10 things I've learnt about travelling

 /people who travel/I spend too much time on modes of transport.

1. Your luggage probably doesn't come with a neon sign attached to it, so sometimes people won't see it and will walk into it, this is your fault. 

2. Also sometimes if you don't come with a neon sign attached to you and you're small enough to be looked over, people will walk into you, this is also your fault. 

3. Seats on any form of transport are measured using tiny children, because there is no way even a small adult would have given the okay to seats that size. 

4. Seat reservations are to be taken seriously, and if you've had the impertinence to misread your ticket and sit in the wrong place you deserve to be publicly shamed through a collection of excessively loud declarations of your error and exasperated sighs as you get ready to move. 

5. Some people will crave human contact so badly they will sit next to you even if there is plenty of other space available.

6. Travel is the time to live your dreams. People who sit behind appear me appear to have dreamt of playing percussion (read as: you are not Keith Moon; stop tapping on my chair).

7. If you're carrying a hiking rucksack as opposed to a suitcase, you are obviously a student or on your gap year, and therefore less worthy of the respect or courtesy of everyone around you. 

8. Most children will be quiet most of the time, on the occasion they dare to make noise it is customary to exchange pained glances with everyone around you. 

9. Sometimes all the stars and planets align and you get two seats to yourself  for a whole journey-this is impossible to enjoy at the time however, due to the fear that will grip you at every station that someone might get on and sit down.

10. 99% of the time, everyone has a pretty firm grasp of social convention and knows exactly when it is a appropriate to make conversation and when it is not. That 1% is the worst 2 hours of your life.

But I had a really nice Easter and now it's moving into double figure temperatures (that's right, people of Britain, it's cold in other places too) we can do things outside and I know I've been really bad at this recently but I'll try and get better I swear.

Until next time!
xx

THANKS FOR THE SNOW, MARCH.

That's exactly what I wanted after the awesome weather we had last week. 

That's just a fucking dream that is.

---

The irony is that I started writing this before I realised I was late to go out to dinner, and on my way home from dinner I fell over and now I can't really walk/sit down/function as a proper human being.
Well played snow, you win this round.
The worst part is that if I manage to sit in a position that's comfortable the pain kind of goes away, and then I forget why I'm so bed-ridden in the first place and I try to get up and do something and...well there's a lot of swearing going on after that put it that way. I also keep throwing my phone casually onto the bed and realising I can't bend down to pick it up. So I have to do a weird kneel-then-roll kind of movement and my life is just a series of ridiculous movements at the moment.
There's also a really attractive lump on the back of my head.
Only I could possibly injure myself so severely from slipping over in the street.

And although I'm obviously eternally grateful for the people who stopped to ask if I was okay...they were probably a bit too quick to try and call me an ambulance.
I think proportionality here is key. Yes, I was in a lot of pain, but I sat up almost straight away and I only really wanted to stay sat down because I'd just travelled a 1.65m downwards in about half a second, so I was confused. I wasn't sure what I was doing on the ground to be honest. It's not like I'd been shot.

In all fairness even if I had been shot I'd probably still get up and persist that I was fine. I find talking to strangers pretty awkward at the best of times, so if I'm going to be writhing in pain, I want someone I know to watch me do it. 

And now I'm doing weird things to protect myself from further pain, like physically stopping people who are trying to pass me in shops and moving away in case they accidentally brush against me and cause me to burst into tears. I'm giving no explanation to these weird gestures though, so I either look overtly polite or like I have serious social anxiety problems.

This hasn't been that interesting and I apologise, but if there's one thing being in constant pain does not make me want to do, it's write. Or anything at all for that matter.

Au revoir.
xx

No spoilers here - just good food.

 

Look how beautiful Brussels is in the autumn! It's still like 20°C here at the moment, which is even better. I really feel that if it was always this temperature and looked this good then I'd stay here forever, but realistically I'm just waiting for winter to return with a vengeance.

Okay so I saw Taken 2 over the weekend, it was really good, that's all I'm saying.

There is a post coming but that probably won't be for another month or so, to prevent the punches in the face that I would totally deserve if I completely ruined the film for anyone who reads my blog.

I also made a very dangerous discovery:

And it's only €0.15. They shouldn't make something that's so tempting that cheap, especially not when 6 apples are like €3 or something ridiculous. But luckily after you've eaten one you can't  imagine eating anything sweet ever again, so as food, it more than does its job, and you definitely couldn't have too many of them. And I'm actually doing exercise now, so I don't feel that bad - actually, what am I saying, I never feel bad when it comes to food. My bad eating habits are definitely the worst symptom of my limbo financial situation where I have no idea how much I'm going to have to live off for the next 8 months - to say I go to what is now the third best University in the country, they sure take their sweet time to respond to their students. Clearly time taken to (helpfully) reply to emails was not one of the criteria.

They've started selling Christmas themed biscuits in the Delhaize now, so if you hadn't already noticed, Christmas is coming. Usually I'm not excited this early but I'm travelling home on the night of Halloween and they don't celebrate Bonfire Night here for obvious reasons so it's the only winter holiday I really have this year. And it's going to be the first time in about 5 years (seriously, what have I been doing with my life) that I won't spend Christmas tidying gift displays and getting up at 5am on Boxing Day (okay really, I didn't realise how awful that was until I saw it written down). I'm not even going to mention the fact I won't have to do any revision, because that's just mean.

