The amazing adventures of Michael and Hawkins

This is a story about me and Karen and Brussels. All I knew a couple days ago was that I was flying out of Brussels to get to Prague on Sunday evening and so I should somehow get myself to Brussels. Very much unlike me, I was not at all worried about it, and once Karen signed on, I realized we would just fly by the seat of our pants.

So on Saturday afternoon, we leisurely made our way to Gare du Nord train station, after being told that there are trains to Brussels every hour. Well, turns out that is not the case, and there was one more train, with only first class tickets available. We managed to get a student discount, and we realized pretty quickly that first class ain't so bad. We spread out in giant seats and were served a snack and wine, feeling like foreign dignitaries on our way to Brussels for an important meeting. (Clearly we are easily impressed.) We then got to the hostel, which luckily had an open bed for Karen (... who, by the way, must have attracted a handful of suitors just on the way there, including a man who worked at the hostel who was enamored by her dreads. The European mens love them some Rasta, as they kept calling her while acting like she hailed directly from the Motherland, rather than, say, the suburbs of Chicago.)

OK the first stop was the Grand Place, a public square and marketplace with cute little cafes lining the streets. We stopped for a beer (which flows like water there) and watched the street performers. One pair of clowns/mimes/long-in-the-tooth-hippies-needing-of-a-stage were putting on a show in front of us, complete with an accordion, and then passed the hat for money. The server came out and started yelling something at them in French, likely about not bothering their patrons for money. Well, a crowd quickly gathered around us since the performers were directly in front of us, while the clowns and servers yelled at each other in French. Then one server hauls off and shoves one clown in the damn head, sending him and his according stumbling back. The crowd booed, more yelling in French, clown sulks in the corner. After the hullabaloo died down, we decided to give them a euro, so I stood up and walked over and put one in his hat. The cafe crowd applauded at me...! Little did I know, I was making some statement or taking a stand about street performers and free spirits etc. etc... A few other folks followed suit, and Karen and I downed our beers and booked it out of there. Strange.

Brussels is strange. Very touristy, and everything is in four languages. Menus are four pages rather than one. Doors say 'push' four times. As inefficient as it was, I guess with NATO and the EU there, it's got to be done. Also, people didn't really seem to smile much, and just looked generally sullen, particularly on the street or in the Metro. (OK, so maybe it had to do with two American girls and their 4,500 pounds of luggage. Karen did have a 2,000 pound bag on her back that tumped her over in the Metro, directly into a couple who were less than amused.) I will say that the city was so ethnically diverse, which was really neat. And one of the biggest tourist spots is a tiny fountain with a sculpture of a boy peeing into a basin. Mannequin Pis, they call him, and people flock to him to take his picture and rumor has it the locals make little outfits for him (with pee holes no less) and dress him up for special events. You can even by bottle openers, T-shirts, chocolates, you name it, all in his image. And yes, we took his picture too.

But it was a gorgeous city. We happened to walk into the Cathedral of St. Michel while the organ player was finishing a song on these stories-high pipes. We then went back the next day (today) where people were filed in mourning the Pope and the church was flanked with police and TV station vans. The architecture across the city is amazing, and there is something to be said about the Belgian chocolate, waffles (which you eat more as a snack rather than breakfast) and all the delicious beers. Now, waffles are the new crepes. You gotta keep up.

And I made it to Prague. I just got in and got settled, met my roommate, and found the Internet cafe. It's feeling a little lonely now that I don't have a group of Medill folks with me and am surrounded by people speaking another language - this time, a language that is no where close to English. It's a little overwhelming, to say the least. But my apartment is really nice in what I hear is a cool, safe part of town.... but since the owner just bought the place, furnishing is scant and my room is pretty much a bed and a couch. Should be interesting....