Bruxelles Part One.

Two blog posts in a month...if it weren't for the four from February this would be a record.

Last weekend was a very fun one. Friday afternoon, I boarded a train from Mulhouse. After six hours and fifteen minutes of varying degrees of annoying seatmates and boredom, I arrived in Bruxelles (Brussels, for all you non-French speakers), Belgium. Sadly, thanks to the Schengen Agreement, this no longer warrants a stamp on my passport. I've gone to Switzerland, Germany, the U.K. (well, Heathrow Airport), and Belgium and not received a single stamp. This depresses me. I want proof of my travels in my passport! Anyway, back to my story-I stepped off the train, went down an escalator, and surprise, surprise! There was Jackie waiting for me! We proceeded to get a little lost in Bruxelles Midi station as we looked for the Metro, but after that we were pretty easily able to find our hostel.

The next morning we got up quite early (earlier than we needed to, as we later found out, since nothing opens before 10 am on weekends in Bruxelles) and attempted to find the Atomium. It wasn't listed on any of our maps except for an arrow pointing in the general direction of the river. We saw several street signs, but nothing to indicate where the Atomium might be. After about an hour of wandering and searching, we decided to find the Comic Strip Museum instead. This we were able to find quite easily, and when we got there, we were a little early so we started looking at various brochures. We found one for the Atomium, and lo and behold-it was in exactly the opposite direction we'd been searching and absolutely no where near the river (hence why it wasn't on the map-it was too far out). Fortunately, it sits on a Metro line so we were able to visit it that afternoon.

What the Atomium is: It is a very large model of an iron crystal. When I say "very large", I mean "magnified 165 billion times and large enough to house elevators and escalators for visitors). It was quite fascinating-being inside an iron crystal, yet reading exhibits about immigration to Brussels. Immediately after exiting the Atomium, we walked across the street to Mini-Europe. Mini-Europe is exactly what it sounds like, a walk through incredibly detailed miniatures of major cities and/or buildings from almost every country in Europe. These models were incredibly detailed-in some cases even having very tiny people and moving parts. Each model had a plaque marking its country as well as a button which when pushed played the country's national anthem.

Food: Moules-frites (mussels and fries, yum!) for lunch and pasta in a random Italian restaurant.
Entertainment of the night: Watching/Listening to the various Maître D's trying to sell tourists on their restaurants by very vocally competing with each other.

More Bruxelles later...