This time last year...

In April of last year, I was just returning to Brussels from my three-week long spring break travels. To start off, I spent a week in Geneva, Switzerland for the Harvard World Model United Nations Conference with some local students at my college. We were there as delegates, but we had a lot of fun exploring the city when we weren't in committee. There were eleven of us.. We stayed in a twelve-person hostel room, where we all got really close. It was definitely a bonding experience. After Geneva, we headed back to Brussels to regroup, and then my roommate and I spent nine days traveling to Budapest, Prague, and Vienna. It was the trip of a lifetime!



Le printemps en Genève (Spring in Geneva)



View from Várhegy (Castle Hill) in Budapest, Hungary

We were very tired by the end of our trip, but it was worth it. We met lots of different people.. other American college students, a British guy our age who was spending some time traveling after university, a lady in her sixties who always wanted to see Vienna... just to name a few. I can't wait to go back to Europe and travel to all the places I didn't make it to while abroad.

Posted by: Jen, Brussels, Spring 2007

For all the Beer Connoisseurs

While I was out to dinner with my friends this weekend, I looked down at my icy cold glass of Miller Lite. I do enjoy Miller Lite, "old faithful" as I like to call it, however I couldn't help but miss the wide variety of great Belgian beers I sampled while living in Brussels. Since Belgium is known for its beer, and the locals take the subject very seriously, one of the first things I learned when I arrived is that every Belgian beer is served in its own special glass.

My personal favorite of all the Belgian beers was the golden ale Duvel:



A close second was Leffe Blonde:



Followed by Chimay:



During my first week in Brussels, our group was taken on a tour of the last operating brewery in Brussels, the Cantillon Brasserie. It is a family-owned brewery, opened in 1900, that brews lambic beers such as kriek (cherry-flavored beer) and gueuze (a more acidic beer). We got to see the entire brewing process, from the storage of wheat, barley, and hops, to the brew kettle, to the cooling tun, to the barrels used for aging, and finally to the store shelf. My tour guide at the Cantillon Brasserie described the process as if it were an art form. During my five month stay in Brussels, I learned that beer is an integral part of Belgian culture, and it was also an important part of my experience in Belgium.

Posted by: Jen, Brussels , Spring 2007

Bruxelles.. Tu me manques!

Being a peer adviser for the Office of International Programs has enabled me to share my life-changing study abroad experience with other Penn-Staters. Sometimes, when I’m talking with another student, I get nostalgic for Brussels… I wish I could snap my fingers and be back in my apartment on Rue Veydt! I wish I could walk around the corner and browse for breakfast at Delhaize (our neighborhood grocery store), shop on the trendy Avenue Louise, have a beer at Café Belga… I could go on and on.

Even though my study abroad experience in Brussels ended in May of 2007, a part of my heart will always be there. Every time I look at pictures of the magnificent Grand Place (arguably the most beautiful square in Europe), the Manneken Pis, or the Atomium (Brussels’ version of the Eiffel Tower), I think of all the great memories I have and I feel like I’m there again.

Studying abroad is an experience that you will always carry with you... as cliché as it sounds. Never in my life would I have expected to fall in love with a city like I did with Bruxelles.

Posted by: Jen, Brussels , Spring 2007

Movie Review: "Au Revoir les Enfants"

The other night while I was doing some homework, I was flipping through the channels on TV and came across one of my favorite movies, “Au Revoir Les Enfants,” or in English, “Goodbye Children.” It is a semi-autobiographical film, written and directed by Louis Malle. It takes place during World War II at a Catholic boarding school in France; the priests at the school are hiding a Jewish boy named Jean Bonnet from the Nazis. A great portion of the film focuses on the friendship between Jean Bonnet and another student at the school, Julien Quentin. For anyone who is interested in French culture, or even historical films, I would totally recommend this movie. I originally had seen it for one of my classes, but I have been a huge fan ever since. Louis Malle does a great job of portraying the struggles that accompanied World War II during the 1940s… Definitely check it out!

Posted by Jen, Brussels, Belgium, Spring 2007