Sex and French Fries

Brussels: Dessert forever!

Brussels from Atomium

Waffles. So many waffles with chocolate and strawberries and Nutella whipped cream. As soon as I arrived in Brussels on Thursday night, I was anxious to eat some good food. Brussels is one of those places that shuts down early, though, so the only place open was one lone counter that looked like it served a local brand of fast food. Belgium is famous for its frites, or French Fries, which ended up being the perfect food to eat at midnight after a long Eurostar train trip from London. These were some good fries, oily and hot and perfect. The Belgians take pride in the fact that, despite the misnomer, French Fries were invented in their country. Gift shops stocked shirts and aprons that say "It is a Belgian invention, so we shall call it 'French Fries'" with a picture of a cone full of fries, because frites are served in a paper cone in Belgium. The next afternoon, I had a real Belgian Waffle from an upscale cafe near the Grand Palace. This was no ordinary waffle. It was warm and not too sweet and just plain delicious, with chocolate dripping down the sides.

Atomium

There are other things to do in Brussels besides eat, of course. Atomium is located on the edge of the city, the remains of the 1958 Expo, the first World's Fair after World War II. It's a really cool structure, designed to look like giant atoms. The inside is an exhibit on the world's fair, with models of all the old pavilions Everything looks very 1950s, with the futurist look.

Brussels' Grand Palace. We couldn't go in because it was closed for a special event.

Mannequin Pis is one of the most famous landmarks in Brussels. Yeah, it's a statue of a kid peeing.

The European Union headquarters are in Brussels, but by the time I arrived at the EU Parliament building the last (and only) tour had already passed. The presence of all of these important government buildings makes Brussels feel like Washington DC, as my friend who was traveling with me noticed. As well as having all the government buildings, Brussels also closes down really early, just like Washington. Shops began closing down for the night at 5:00, and by 8:00 the city is eerily quiet. We passed very few people on the way back to the hostel. Everyone in the city appeared to be sleeping all the time.

Brussels has great food and it's nice, but it feels empty and boring for tourists. It'd be a nice place to live, but I'm not sure I want to visit there.

Amsterdam: Prostitutes, marijuana, and really beautiful canals
I'm hesitant to write that I should have studied abroad in Amsterdam. Almost a year ago, when I was deciding on where to study abroad, I had narrowed my options down to Amsterdam and London, and eventually chose London. Amsterdam was so nice that, for a second or two, I though I might have picked the wrong city. I arrived after midnight after a three-hour ride in on the train from Brussels. The city was still filled with energy, and I got a milkshake from Febo, a fast food place that sells hamburgers from vending machines.

Amsterdam's canals were really pretty.

Amsterdam looks way better during the day, though. The trees that lined the canals all had yellow leaves, since it's the end of October. All the buildings are pretty. Houseboats are parked alongside the canals. My friends and I rented bikes and pedaled slowly along the canals. It was more leisurely than the London and New York biking I've done, since Amsterdam moves at a more casual pace. The museums all had huge lines stretching out of them, but we found enough to do without seeing Anne Frank's house and waiting line. We ate pancakes for lunch, which the Dutch put meat or cheese or vegetables in and eat as a meal. I quickly realized that there is much more to Amsterdam than the vices it's famous for, and it's really a nice place even for people like myself who don't like to indulge in the drugs they sell at the Magic Mushroom Gallery, although 'free samples' signs next to lines of mind-altering powders for snorting are certainly not an everyday sight. And this is all just normal for the people of Amsterdam, who, it seemed, rarely indulged in drugs or prostitutes.

The place where we got pancakes for lunch

The red light district at night is definitely something unique. Sure, there are other red light districts in Europe, in places like Brussels and Frankfurt, but none get as much hype as the one in Amsterdam. Groups of rowdier American 20-something males cheered on a friend who had dared to step inside one of the blacklight-illuminated doors and paid for a session with one of Amsterdam's famed prostitutes. Smoke poured from the coffee shops, which are more famous for serving up marijuana than serving coffee. The area was filled with other tourists, but it was a slice of Amsterdam's liberal, honest culture.

The houses all looked like this!

The language barrier in Amsterdam was smaller than the language barrier in London. When one of the students in the SHINE classroom asks me to use the 'loo,' it sometimes takes me a minute to translate the phrase from Cockney to American. In Amsterdam, every single person I encountered spoke English, and the accent was easier to understand. The Dutch were very friendly, and I did not feel like I was being treated like a tourist, as I did in Italy and Spain.

When it was time to go to the train station, which had the most bikes I'd ever seen parked in front of it (one guidebook estimated that there are about 7,000 bikes parked there on most days), I almost didn't want to head back to London. The train back was the only time I saw the Dutch countryside during the day. It really is filled with tulip fields and windmills, but the tulips aren't in bloom on Halloween. Amsterdam is one of the more interesting places I've been. It's famous for its hedonism like Las Vegas, but it has the charm of San Francisco and the anything-goes attitude of New York. Beautiful, lively, and edgy, Amsterdam is like no other place on earth.