Trip to Paris

One of the best things about the location of Brussels as a place to live and work is that it is right bang in the middle of Europe and thus an excellent springboard for travel!

This weekend past me and some friends got the Eurolines bus from Gare du Nord at the cost of €57 return to Paris. We left on Friday and Returned on the Sunday. It was four hours each way. Not too shabby. It was a pretty awesome trip. We made use of AirBnB to rent an amazing apartment in the Montmarte district of Paris aka the Red Light District. Colourful and far from sexy it is lively and definitely a place I would love to explore more next time I am in Paris.

This is what we got for our money, a really really comfortable and massive apartment for the weekend complete with 2 double beds between 5 people. And a little silver fish that I volunteered to feed. I should have named him. We left one of the beds to our friends who are enjoying sexy-times together at the moment and drew cards for who would get a double bed for themselves out of the three of us. Highest card wins. I drew a two. Balls.:

 

The benefits of staying in a place like this was that firstly for the cheapness you get an amazing place and secondly the comfort factor means you settle in much quicker and it is homey from the start.

After this we went exploring. Friday at the Louvre is amazing. It is open late and it is EMPTY. If you are going to go, go on a Friday afternoon and stay until late. You won´t regret it and if you are under 25 you will get in free, just don´t pay at the machines!

To be honest you would need weeks to properly explore the Louvre. My personal favourite areas are the Greek and Roman Sculpture areas, I could spend days there. But if you are going, pre-plan and use your map. You won´t see it all in a day and actually be able to appreciate it. This place is a maze and it is much much bigger than it looks. I have been twice and I have still only scratched the surface.

 

After this there was a drunken night of debauchery and laughter. Your standard Friday night really with this gang. But the morning, oh the morning we sat in our Parisian apartment listening to the Amelie soundtrack while indulging in an amazing breakfast and really strong coffee. Made in a French Press. There was also baguettes, French jam and French cheese. And French Pastries. Did we over do it? Never.

Then we left to our wanderings which involved Notre Dame (watch out for the fake charity volunteers trying to get you to donate money to a fake homeless and children´s charity. Ask for ID, none of them have it and they are all young and do not look legit) and then a trip to Shakespeare and Company, a wonderful, wonderful bookshop that has a famous history and that stamps your books with a Shakespeare and Co. stamp when bought. I found the books to be a bit on the pricey side but I did buy a book of Adrienne Rich´s poetry. The one thing I have always said to myself is to never regret spending money on a book. It is a souvenir and I will get much more out of it that I would an Eiffel Tower keychain. They also have a small second hand collection. But the main seller for this shop is the upstairs reading room, complete with piano, sofas, old typewriters, knick-knacks and books for you to peruse. These are not really for sale but just for your general reading pleasure. A book shop with a library. I think I just swooned.

After leaving Shakeapeare and Co. we journeyed to the Pantheon to visit the tombs of some French Occupation heroes and of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas and Marie and Pierre Curie. All in all that was pretty awesome. And free if you are under 25 and European. If not expect to pay between €3.50-€7.00.

After this we picnicked in Jardin de Luxembourg. It was a beautiful day and people were sailing little wooden boats in the large pond at the centre of the park and a Gay choir were singing songs like “It´s raining Men” and Michael Jackson numbers along with French songs. The were awful but cheesily wonderful. It made for a wonderful afternoon. The alcohol was also nice.

 That night we again painted the town red but to be honest I mainly loved the exploring and the new experiences. I loved the books and the lovelocks on the bridge. The people picnicking by the river and along the wide bridges. The booksellers and the general hustle and bustle.  This was my third trip to Paris and I still have so much more I want to see.Paris is a city with a lot of history and you can feel its heartbeat. The only recommendation I can make is to wander a little. Don´t follow all the tourist maps. Use maps as a guide but cut corners and roam. You won´t regret it. It is the best way to travel.

 

Le Pantin!

Today I am going to talk about my favourite pub in Brussels.

Located at the bottom of Chaussee d’Ixelles just as it meets Place Flagey it is altogether the best, cosiest and cheapest pub we’ve found in Brussels so far. From the outside it doesn’t look like much, one of the common white and ugly  Jupiler advertising signs that so many of the small pubs have around Brussels. Not the most inviting. But every night you can see a few casually dressed urban twenty-somethings standing outside smoking and the soft glow of tealights from the tables by the window.   You open the old rickety door and you push-past a hanging curtain and you see a long narrow room that never seems to be empty.

