American in Brussels

After some time, Eric Abroad returns to bring you exciting tales from the exotic and unknown land of Brussels, Belgium.

I'm currently taking the Reporting Inside the EU course and part of that course was a week trip to Brussels. Since Jimmy (Holland) brought his car to school, four of us decided to drive down in order to save money. We departed Arhus at 12:00am on Monday morning, only to arrive at the hotel door at 12:00pm Monday. The time in between was filled with attempts at sleep, pit stops and the almighty food stop at McDonalds in Holland to partake in the gloriousness that is the McKroket. I'm assuming known of you know what a McKroket is and I'll leave it at that, because it is something beyond words.

Brussels, by the way, is a great city. We arrived at the hotel and had a mini-tour of the EU area that afternoon. For dinner I had what were touted as the Best Pommes Frites (fries to the lay person) in the World, and I have to admit that were pretty darn good. You all know Brussels in known for their beer, so we ended the night with a boot of beer (see picture) at the bar Delirium, which boasts a Guinness World Record 2,000 beers available. They actually have a huge folder to give to customers so they could flip around and find something interesting.


Considering I've never really been exposed to many things EU, I was excited about all the things to see and people to meet. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday was filled 9-3 with meetings, press conferences and lectures. A couple were boring I'll have to admit, but the vast majority of the stuff was quite fascinating. On Spring Break several years ago, me and Dad went to the UN in NYC, which in a way is comparable to the EU, although with more power. We went to the European Commission and the Parliament and listened to many high ranking people speak about their respective areas. I think the most interesting talk was given by Jean-Christophe Filori, the Directorate General for Enlargement. He talked all about Turkey's possible admittance in the EU and the whole fiasco that surrounds that, intriguing stuff. On Tuesday we attended the daily press briefing in the Commission. The EU translates into the 23 languages, the most of any press service in the world. While they were speaking French I put on the earphones at my seat and followed along with the translator, who I could see sitting in the booth next to our chairs. You really become immersed in things when they start speaking another language because it seems to heighten the situation. On Wednesday, we were provided a buffet lunch in the Parliament which was amazing. Huge tables of food, dessert, wine, coffee and EU engraved silverware highlighted the lunch. Me in the European Parliament, plus the outside (great architecture):


Outside of our time spent in the EU, I traversed the great city of Brussels. And I don't say that with a sarcastic tone, it really was a cool place. The architecture, food, beer, EU, metro system and green space all combined to make it great. I was very surprised by the large amount of green space within the city. It made the whole place a lot more cozy. After the EU one day we grabbed some snacks and chilled at one of the parks for a while enjoying the beautiful weather (which also contributed to the nice time).

Hopefully in the future I can return, because I def. didn't get to see everything there. Also, to make a couple side trips to Antwerp and Bruges.