Do they speak Belgian?: November 2015

Thursday 12 November 2015

A to B

At university I joined a module called Justice, mainly for the fact that it is taught in English, but after the first lesson I found it much more interesting than I had imagined. This class was formed on the idea of a historian refugee from Austria in the second world war, a historian who was trying to find himself and figure out the world around him. From this, we started to think about how Europe finds itself between past and present, in social, political and economical situations, and how justice has a major impact in these areas.

There are just 15 people in this weekly class, much smaller than any at Camberwell, and it's a class in which we can interact and converse with one another about our ideas and opinions, an opportunity that is rare in London.

In pairs, we chose a point on the map of brussels, all at the same perimeter, as a starting point to walk in to the centre point Palace de Justice. We had 4 hours to walk from our outer point, to Palace de Justice.

Sunday 1 November 2015

Ghent

My friends from Manchester came to visit me in Brussels this weekend, and it was so good to be around not only English speaking people, but the accent as well, which made me feel like I was back home. I was struggling to find things for us to do in Brussels, as there it isn't that big, so decided to do a day trip to Ghent.

The day trip turned into a 'couple of hours' trip, as the night before we had a few too many and getting out of bed the next morning, or afternoon, seemed impossible. Eventually, after a couple of hours of lying down and chatting we forced ourselves to get ready.

Once we arrived in Ghent, around 3pm, we wondered into the centre from the train station mapless and came across a beautiful park covered with golden leaves. We also stubbled across a sort of cave like tunnel, which gave the park a very eerie feel.

The sun set shortly as we arrived in the centre, and the next stop was waffles. I made a terrible choice to top mine with ice cream, and although it was freezing outside, it melted just as quick as it would in 40 degree heat. Next time i'll stick with Nutella.