Le Pantin has all the comforts of a cafe with the relaxed, warm and vibrant energy of a popular and laid back pub. Here you can make use of one of the numerous chess boards or books and kick back at a table with a beer, wine, spirit or tea and coffee.

Here is a picture of me and a friend enjoying a game:

The walls are panelled with folding chairs. Attached to the wall they fold up to let you get if needs be and make clever use of the space.

Upstairs you have cosy low couches where you can sink into oblivion or chat for hours over a drink. (As we did several weeks ago after a trek around a massive forest park and adventures through an abandoned racehorse track and its accompanying buildings. More on this again later.)

Le Pantin is also the cheapest place we’ve found for beer. The cheap stuff, Jupiler, tastier than Heineken(which I hate but is my usual marker for piss-water)  but still not amazing  is €1.90 for a half pint and €3.60 for a pint. Don’t mind if I do.

Also, you can grab food and bring it into this pub as they don’t serve food. So frites, pizza, falafel. Whatever. Make a night of it!

This is now our ‘local’, though I have every intention of exploring as many places as possible but if you’re in the Flagey area and looking for a nice place to drink, especially if you like to chat and chill out with a chilled out smiling crowd and incredibly friendly bar staff, then this is the place for you.

And this is the famous Jupiler, don’t expect much, but it sure hits the spot on a cold day when you only have a couple of euro in your pocket.

 

Kiss me I’m Irish!

So I hate to sound like an ignorant tourist. Cos hey I’m paying rent here, I’m not quite a tourist…. I’m like a relative who overstays their welcome instead. I’m you aunt Maude. Hi.

But, I keep getting nonplussed by the Belgian habit of cheek kissing. Especially when the people doing it are French or Irish and I am left in a position going WTF? I am an awkward enough person and also apparently a VERY Irish person in many ways. Ways that I didn’t realise until I decided to move to another country for half a year.

Now, I am the kinda person that really appreciates a good old fashioned handshake. Not one of those limp-wrist dead-fish kind of handshakes but one of those:

‘Wow you have character but I am really reading too much into the firmness of your handshake because the quality of your handshake will never exempt you from being a douche’.

Saying that, I do have an excellent handshake.

But here when saying hello  to some fellow trainees, those I would know a bit better or who have spent a bit of time here, they will lean in and press their cheek to your cheek and make a kissing sound, first on one side and then the other. Now, I have heard that three kisses also happens, but so far I have only experienced the two kiss approach. Thank god for that because with the way it flummoxes me a third unexpected kiss might lead to me headbutting someone and ending a friendship in its infancy.

Just today a guy I had met once before, a lovely guy, and a girl from the floor I work on, went for coffee. These are the two French people. On meeting up, they both dart at each other like graceful birds, cheekbones glancing fluidly by each other. It happened so quick. I didn’t find it strange. But then it was my turn! What the hell. I hug friends. Tight. I am very affectionate. But this is a near stranger. And he looms over me and I dart to the right and he glides to the left. I feel like we’re dueling. My cheek is a good 8 inches from his cheek when I make the kissing sound but the next time I get better and there is slight contact. Then I babble something barely coherent along the lines of ‘What, I don’t know, how, the, uh, used to that!’.

They laugh.

I am just the strangely awkward Irish girl after all.

But I do have another 4.5 months here, so be warned. I may challenge you to a duel on my return.

Day 3: “Now war is declared and battle come down”

Okay so today I started work in the European Parliament. Wooo! My favourite part had to be going through security when I realised that I had a pocket full of change. I don’t mean a few euro. I mean over 20-30 euro in change and lots of it small that I had to shovel out of my pocket and in the the x-ray tray and then painstakingly return to my pocket on the other side. I’m thinking I’ll bring something interesting in every day for the x-ray man. I have a little toy soldier for Monday I think. Today basically involved a huge meeting with the other 100+ interns . I  grabbed one of the available empty seats, and of course due to the in built Irish Radar managed to sit next to a pretty awesome Irish couple. Both of whom will be working in the Directorate-General of Communications. I’m working for the Directorate-General of External Policies. EXPO for short. All in all the day started with the usual bureaucratic promptness, that is about 45 minutes late. It was supposed to start at 9am. With Tea/Coffee at 9.30. The coffee was eventually served at about 10.30 or so by four men wearing, I shit you not, tuxes. I was served coffee by a guy in a tux. At the start of an internship. I don’t really know what to think about that. Sure I’ve been served coffee before. But the tuxes definitely made the experience unique. We also got little complementary bottles of water. And for some reason a coloured square sponge that had a link on it to subscribe to an events list. These sponges queued a ten minute brainstorming session on what the f*** we could do with them. They weren’t exactly practical. I’m going to hollow mine out and make an elaborate cup holder. Insulation you say? Or a pen holder.

