Brussels Baby!

Today was our field trip to Brussels, Belgium- Home of NATO and the European Union Headquarters.

We left Olympus just after 7 this morning and arrived in Brussels at NATO at about 10:30. We got there super late because we were stuck in traffic for a bit and then we got lost and no one knew where to go. We finally found it. Went through a throrough security check where we had to show our passports and go through a scanner. We then walked into the building and were seated in one of there big lecture rooms. Since we were quite late, we only had 45 minutes left in the room and the guy talking to us was not impressed at all. He was very grumpy and got very defensive for no reason. He gave a short talk on what NATO is and what they actually do followed by answering some of our questions. We were out by 11:30 and went back to the bus. We didn't see anything else at NATO which was very dissapointing, we didn't come all the way to Brussels just for that...

Rainy morning

Historic

Our bus then drove us to the EU Parliament. Yesterday, we learned in class the three (actually four) institutions that make up the EU- the parliament being one of them. So we all had a bit of an understanding of what goes on in there. We were starving by this time so went to the cafeteria. I though I was going to have to pay but at the end of the line, I found out that it was included for us!! (I should have grabbed a bottle of wine!!) It was not a very good lunch and you can tell that even the EU is making cutbacks which is directly seen in their cafeteria. We then headed into another room where our fantastic tour guide gave us a very interesting speech on the parliament. She could talk for hours and I could also listen to her for a long time, the was a great public speaker. She then took us into the actual room where big decisions are made- the room that you see on tv sometimes. It was very cool to see this in person!

This is the EU Commission

Trying to find the parliament- it was getting nice and hot

There it is. This is my German friend that i live with for 6 weeks

official EU lunch @ cafeteria

There's the Parliament

And me in the parliament

President's seat

Translation boxes- there were over 20 of these!

After the EU Parliament, we walked back to the bus, and drove back to Utrecht. It was too bad that we didn't have any free time to explore more of Brussels, eat some chocolate, waffles or fries or see manneke pis...

I got back at 7:30, biked back home and made some supper. It was a pretty tiring day, sitting down for most of it but overall, very interesting!