Last weekend, members of Bucknell en Espana had a four-day weekend. Emily, Vicki and I choose to spend our weekend in Brussels, Belgium. Even though we happen to be living in Europe, travel to other countries is not as easy as we had imagined. It took us about 14 hours to travel from Granada to Brussels, which is about the same time it took us get from New Jersey to Granada in January.

To save money, we booked a 6:15 a.m. flight out of Madrid.To get to Madrid, we had to take a 7 p.m. bus that arrived at 12:30 a.m. in Madrid, followed by an hour-long metro ride to the airport. Once we were at the airport, we attempted to doze sitting up at a table in a cafeteria, waiting for our flight. We finally arrived in Belgium at 9 a.m., where we then had to take a 45-min bus ride to Brussels. Whew. It was a long morning before it even started. Most flights arrive in Brussels itself, but we took a budget carrier, RyanAir.

If you never have had the luxury to fly on RyanAir, let me enlighten you a bit. First, when I say budget, I mean budget. As my friend who studied last spring in Tours told me, when you fly RyanAir you are putting your life in your hands. The seats are made of hard, imitation leather and do not even recline. There are no assigned seats, so it is a mad dash from the airport gate to the plane. It's similar to the Christmas shopping season, when Toy's R Us has three Tickle-Me-Elmo's and parents climb over each other, clawing their way down the aisles.

Everything extra on the flight will cost you. You have to pay to check baggage, you can pay to have priority boarding (and miss the fun, exciting "running of the bulls" reenactment) and you have to pay for all food, including peanuts. But it's OK, as there isn't even a place to put your peanuts, since the seats are not equipped with cargo nets to store magazines, nuts, or barf bags. As soon as you fall asleep, a voice comes over the PA system, advertising other routes that RyanAir flies. British Airways this is not.

Brussels is a beautiful city. I know I tend to say that a lot, but most of the cities I have seen are awfully pretty. Emily, Vicki and I made the best out of our trip to Belgium and saw most of the famous sights of Brussels. This includes Grand Place (a huge plaza), the European Union buildings (Brussels is the capital of Europe), a military museum, a cartoon museum, the Royal Palace, an ugly park, and Cinquantenaire Park (a really cool arch). We gorged ourselves on Belgian chocolate and waffles. Both were delicious. We did not find any sprouts...

One of the most interesting sites we saw was the Atomium, which is a big metal exhibit that resembles an atom. It was built in 1958 for the World's Fair. From the top of its 300-foot tower, you can see the entire city of Brussels. The escalators were very steep and were in the enclosures that connected each of the spheres of the structure. Inside, there was an awesome exhibit on an architect that built furniture and homes in a manner that used the least amount of materials and resources. The stuff was ugly but it was really interesting to see the logic behind each piece.

We also saw the famous Mannequin Pis statue. It's a small fountain of a boy peeing. (We have the Statue of Liberty, Belgium has a urinating toddler). It was so small; in fact, we walked right by it and had to ask a lady in a gift shop where it was. It was pretty embarrassing, as the shop was adjacent to the statue and the lady gave us a very confused look while pointing to the statue.

My favorite part of the trip was the beer. The beer in Belgium is great and some flavors have a complexity that is not found in the poor Spanish beer. We went to the Delirum Cafe, which offers a selection of 2,004 different types of beer (A Guinness Book record). We sampled quite a few different types and enjoy the unique flavors of each. The beer in Spain is not very tasty and after going to Belgium, I will have a tough time drinking Cruzcampo.

Wednesday, we attended a Tango performance at the same theater that we saw The House of Bernarda Alba. I do not have much to tell you about Tango in general, (you and I can both "Wikipedia it" for more information), but I did enjoy the performance. The dancers were great and the music was wonderful. Tomorrow we leave for Seville. Hasta luego.

Grand Place	I love this country	Chocolate	Waffle-mobile
Vicki+Waffle	Atomium	Cinquantenaire Arch	Royal Palace
EU building	Mannequin Pis	Grand Place at night	Me at the Arch