This is the conference room were we had our meeting, there are headphones at each desk and boxes from which the interpreters for languages do their thing. There was a box for each of the official languages.

This is a really blurry picture stolen from the intern run stagiaire (traineeship) associations facebook page.

Now the more interesting part of that day, other than me looking exceptionally sharp in my suit and shoes, was the evening that followed.

We get a half day 3 out of 4 Fridays so we finished at one and at the meeting it was arranged that any interested would meet at 6 in a pub in the Place du Luxembourg square in front of the Parliament. The pub was called the Grapevine and Place du Luxembourg is one of the Brussels equivalents of Temple Bar. That is overpriced and filled with tourists, and in this case diplomats as well.

The beer is fine, happy hour between 6-8 and at 4€ for a Hoegaarden or Leffe that’s pretty sweet. Just don’t go for a Jameson and coke, €8.50. I’m still feeling the sting. Spirits will set you back big time and those beers pack a hefty punch. Each one is equivalent to two beers back in Dublin’s fair city.

The Grape Vine

All in all, it’s not the worst pub but my two Irish compadres have been living in Brussels for about 6 months already having done other internships elsewhere so they gathered the group and we headed to a much cooler, slightly cheaper and all around more Me pub.

From the moment I heard the name of the place I was there. ‘London Calling’, bringing to mind The Clash, on the corner of Place de Londre which intersects Rue de Londre and Dublinstraat.

The pub was small and packed with a DJ mixing right there are the bar, decent beer at €3.50 a pint and Unisex bathrooms. The poor guy behind the urinal partition when he realised it was unisex as I walked past him to the cubicle.

The atmosphere was great, the bar-staff were friendly and it was only a twenty minute walk home for me when I decided to call it a night.

This is the place. Visit it.

(Image by Yamina El Atlassi)

The First Day in Brussels

I arrived at Dublin airport at about 10 am to the fanfare of sullen looks and duteous courtesy. There really is nothing like an Irish welcome.

Except early in the morning.

At least they serve tea.

 Meet us after noon and we’ll buy you a drink.

I left the parents tearfully (my mother, not me) behind at security. I got to my gate, and honestly I have never seen so many smartly dressed men. I say men, because the ratio of men in suits to women in general was startling. I also think I was the only be-pierced, shaven headed female wanna-be-diplomat (but not really because who wants that) to be seen.

 It was an Aer Lingus flight so I will have to see how suit filled my Ryanair flight is next month (you never know, cutbacks). I quirked a smile and appraised the polish of their shoes as I imagined my own Vegan Oxford work shoes, nestled snugly between my copy of Ray Bradbury’s ‘Martian Chronicles’ and my iconic plaid shirts.

I arrived there and followed the easy trail of signs that led me to the bus I was supposed to get to the European Parliament buildings. While on the bus I saw a street sign for ‘Kiss & Ride’

(This picture is not mine: sourced from  – http://pix.ie/bernarddunne/1758609)

You can imagine what I thought when I saw this. But no, it’s not a publicly accepted cruising site but just an elaborately named drop-off point for people to drop off family and friends with their suitcases and kiss them goodbye.

Yeah, I was as disappointed as you to be honest.

So I got off in front of the European Parliament with my massive suitcase and not so small carry on case and walked the twenty minute circular and completely uphill (well maybe not, but it felt that way) to my new humble abode. 

I’m living in the Ixelles/Elsene Area and while I’m paying slightly more than for other places in the area, my apartment is amazing and comes with a truly wonderful housemate (who incidentally is cooking for me tonight) and a Neurotic cat named Rocket who can’t decide if she wants me to stroke her or if she wants to attack me. She has cuddled me and clawed me within seconds. My housemate says it’s because she was taken away from her mother too soon. I say it’s because she’s insane. But despite the gashes, I think she likes me. 

 

 

 

This is Rocket. Doesn’t she look disdainful?

This is the same look she gave me later. As I cleaned up her vomit. After she had attempted to eat some sort of plant. Twigs and all. Don’t you just love cats?

 

 

And this is my lovely apartment: 

 

 

Yeah, so this was my introduction to Brussels. There will be more tomorrow to catch up with today I will tell you of all the wild and crazy shenanigans that I get up to while here. They say Brussels is a quiet and boring city. I aim to find all of the secret, fun, hidden and beautiful things in this city. Stay tuned.