Lille, France and Brussels, Belgium (Pfingstferien, 19 May - 26 May 2013 + some September 2012)

I found out two Wednesdays ago that our students would have a week vacation for "Pfingsten". This apparently is a University-level decision. That is, some universities have a week off, some don't. Everyone has that Monday off, as it's a public holiday. Due to the technicalities of vacation time in Germany, I also designed it to be a "working holiday", so the touristing stuff was on the weekend and late afternoons.

Discovering this, I decided that I really ought to see some friends I haven't seen in a while but have been meaning to (former residents of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois as well) in Brussels and also see my good friend who is in Lille, France, as she leaves Europe to move back across the ocean soon.

I bought a roundtrip flight through Brussels and also (by walking in to a DeutscheBahn travel center) bought TGV tickets between Brussels and Lille; by (fast) train, it's about 30 minutes.

While waiting at the Brussels  airport train station, I noticed this Mannekin-Pis Cola machine. Well. It is a symbol of Brussels.

Here's the view pulling out of the train station. Bears some resemblance to all main train stations I've seen in Europe, I suppose:

Brussels by train

[LEUVEN]
I stayed over in Leuven when I arrived and the night I left. My friend D. is a pleasant 5 minute walk from the main train station there, which is a 15 minute train ride to Brussels-National airport.

Leuven is a funny town with sister town Louvain-la-Neuve, which I talked about before (at "case in point...").

I arrived a bit late-ish, so didn't snap many pictures. This is the view from the main train station down towards their cathedral:

I did take some pics of my friend's swank flat, but it feels a bit weird to just toss them up here, so you'll have to trust me that it is swank. 3 of the 5 or so (depending on how you count) rooms in his place have (filled in) marble fire places, and there are some awesome chandeliers.

[LILLE: May 20th until 25th + September 2012]
The title says "+ September 2012" since I had been to Lille once before, a middle-small-sized town in the Flemish bit of France. It is really a lovely town, and a good blend of Dutch and French sensitivities (French:
2 euros for the best cheddar/brie/etc you'll ever have!
8 euros is 'too much' to pay for a good bottle of wine!
Dutch: 
Meat! Beer-y meat!
Delicious beer!
More beer! ;))
I'm also told that despite being in France, people tend to drink beer with meals instead of wine.

That does not keep them from speaking French, however. I was thinking (again) this trip that French is a really "wet" language. Like you always need some reserve spit hanging out in your mouth to properly say words like "rouge".

Lille has made its "name" by being that place where the train dumps you off in France when coming to France from London. Some people just change trains and head on to other places in France. The rest just hang out and go shopping. As a result, there are a lot of people wandering around speaking English, and the staff at the more centrally-located shops tend to speak some English as a result, which is nice as a foreigner.

When arriving in Lille (specifically at the train station Lille Europe), one is greeted by the Eurostar building, which reminds you, in case you didn't know, that the town you're in has a name that begins with the letter "L":

Adjacent is a nice mall abutting a giant French version of target/walmart, Carrefour. Everything from "Je t'aime" baking tins to 2 euro cheddar to random clothing. The mall itself is full of fashionable-yet-affordable (mainly) stuff. I got a few things there and had fun looking around.


The sort of main square area:

Those polls show where cars can drive. Confusing the first time through.

I think some of my main thoughts walking around both Lille and Leuven is that it's clear (or, at least, seems so) that these places did not get obliterated in WWII bombings, unlike a lot of towns in Germany. Either that, or they had top notch reconstruction efforts.

The following is a fantastic example of German-style humor (wordplay):

Fleur de Lille 

[FOOD IN LILLE:]

My first day in, we met several other math people and went to dinner at Café Leffe. I really enjoyed the "English" menu. I took a picture but it was too dark to be really legible. My favorite items were:

CONCERNING PORC WAY BIG MOTHER about 300 grams. (cote de porc façon grand-mére)
and CRUNCHY OF GOAT (which was a goat cheese and crostini salad, I believe)

The next day, we ate out again after watching a practice job talk, at Les 3 Brasseurs. I had a flammküchen (spelled roughly the same as in German), which is kind of pizza, but with super thin crust. For dessert, I had to try the one that came with a bit of everything (it was all amazingly delicious):

Coffee + a shot of something + 3 tiny desserts

French desserts do a good job of being both rich(i.e. fatty) and sweet.

