scribbler: How you folks doing? Oh Crampes, I’ve never heard that, is it French?... Well, you’re certainly not going to need that arctic jacket in Sedona, lucky duck…Joan and Michael, how is Tim doing now? He’s selling cars, AND just had his second little one. Wonderful, wonderful!... Caitlin, that’s usually with a K, right?”
Me: “Sometimes.” Now, it is 7am and I’m about to enter the airport security line. Even if I was staying at the airport hotel, which is unlikely, think about what time I must have woken up at. Also, I’m trying to get through airport security and board a plane on time!
Id checker/Boarding Pass Scribbler: “Ah, sometimes” with a lack of earnestness that tells me he thinks I’m a cold-hearted East Coaster.

Logan Airport, Boston Ma at a comparable early morning time
Me: Hi, how are ya?
Id checker/Boarding Pass Scribbler: Possible grunt. Eye contact lasts .2 seconds when he looks at my license and then me, which I’m pretty sure is part of his job required by law.

Spokane airport, Washington State (close to the Idaho boarder) 7:30am
As the TSA Official in the security line takes the third bag in a row back through the scanner, “Folks, liquids need to be separated from your carry on.” He shakes his head with a smile that says, ah you knuckleheads

Logan Airport, Boston Ma about 2 minutes later than the comparable early morning time you previously envisioned
TSA Official in security line shouts with the condescending cadence used by old Catholic nuns to teach children multiplication tables, “People, liquids must be separated from your carry on. You are holding everyone up. There is clear signage. Read it. There are pictures on the signage if you can not read. Separate your liquids. That includes water bottles. That includes breakfast yogurt. That includes lotions. And perfumes. Take off your belts. Take off your shoes. This is not difficult, people.” She shakes her head with a look of disgust that says, you are all idiots.

Other people who were nice to me in Idaho who would not be nice to me in Boston:
-The cop who pulled me over for speeding, and before I could even play the my dad is a cop in Massachusetts card, wished me a safe drive to the airport and hoped I enjoyed Moscow. I was going 60 on the highway, which may get your pulled over in Massachusetts for blocking traffic.
-The car rental guy when I somehow locked my bags in the correct number car for the incorrect car rental company-Dollar not Budget! He chatted about watching out for deer as I dragged him outside in the snow to unlock it.

I can kiss you on one check in Ecuador as I leave a group, even if I only met you for 2 minutes. And if I’m in France I will kiss you on both cheeks. I am well traveled. I am culturally sensitive. Feeling uncomfortable in a new place, observing, and possibly adapting to new social niceties is something that is exciting to me.

However, this veer of social norms in a place I did not present a passport to enter, didn’t seem like a fun game anymore. In my own country, where we share a common language and history, I felt a bit hurt and self-conscious, like these people in their infinite cheerfulness had to be mocking my bitter East Coast ways. Were they?

Mussels in Brussels

This was a delicious meal.

Mezze in Cyprus was my favorite meal of the trip. We had all organic Mezzes at 7 St. George’s Tavern which is all you can eat courses. Some of the best parts were warm organic wine, pita, tahini, hummas, black olives, eggplant hummas,salas with olive oil, chicken and lamb kabob, eggplant,, eggs and zucchini, vegetable fitters,

Best drinks
Crabbies ginger beer in London during the surpise stop over
Stoli, fruit juice, and seltzer which Kacee made me when I finally made it to Cyprus 4 days late
organic wine at 7 St. Georges Tavern in Cyprus
baby guinesses in Cyprus at the Irish pub
Beer from the Brussels festival-Delirium and Leffe
wierd sangria on the beach in Barcelona

dali

I enjoy that the museum is set up in no particular order and with little descriptions near the works, it leaves lots of room for these questions. It is also neat that Dali designed the museum himself, as this is rare for artists to have the opportunity to show their work in the way they choose. I got lost a few times and had to double back through a room, but that is also ok because everytime you see something from a new angle or for another time in the museum you have to stop in puzzlement, look again, and smile.

Is that a spoon, an egg, a penis, Gala (Dali’s wife), lips, Abraham Lincoln, a dead bird, a loaf of bread, a rhinoceros, a telephone? And in this I believe Dali has accomplished his goal.

I had been wanting to see Midnight in Paris this in the US but missed it in the theatres, so Europe being a bit behind on movies was a good thing for me as Merel and I went to see it in Amsterdam. Gil (Owen Wilson is a writer on vacation in Paris and at midnight each night he goes back to Paris in the 20's and meets all these famous writers and artists like Hemmingway, FScott Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dali.


Luis Buñuel: A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!
Man Ray: I see a film!
Gil: I see insurmountable problem!
Salvador Dalí: I see rhinoceros!

castillos

Annabel’s boyfriend, Roger, takes part in this common activity in Barcelona of building human castles. Many of the neighborhoods in Barcelona practice several times per week, and there is a competition every other year with costumes and music. It is a really nice activity to bring a neighborhood together because you need people of all sizes and abilities to build the castle-you need big strong guys on the bottom, limber lighter people to climb up, and a very small girl with good balance and no fear to climb up to the top, raise one hand above her head to signal that the tower is stable and finished.

