16/08/2009
I wake up in time to make my extremely early check out. In fact, I wake up early enough to shower again, get breakfast and return to my room before heading out. Thanks to my broken clock that was not working at all when I awoke and told me that it was 3:45. However, the sun was out, so I knew that was not correct. Opening my computer confirmed my suspicion and gave me the correct time. I look outside and three times see different men who are not poorly dressed pull bottles of juice out of the trash and consume the remnants. I pack up, check out and see the Czech boy waiting there. I am put off, but we go to the hostel where I will be staying and put my luggage in a room and my computer bag behind the counter. It takes some persuading since I don’t actually have a room yet. We head out to kill some time before the 12:00 meeting. We go to a church with urinals on the side. He goes into a rant about Belgium and how they have no respect and merely do these sorts of things for attention. I relish the opportunity to use such an implement. Eventually I have his email and I am in the lobby of the hostel for registration. He is headed back to Prague. I see some of my acquaintances from the night before and we start chatting. We are greeted and head to a room where we are given schedules and a lot of papers. We play some getting to know you games. One of these is a list of random things that one tries to fill in with their fellow student’s names. I can put myself down for almost all of them, so I make it an easy time for everyone else. We eat a large amount of small sandwiches. My favorite is a neon green chicken curry that looks as if it could give me superpowers. After a few hours of presentations on the Metro and other aspects of living in Brussels we are let loose to move into our hostel rooms. One of my roommates is a person I sat with the night before. He is very friendly and has a severe receding hairline. The other is a guy who hasn’t said a word the whole night. He drops his baggage, which is substantial, off and leaves before I pull my backpack and suitcase up the stairs. I will not actually see him until the morning of the 18th. My roommate and I talk for a while. He has graduated already, but wanted to go abroad and since his parents were paying for it figured why not just study? He has a job as a bartender in Australia after this semester. I take a shower and head downstairs for a walking tour. It is about six o’clock and the sun is still blazing away. We are told that this won’t last and that we are fortunate. We walk around and see a few places that I visited the night before. We also visit the urinal church. We are told that there used to be a port in Belgium and that sailors wouldn’t stop urinating against the side of the harbor church, so they eventually just set up a drain and made stone urinals. “Has anyone already taken advantage of these?” Our director Michelangelo asks. I raise my hand and he laughs. “No one usually does their entire time here! Good job!” I get a few slaps on the back and we continue. We see a statue of Godfrey II the man who conquered and became King of Jerusalem during the first crusade. We also see a statue of the current king on a horse; we are told that it had originally been ordered to be on a motorcycle. A few people laugh. We are brought to a beautiful covered walkway with statues aligning both sides and let loose.
A few friends and I are told the name of a really good seafood place and we go there. There are around 18 of us all together and so we split up into groups of four and five to be seated. Everyone else at our table orders the special: A pot of mussels, fries, and a small beer for 14 euro. I figure though that it’s my birthday and I should indulge myself, and so long as I am here branch out a little. I order the horse and a kir, along with everyone else’s food and feel like quite the francophone. The mussels are delicious. The Horse however, is far better. It was a fantastic cut of meat. No ring of fat, no bones, just delicious and tender. It has the consistency of a steak, but tastes like a sweet pork chop. The kir is good too, but as it turns out is much sweeter than I’d expected, so I drink it before eating too much of my meal. After diner we stumble, drunk on our full stomachs to the Delirium Tremens, an idea for a café I’d had since 16. We all order a beer, and I run to get an absinthe. I get a cube of sugar and a match, but I am forced to ask the bartender to do it for me, in less than wonderful French. The confidence I’d had earlier is shattered. He dunks the sugar cube in, pulls it out and puts it on the spoon. I bring it back to the group and it is consumed to many cheers. Someone calls it “Devil’s piss.” I can feel it in my sinuses when I drink it, and in my stomach once it is down. I order a beer and continue to drink, though much more conservatively now. Many other students join us and we go downstairs and shove a few tables together. I let it slip that it’s my birthday when someone asks me why I drank absinthe and happy birthday is sung. The whole bar joins in and after the song demands a speech. It goes roughly as follows with me trying to translate every line after I say it:
“Thank you. In my home country, to turn 20 means nothing. There is nothing that one can do to mark the event. But though I have been here a very short time, and though I have embarrassed myself on multiple occasions while here, I still feel as if I have something to celebrate in just being here. I feel as if this is actually a decent place. So thank you for letting me be here.”
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