We also ate several times at Exki, which has delicious tarts, quiche, and other healthy-seeming foods. They also have good coffee and free wifi. :)

Other expeditions were made to Le Pain Quotidien, which had nice food and coffee (and wifi), but was much smaller and so a bit cramped.


[SEPTEMBER 2012 IN LILLE:]

I took a day or two to walk around the place. Here's pictures I took along the way.

Seafoood mural on a seafood restaurant

This next bit was the main tourist shopping boutique-y area of Lille, in its old town:

the main tourist shopping area of lille

Random red building nearby:

This cool mirrored building abuts the end of the canal-formerly-known-as-moat (for the citadel):

cool mirrored building

Said moat/canal: I would doubt that there are any real fish inside. It smelled pretty rank (which might have to do with its history as a moat):

moat/canal with fish graffiti

The citadel which goes with said moat:

Citadel plaque

The citadel is still actively militarized, so the best I could do was walk up and take a picture of it from the bridge over the moat:

"entrance" (although, couldn't really enter)

Nearby (ish) to the citadel is the Zoo, which is free and public and rather sad. They had some white rhinos:

And some primates that seemed to have some fun hanging out on their fence and trying to grab things from the water. Or maybe just contemplate life: 

Lille has quite a few churches, some of which I just walked by and some which I went inside of.

Church fenced in by other buildings

cool church top

One had a really cool pulpit-thing (all wood): 

Like most old churches, these had lots of little niches, some with relics. This one contained the bone of a crusader: 

the very smallest topmost thing contains said bone

Also some mosaics which looked like tapestries to me:

mosaic-"tapestries"

another view of the wall mosaics and niches

The mosaics were also on the floor:

probably meant to represent Lille

Other stuff:

a rather modern window

If you walk south(ish) enough, you run into the Port de Lille, pointing Paris-wards (I think):

Port de Lille

[Brussels: May 25th]

To Brussels! I've been to Brussels properly once before, in November of 2009 (you can go back and see my pictures here and here (I also saw Amsterdam, Bruges and Ghent on that trip)).

I caught the mid-day-ish TGV/Thalys back to Brussels on Saturday morning.

Since I've done most of the touristy things, I was more interested in chilling out, enjoying the great weather and exploring.

First stop! Food, at this kooky place called "Ozfair"

the storefront

It was a good example of the kind of multi-use bizarro-zoning place we saw several of later. This place had:

• a small cafe-ish-area in the middle. 
• The front was (mainly) jewelry. 
• The back was some more drygoods-esque stuff, and 
• downstairs were clothes.  

We had the lunch of the day, which was some pretty good soup, nice bread (with butter! Bread never comes with butter in Germany) and some other miscellaneous stuff.

I bought a really cool necklace there:

blue! green! yellow-green! teal!

Around the corner was Hallepoort, which we looked at and into (apparently, it houses the military stuff museum) but didn't pay to enter the museum part:

Between this and the castle in Ghent, I have learned that Belgium might be the place to go for "castles"

Since the first trip to Brussels was so wet and my attempt to visit the flea market had been rained on, I wanted to make it this time. That was fun, even though we only saw it for a bit more than half an hour. 

View of the square via google streetview:

View Larger Map

There were no waffles in sight, but there was a cart selling oysters facing another selling snails.

This is clearly where you go to outfit your cool, trendy apartment in the Brussels-area. All kinds of beautiful plates and cups. Silverware. Do-it-yourself chandeliers. Miscellaneous furniture. Odd appliances.  The occasional bicycle. There was also a good bit of clothing and antiques. 