Japanese family moved to the neighborhood only a few months prior and the whole family is involved in the castillos, with the little 4 year old girl climbing to the top. The kids are all playing around with the other Spanish kids and adults, it was really cool to see a community building activity like this in action.

La Playa

It is really cool to see an amazing and famous for the first time, for Barcelona this means Gaudi, Dali, Las Ramblas, sangria, tapas, the Gothic area, and lots and lots of running around the city. It is also really cool to visit an amazing and famous city that you have already been to without the pressure to see all of the sites and do all of the things that you “have to do when you are in Barcelona.” I spent a lot of time relaxing at a few different beaches in Barcelona, eating, and hanging out with Annabel.

Barcelona was a last minute plan, as it was one of the cities I could fly out of with my miles and I thought I could go to the beach and the the Dali museum which I had not been to. I was so amazingly lucky that Annabel has been back in Barcelona for just a few weeks after finishing her bachelor’s in Rodderdam, and invited me to stay at her apartment. Annabelita was an amazing host making me dinner-tortilla, ensalada, cerveza, chorizo, bocadilla de tortilla, yum! It was so much fun to spend time with her in her home. We went to a beach in the south called. Here Annabel was disappointed because there was a huge gray cloud that looked like it would ruin our beach day, and she said this happens like twice a year in Barcelona. However, with good fortune our cloud passed and we enjoyed the sun, and water, and some weird sangria on the beach.

canal tour

The houses in Amsterdam are very narrow because they used to be taxed by width. They are leaning forward a bit so people can move things in through the first story windows as the staircases are too narrow. Why did Boston not think of this? There is also a housing shortage in Amsterdam, so boat houses are common.

750,000 people and more than 1 million bikes

I do not doubt this statement in the least

Legends are powerful

At first I thought the name of the statue which adorns postcards, corkscrews, and tshifts in all souvineer shops was Manic in Peace, and it was some sort of play on words and the state of the world. However, the name is Mannekn Pis it really means little man pee. in an ols Belgium dialect.

                                                          

There are many, many stories as to why there is a small statue of a boy peeing into a fountain in the Grand-Place in Brussels. Perhaps this is why so many people go to see it, as it’s not very impressive. In the Museum de la Ville, which is a lot about the history of Brussels has a whole room of Mannekin Pis and all of the costumes counties and organizations have dressed him in-the US dressed him as Elvis, Japan did a traditional kimono and sandals, there is an astronaut one. All of the costumes have a little hole so the Manneken Pis can pee. I loved this room-it sort of reminded me of it’s a small world in Disney.Walking into the room there is a video playing from the 80s where they taped tourists from all over the world viewing the boy, and their reactions are all pretty much “why did we spend our time to come see this?”

No one really knows when the statue was built, why it was put in the Grand-Place, or if the statue is actually the original. Consensus is that statue was put up sometime in the 17TH century and the various stories as to why include a witch putting a hex on a little boy who was peeing to the baby of a kind peeing on invading troops. It was stolen several times and there are replicas.

Legends are powerful, and fun.

Beer!

I was really lucky to be in Brussels for the annual beer festival. Kacee and I got a late start due to our normal procrastinating-yoga, running, brunch, coffee, buying jewlry from a stand, buying chocolates, etc, etc. So we had a short amount of time to complete our mission of trying as many different beers as possible-mission accomplished perhaps all too well.

Some really interesting beers we tried were apple, peach, brown sugar, coconut, banana, and really bitter cherry.

Some beers I really enjoyed were the Leffe and Delirium blondes.

Brussels-it will surprise you

This is the slogan of the Brussels government or tourism ministry to promote the city, and I think it’s clever. Pretty much everyone I know who has heard of Brussels, been to Brussels, or is Belgium has told me Brussels is super boring. I don’t really agree. It has rained the entire 5 days I’ve been here, but I like Brussels.

The neighborhoods are made up of narrow cobblestone streets lined with balconies, flower boxes, and bicycles. The city center has lots of well preserved French gothic architecture like old government buildings and churches, as well as many green areas of public parks. This could describe many European cities, but as Brussels is small, there is a quaintness that I enjoy.

Observations about Brussels made after 5 days (so they are definitely accurate):

It smells like waffles everywhere-the metro, outside the palace, the pub. I think it is another pretty clever play of the Brussels tourism ministry to pump the waft of waffles and chocolate into the air.

The train station and system is very confusing, and people don’t really want to help you when you ask questions.

The museums and other public tourist sites do not have lots of English explanations-French and Dutch for sure and maybe an English card on the side of some rooms, if you are lucky. This does not make me mad because I speak English and want to understand what I’ve come all the way to Europe to see. I can sort of understand the French if I want to take the time to read it because of my Spanish. However, it makes me upset for tourists from other places-I have seen a lot of Asian tourists who don’t speak French or Dutch- and they travelled halfway around the world to see these things.