Luxembourg/Brussels
My trip to Luxembourg and Brussels was completely boring in terms of travel compared to my other trips. This trip was for my class called “Policy Seminar” which is basically a broad coverage of European politics. We were going to visit the Court of Justice in Luxembourg and the European Economic and Social Committee and the US Mission to the EU. I will explain this all don’t worry…We got on our bus with our scatterbrained Swedish teacher to head to Luxembourg. It was an extremely uneventful ride except for our rest stop for a quick bathroom break…one of the girls had to go to the bathroom so bad that we had to make a special stop for her. Most of us decided that if we were going to stop, we might as well all go to the bathroom. So we all jump off the bus and head into the rest stop. It was a little dark…and by a little I mean we couldn’t really see the stalls and so I, fearless Liz, took the plunge and opened the bathroom door. I took one look at it and laughed. Anna (the girl that really had to go to the bathroom), not that she isn’t a really nice girl, but I can tell you that never in a million years would she voluntarily pee into a hole in the ground which is what I found myself staring at. I heard her say, “What’s wrong Liz?” So I yelled out to her, “You’re really gonna like this one Anna! You better really have to go!” I turned around and walked back out, I didn’t have to go that bad. She looked at me with eyes filled with terror and said, “Liz…what’s wrong with it?” I just smiled and said, “You’ll have to see for yourself!” Needless to say she was not impressed by the facilities. She was going to refuse to go but Jenna took one for the team and went first. Anna was still not going to go but after I said to her, “Anna, think of how bad you had to go before we stopped…you are not going to make it another hour.” After several more skeptical looks at the bathroom she went in, came out a few minutes later, running, saying, “Ew ew ew I can’t believe I just did that. Oh my god, get me back on that damn bus!” I laughed and followed her back to our big purple bus (yes again, a big purple bus) and we finished our journey.
Our hostel in Luxembourg was very fancy compared to some other places I have stayed. We got to our rooms and went down for dinner. I was awkwardly served a big plate of meat which I had to take back to the woman who served it to me and explain in French/English that I couldn’t eat it. So she got out the menu and said, “Lasagna?” I looked at her and said, “Yes, if there is no meat in it…” She gave me a completely blank look and so I looked back down at the menu and so did she. Then she said, “Pizza?” I smiled and said, “Yes, just with cheese…” Again a blank stare….I sighed and looked back at the menu and she said, “Omelet?!” I said, “Yes…” and then she interrupted me with, “Omelet Fromage?” Those were the golden words, cheese omelet, I think she got it! So I nodded and said, “Yes!” and finally 10 minutes later I had a big cheese omelet and fries in front of me. Not bad for no real communication.
That night we decided to explore the town. Unfortunately we found ourselves in a ravine so getting to town was almost virtually impossible. We asked the people at the front desk where a cool place to go was and they circled a few places on the map and we were off. The night started out fine, we found a cool bar, watched some rugby on TV, and then looked outside and realized it was pouring snow. Me, Kristen and Courtney decided to head out before we couldn’t make it home anymore. I’m glad we left when we did because those that came later than us had even more trouble . We knew we were in for a long walk home when we took our first steps onto the snowy cobblestone outside. My boots and Courtney’s boots were apparently not made for the snow. We were forced to do a sort of shuffle down the street to keep from falling. When we hit the edge of the path down the ravine we started getting worried. The snowflakes were gigantic, it was kind of sticking, kind of melting on the ground and we had no hope. Courtney and I resorted to using walls and railings to support us. Don’t ask how the wall worked, it was just something solid to hold on to. We essentially slid down the entire way. Kristen’s boots were fine, she was practically jogging circles around us as we yelped and screamed down the ravine road. We eventually made it to the bottom which basically opened right up into our hotel and we were happy to be back in the warm comfort of our beds only a few minutes later. It was certainly an adventure and I definitely feared for my life.
