The 40th Post

I feel that reaching my 40th post should be some sort of momentous occasion, but quite frankly there isn't a whole lot to write!

I know those of you that are not equally counting down until "home time" will be quite bored of this but -

I'M GOING HOME IN 2 WEEKS FROM TODAY!

Ok, it's out of my system now...

Tuesday was Saint Nicholas Day and as he is the saint for children here in Belgium we were paid a visit by him and his little helpers in one of our classes giving us fruit and sweeties, slightly random but another "cultural experience" I guess?!  Talking of cultural things, I understand it's nice to say bon appetite to someone when they start a meal, and my flat mate always says it when she sees me eating, by the other day I was walking down the street taking the very final bite of my croissant when a random passer by wished me bon appetite, I was a little bit confused... maybe I'm the only one that finds that slightly odd?

A box of M&S, yes, you heard it, M&S Mince Pies has turned up in my kitchen, I want to know where my flat mate got them from! Ahhh it's the simple things you miss...!

This weekend Jenny and I are off on our very last weekend away, this time to Lille to see the Christmas markets and just to generally be able to say we went to France for the weekend.  Once we get back I'll have been to Luxembourg, Spain and France as well as having seen various places in Belgium and having popped back to England for the weekend.  I some how don't reckon I'll be travelling as much from Granada but I am hoping to see as much of Spain as I can.

Oh and this is about as productive as my lecture got today:

A weekend in Luxembourg- we did a lot of walking!

Walking.  This seems to have been the theme of our weekend, and don't get me wrong, I enjoy wandering round and discovering places but I have a limit, and I think my legs have found it this weekend as they are no longer functioning at full capacity I must say....

The journey to Luxembourg city from here isn't too bad, just over 3 hours on the train.  It all went swimmingly, until the little screen on the train started saying "Terminus Arlon" (a town in Belgium...) and we started worrying just a little!  Luckily it must have meant that Arlon was the last stop in Belgium as the train soon continued onto Luxembourg.  Phew!  We arrived in a rather cold Luxembourg in the early afternoon and headed off to the hotel to dump our bags.  After filling in a form that seemed to want to know everything but my inside leg measurement we got into our room.  We decided that the best thing for us to do first would be to go to the tourist information centre to get ourselves a map (as you will later learn it obviously wasn't good enough...).  Seeing as it was still mid-afternoon we wanted to wander over to the European area and see everything over there and it made sense to get it over and done with first as it was on the other side of the city.  So off we went, in the direction that according to our map and the signposts would lead us to the area with all the EU institutions in it.  After a while we were faced with a long path, leading uphill, through the trees.  For some reason this didn't strike us as odd, I just remarked that they must send the tourists the scenic route as presumably all the people that work in the EU institutions don't walk this way!  So up we went...it didn't take too much longer for us to realise that we clearly weren't going to get there that night.  The problem was this being abound 4.30-5pm in November it was starting to get dark and we were on a rough path, through the woods and round an old fort, with no lights.  Brilliant.  The choice being either to turn back where we'd come- hardly a short distance, or continue we decided to march onwards.  Eventually we ended up at what you could loosely term as civilization.  I hesitate in calling it this as there seemed to be no people, shops or anything of the sort.  By now it was too late to be heading for the EU stuff and about time to be searching for food.  Problem.  Luxembourg is basically on 2 levels, the high town and the low town.  They aren't very well linked-other than by a great many stairs and you'll have a job locating them.  So this is how we spent a large part of our first evening in Luxembourg, trying to "escape" the Ville Basse and get back where human life could be found.  We managed this - via an epic flight of stairs and a series of rather steep hills.  Nice relaxing welcome to Luxembourg....  Food was soon located, and you know you're in a posh expensive restaurant when they take your coats and give you some pea-mousse thing whilst you look at the menu.  It was a fish restaurant and all the food looked (and tasted) very nice.  We did feel a bit like (bad pun coming....) fish out of water though as we were most certainly the youngest people in there.

Saturday-
On Saturday we had to head to the European area, after all the mess of the night before we had worked out where we'd gone wrong and how we'd ended up underneath the bridge we'd actually wanted to be crossing.  As it turns out it is probably for the best that we'd not made it there the previous night as there was a lot to see, it took us a good hour or so to walk round and wouldn't have been so good in the dark.  The geek in me wants to go and see the rest of it in Strasbourg now seeing as I've seen the European Commission and all the other bits here and now (here comes the list...) the European Investment Bank, European Court of Justice, European Court of Auditors and the European Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg.  I'm pretty sure we also saw where the main translation centre is too.  I've been looking into all the types of translation jobs they need in the EU, I'd love to translate for the Court of Justice but that would involve some form of Legal qualification which I don't have, well I can dream can't I?

After this we did a hell of a lot more walking!  I've put some photos on Facebook but for those of you not on there I'm about to stick them on Flickr too so I'll give you the link, just give me a chance to get them up there.

2 observations about transport in Luxembourg- there are loads and loads of Audis, especially in the European area where at least I'd say 1 in 3 cars were Audis.  Also Luxembourg, despite being tiny seems to be the European Capital of busses or something, there were hundreds of them, often with the very useful destination on the front of "Luxembourg".

After exhausting all the views and monuments of the city, writing postcards and drinking expensive (but very nice) coffee we went to the restaurant next to the one we'd been to the night before.  Whilst we were looking at the menu outside the waiter from the other restaurant came past and said hi, 2 young female students were probably a rare occurrence for that place, must've been easily recognisable or something!  When we were inside we were offered the English menu and caused some confusion when we asked for the French, and one of the waiters clearly wasn't sure as he insisted on speaking to us in English each time, although the others did at least stick to the French.  When we ordered the waiter asked me if I was sure that was what I wanted, did I know what it was?  I thought I did having read the English version of the menu outside but evidentially it was a different thing entirely.  What I was ordering, the internet now tells me, was part of a pigs large intestine.... yuuummmmm :S  I'm glad I didn't go for that in the end then...  As the exciting, party-animal, Erasmus students we are, we then returned to the hotel, got into our PJs and watched Danse avec les Stars.....

