Weather and Waterloo

Ok, ok, I suck. I didn’t get my blog written yesterday. But in my defense, I was studying so I was doing something productive! Kinda. Anyway, to make up for my lapse here is the longest blog ever (I think).

So, another pretty low key week here. It’s actually sunny today, which is a change from the normal bi-polar weather that’s usually going on. It generally follows something like: gray. wind. clouds. rain. clouds. DOWNPOUR. wind. 100 MILE PER HOUR GUSTS. sprinkling rain. sun. couds. wind. repeat. Each of which lasts for about 5 minutes. That’s a pretty normal day. And I thought Seattle was known for freaky weather.

Anyway, this last weekend! I had a really fun trip to Waterloo. Kristoffer had a test at a school there, the city center is about 12 miles south of Brussels, and so I decided to tag along. The test he was taking is something like the SAT’s but slightly more important. They use it to determine who gets into classes in the Universities since you don’t actually apply to a university, but you apply directly for whatever classes you want to take. So students retake this test quite a bit because the higher your score, the easier it is to get into the classes you want.

Saturday started at 6am with us trying to catch a bus to be at Waterloo around 7:45. K’s test started at 8:30am. A frantic run around the train/bus station finally ended with us finding and jumping onto the bus, the doors closed and we were off! We barely made it; thank goodness the bus was late leaving! I’ve had a lot of close calls with transportation these days.

We got to Waterloo and Kristoffer needed to take a taxi from the bus stop to the school, but after calls to THEE two taxi companies that service there, both said “Not possible” because apparently they weren’t open. A panicked Kristoffer and I finally managed to find a cab that was just driving down the street (pure luck!), and I sent Kristoffer on his way.

So there I was at 8:15 in the morning in Waterloo. Keep in mind that this is still Belgium, and in Belgium NOTHING opens until 10, 9:30 at the earliest. So I sat on the bus stop bench, and ate my croissant and juice I had brought with me, trying to decide what to do. Instead of waiting around for the tourist office to open, I decided to take a walk down the main street and look at the shops. Waterloo is very beautiful.

About 9am. I found an Ibis hotel, which is a chain similar to Motel 6 or Best Western. I stopped in to use the restroom (and warm up a bit), and was able to get a free map of the city from the receptionist. I realized that it wasn’t so far to the actual battlefield from where I was. I was planning on taking a bus but since I had much more time than money, I embarked on the 3-mile-or-so walk.

For those who may not know, Waterloo was the great battle between Napoleon and the Allied forces lead by the British Duke of Wellington, where Napoleon and the French were finally defeated on June 18, 1815. The landscape is mostly farm land and has been kept/restored to how it was at that time.

The Sunken Road to Ohain on the bus tour

I bought the “I-want-to-do-everything” pass (student rate, woo hoo!), and started my morning off with the BUMPIEST bus ride around the battlefield. Imagine riding down the bumpiest row in an orchard that you can remember, now add a hard seat with no real cushion or springs and a bus with suspension made to handle a full load of people. Only it was just me and one other guy. We’re talking enormous potholes. Anyway, hopefully you get the picture.

The tour was in 3 languages and took you to all the different farms and key areas of the battle. Really fascinating. After that I saw the Panorama display of the battle: “An immense fresco places you in the heart of the battle, completed with amazing sound effects.” I think amazing is a little over the top for a descriptor, but it was a beautiful painting none-the-less. When I came out, it was raining, so I ran to the visitor’s center to see the Audiovisual show and a Film of the battle, both of which I got to see all by myself in these huge theaters (there was hardly anyone there that day). The show was a model of the battle set up with lighting and miniatures and showed you hour by hour the movements of the troops in the battle. The Film was cheesy, and more for kids. I came out from that and it was still raining.

Now, I need to digress a little and explain to you why the rain was a particular problem. That morning I had asked Kristoffer to check the weather. As I’ve mentioned before, this is almost a futile effort because of the sporadic weather patterns in Belgium. However, being that it was 6 in the morning, and I wasn’t really awake, when he said, partly cloudy with some sun, I believed him and didn’t bring my umbrella. Really stupid.

So now it’s pouring rain, and the last attraction that I had to see in that area was the Lion Mound. The Lion Mound is a huge conical hill that was built by the Dutch on the place where the Prince of Orange, their leader, was wounded in the battle. There are 226 stairs to the top which is crested by an enormous statue of a lion that is glaring down toward France (oh these Europeans and their symbolism). Being the super tourist that I am, I thought, “Oh it’s not raining that hard, and I’m from Seattle!” So I whipped up my hood and started up the hill. What I didn’t count on was that it would start monsooning, and that when I got to the top of the hill, not only would it be raining, but crazy-windy as well. So after I staggered up to the top, I hid on the downwind side of the statue so at least I wouldn’t get the wind. Snapped a couple of sad pictures, and slopped my way back down the stairs, which now all had puddles on them. I was the only person climbing at that time, to state the obvious.

So now, I’m soaked from the knees down, my jacket is dripping, I’m sweaty from the climb, and it costs 40 cents to use the bathroom. On principle I refuse to pay for toilets unless in dyer emergency, so I instead wandered over to the wax museum, to warm up and dry a little. The wax figures were nice, but what was really interesting was the battle debris that they had on display at the end: Napoleon’s sword and hat, musket balls, armor, and even skulls that had been found. The skulls were discovered in the foundations when the museum was built and it was very obvious that the men had died from battle wounds.

It was still raining, so I decided to have some lunch at the Napoleon Bivouac Café and Restaurant. I sat as close to the HUGE fire as I could to dry a little more. Had a coffee and a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. and spent the meal rereading Victor Hugo’s description of the battle of Waterloo from Les Miserables, which I am crawling my way through now. I wanted to see if he accurately described the battle, and from what I had seen that day, I think he did very good job.

By the time I was done, it had stopped raining, the sun had come out, so I opted to go ahead and walk back into town.

The last visit of the day, was to a museum next to the bus stop where Wellington had spent the night before and after the battle. It was a lot of the same information, but added some more history from the British/Allied side of the battle.

I met up with Kristoffer after that, and we had some coffee and then headed back to Brussels, in the midst of another monsoon. Crazy, ridiculous weather.

That night we had dinner at a friend’s house, and Sunday was a much more relaxed day. We visited the comic strip museum in the afternoon, since apparently Belgium in the birthplace of comic strips. And if one needed any more proof that this is a strange country, the man who created the Smurfs was a Belgian from Brussels.

Well, I think that brings me pretty much caught up! This was a super long blog for only chronicling one day, but it was just such an eventful day, all by myself, that its fun to share all the details.

If anyone wants to know more about anything I have done or seen, let me know. It’s hard for me to know what details to include so much of the time, so if you want more descriptions or a fuller account of anything specific, I can do that!

Now I’m off to study. That’s my primary activity these days.

Oh! A couple of notes for you brave souls who are still reading.
First: I got my start date for Ernst & Young: August 6^th.
Second: If you haven’t noticed, my itinerary has been updated. We’ll be heading off to see the land of Turkey at the beginning of May for our last excursion! We have a friend we know that has been studying there for a while, so we’re going to crash at her place. Istanbul, here we come!

Me and Napoleon