Get To Know Me: That time I went to Belgium and watched Christmas trees burn

Hey guys and welcome to another Get To Know Me post! I do these sporadically on Sundays to divulge some stuff about my life aside from books and share things from what I'm up to when I'm not blogging. This time, I'd like to tell you about my trip to Belgium that I got back from last Monday. There are A LOT of pictures, so I'm sorry if the post loads a bit slowly for some of you!

Why did I go to Belgium, you may ask? Well, to keep it short - my best friend fell in love and moved there to be with her boyfriend in Kontich, a small town near Antwerpen. I miss her. She wanted me to visit. I was more than okay with that. Flights with Easyjet are very cheap and only take an hour from Basel to Brussels - there you go. I flew in Thursday evening and my friend and the BF got me in Brussels with his car. Back in Kontich, we stayed in at their apartment, cooked, and watched the last two episodes of Game of Thrones, season 2. Who doesn't like wildfire and dragons?

Anyway, here's a picture to show you how I basically slept in their library:

The heap at the bottom is the pillows on my mattress. My friend is as book crazy as I am, so now the study is also the book room. Another cool thing in their apartment? They have a shelf in the mini-bathroom that is comics and manga only. My inner nerd approves.

Anyway, on Friday, we got up sort-of-early and took the train to Antwerpen. It's a very beautiful city! We did some sightseeing and shopping and later met with a friend of theirs for coffee. It was a lot of fun! There was also a used books store and a comic and manga nerd-store (also English ones!) involved ;) See?

This life-size spiderman is on the outside wall of the store.

They had a bit of everything.

You guys, I could've bought so many mangas that I usually have to order from the internet >.< But I restrained myself. Instead, I bought Neil Gaiman's Death - The High Cost of Living, a companion to his Sandman graphic novel series that I'd been looking for for a long time! Silly me forgot it my StS post from yesterday, so I'll add it next week.

Here are some more impressions. If I know what the buildings are, I'm adding it to the captions. Click the pics to make them bigger.

This one and the next 3 pictures are from inside the railway station. It was so beautiful!!

Random snapshot from one of the squares

Chinatown

This one is from inside what used to be an 18th century ballroom and was now restored in its gilded glory and turned into an upscale mall.

The cathedral.

Traditional shop front behind the cathedral. There are lots of red brick buidings in Belgium, and I love it! There aren't many of those in Switzerland. It reminded me of England.

After lunch (sushi, myum) and meeting up with my BFF's friend, we headed for the river and the docks and made our way over to the MAS - Museum aan de Strom, which means museum on the river. If you want to see it from afar or read more about it, you can do that here. It's a nine storey art museum and we went up all the way on escalators, which took a while. The view was amazing though! Twilight was just starting to fall and you could see all over the city and the river.

By the time we were done taking pictures and goofing around, it had grown really cold. Coffee was in order. And a quick trip to the book store before it closed.

That evening, we were really beat from all the walking, but we still decided to meet up with the boyfriend's friends in the neighboring town of Duffel (not pronounced like the duffel in duffel bag) for the traditional Christmas tree burning. Yup, everyone brings their trees to the town square, where they're lit on fire at night. It was cold, but really fun!
 Thankfully, the BF's friends also spoke English. I understand some Dutch (it's like a mixture of English and Swiss German) but not when several people are talking at once and a band is playing. The second cover band was really awesome and played all these songs from the 80s that everyone can just sing along to. It was so much fun! People were friendly and outgoing, we started dancing, and suddenly I found myself in a huge Polognese that trampled all over the square. We went home around midnight, stinking of woodsmoke from the fires.

The next day, we had planned to go to Ghent but the weather wasn't so awesome and we were lazy, so we stayed in. I watched my friends play the Lego Marvel Heroes  and Lord of the Rings games on Playstation, read a bit, watched Iron Man... it was nice. We went to bed early-ish because we had to get up early to drive 1.5 hours to Bruges on Sunday morning.

Have you ever seen the movie In Bruges? If not, you should!! It's fun (if you get dark humor), and sad, and just... crazy. It also has the highest frequency of F-bombs (usually at least one per sentence) I've ever heard used in a film, just to warn you if you've got a problem with that. But yeah. It's a lovely medieval town with beautiful buildings, shops, and awesome chocolate! Here are some impressions.

