I made it into the station surprisingly quickly. The security and "border" was super easy. The security guy even hit on me, which was funny (to me anyways - the french accent and stuff always makes things funnier). Soon enough I was on the train...
I arrived in two hours plus a time change, so three. The train itself was nice enough, you could tell it was going super fast! A lot of the way was black, but there was some French countryside and Belgian countryside on the way too!
Martijn from Couchsurfing was already at the station, so I had a guide outta there and onto the tram heading to the city centre!! He let me drop my pack at his house since my host was not going to be out of work until later in the evening, and we started walking around...
This church has the city's first public urinal.... on the side of the church. So you literally were peeing on the church lol.
at this point we stopped and I had my first Belgian beer. It was excellent! I had also already had Belgian fries at this point too, in a sandwich no less. With some sauce. Yummmmmmmm
As you can see, this was a mammoth sightseeing tour! He even had spare maps at his house, so I had maps as well!!!! Martijn knew the history of a lot of things too - I felt like I was getting a personal tour from a pro :) I was so lucky! The time went quickly, and soon enough my host Nico was off work and at a bar in the city with some friends. We went to get my stuff from the house and I headed down to said bar...
It was very easy to find! I put my bag down and joined the group.
One thing to note about Belgium is that it has two official languages: Flemish and French. Flemish is similar to Dutch. Martijn was Dutch-speaking from the Netherlands, and this whole group of people here in the bar were French-speaking. Most of Brussels (that I noticed anyhow) is French-speaking, although there are more Flemish speakers in Belgium than French. The Northern part of the country (Flanders) is Flemish, the Southern (Wallonia) is French-speaking, with a small dab of German in the East. Okay I am not going to get into the politics of this since I am so far behind in writing this blog.
Sooooooo we were at a bar, then we decided since it was so nice out we should get some beer from the store (cheaper!) and go somewhere else. We went for a walk to the skate park in an area of town I didn't walk through. I ended up there till fairly late trying a variety of Belgian beer. I ended up hula hooping a little at the skate park (hey that beer is strong!) but soon it was time to go and we took off for the tram. I tried fries with a new sauce on the way I think, and it was super gooooood!
The house itself was nice - had an amazing view and big terrace! You will see pictures of this later. My couch looked nice and big, so I was asleep in no time :)
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