Belgian Chocolate + Belgian Waffles + Irish Choral Society= The Perfect Mix

So. Belgium. Well, My time in Belgium itself was quite fun and I got to know a lot of cool people from Choral society much better. Getting to Belgium, though, was a whole different ballgame. A train, a bus, a plane, a bus, a train, a tram, and an Irish pub all worked together (not so smoothly) to get me to Ghent, Belgium from Venice, Italy to meet up with Choral. Let’s start at the beginning.

5:10am- I wake myself up 5 minutes before my alarm and realize that I’m going to be walking with all my stuff, alone, through the streets of Venice to get to the train station. I promptly freak myself out and calm myself down in a 5 minute time span. But we were literally a 5 minute walk down a main street, so I just grit my teeth, said goodbye to the other girls, gripped my lifeguard whistle and walked myself to the train station. My train was at 6, and I got there at 5:40, so I had plenty of time, but here’s the thing about Italian train tickets. They say your destination and that’s about it. It doesn’t say which train you should be getting on (your destination may just be a stop on the way) it doesn’t say the time, it doesn’t say the platform: all this is supposed to be known to you. So when I got to the train station, I looked around in the main area for someone who was working to help me get to the right train, but I literally couldn’t find anyone working at the station besides the magazine guy. Soooo I stood around for a while hoping “Treviso” would show up on the departure list. But by 5:55, it hadn’t shown up and I began to freak out again. I looked harder for someone working and finally found a lady who told me to hop on a train that had been sitting near where I was standing the whole time. I made it with 2 minutes to spare. What a great way to start my long day of travels.

6:10 am- I arrived at the Treviso city train station and realized that I wasn’t at the airport, which is where I thought I would be. Add a bus to the list.

7:30 am- I made it to the airport, finally! And it was only 7:30. Ok, so I got in line for my flight and realized that they’re being really picky about bag size. This is an issue because my bag, while quite small, isn’t the right rectangular shape for Ryanair carryons. This hasn’t been an issue for the 3 other Ryanair flights, but this time, they didn’t let me take it. So I got in the other line, to check it. Then they shooed me to another line and by then I was worried about being late and when they told me to go wait in another line to pay 50 Euros to get my bag on the plane, I was in tears. I paid to carry on an oversized bag and went through security. On the bright side, I’ve never gone so fast through security. Who knew that tears worked wonders on airport security? I didn’t even take off my coat or shoes, and they let me go with a sympathetic smile. Despite all my worries, I made it to the gate before most of the other passengers did. My 9:15 flight took off with me blaring the music as loud as I could stand it, but miraculously still on track.

10:45 am- The plane arrived on time, and my bag made it with me.

My next step was a bus. Of course the automated ticket machine wasn’t working and the line for the ticket booth was astronomically long, but I eventually got a ticket and was on the bus into Brussels.

12:30 pm- This marks the first good transportation moment of the day! I got dropped off the bus right at the train station where I could catch the train to Ghent. Yay! The second good thing was that there was a Subway sandwich shop there and they had regular potato chips! What a good hour of my day. So after that lovely interlude I hopped on the train to Ghent and guessed which of the 3 stops in Ghent I was supposed to get off.

2:30 pm- I got off too soon. I shoulda waited one more stop and I would have been right in the City Centre, but alas, I did not. So I asked the student worker at the desk how to get there and she said Tram 1. But when I got to the stop for the tram and asked all the locals there, they pointed to Tram 2. So I trusted them and hopped on that one. I didn’t pay for the tram cuz I couldn’t find where to get a ticket, but no one checked, so I didn’t feel too bad. I tried to figure out where to get off, but mostly just ended up waiting. It turns out that the end of the line was where I wanted to get off, and with the help of a nice mother/daughter duo, I alit in the right place. (they say alight in a lot of transportation places- it’s a cool word and I like it :)

3:30 pm- I was on the right street but was going the wrong direction. I spied an Irish pub and decided to ask directions here for 2 reasons- 1) it was familiar and 2) I half expected to bump into one of my Irish friends who I was meeting in the area. I didn’t run into anyone but I got headed the right direction. After walking for 5 minutes or so, who should I see but Aaron, one of our Choral committee members. I had finally made it.

