So Katie and I made our way from Italy to Brussels just in time for me to be in class with my friends from Duke. Brussels is a great city – very multicultural (3 national languages of Belgium: French, Dutch and German). Of course they are known for their Beer, Chocolates and Waffles, and as expected, I am known for my tendency to over-consume everything I touch (doing the math, you can easily predict that we gained some weight during this stop of the trip).
While we were busy with school, my class made sure to take plenty of time to enjoy the local brews of Belgium. We had a tasting in this local bar and even had the opportunity to go to InBev’s headquarters and see the production lines of Stella Artois (and of course, taste some!). This is clearly proof that drinking beer in school is rather educational.
Another staple of Brussels is its chocolate. I never pass up a good praline, so here I am in Neuhaus enjoying some chocolates they graciously suggested to us. That’s our tour guide (with the beard), a true Belgian who gave us the ins and the outs of the chocolate industry. He adamantly stated that Swiss chocolates have simply copied methods from Belgium and that Neuhaus has the original praline. I can’t argue the facts, but I would like to add that all of them are simply delicious.
And so we come to the third most renowned piece of Brussels – waffles. Belgian waffles have always been a favorite of mine, usually topped with a (very) generous scoop of ice cream. We ended up grabbing waffles at many places throughout the city in attempts to find the best one, but they all seemed to be pretty similar. Nonetheless, waffles are a tremendous ’snack’ between rounds of chocolate and beer as you walk the streets of Brussels. I would recommend it to anyone.
While our stay in Brussels was the longest, I was so busy with school work that we don’t have too much to post. By the way, thank you Allison for the photos (she’s the one eating the waffle with me)!
The mornings were early (7 AM) and the nights were late (often 3+ AM) but I was extremely happy that Katie finally got to meet my friends from school whom I had talked about endlessly for months and months. I didn’t think any of my friends could handle Katie’s ‘powerful’ personality (she will criticize you until she’s blue in the face) and yet the sarcastic tone seemed to be a uniting force throughout the week.
Whenever we had time, we took short day-trips to Bruges, Antwerp and Leuven since they were all so close to Brussels and soaked in the Belgium culture as much as possible. All in all, we had an amazing week and I was so happy to share it with both Katie and my friends from school. Now fat and happy from my beer, chocolates and waffles, we head off to Germany for more European goodness. Talk to you soon!
Hello again and welcome back to Katie and Mike’s Wedding of Wonders Blog — the place where you can read about daring adventures, exquisite cuisine, high-end fashion and deadly cobras (if you’re wondering about the cobras, this is the post for you!).
As some of you may know, I (Mike) am currently in India with my class from Duke exploring the global impact of one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. While here, I decided it would be a good idea to check out the sights, explore the local flavors and most importantly, learn which things were “Katie-worthy” and which were not. In my time here, I can honestly say that Delhi is unlike any other place I have ever been to before. In many ways I am watching a 1st world and a 3rd world country exist side by side. Thus far I have witnessed the following:
1. Monkeys playing with plastic trash while climbing on the imperial palace
2. An elephant walking down the street at midnight
3. More professional beggars than I thought any tourism could support
4. A group of foreigners running away from a “pregnant woman”, a man with one arm and a bicycle ice cream salesman at 2 AM (keep reading for more details on that one)
5. A shady snake-charmer (video below)
Quite a lot of things, eh? I suppose I’ll start with a story of my first night in Delhi (which, I still can’t even believe happened)… So after 4 flights and about 30 hours of travel (I could’ve gotten there faster, but hey, I’m saving money for a wedding!), I arrived into Delhi Friday morning feeling tired, dirty and miserable. Naturally, I did what anyone would do and quickly took a shower, changed my clothes, saw some sights then headed right for the bar with my classmates whom I hadn’t seen for 2 months. We had heard cautionary tales of the surrounding neighborhood and its numerous perils but figured that our combined travel experience (and drinking experience) would keep us safe, and decided to look for a bar. After stumbling upon some great Indian food and an excellent cover band that played US music, we settled in for a night of drinking and catching up. The hours flew by while rocking out to an Indian band’s version of Michael Jackson, Creedence Clearwater Revival and “La Bamba“, and before we knew it the band was packing up and it was time to find our way back to the hotel. The second we stepped foot outside the bar we were instantly confronted by several beggars, offering to help get us home (none of whom had taxis). Rather than stand around with the beggars, we decided to start walking toward the hotel and grab a cab along the way. …Unfortunately for us, a group of white, black, Latin and Asian people attracts quite a bit of attention in Delhi and we soon realized we had a guest. A woman, probably about 40, had infiltrated our group and was grabbing our arms shouting “I’m pregnant, I need your money!” Seeing that this woman was far too skinny to actually have been pregnant, we all continue walking, just trying to find a cab and make it home. After about 5 minutes, when the “pregnant” woman would not give up and no cabs were in sight, we decided that we had to do something. Now… this might not make sense now, but after a few beers and the harassment of this lady, we decided the best option was to start running. So here we are, a group of 6 international students running down the streets of Delhi with a “pregnant” woman (she was really fast too! Either she was pregnant with Michael Johnson’s baby, or she was lying to us). Then, as if it couldn’t get any more bizarre, a one-armed-man joined the pack, running alongside and begging us for money as well. Finally, a bicycle ice cream salesman sees the commotion and rides his bike next to us, trying to convince the group that we all need to stop for an ice cream break.
…I’ll give you a second to let that sink in, it took me until the next morning to realize just how unbelievable that story was…
So that was my first experience in Delhi — strong, I’d say.
From there, things calmed down a bit. I did some school work, saw a few beautiful landmarks, and ran into this lovely snake-charmer in a nearby park. Now, for those of you not familiar with the ins and outs of the underground snake-charming market, it works similarly to the urban drug trade. Each snake-charmer is in charge of a different region and cannot compete on another charmer’s territory or else… well… there would probably be some sort of battle involving snakes, and my bet is that it wouldn’t be pretty. So my friend Manuel and I are walking down the street and this guy walks up to us, drops a bag off his shoulder and holds a snake in our face asking if we want to see some cobras. We reply like any two guys and say, “sure, of course” and he proceeds to lead us across the street (back into his territory — he was poaching us) and show us the snakes. In the video below he’s taking us to see the snakes in his territory:
In case you didn’t catch it at the end, the snake charmer tried to charge us 1000 Rupees ($20) EACH for the 2 minutes you just saw! Of course we didn’t pay that (but gave him something) which led to more chasing, begging, misery, etc.
To provide cultural perspective, the following days I got a chance to visit Old Delhi and it was really an eye-opening experience. I was shocked at just how much it contrasted from the business, polished side of India. There were rows and rows of shacks filled with people living on less than $2 a day while the capital of India was a mere 15 minutes away and some extremely popular tourist spots were just 5 minutes away. Though this is an extremely White Person thing to say, I feel justified in saying it because many Indians said the same, it is amazing how much some poor parts of the city reminded me of Slumdog Millionaire.
I have learned an incredible amount here in India, about the people, their culture, the economy and the world. I can’t wait to come back here during our Wedding Around the World to share India’s most famous wonder, the Taj Mahal, with Katie.
Until then, keep checking back for updates! I’m headed to Dubai on Saturday and Istanbul Monday. When I finally get home we’ll have just about ONLY ONE MONTH UNTIL WE LEAVE!!! I can hardly believe how fast time is flying by. Keep posting comments, share your thoughts with us and we’ll talk to you soon!
