Dreamcatchers and Samurai Mayo

The trip started out in a state of total exhaustion. In order to get our bodies on Belgium time, we all stayed up the entire first day of being here resulting in a 31 hour day with maybe 1 hour of sleep on the plane. I was beat. On top of that they expected us to sit through an orientation lecture that I kept pulling the old ‘head bob’ maneuver in. However, despite my extreme exhaustion on the first day, my body adjusted to Belgium time pretty much overnight and I have been able to continue to enjoy the city ever since.

The building we are staying at is called The Monty and is a set of apartment style suites where many of us have one roommate and two other suitemates with whom we share a bathroom and a kitchen. The Monty’s location is pretty amazing. Literally across the street is a chocolate shop where they make and sell their own Belgian Chocolates. I went in a few days ago and tried a couple of chocolates that were very good, and I hear we are going to take a tour there before too long. Around the corner and across the street is an enormous and beautiful Cathedral (see right.) The University of Antwerp (where we will be studying) is just a couple doors down from where we live, so walking to class is very convenient.

We took a practical tour of Antwerp the first day and one of the most beautiful things we saw was Central Station, an enormous building that looks like a cross between a Medieval Cathedral, The Taj Mahal, and something from Hogwarts. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and inside there is a beautiful grand staircase as well as an amazing clock and an extremely tall, beautiful ceiling. (see left)

The first night we ate dinner in a nice Italian restaurant where I had delicious pasta with shrimp and a fantastic spicy cream sauce. I also tried my first Belgian Beer! I had a beer called Duvel (pronounced Duvul) which was served in a really cool glass shaped similar to a vase for flowers. The beer is a bit stronger here but it’s really good. The coolest thing about drinking in Belgium (besides the delicious beer) is that every beer has its own glass that it is served in, and most of them are quite different from one another. Everything from a glass that looks like a big orange juice glass to a goblet style glass harboring delicious De Koninck, a beer with an interesting fruit/cherry flavor.

On the second day we were given some free time to explore and in our explorations we stumbled upon a gorgeous little square where we were approached by a homeless man who heard we were American by the way we were talking. He told us of his travels to America and then proceeded to try and sell us dream catchers that the Native Americans “taught him to make.” He was selling them in exchange for a small donation of Euros or if we could give him some weed, he’d be fine with that too. As appealing as his third grade art project was, we respectfully declined and continued our adventures to a great pasta shop called “Spirelli’s.” One of the employees was nice enough to come explain the entire menu to us, give her recommendations, and wait on us even though it seemed the other people in the restaurant were serving themselves. Great pasta, and a really nice lady. We will definitely go there again. Somehow, mostly due to the amazing sense of direction on of the people in our group had, we basically were in a perfect spot to get back to the Monty which was now right down the street.

What followed in the afternoon has been my biggest bit of culture shock yet—the grocery store. It was wild to be in a place that normally is so familiar and feel completely lost. Just about NOTHING is in English, and many of the foods were unfamiliar to me. After navigating as much as we could on our own, Ryan (my roommate), and I had a bag of groceries ready to go consisting of everything from frozen pizza to samurai mayo. Yeah, they’re really into flavored condiments here. The Samurai Mayo is a spicy Mayonnaise that is pretty delicious. They have tons of different types of mayonnaise and ketchups that I’m excited to try out. Fun fact about the grocery store: you know when you’re at the grocery store and you’re looking at that pack of 6 milks packaged together that aren’t refrigerated and thinking “man I really just want one milk, not 6?” Yep…me neither. But Belgians will just open up packages of stuff and take as many as they want. For instance, if you see a six pack of cans of soup, but you just want one can, you break open the plastic and just take one can. They also don’t sell milk that is refrigerated.

So far operation Study Abroad: Europe has been a success, more stories coming soon!