My time in Belgium itself was much better than the journey there. We were in Belgium for an international Choral Festival, which turned out to be a very small festival (us, a choir from Russia and the home choir) I got there on Thursday and our days were pretty full- Friday a trip to Brugge, Saturday a concert in one of the grande churches in Ghent and Sunday the actual festival (which I thought was odd, cuz who’s gonna want to go to a choral concert on Easter?) Anyway, we started our trip with a jaunt to Brugge. It’s about an hour away and it was a very pretty town. We did a boat ride on the canal and I took a picture of two swans that I think is one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken. We also went to a lot of chocolate shops, climbed the bell tower for an amazing view and tried our first Belgian waffles. So good. We came back for dinner at the B&B and then split up to get ready to go out. Now remember, I’m here with Irish people, so lots of the girls got very dressed up. But actually, a lot of them didn’t. So I felt better about that, since I didn’t have anything dressy. We went in search of somewhere to get a pint and where should we end up, but at an Irish pub. Leave it to a group of Irish students to go to Belgium and find the Irish pub :P It turned out to be lots of fun and I mostly chatted with a small group of people and just got to know people a bit better.

Saturday was our first performance of the weekend, an exchange concert with the Russian choir. It was held in St. Nikklas church, and it was a beautiful place to sing. Our first encounter with the Russians did not go well. They went way over on their rehearsal time in the space and when we had finished our sound check (15 minutes before the concert started) They had taken the back room to change into their outfits and were literally barring the door to the single bathroom and not letting any of us in. Their director was the one leading the charge. We were not thrilled with their manners, to say the least. That night, I headed out for Easter Vigil mass with about 8 other people. The mass was in Flemmish, but it was actually really cool because they had all the readings written out on the worship aid. I was sitting next to Melanie, who is from Austria, so between her knowledge of German and my mix of bits of languages, we pieced together was all the readings were about. They also had a really good choir and ended the mass with the Halleluia Chorus J

Easter Sunday was the day of the actual festival. It was held in a small theatre in Ghent, and it was really cool to be part of a young choir, so to speak. A lot of the people in Choral had never sung in an actual theatre before, or a church like the one we sang in the day before. It was nice to be reminded how cool it really is to be able to make music with people in such a space. The concert itself went really well. We sang a wide range of things, but my favorites were the two Irish pieces we did. For everything else we stood in our two rows, but for the Irish songs, we spread out to cover the whole stage and sang without Tom directing. They felt more powerful that way. The other choirs were good as well. The Russians we had already heard the day before, but the Belgian choir was a surprise. It was a group of mostly white people singing gospel songs with more soul than I’d ever encountered. They began the concert with a 30 minute set and I really enjoyed it. They also ended the concert with more people in the choir, and it turned into an almost hour long set that went on a bit too long. But they ended on a good note, and the concert was a success.

That night, as part of the festival, we were supposed to have dinner with Russians. Believe me, we weren’t all that excited about that considering their chilly behavior throughout the past few days, but we decided a bit of a social experiment would be fun. We were there before they were, and we automatically started to sit in one big clump, so it would have been us on one end and the Russians on the other. But someone suggested that we all sit on one side of the table so that when they got there, they’d have to sit on the other side. This way, we’d be mixed up, but we’d all have a bit of hometown support on either side. So. When they got there, it was a very tense moment. We could tell they weren’t excited and they were muttering in Russian…but they all sat down and after about 10 minutes of awkward tries, the room grew louder and we all relaxed and actually chatted with each other. The night ended up with a song exchange orchestrated by the guy across from me, who seemed to have the best English of the bunch (I got lucky there). I’m really glad we did our social experiment because now we can all get past the rude bathroom incident and remember the Russians and their awesome folk songs (which they taught us the dance to). That night it was decided that everyone would gather to play Werewolves (Irish form of the game Mafia) and drink the night away. Instead, our apartment sat around talking about politics and religion for almost two hours and then heading over once the party was in full swing. That tiny apartment was so chaotic. We had arrived just as they were trying to mobilize to head out and I could tell from the amount of yelling and stumbling that I didn’t want to be part of that group. So I corralled anyone else who seemed to feel the same way and we went back to my apartment to play cards.

The next day was the day they were heading back to Ireland and I was splitting off to join up with Julia and Katie, but I had one more day in Belgium before catching my flight to Spain. I took the bus with Choral to the airport and caught a bus into Brussels, where I was staying that night. On the way to the airport, Eilin taught me the Our Father in Irish. It was a good way to end my time with Choral. J The following day I spent in Brussels, which was not all that exciting, except I went to a musical instrument museum, which was pretty cool. I didn’t learn much since everything was written in French and Flemish, but hey. (you’d think if they could do it in two languages, a third, more widely used language wouldn’t be too difficult) It also rained all day, so I didn’t do all that much. My flight was at 6:30 so I caught a train with no problem and arrived at the airport with plenty of time. I got to Barcelona airport and figured out the metro without a hitch and found the hostel, arriving after Julia and Katie, so I was greeted when I got there. It was a much better traveling day getting out of Belgium than coming in, thank goodness. Belgium overall was lots of fun and very pretty, but probably the country I was the least impressed with. I think I’ll remember it mostly because that’s where I really got to know my Irish friends, and I’ll cherish it because of that.