Braderie
Three last days of June you see this word in all stores in Brussels (and beyond, I believe).
That means 'Neigbourhood fair' or 'Neigbourhood sale' if you translete it. In real life, it's just the way shops try to go around the Belgian law and start sales earlier*. The whole shopping street looks like a street market - all the stores have their stands out with goodies sold for half price.
This is what I call creativity :) We have the law - we know how to avoid it;)
* In Belgium, law determines that sales are allowed only twice a year, during months of July and January. This is also the only periods when stores are allowed to work on Sundays with no special licence.Labels: Belgium
Rotterdam and Luxembourg in one weekend
It was not planned to be that busy.
But it was.
And it turned out to be very very good!
My dear friend
Piret was in Rotterdam for SSGN board transition and planning, and it was the only spot when I could actually meet her before she goes all the way back to Brazil. So I had to make i
t! It was soo fascinating, I met her in Baltic Synergy in 2005, when we both applied for international MCs, and now we got to see each other after a whole year!! We had lots of things to talk about, to catch up with our experiences and news.
Apart from that, was also nice to come to the AI office and catch up with other people, with Lithuanian gang, with other long-time-not-seen ones. And get inspired again, I think AI office has something special in the air. There is about 60 AIESEC people in Rotterdam now, including task forces, regional boards and new AI team. Meeting the people that inspire - absolutely amazing, what else I can say! By the way, the African restaurant that Araz and Abhinav took us to, was excellent! Itw as in Dutch, I dont excaly remember the name, but it means 'Taste from Africa' ('Smaak van Africa'??, strongly reccomended.
I have spent way more time there than I've planned, but got to catch my last train to Brussels and still see Michal in his farewell party.
Next morning - sleep in, get up, shower, pack and back to the station. Luxembourg this time, and taht was a
Rock-A-Field festival. And yes, it was totally in a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Luxembourg. Get off in a city, take a train to some village, walk for &.รจ km to parking lot, get picked up by bus, go to the festival site, walk another 500 m, get your bag checked, ticket, enter.
I was early, not too many people. Extremely hot. Everyone is baking and intensively consuming beer and other beverages. Bands start to play. First one - i don't know it, was average. It was cool observing the moves of the vocalist though. I should try to sketch something like this some time. Second band - some german one, also don't know, but I liked them very much!! That girl has a super good voice! Rocks! For sure i have to find out more about them.
Then we had an interruption of rain... then interruption of 2-3cm pieces of ice falling from the sky... man, it hurt! It went totally out of control, everybody started hiding anywhere they could, and there was not too much of a choice, as it was a grass field... well after the storm it became a mud field :) And all people had mud all over themselves :) Luckily i got around just with old jeans and shoes.
At any case, I didn't pay money for the rain, same as others, so we got to see the other bands as well :) Mando Diao. I didn't know them, but they rock!! The crowd went crazy, and their music is worth it! Raphael - French siple guy, very lyric and sentimental. Nice and soothing. Franz Ferdinand - frickin awesome!!! Since I love every single song of this band, it was more than great to see them rocking the field live - with Take Me Out, Matinee and Walk Away... ah, yeah! And finally, Placebo - the top of the concert. They were good. However, my expectations were higher than that. I was hoping to see that black-dressed mystic guy that i see in pics and videos, but I saw a guy in a suit! Mystery revealed. However, that didn't spoil the show itself - music was great, stage effects also great, and crowd also went crazy. By the way, crowd was surprisingly young - I even got to run into 16-year old Lithuanian girls and around 20 of their schoolmates. Quite funny :)
After the concert my adventures didn't end, as still I had to get back somehow. The transortation by bus from the field to the city was terrible, so luckily i got to meet a local family who kindly took me by their car to the station of Luxembourg. Where I also found out that there are no night trains to Brussels! However, it was more of a nice adventure, as Luxembourg was quiet, and I met two exchange students from the US who have missed their train to France, so having some conversations was a good way to kill some time before our first trains.
Monday morning I was happy to find my bed in place:)
Labels: Diary, Friends, Luxembourg, Musicroom, Traveling
Summer in Belgium
Yesterday i got to observe an annual Belgium's phenomenon, called 'Summer in Belgium'. The roots for this phenomenon start from the climate in Belgium and the surrounding areas, where the amount of sunny days with a temperature of 20 degrees and higher is no more than 15. Taking into account an average person's daily schedule, those 15 days get two weekends, most probably in June. As a natural conclusion, the big part of Belgian population on weekends tends to use every single ray of sunlight which is showing up. Therefore, in the weekends of June a huge increase of human migration is noticed to the Belgian (or not necessarilly) seaside.
It is easily seen by anyone, not necesarrily an expert - this phenomenon causes such (in)conveniences as:
- no places to sit in the trains, going towards the seaside
- huge traffic jams on highways, leading towards the seaside
- a dramatic increase of amount of people on the streets of all seaside towns
- same towns having all shops open on Sunday (!!!)
