Brussels and Beer

On April 25th I left Paris for Brussels. I made the decision to leave on April 22rd and I typically get anxious if I don't plan out overnight trips to the hour, so this weekend marked a very important first. It was the first weekend I decided to do something that felt kind of scary knowing I would get a rewarding experience from it. And it paid off.

On facebook, I believe I described being in Brussels as finding "beer nirvana (beervana, if you will)", a status that was fuled a bit by - you guessed it - beer. In all seriousness, my weekend in Brussels was one of my first entrely positive experiences with beer. I never really hated beer, but it was never the first thing to cross my mind when deciding what to order. In the U.S., I really only cared for Blue Moon (fun fact, this Belgian-style ale does not exist in Belgium) the occaisional Guinness, and various other similar beers. I attribute this mostly to the terribly limited varitey of beers at college parties (Do I want PBR, Goose Island, or an IPA? I think I'll stick with a Woodchuck cider...).

The first beer I drank I ordered because I was in Brussels and...that's what you do. The seven other different beers I drank over the course of the weekend were a result of my genuine interest in tasting new beers and getting an idea of my beer preference. The result: I seem to really like Belgian whites and blondes.

Of course I did a whole bunch of other things besides drink beer. I'm not an alcoholic, Mom. I spent a lot of time with our little group just walking around Brussels. In case you were wondering, the street layout in Brussels is even more insane than Paris. It made Paris seem like that road-map rug we all played on at some point in our childhood. You know what I'm talking about.

We went to a street market and got caught in a torrential downpour. We stumbled upon this cafe called Comics Cafe in which I had the most blissful lunch of a veggie burger, fries, and a Saison Dupont while surrounded by comic stuff.

Best lunch ever!

We visited the Magritte museum, which, for a fan of surrealism, was an absolute dream. On my own, I went to the comic book museum and went into full-on geek-out mode.

Me and Tintin!

We went to the top of the Atomium, basically the Eifel Tower of Brussels.

The view of and from the Atomium

Probably one of the strangest experiences I had surrounding Brussels didn't occur until I was back in Paris, on the metro home. Coming back to Paris didn't really feel like I was going from the new, breifly explored city of Brussels to Paris, my temporary foreign home. It felt like I was returning...home...from a weekend trip to a nearby city. After spending a few days in Brussels, Paris felt relatively familiar, like the place that made the most sense to return to. I know a lot of us have described being here for the past couple weeks as feeling as though we're "getting used to" the city. That weekend was the first time it felt as though I was "used to" it because it felt familiar. It seemed like a more warm-and-fuzzy feeling and not like I was losing sight of the magic of the city. It was sort of as if I transcended the feeling of being in a magical realm to a feeling of being in a very real place that still has its magical gems.