After travelling for spring break, I have a new appreciation for Belgium. Some good, some bad.
1) Compared to Italians, Belgians are extremely quiet. I love this about Belgians because I found the Italians to be rather loud.
2) Everywhere has nicer weather than Brussels (everywhere but London) It was so nice to travel South and get some sun. I have returned half way through April and the forecast this week is in the 60’s.
3) Compared to London, Brussels is tiny. London was too big. Not in the over whelming since but in a impossible way to get anywhere. The hour transit and multiple transfers on the tube made me miss Brussels’ simple and quaint system to get around.
4) While in London, I thought everything written in English was a tourist scam. In Brussels, the only things written in English are tourist signs that are usually over priced and not authentic. This took a couple days to get used to in London.
5) Brussels is a good medium of feeling foreign and feeling at home. London felt too much like the United States. Italy is very different however, along with Tunis Ibiza. I felt these places were much more of a culture difference than in Brussels.
6) In Brussels and London, there are maps everywhere. Not the case in Rome. After visiting London first, I expect maps to be on the streets to easily get around, this was not that case.
7) Grocery stores are more frequent in Brussels than the parts of any city I visited. Granted I don’t live in the most tourist part of Brussels, but in every city I found it much harder to locate a place to buy an apple where in Brussels there is a shop every two blocks or so.
8) Europeans in general do not know how to walk in public. In DC, almost everyone is aware of fellow sidewalk walkers and don’t stop in the middle of the way and walk to one side or the other. In Europe, it is a fiasco of people colliding. London was better than Italy and Brussels, but overall I miss the walking skills of DC residents.
9) Belgians smell better than Italians.
**Italy refers to Rome, Palermo, and Genoa.