This was one of the weirder things there (oh, Belgium): 

All the streets have 2-3 names it seems (Dutch, French, and sometimes another (French?) name additionally). Rue de Renards/ Rue Haute/Rue du Faucon was the street that was on the edge of the plaza and lead upwards, which we walked up afterwards (and had walked down before). It had a lot of cool little shops, including one with some robots in the back.

on Rue de Renards/ Rue Haute/Rue du Faucon

on Rue de Renards/ Rue Haute/Rue du Faucon

We walked around the corner onto Hoogestraat.

Pretty buildings

There were some cool facing murals:

Also, along the way, some cute family-planning advertising (this was one of several posters, and the one that made me realize the halos were condoms):

condom-halos; Brussels: where "city planning" is not what you think it means

On this street, by the place that sold clothes by the kilo (15 euro/kilo) was a place selling kitchen supplies in a similar way:

We stepped into this shop which sold:

• Things you install in your home (e.g. fancy antique windows)
• Stuff to put inside your home (sofas and chairs)
• Clothes
• and also had a cafe area.

awesome windows above, tables below, and a mannequin with a sign that said the clothes were upstairs

looking down at the cafe

At some point, we'd also walked past a hospital with cool lettering:

We also came across an American-clothes store with a free in-store blues concert. They said they were part of the Brussels Jazz Marathon that weekend, which then explained the presence of this at Sablon:

Nearby: World Champion of Pastry, 1995? Way to rest on your laurels, guys ;)

Turns out, the cake was delicious (and not a lie). The one on the right is the world-champion-winning recipe:

Walking from there to the Grote Markt/Grand Place to meet up with the other former-Champaign-Urbana-ite, I caught a glimpse of waffles:

Waffle truck!?

and a very quaint little square:

pretty Belgian square nearish the Grote Markt/Grand Place

If you didn't know, Tintin (and some other famous comics) originates in Belgium. Thus, random Tintin murals on buildings around the city:

Tintin!

To come full circle, we walked through the street I remember which boarders on the Grote Markt/Grand Place, full of almost-identical restaurants all with 18 euro menus, with waiters standing outside, trying to beckon you in:

It was nice to be back in Lille and the Brussels-area. Sadly, much as "Wally" (of Wally's waffles) said, most of the Brussels-area waffles one can get are the "Liege"-style, where "fresh" means that they were made that morning and re-heated when you order them. We did sit down and have a waffle at a restaurant, but it was sadly overcooked. I guess I'll have to go back to Amsterdam for a proper Brussels waffle. ;)

Travelogue 8: Finis

[Last set of pics]

Note: Added two pics to the Amsterdam set. The weensy little car that fits 1.5 people, and it next to a 'real' car for scaling purposes. Both taken by my friend Cherie. These are apparently indigenous to amsterdam, and quite pricey.

A note on drinking water in Belgium -- the tap water is just fine, and my reach-for-my-nalgene reflex has served me in good stead, since every restaurant charges for water. I don't know how the natives stay hydrated :P

I spent today tooling around Brussels. Went to the flea market, which would have been awesome if it hadn't've been raining. As I walked up, people ran around yelling "Vite! Vite!" and grabbing tarps to cover up rain-damagable goods. I sauntered up the street towards the grand place-ish area, seeing random neat antique-y stores. One had a whole carousel inside!

Lunch was slow, a plate of four tapas and a Chimay Bleu. I spent some time writing several post-cards and enjoying the down-time.

I'm pretty much all packed at the moment. Grabbing the 5:35 am airport bus. Flight at 8 am. Arrive Chicago around 2:30pm or so central time. Hopefully customs won't be all that long.

So, I will soon be back in good ole shampoo-banana. Around fluent english speakers. Grading. Research. Good times.

Hope you all enjoyed my tales.

Au revoir

Travelogue 7: Brussels again-- Magritte, chocolate and Cantillon

"The common ordinariness of all things is a mystery" ----Magritte.

mural by Grand Place


Today we were going to go to the Brewers museum, only to walk up to a tri-lingual note telling us that it was closed specifically today and tomorrow. Nice. Oh, well.