Apparently this post is almost entirely about food because I'm now going to talk a bit about the amazing Romanian food I had for lunch (and dinner) at the event I went to on Saturday. Salată de vinete is mashed aubergine and chopped onions, it's amazing on bread, pancakes with ham and cheese, eggs stuffed with pâté and a side dish made with tomatoes and root vegetables. Dessert was pastry filled with cream (best description I can think of) and what were basically Hobnobs but they were home made so obviously ten times more amazing. Overall, I had two very good meals from that food. Thanks Romania.

Continuing the theme, the crisp flavours here are just baffling, so they use blue for paprika and green for pickles, which is...fine I guess, I mean blue for paprika is a weird choice but whatever. But the issue is really that those are the only flavours you can get, which means someone at Walkers/Lays decided that Belgium didn't need a variety of crisp flavours, they needed Paprika, Pickle, Naturel and nothing else. And now they've got this special edition hamburger flavour which is not only the worst thing I can imagine but its also taking up space which could be used for other normal flavours. I don't even like crisps that much, but it bothered me that should I ever crave them, I'd have incredibly limited options.

I think that's pretty much it.

Oh and I'm going home in like 8 days.  So excited.

Lots of love!

xx

There were going to be more photos but...

it rained. The it rained some more, and my measly completely-made-of-paper notebook took the brunt of the bad weather, so now it's just some paper stapled together rather than an actual book because the cover came off. Yes, this was made worse by the fact that I got lost, and yes, this is the same place I got lost finding last week, but finally I've realised where I've been going wrong, something I could have done much earlier by paying more attention when I walked home...

But it's good to know that the weather is just as bad at home at least, although I am still missing things from home:

• A hairdryer - So I don't get temporary pneumonia every time I wash my hair.


• An oven - Which I didn't realise we didn't have until I got here, and even though I barely cooked in the oven at uni due to its inability to cook anything evenly, I've just been continuously craving oven pizza for the past 3 weeks.


• My running shoes - So. Many. Carbs. Even with the lack of pizza I've been eating terribly and to be honest, I need to do some sort of exercise when the office is only 5 minutes away.


• Central heating - That's not a Belgian thing, we just can't turn the heating on until November in the house, which I assumed would be fine, until I had to start wearing more clothes in the house than outside of it.


• The time - Or rather not converting it for no reason in my head every time I look at a clock, even though it's just an hour I can't get out of the habit of knowing what time it would be if I was in Britain.


• Not living with my landlady - it's only for another couple of weeks now, and I'm not exactly untidy...but it's a bit like having your lecturer or boss follow you home to make sure you're doing enough work, it's just a bit weird. So I've taken to hiding things I haven't had time to wash up yet in my room, like being a student, but in secret.

Also a fun fact: If you get your bike stolen from the street in Brussels, you'll probably find it at the bike market at Gare du Midi on a Sunday, where about 90% of stolen bikes turn up.

Just one photo from something we visited at the weekend, it's Porte de Hal, a city gate from the second set of Brussels city walls.

À la prochaine :)

xx

1 week in Brussels - 10 things.

Here are ten things I've taken from my first week in Belgium:

1. Brussels apparently put cars last on their list of priorities against other forms of transport, in fact today is even 'No car day' and public transport is free. However, it appears no one has told the cars this, and everyone drives like they've been told they've only got an hour to live, like 'even if there's a red light I'll drive anyway if it doesn't look like I'm going to hit anyone'. It will probably be a small miracle if I leave this year without a broken leg.


2. The weather is the same. For anyone who had the idea that the weather would be much nicer for much longer in Brussels, this was an error, it's freezing and it rains, just like home...


3. On a more positive note, my French is much better than I thought, at least understanding wise, and when someone asked me a question in the street I actually helped them!


4. Sunday is a ghost town day, everything is closed by 1pm apart from the restaurants, public transport is still as regular,  but buying things is off the agenda entirely.


5. They absolutely love the waffles-fame, no doubt, they know that's what people come to see, in Grand-Place there are at least 5 shops per street that sell waffles for €1, and the waffle vans are everywhere in the city.


6. There's a big difference between the outer districts and the Schuman/EU institution area, particularly in language. I barely hear English in Etterbeek, but a 15 minute walk to the institution buildings creates a very different environment.


7. People are constantly coming and going. Not just in a 'this is an international city' kind of way, but in a 'internships are usually only 5/6 months here' kind of way. So as I'm staying until the end of June, come March I'll probably have to make a whole new set of work/house friends.


8. Google Chrome struggles with having websites in 3 languages. It translates something originally only in French fine, or in Dutch fine, but as soon as a website is potentially in both languages and I would like it in English we seem to get an amalgamation of the three. In which it translates some number characters into their English word counterparts and days of the week are spread over all three languages.


9. It's pointless to register as a resident - or so I've been told. I had an appointment to go and show my documents and pay the fee to become an official resident which then means I can have a bank account. However when I mentioned this to some people they told me it was more trouble than it was worth and since international bank transfers means I don't even need a Belgian bank account to pay my rent  and I don't want a phone contract - I guess they're right.


10. The guy who created Tin Tin is from Brussels, he's even from my district, which so far is my only claim to fame.

À la prochaine

xx