The next morning we had an unnecessarily early start to go to the Court of Justice. Going back to our teacher being scatterbrained, he failed to mention to us that it might be a good idea to dress nicely for the court. We show up to the room where we were getting a joint lecture about the inner workings of the court with some students from American University and some other American group in jeans, t-shirts, etc. I have never felt so judged in my life. Not only were the last group to get there, we were about 10 minutes late and extremely under-dressed compared to the other students in their suits and ties. We snuck into the back of the room and tried to melt into the chairs. This kid in front of us said, “Excuse me, where are you from?” We said, “Syracuse University, what about you?” “From America.” “Yeah? Where in America?” “America!” “No I mean what SCHOOL are you from?” “Oh we’re all from American University.” “Oh cool, we’re just visiting, we go to school in Strasbourg, just checking out the court etc… What are you guys doing here? Where are you studying?” “In Brussels, we ALL have jobs interning for the European Parliament. We’re here for work.” And with that he turned around. Not that all American students are stuck up (no pun intended) but he definitely made it clear that we were the odd ones out on this one.
After the boring lecture that we couldn’t see through the sea of black suits, we headed to the court to actually hear a case. Our teacher had warned us about the bailiff waking up judges who fell asleep but we didn’t believe him. We couldn’t see how someone would fall asleep in court, especially the judge. Oh how wrong we were! I could not keep my eyes open if my life depended on it. It was beyond boring. It was to a point where I had to try to listen to the other languages it was being translated into and draw pictures in my book to try and keep my eyes open. I felt like every time I looked up, the bailiffs eyes were looking at me…knowing that I was about to fall asleep. But we made it through to live another day. We had lunch, some free time in Luxembourg and left for Brussels.
Proof of our ravine hike:
We were starving and exhausted by the time we made it to Brussels and had walked to our restaurant where we were having our big group dinner. Unfortunately there had been some confusion about our reservation which pushed back dinner even further but it ended up working out because the restaurant gave us free appetizers and a round of drinks. The appetizers, bread, and passion fruit ice cream for dessert were incredibly delicious. I kind of disliked the entree because whatever was in my tart thing (I believe it was a cheesy cream sauce thing) smelled really bizarre and I couldn’t get over it. The dinner took in total almost 3 hours so by the time we got out of there at 10:30 we were dead tired so we all went home and went to bed.
Sitting at our table for our ridiculously long dinner…
The next morning we headed to the European Economic and Social Committee. This is an organization that has no actual power within the European Union, but when legislation is coming up for a vote, the EESC produces opinions on what they think should be done. So we went and talked to the man in charge there. It was kind of interesting, the man was very knowledgeable about his job but I can’t say that I remember everything that he said, I was too busy watching the girl across the table from me struggle to stay awake. I had to control myself to keep from laughing because she would try and try and try to keep her eyes open but failed every time. Apparently I wasn’t the only one watching her. As soon as our talk was over, a kid named Tom walked over to her and said, “GENEVIEVE! I lost count of how many times you fell asleep but the last number I remember is 57!”
After the EESC we had lunch and ran around Brussels for a while then went to the US Mission to the EU. Basically their function is to act as a voice from the the US to the European Union when we want to tell them something and on the flip side, they can go through the Mission to talk to the US. I had to stop dead in my tracts when I walked into the building because on the wall is saw three big pictures that took me by surprise. I saw Obama, Biden, and Hilary all smiling down at me. This was the first US government building I’ve been into since Obama became president and I was sincerely taken aback to see those pictures up on the wall. But I had to just smile back and then hand over all my possessions including purse, notebook, pen, passport, and coat. All I could keep was my scarf but I’m pretty sure they were eying that too. Then we were escorted up to the room for our lecture 3 at a time because we might wander off and hide ourselves in the building somewhere and steal all their secrets…The two interns that work there were very nice, the escorted us up the stairs, down the stairs, and to the bathroom which was approximately 10 steps away.