Sunday- To round off our trip we headed to the Museum of the History of Luxembourg City, presuming that the museum would be some what relative to the size of the city itself, it was surprisingly big though but a nice way to spend our last morning before heading back to the station and returning to Brussels.

I know I've already told you how much we walked, but seriously, my legs really really ache now.  I've had my exercise for the week.  Maybe I don't need to climb the stairs every day?!

My Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bexnobes/ 

The realisation that you're more than halfway through first semester...

...and therefore already a quarter of the way through the year abroad (not including Christmas and the gap between semesters).  Scary stuff.

I realised this when I said goodbye to my grandparents today and told them I'd be home in 6 weeks tomorrow, 6 weeks actually sounds like a short amount of time to me now, I've been out here for nearly 9 weeks I think and that has flown by like you wouldn't believe.  I remember booking all these trips and things to give me something to look forward to and I've been back from the first for nearly 2 weeks and going on the next one (Luxembourg) this weekend!  I've got into quite a little habit of crossing the days off on my D.I.Y calendar now too.  Call me sad if you want, I'm used to the abuse, I'm hardening to it...

I was hoping to do another video (yes I know the music has been removed from my first one, no worries I have a cunning plan to get round Mr Copyright Police next time) but lets face it, time is not on my side at the moment!  I'll try at some point but there are no promises!  There'd be no point at the moment anyway, it wouldn't be pleasant to listen to, my lovely germ infested, sore throat and bunged up nose have seen to that one...

In other news I've got myself an interview for volunteering at the Olympics, not doing anything exciting, in fact I'd be on the wrong side of the gate taking tickets and not seeing anything at all, but hey, it's something.  I might not get it anyhoo.

Attending the world premiere of the lastest Speilberg film

Until today this week has brought nothing noteworthy really, just been getting on with things now, which is nice in a way and some what boring in another.

Onto something interesting.  Today Jenny and I decided to go and see some of the celebrations for the Tintin world premiere.  First thing I noticed as the bus made its way into the centre were the police, I hardly ever see police here and normally they're just directing traffic but there were loads of them round here today.  First there was a display of cars all featured in Tintin through the city.  Afterwards we headed towards the cinema where the premiere was being held to see an acrobatics display, we didn't stay for the whole thing- we began to freeze, so went and got lunch.  Afterwards we found ourselves in what we thought was a great place to see what was going on, right opposite the end of the red carpet.  We stayed there for a while and thought something exciting was going to happen when a load of police on motorbikes appeared and a black car followed.  Out came the cameras and from the car appeared....some Belgian royalty.  This could've been vaguely interesting if I hadn't been expecting Steven Speilberg to emerge.  We heard a policeman tell someone that he was expected in an hour so quickly popped into a shop for some warmth and to kid ourselves that we will actually read these Belgian and Spanish/Italian newspapers we've bought.  When we were in there what did I hear but "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Steven Speilberg!!"  I still don't quite get what happened, I don't think he arrived in a car where we were so maybe we still wouldn't have seen it, but still annoying huh?  Bit of a fail really, and I sort of wish we made it to see the celebs on the red carpet beforehand as Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) was there but we still got close to the red carpet, even if after the event:

So next weekend I'm heading off to Lancaster, I don't anticipate there being anything for me to need to share with you all before then.  I'm not sure when I'll be blogging next because after that my grandparents are visiting and once they've gone I'm off to Luxembourg for the weekend!  I hope I'll get back to you before then, I'm sure I will.

Since when did I become so unfit?!

Sitting here with 3 apples and a bowl of grapes on my desk and a chocolate chip cookie in my mouth I'm trying to work out when it was I became so unfit!  Do I blame the YA? It would appear to be the easiest thing to do, and after all everything else gets blamed on the YA, but I don't think I can this time.  I am going to shift blame and say that it is down to University.  Don't get me wrong, the intention was there, I signed up for a membership, went swimming a few times and enjoyed it, but at some point it just went out the window, probably around the time that Glee, Swing Group, LUSU and work started taking more of my time!  I love to be busy, that's one of the things I miss most here.  I have a lot of time on my hands, I could be doing work of course.... That's how this whole thing started actually, I'd reached the point where I want to chuck this Faux Amis list out of the window and decided that a quick stint on the exercise bike would be a good idea.  Well, a quick stint is what I got!  I knew I was unfit, but I've never been this bad in my whole life!  From today I eat better (when this box of cookies is done that is), use the 4 flights of stairs (with the exception of with shopping) and work to lasting more than a couple of minutes on that flipping exercise bike!

So that was a little unrelated to the YA but hey!

Back to the YA stuff, so Jenny and I have booked our weekend in Luxembourg, I've not looked into it at all, I have no idea what we should do and see but we have a hotel booked for 2 nights so off we go! I'm trying to book up weekends to keep myself busy after realising this weekend that 3 days off is great in theory but you have to fill time, and even if you have plenty of work there is only so much time you can spend doing it.  I so far have a weekend back in Lancaster, some time here with my grandparents and the trip to Luxembourg.  I'm also hoping to pop over to Madrid to visit a friend (may as well as it is cheap!) and I might have a friend come and visit nearer Christmas.  Just going to see how much I can pack in!