The Grizzle makes the trek across the ocean for a weekend in Europe. Hilarity ensues…

Note: This is in reverse chronological order for some reason.

I’ve been traveling, and traveling, and traveling lately…

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I know this looks pretty sad… don’t worry though, I’m OK. Malnourished, but OK.

More posts, more frequently now – I promise. I now have Internet at home, so I have no excuse.

Since I last wrote, a lot has happened here. I moved into a new apartment and out of the hotel. All of my clothes are permanently suitcase-creased, but it was worth the wait. The new place is amazing! Cool architecture, furnished, and right in the center of town:

Check out the awesome view of Grand Place!:

I broke the new pad in with a little party last weekend. Naturally, I wanted to put my best foot forward, so I decided to iron my shirt before everyone showed up. As soon as I plugged the iron in, all the power went out and, to make a long story short, it took 30 minutes and a trip down to the cave of a basement to get the lights back on. Luckily, only a few guests showed up before we figured it out. I mean, I like parties with music from laptop speakers and two candles for light as much as the next guy, but that would have sucked. Why do I keep having power issues?

Most people brought some alcohol to the party – more as a gift than something to drink that night. This is pretty different from the U.S. I think I actually ended up ahead because people brought so much. So it just solidifies the obvious: Having a party is almost always a good idea.

Other recent happenings include a visit from Grant, a friend from MKE. After he broke my water heater,

we hopped on a train and went to Antwerp for the afternoon,

before heading to Essen, Belgium for his girlfriend, Femke’s, graduation party. I can speak a bit of French which gets me around fine in Brussels, but I speak zero Dutch. So, it was a cool experience to see a traditional Dutch graduation party, but there was quite the language barrier.

We finished off the packed weekend with an afternoon in Amsterdam. Not really enough time to see the city, so I’ll have to go back. It’s only about 2 hrs by train from here.

 Don’t you love checking websites daily when they only get updated every other week?? I know I do.

Seriously though, sorry for the delay between posts. I originally wanted to wait until I had good news about my apartment search here in Brussels… and I’ve had two weeks of bad news…UNTIL TODAY! I’m moving in tomorrow (I’ll actually believe it when I’m through the door). I will post some pictures of the new place soon.

Since my last post, I’ve moved to my 3rd hotel in the last month. This one is much closer to work at least which is so much better than the first.

I went to Brugge over the weekend with my friend from work, Remi, and his girlfriend Amandine.  It’s a beautiful city in the North of Belgium with great architecture.  Check out some pictures:

We took a canal tour which was dirt cheap at 5 Euros…compared to 60 Euros in Venice.

I did a little experimentation with motion photography while we were there as well:

Overall, great trip.  Thanks Remi for the ride!

Over the last couple days I’ve been working with a relocation company to find an apartment for my stay in Brussels (I’m still in the tragically located hotel).  I think I’m close to securing the the one place that really interested me out of the 8 that I saw.  It’s in the Sablon area of Brussels, right next to the Grand Place.  I don’t want to jinx it by posting pictures yet, but look for an update early this week.

I finally made it to Brussels, Belgium yesterday morning at 8 AM. It seems like a long time coming since I knew I was going to be moving here (look for a future post regarding that whole process – and why it took so long).

Day 1
The first day was pretty uneventful really. I made my first crucial mistake — booking the wrong hotel. Apparently there are at least three “Crown Plazas” in the Belgium area…something I didn’t think about when booking. So when I told a taxi to “take me to the Crown Plaza”, I ended up at the wrong one, and had to pay another taxi to take me to the right one. To make matters worse, the “right one” is way out by the Brussels air port which will make my daily commute about 40 minutes of train and metro, when it could have been a two minute walk. Hopefully the hotel can work out a switch in the next couple days. I’ll only be in a hotel for two weeks anyway while I find an apartment.

Even though it’s the wrong hotel, it’s still pretty cool. Check out this video of the elevator ride:

Otherwise on day one, I walked around trying to stay awake from the jet lag. I fell asleep on the bus and a stranger woke me up around 3 PM — awesome.

Then I realized that I was kidding myself when I thought I could function two days without a snap-shot camera, so I bought a new one. But this is the reason, I didn’t have any pictures from day 1. I didn’t feel like lugging around my big camera. We’ll bring that out on special occasions.

Day 2
Ok so day 2 was much more interesting. Probably because I wasn’t sleep walking all day.

My first objective was to find my work building. It was at this point that I stumbled across the 3rd Crown Plaza… right next to the office. So my commute for the next two weeks is 50 minutes of trains and metros when it could have been a two minute walk. Anyway… Check out how close the office is to the European Union Parliament Building:

Right next to work is the Parc du Cinquantenaire.  Here are some pics:

There are two museums connected to the big arch in the pictures.  I went into one to get some details and heard about a special deal they are about to run next month called The Nocturnes.  Apparently they open up all of the major museums of Brussels every Thursday night and only charge 1 Euro for admission (Steal!).  Now my Thursday nights will be almost as culturally enriching as they were in college (ahem..).   Seriously though, this works out nicely because I plan to travel most weekends and wouldn’t have had much time to see the museums.

I had lunch at Cafe Metropole, and had the Croquettes de Crevettes.  A very very good meal. I will be back, and order the same thing, for sure.

I thought this soccer/basketball area was pretty cool.  It was in the Parc du Cinquantenaire:

I saw multiple men’s suit advertisements depicting rage (a sign of the culture?):


I found a great English language book store and ended up buying a few.  I want to learn a bit about Belgian beer, so I was faced with two top choices:

I chose Tim Webb’s book, because what the hell does Michael Jackson know about Belgian Beer?

I gave some serious thought to buying a “learn French” book, but the cover was just too rediculous

At one point, I even stumbled upon a movie set:

After all of this I was pretty tired, so I hopped back on a train to begin the 50 minute commute back to my hotel in the sticks.