Our talk was probably the most interesting thing we’ve done so far. First we got a talk from a woman who has been in the foreign service for over 20 years and she told us a little about the process to get in and what you do once you’re in. Apparently you change jobs about every 2-3 years and you pretty much switch countries every time. It sounds like a crazy job…Next was a man who is kind of an international trade lawyer. He handles various trade problems between the US and the EU. He told us about the conflicts between us over the poultry and beef that the EU (especially France) don’t want to import from us as well as the the French Roquefort cheese that the US in turn has increased tariffs on so people won’t buy it anymore. I loved the conversation, it was all about economics and I personally found it pretty interesting. The final person to come in a talk to us was a woman who looked really young but apparently wasn’t. She told us that she had been in the foreign service for 9 years and she’d been stationed all over the world. She worked in Hong Kong, Cyprus, for the operations board and before coming to Europe she was a special assistant to Condoleezza Rice. Her job at the operations board was pretty crazy sounding. The people that work there are basically working 24 hours a day between them. They take all the calls from embassies around the world if something happens. They will call in and say, “Oh, hey there was a bombing in Madagascar, do you think we should call the general?” And then the operators would say either yes or no depending on the situation and keep track of it. It seemed like a pretty intense job to have. I can’t imagine being on the receiving end of that. She did this in 2003 so I can only imagine the kinds of calls she got considering the year.
The most incredible part of it all was when she worked for Condoleezza Rice. She was essentially an assistant to her assistant. Her and the other special assistant would trade on and off every day. If they were the late shift, they would get into the office around 3-4 and stay there until around 10-11 getting things ready for the morning. Then she would go home and was on call throughout the night. That meant that if a call came in from the operations board, they would say, “Oh hi, there was a bombing in Madagascar, do you think we should wake up Ms. Rice?” And it would be her job to say, “Oh no, I think it’s ok but call me back if something changes.” Or whatever her response would be depending on the situation. Once again, it was her job to literally decide whether or not to wake up Condoleeza in the event of an emergency. I can’t even imagine. Then after being on call all night, she had to be into work at 5:30 am to look through newspapers and online articles to decide which ones would be important for Rice to read before she began her day. I can’t imagine the pressure! Then her day would be over around the time the other intern came in to do his late shift and then she got to go home early. She did that every week for a year! (Well except when Rice left the country, then it was a vacation according to her) It was fascinating hearing her talk because I can’t even imagine what her life was like doing those things!!
After the talk we were escorted 3 at a time back down stairs, given our possessions back and then had the rest of the day free. We ate some incredibly delicious waffles, saw some sites in Brussels and headed back to the hotel.
A famous statue in Belgium…??
That night it was Anna’s birthday that night and we were going to take her out when suddenly I received word that Jenna was throwing up in her room. Having the mothering personality that I do, I sat by her side as she got sick. The poor girl had the 24 hour flu. I took a break from feeding her water and pretzels to go out for a birthday dinner. We had some incredible pizza, surprisingly, and then Kristen and I walked home to get back to Jenna. She was still pretty ill but Kristen and I took good care of her and the next morning she was as good as new!
So I must tell you the story of my teacher’s reaction to Jenna’s sickness. We had all originally thought she was dehydrated so he disappeared and came back with a big glass of beer. We all looked at him with utter dismay and he said, “It will help her hydrate!” Now I’m not sure how they do it in Sweden, but I’m pretty sure beer does not help hydrate someone who is very sick. He made her drink some before I finally had to say, “I’m sorry professor, I don’t mean to be rude but I think it would probably just be best if Jenna is just alone with us right now. I’ll call you if we need anything.” And I kicked him out. Oh swedes…
So anyway the next day we went to the art museum in Brussels, had more waffles and fries, and headed home.
All in all a very interesting trip. I really enjoyed our lectures and talks and I don’t know if I did a very good job about relaying them to you but it was pretty fascinating!
