Class Trip to Brussels

Marissa, Hailey, Bea, Elise, Petra, Max, Teo, Norman

Hastomi

2 Liter beer at the Delirium!

The Atomium

View of the city from the Atomium

Parliament

For my European Integration class we got to travel to Brussels, Belgium for two days.  The transportation and hostel was covered by the school so we only had to pay for food which was very nice! We left Monday morning from school around 9am and we took a coach bus there.  We had turned in our paper a few weeks ago but we still had to do our presentations in our hostel.  My group was a little unorganized.  A few days before we left Anna found out she could not go on the trip for health reasons. Sunday night I realized that our group didn't have our presentation made or prepared! I made a template of our power-point and sent it to the guys to do their part. Teo and I were the only ones who had something done on it, so Teo brought his laptop on the bus so that we could work on it.  His computer battery only last about 20 minutes so it died before we could finish!  We arrived in Brussels around 1:00 and we were sitting in the hostel lobby starting to work on our presentation again. We got kicked out because they said that we couldn't check into our hostel until two so we got to walk around a little.  We came back at two and changed clothes for the presentation and went down to the dinning area where we were to present. We were very lucky that we were the last group to present because we were working on finishing our power-point and making our note cards during other peoples presentation! I have never been so unprepared in my life but it turned out ok; I think our presentation went fairly well for how little we prepared. The presentations lasted until 6:30. Then we had two girls who studied in Arnhem last semester and are now doing internships in Brussels come talk to us for about 15 minutes.  Then we were free to do what we wanted for the rest of the night. The two girls were really nice and showed us around Brussels a little.  First we went and ate and this small shop.  The girls recommended this sandwich--it was a sub role with mayo, this really processed, spicy hamburger, french fries and fry sauce. It was really difficult to eat and I could only eat half of it because it was so big and it wasn't the greatest.  We just continued to walk around more and of course the guys had to see the Red Light District of Brussels which was really small.  We stopped at a grocery store so that some people could get bottles of alcohol. We went back to the hostel and were sitting outside drinking.  Then around eleven we left to go to a bar.  Some how I lost the rest of the girls so it was me and nine guys that went to the bar.  We went to this bar called Delirium (http://www.deliriumcafe.be/)which has over 2,000 kinds of beer on tap; they rotate them and have 15 on tap a night. One of the guys bought this really huge beer, I think it was two litters that we all shared! Then I tried this cheery beer which was really good, but it was almost too sweet! Around two Marissa (Cali) and Hailey (Australia) meet up with us.  We stayed at the bar till after close and then walked back to the hostel which we ended up going to bed around 5am and my alarm went off at 7am! We had breakfast at the hostel and then packed up and left around nine and went to the Atomium (http://atomium.be/?lang=en).  It looks really cool but there really isn't much inside of it.  Then we went to the Parliament.  We had a little time to walk around and then we had a speaker which a lot of us were trying really hard not to fall asleep for!  Around 3:30 we headed back for Arnhem and arrived back around 8.  It was a fun trip though too bad we didn't have more time to see more of the city.

The class in front of the Atomium