Yummie chocolates! We call them pralinés here, and they were better than the Swiss ones! For regular chocolate bars, I prefer my native ones though ;)

Lots of people took tours of the town with carriages.

Many lovely small alleys.

If you've seen the movie - yes, this is that tower!

The Grote Markt square.

I love that there's a compass / clock on top of this building!

Chocolate fountain.

This sugary colorful cones are a Belgian specialty.

Cute waffle shop :)

Allegedly, they have Jesus' blood in there. We didn't go in to check.

The façade is very beautiful though!

They also have Grachten!

We thought it was a bit cold for a boat tour...

The BFF and me :) I'm on the left, in case you don't know my face ;)

I meant to take a picture of the flowers for my dad, but ended up loving the reflection on the water!

Tree decoration.

Bruges is also famous for its lace shops.

I love foreign street signs :)

The beautiful Queen Astrid Park.

And the pavillon there. Again, if you've seen In Bruges, you know the place ;)

Lots of houses had the year of their being built written somewhere.

I love that spider web window!

This tiny Döner kebab shop stood amidst more modern buildings so I just had to take a pic.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip and Bruges was a beautiful conclusion! Early the next morning, it was back to the airport for me and then off to work for my friends. At 10:15am, I landed back in Basel and a good 2 hours later I was in my Zurich apartment.
Here's a map so you can see where I was. The first one is of the bigger context (where is Belgium in relation to Switzerland), the second is within Belgium.

I live in Zurich, flew from Basel, and stayed near Antwerpen.

I landed in Brussel, stayed in Kontich near Antwerpen. Bruges is more to the left/east near the coast.

Alright, this is it :) Took me about 90mins to write this post, haha. It was great to see my BFF and her boyfriend again and see where she's living and working now! It also felt awesome to just get away from home and work and everything for a few days and see new things, meet new people, hear a new language.

I hope this was interesting for you guys as well, and that you liked the pictures! If you did, it'd be lovely if you left a comment. I also have pictures from Prague, Florence, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Budapest... but I feel a bit silly sharing them if no one actually cares to see them.
Do you ever take short trips? If so, what do you go see?

Get To Know Me: that time I went to Dublin and accidentally met an author

Hey guys :)

As I announced last week, I want to keep giving you a little glimpse into my life and stuff I like on Sundays, even though the Know Me Better meme hosted by Kathy from I Am A Reader, Not A Writer is on hiatus at the moment.

Last week, I talked about favorite TV series (I'm now caught up on Game of Thrones, by the way, and can't wait for the new episode!). This week, I'll tell you about a Dublin trip I went on in October 2011. Why Dublin and not some other city I've been to? Well, I'm reading Karen Marie Moning's Fever series at the moment and it's set in Dublin, and I've been feeling nostalgic. So there.
Note: this post includes quite a few pictures, and they were all taken by me. Don't re-use them without permission. Click them to make them bigger.


Oh Dublin. I'd been meaning to visit you for a while. Then a total coincidence happened. A band a I follow on Twitter retweeted a tweet from a girl from my country being sad about not being able to take part in a video competition because no one else she knew was a fan. She was from Switzerland (and lives really close to where I grew up). I tweeted her. We talked. We met. 10mins later, we decided to go to Dublin together. Two months or so later, we did. She's now my BFF. She's one of those rare people who share both your taste in books AND music!

We arrived at our hotel in Dublin at about 11pm on a Tuesday. We dumped our stuff and headed out again, despite the drizzle and cold. I was really glad to be with someone who already knew the city fairly well. We headed strait for the Temple Bar district, to the actual Temple Bar bar. Despite the weather and being quite tired, I loved the atmosphere! It was quite packed but everyone was happy and in a good mood. There was a live band playing and soon we found ourselves sitting on old wood barrels somewhere near the front, enjoying our drinks and unable to keep our feet from thumping the beat on the floor. I felt like I'd arrived properly, like the city had welcomed me. I didn't want to leave, but we eventually did sometime around 1:30 or 2am, I think.