- almost no place to put your towel on the sand
- absolutely no place to play volleyball or any other gale without disturbing your beach-neigbours
- losing your property, friends and children in the crowd
- huge delays of the trains going back to big inland cities of Belgium
In order to make the most of your holidays, please take the above into account before going to the Belgian seaside, and explore the phenomenon with a great joy and relaxation!
There is another phenomenon, called 'FIFA World Cup 2006', but I believe someone else will write about it...
Labels: Belgium
Short break in London
I liked London the first time I went there, and the second time last weekend I fell in love with it!
Me and Rasa took the Eurostar train, which was almost like an airplane - luggage check in with metal detector, then going really fast with my ears almost closed and passing through the tunnel very fast. We were easily falling asleep until... Suddenly there comes an announcement, which states mainly 'Ladies and gentlemen, due to technical problems, now the passengers going to Paris change with the ones going to London!' Yey, let's run, see who wants to get to their destination faster!! The arrival got delayed by half an hour, then we made it to Vilija's place in a cool section of the city.
...the weather was incredibly awesome - not a single drop of rain, +24 degrees all the time.
...it's nice to understand the language people speak in the streets
...catching up with the news in friends' lives
...girls night out in a cool Rumi lounge bad
...forgetting about everything and everyone that was giving me a hard time recently. At least for a bit.
...shopping!! Portobello Market, Primark, NEXT and everywhere else. My MC salary budget cannot hold expensivo brands, but it's about the shopping experience anyway ;)
...seeing the variety, the mixture, the liveliness of the city!!
...visiting Salvador Dali experience and realizing even more that this guy was a sick genius. I love his works, probably because they are so disturbing
...visiting Sherlock Holmes' house, which was missed the first time
...sitting on the bank of Thames with a beer and philosophies about the purpose of life.
...realizing, that I am not a tourist in London anymore, and this is a city I could live in.
Hey, Brussels is sunny today as well!
Labels: Diary, Friends, London, Traveling
The coldest May 1st in Belgium
This year's May 1st was officially announced the coldest May 1st in the history of Belgium.
Thank God! I knew it cannot be that bad every year - 8-11 degrees during the day!
Anyway, the weather has been very moody recently - sun and rain changing every 2 hours, same with temperature. Some friends I know have turned the heating back on :) Luckily, London this weekend is gonna have 20-24 degrees, and this is where I'm going to spend this weekend!
Labels: Belgium
Bonn and Cologne
Guten Abend...
I love to go to teh countries where I understand the language :) More or less, at least.
After 10 months of planning we finally found a spot in our agendas to go to Bonn and visit
Eva!
Me, Amritha and Eric met up with Eva and Bonnie, another DHL/DWPN intern in Bonn, Eric's former teammate (as we joke 'boyfriend') in Malaysian MC.
Firstly, I would like to ruin your perceptions of German punctuality - almost all trains and buses there are LATE! So, Eric's train got delayed, out train got delayed and then we managed to get the wrong connection from Koeln, luckily, the conductor was nice and let us come back with no extra fee. First night we went to one of the cool restaurants in Bonn, then joined other interns for a drink. We got a chance to compare Belgian beer with German one, glass of which had a weird twisted shape.
To summarize the whole weekend, it was chilled out, a lot if socializing with local trainee community, former AI members included (seeing Amit always brightens my day :) ), got to visit two most famous things in Bonn (well, there is only two of them actually) - Post Tower and HARIBO store. First one was high, and it had a collection of post boxes from all over the world (I found the one from Lithuania!!), second one was big, like a wonderland of Gummy Bears and other sweet stuff. Eva was so nice to show us around and host us during our stay, it was super! Then we hung out in
Starbucks (yey!) and Irish Pub, just chilling out.
BTW, about
Starbucks. So strange, that Germany, as country which ahs it's own coffee culture, still has Starbucks chain there, while in Belgium coffee culture is not that strong, and there is not a single store here! And people still drink coffee, and still many internationals are here, I just wonder...
Cologne (Koeln) was way bigger and lively city comparing to Bonn. We met up with Chrisi's (my MC successor!!) friends, Adrien, Jana and Alexa, very nice people. We went out with Jana and her friends to have some Happy Hour Cocktails (they had everything there!). And their house looks like a lounge bar. And thanks to them and the football table in their flat me and Amach started liking football! (10:8 I win, 5:3 Amach wins). It was so in line with all teh FIFA fever that is all over Germany!
Monday Morning, Adrien took us to the station, we had some time for another
Starbucks caffeine infusion, got the train and wents straiht to the office. Week flew liek crazy.
Labels: Diary, Friends, Germany, Traveling
Planning Days
We had our last planning days in the middle of nowhere in teh Netherlands. Check Pedro's blog about teh place we stayed at :) The closest city next to teh camping place we were staying, was called Goes, which had probably us as first tourists in the history of the town. What was funny, that they have a Heart Break Cafe which is a nice copy of the famous Hard Rock Cafe chain :)
Labels: AIESEC, Diary
