Monday, June 9, 2008

Day We Don't Know What Number

Greetings from Brussels, Belgium! We just got in yesterday afternoon, and already we are heading out. But its been a really good 3/4 of a day. We didn't have any problem getting from the hotel in Paris to the hostel here. Once we threw our stuff down in our 10-person room (more on that later), we took a walk around town. Highlights: getting fries, with sides of mayo (less gross than it sounds) and curry ketchup (especially good when mixed together); eating a belgian waffle smothered in chocolate sauce, bananas and strawberries; drinking delicious Belgian beer. So basically, we're fat.
We were so stuffed from the waffle that we skipped dinner and went straight for the beer. We downed a few, and were then joined by a young guy who had been making eyes at me all night (I swear I'm not being conceited, he really was!). His name was Hamsa, and he had grown up in Brussels, although he was born in Morocco. We talked to him for three hours or so, about movies (In addition to being huge in real life, Jean Claude Van Damme is a huge deal in the film industry here), languages and his family in L.A. Oh, maybe I should mention that he spoke NO English. At all. Our entire conversation was through hand gestures, high school French and miming. We were able to communicate that Tor loved Hillary Clinton, beer and Diet Pepsi, and once we did that, Hamsa kept making fun of her for being very American. We tried to explain to him the concept of a hostel, but he thought we were talking about an orgy. Cultural miscommunication, much?
At one point, he started telling a story. I was pretty convinced he was making fun of Jew (the only words I understood were Jew, Morocco and laugh). Turns out he was telling us about an Israeli comedian.
At the end of the night, he walked us back to our hostel (which was only a few blocks away) and then headed home. Oh but don't worry, I got his e-mail address. Freetranslation.com, here I come! Then we stayed outside for awhile and talked to other people staying at the hostel-a few Scots, some Aussies and a Canadian. One of the Scots had spent a few months partying in Thailand, then met a Belgian girl and moved here with her. He woke up yesterday morning, dumped her and wound up in the hostel.
We went to bed at a decent time and woke up early this morning to try and get waffles again, but alas, every place was closed because it was 8 a.m. So we settled for Subway. Mange fraiche!
We're leaving for Amsterdam in an hour, and will be there and hopefully settled in our hotel by mid-afternoon.
Thanks for reading, and we'll update you once we get to the Netherlands!

Love and Moroccan Muslims,
Melissa

1 comment:

Lauren Effron said...

hahaha I'm so enjoying this travel blog