Coming up on month 8 here in Brussels, and we're still having an absolute blast! We keep pinching ourselves, but luckily we never wake up. Here's what we've been up to:
-February
- Two of our favorite people in the whole world, Dan and Patty, graced us with their jovial presence for two weeks of great times. We took a quick trip up to Amsterdam, threw an "American Party" at our place (we introduced our European friends to Beer Pong and Flip Cup), and enjoyed Patty whipping up some pirogies (there's a Polish food store right down the street!).
-March
- -Took a day trip to Ghent, Belgium with our good friend Erin. It's definitely one of our favorite cities in the country, with a great mix of old and new architecture. It's also about 35 minutes from home, so that makes it handy.
-
- -Our friends Justin and Lisa came to visit for a few days in mid-March, so we took a quick trip back to Brugges to visit that medieval town and former trading center. It's a beautiful little town, and it was fun to explore it with Justin and Lisa. Jen and I still need to watch the movie.
-
- -March was a good month, and we decided to finish it out (and celebrate my 30th birthday) with a two week trip, starting by heading down to southern Italy to visit our friends Andrea and Daniela (and the bambinos, Alessio and Aurora). Italy was amazing, as always, and our Italians showed us all around the "heel of the boot", eating our weight in olives and pasta along the way. It was great just to hang out with them, and by the end of the trip we were speaking Italian (based on our limited knowledge of French, this amounted to generally understanding what people said, then waving our hands wildly and gesturing like crazy people; the Italians totally got it). We decided we're going back in July to explore some of the other nooks and crannies of the region.
-
- -After our great time in Italy we caught a ferry from Bari, Italy to Bar, Montenegro (that's not confusing) to visit our friends Brian, Liz, and their son Lucas (Yeah, Olmsted Program!). They were amazing hosts, meeting us after we got off the ferry, and shuttling us all around their beautiful country. The motto of the tourism site is "breathtaking beauty", and it's dead on. The Adriatic coastline has crystal blue water with Venetian villages perched on cliffsides, and inland there are steep, craggy mountain ranges with tiny winding roads straddling sheer canyon faces. Pretty impressive stuff. Brian and Liz even introduced us to beer in plastic 2 liter bottles, and cevapi, which is known in the Balkans as "the best ground meat product in the world". Awesome trip! My personal favorite Balkan highlight was when, at 7am on our way to the airport, our cab literally ran out of gas in the middle of the road. I laughed it off, and started laughing even harder as our middle-aged, overweight cabbie began pushing the cab with us inside. And he told me he was planning to push it the rest of the way to the airport. Which was a mile away. Hilarious.
-
-April
- -Literally the day after we returned from our two week jaunt, Jen departed to Stockholm, Sweden for the annual "Olmsted Ladies Weekend". Every year the ladies assigned to European posts get together in a city of their choosing for some camaraderie and fine dining. There were 11 women this year, and Jen had a blast. Stockholm looks great, and we'll definitely be heading back some time in the near future.
-
- -The weather here in Brussels this April has been amazing: 60-75 degrees and sunny almost every day. It's not quite San Diego weather, but after a dismal, gray winter, I think I appreciate the sun more than I did in SD. Jen and I picked one especially nice day to check out the Botanical Gardens. Victor Hugo said, "Brussels has two marvels unique in the world: The Grand Place and the panorama of the Botanical Gardens." Since Mr. Hugo's day the smelly horses have been replaced by loud and smelly cars, and the city has certainly grown up around the gardens. Despite that,we set out our blanket near the fountain, which drowned out the sound of the traffic in the city, and read our books while basking in the sun.
-
- -We were lucky enough to see our Italian friends one more time when they came up to Brussels to visit Andrea's sister Stephania and her husband Luc, and to take a quick TGV ride down to Paris to Disneyland Paris. It was great to meet Stephania and Luc, and since they live here in Brussels, we hope to get together again with them soon.
-
- -Just yesterday, we had our last visitors of the month: Sean, Nina and their son Connor, Olmsted Scholars from Regensburg, Germany. Being the consummate travelers that they are, they caught a bus tour to get the lay of the land before we all met up, and in so doing were able to better absorb the walking tour we did later in the day. We even mixed it up a bit by taking a trip out to the Atomium and Mini-Europe. The view from the top of the Atomium was actually even better than I had expected, and although it was exceedingly touristy (but how could 350 scale models of European buildings not be?) I really enjoyed it. In fact, I think my favorite part was watching Connor run back and forth following the mini-TGV as it went through the tunnels.
-