As a back-up museum, we went to the Chocolate museum. For 4.5 euro for a student it was so-so. Poorly organized, but two free chocolate things and a cute demonstration by an old chocolatier with very limited english. Apparently Belgium became a big maker of chocolate because they improved one of the processes involved in producing chocolate, and they had a large/quick explosion of factories built for that purpose. Also, chocolate moulds didn't come into play until the 19th century.

Lunch was half a baguette sandwich and a double espresso. My experience with espresso in the states is that people tend to either drink it as part of something (cappuccino, etc), or entirely on its lonesome. Here it acts the way a cup of coffee in the states does, served with cream and sugar on the side that you can add. I have to say, I am pleased with the consistently high quality of coffee. I have yet to have a mediocre espresso here.

We checked out a few beer stores (Beer Planet and "de Bier Tempel"), looking for the elusive Delerium Tremens Noel in 75 cl bottles, or their seasonal glassware. All of the bars here serve each beer in its own distinctive glass (e.g.) and Will tells me that whenever they happen to be out of the associated glass, you are apologized to profusely.

The rain let up when Will bought his umbrella (of course) and we made our way to the Magritte museum. Magritte was, in fact, Belgian. Also, incredibly talented. Realism, impressionism, cubist stuff, sculptures, drawings, paintings, films, photos. I had no idea, past the well-known 'ceci n'est pas une pipe' and the man with the apple in front of his face. I bought a poster of 'black magic'. The museum has 3 floors. One is a cloak room and one an entrance level, but the other floors are dense with Magritte's work. He was very prolific. And got really weird when Belgium was invaded. As a side note, 2 euro entrance for students. Rock on.
 
After that, we headed out to the Cantillon Brewery, on the edge of town:

"The Cantillon brewery is outside the Petit Ring. Most of the Brussels region is surrounded by a motorway, called the "Ring", numbered R0 in the national road numbering system. There is a smaller ring of wide, differently named boulevards, in a roughly pentagonal shape, called the Petit Ring (Kleine Ring, Small Ring), the R20. This follows the path of the city's former 14th Century city walls." [source -- the interwebs ;) ]

in the brewery:

Cantillon brews lambics and guezes. Lambic is a traditional spontaneous-fermentation beer, tasting very sour instead of the bitterness you might expect in 'normal' beer. According to German definitions of beer, it actually can't be called beer. Lambic is aged for three years, and is flat. Gueze is what happens when 3 & 1-year lambics are mixed and more yeast added before bottling, giving it some carbonation. To widen their appeal, some lambics also have macerated fruits added before bottling-- Krieck has sour cherries. `Rose' ended up meaning raspberries were added (you might also see the word 'framboise' used). We tried one with muscat grapes added and Will said he had one with rhubarb (as an 'off-one', or seasonal sort of thing).

Neat tour. There's an attic with a lot of air whooshing through where the mash picks up its yeast and starts fermenting. Two of the yeasts in particular are specific to the region, and there are on the order of 86 yeast strains involved.

Lunch had been 'traditional libanese food', their plate of the day, which was cinammoned rice with pistachios and almonds as well as some really tender chicken, then a salad with lemon juice, some oil and a lot of parsley mixed in. Washed down with European coca-cola, which *does* taste better (mmm real sugar). Also, lemon fanta is amazing.

Dinner (for the grand total of 8 euros - amazing) was made with stuff from the pseudo-grocery near the European parliament. Fresh tortellini stuffed with arugola ('rucola') and mushrooms (funghi) in a white sauce with shredded gruyere and sauteed some 'chicken sausage' (which was somewhere between sausage and bologna, but tasted pretty good on browning) as well as a nice salad of mixed greens on the side.  All cooked on two lone burners --- Will's place lacks a real stovetop or oven, and he said that was common for apartments he was looking at in the area.

One more day, then another grueling plane-ride and customs-juggling. Woo.