The band was taking a break.

Temple bar in the morning.

The next morning, we did some sight seeing, visited Trinity College, went to the wonderful library there, and looked at the Book of Kells. I had an intense moment of damn-I-want-to-study-here-it's-so-much-prettier-than-Zurich. Unfortunately, I realize I didn't take so many campus pics, my friend mostly did and we never really exchanged them. Here are some shots from the library that I do not own, because taking pictures was forbidden to protect the books.

Trinity College Campus

Courtesy of National Geographic

The Book of Kells was written around the year 800 in is known for its beautiful illustrations. Image source.

Let me tell you, this city is full of book stores of all kinds!! The biggest one we were at is Eason's, and there we had another lovely surprise!

Seriously you guys, I NEVER get to go to any author events because hardly any I read ever come to Zurich!! And I was so sad to have missed Sarah Rees Brennan by one week and that Cassie Clare would be there about 2 weeks after we left. In that very store. Ugh. So when we saw that Becca Fitzpatrick would sign the next day, we talked the book store lady into wizarding up two more tickets even though the event was sold out. Neither of us had read the hush, hush books yet but I'd seen them around and been debating whether or not to read them for a long time. So we bought them at the event the next day and had them signed. I'd post a pic of the signed book but I've already packed it into one of my moving boxes...

Meeting Becca. I'm on the right side.

 Of course I also bought a great deal of other books. 3 for 2 bargains don't exist over here. Also, books cost more than twice as much in Switzerland. I guess you know what I fill my suitcase with when I go abroad :P

Another author I 'met' was James Joyce. I've read most of Ulysses and a couple of his short stories in Dubliners, and finding his statue on the way to our hotel was awesome! One day I want to go to Dublin on June 16, the day Ulysses takes place. It's called Bloomsday and all over Dublin people dress up like characters from the novel. There are also tours and readings of the book and of poetry and it's generally an awesome literary event!

Me & Mr Joyce

Later that day, we also went to a shopping mall called St. Stephen's Green (I think) and I loved the architecture of that place!

St. Stephen's Green

We also made an excursion to the peninsula of Howth because I wanted to look at the sea. It was really cold so we stopped by the Bloody Stream pub too. Here are some shots.

Harbor

More harbor

Two fishermen

Unfortunately I don't know what this commemorates

Bloody Stream

We did A LOT of walking around over the two and a half days we were there! On the last morning in the hotel, another guest and his wife gave us their tickets for a hop-on-hop-off tour of the city. They were leaving and couldn't use them anymore, but they were valid another day. So we jumped that bus and drove around some more, also through Phoenix Park and some other places. We left early in the afternoon after buying some more souvenirs and stuff. It was quite a short visit and I would have loved to stay longer! I'm thinking about going back for a short trip in the summer, but we'll see. Below are some more random shots of the city, some taken on foot, some from the above mentioned bus. I hope you enjoy :)

The Olympia Theatre

This might be the Halfpenny Bridge but I'm not sure...

That needle was so high I couldn't get it on the pic properly.

That pole is the needle from before. Also, Jame Joyce statue from the back.

O'Connell Street

I love how the buildings along the river blend old and modern architecture.
Lots of brick, lots of glass.

Some more shots from the Temple Bar District:

No such thing as strangers in the Dub.

Street Art

Molly Malone statue. And a Leprechaun.

Irish bilingual street signs.

Hall of Mirrors shop.

So... I hope I could give you guys some sort of impression of the city, but I'm not sure I succeeded. I didn't take all that many simple street level shots, and I'm never sure what to include. The way the shops and all that looks is really different from here and I think it looks interesting, but it might be completely mundane and boring for other people. I also realized I don't have any big shots that give you an overview of the city. And many pics look bleak because of the weather. But I hope you enjoyed those I put there, because I had a great time!

Any comments on the pics or the author event? I kind of bombarded you ^^' Do you even like this kind of travel post? Would you like me to do another city? I've got lots from London, south England/Cornwall, Paris, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Florence... Or I could do more stuff with favorites. Feel free to suggest a topic :)