Brussels

Well, again the keyboards were thwarting my attempts at blogging, but now I have gotten my hands on a standard (to me) board, so I will add a little bit...

My first impression of Brussels was, "hmmmmmmmmm...." It seemed gray, kind of dirty, and not very friendly. Luckily, I got over it pretty quickly. We stayed with a gentleman named Pierre, who was incredibly interesting and always willing to sit for an hour at breakfast and answer questions about culture, politics, language, etc.

Belgium has three official languages - Flemish (which is almost the same as Dutch), French, and German. Brussels is about 85% French-speaking and, as I have been told is the case in France, they really don't want to speak English to us. This is, of course, their right (it is, after all, their country!). But it made communication a bit more difficult that it has been up to this point.

While in the chapel of the EU building, I tried to ask a question and the woman there did not understand me; oddly enough, I asked her if she spoke Spanish and she did! So, I was able to talk to her a bit that way (she had lived in Spain for four years at some point in her life). She called over an older gentleman who spoke English and told him that I was American, and the first thing he said was, "Oh, you have a very important election coming up - are you voting for Obama?" I assured him that I was, and he was very happy. The people here in Europe are pretty unified in their hatred for Bush (smart people!) and they all love Obama. If Europeans could vote in the election, Obama would win by a landslide!

Anyway, we saw all kinds of great stuff in Brussels, and ate WAY too much chocolate!!! Next blog entry, I will tell about my three days in Brugge, but for now I have to go get some dinner. Peace, everyone.

--Janine