Brussels Weather and Missouri Weather should get married

Alright story time.

Belgian weather is crazy. When Gareth introduced himself to us and went over the syllabus, program, etc., he listed the downsides of the city as well as the positive aspects. One of the cons? The weather. "It rains all the time," he said. Score!!! I love rain.

Well tonight we went to Gareth's house for a welcoming party. In class today he explained that he honestly didn't know the exact directions to get to his own house. I believe it because the directions he gave us to his office today were pretty sub-par. We managed, but not without slight difficulty.

So Lizzi spent time getting directions to Gareth's house on Google Maps (my clandestine lover) and wrote them down on my class syllabus. Only mildly relevant. Gareth told us to get to his house around 7:30, so we caught the 6:54 bus that he recommended. This is where our issues began.

Perhaps we were not meant to take public transport. Or perhaps this was Belgium's snide way of informing us that since we don't know our way around we should probably just go home. Who knows. Regardless, our €2 bus tickets didn't get us off on the right foot because while I asked the price and paid, the other 3 didn't hear and therefore it took a while for them to get on the bus, take out their money, pay the driver, get their tickets, and check it. Please note, we are already on a bad start with the driver.

We were told to get off at the Observatoire stop--about a 15 minute ride from our flat. I tried to figure out the electronic stop system (not exactly as easy to understand as the NYC metro that lights up each upcoming stop). As the bus stopped and opened its doors, it changed the name of the stop to the next upcoming one. Perhaps Brandon and Nicole had not noticed this--entirely possible--but regardless, they jumped off the bus one stop early. I was the furthest from the door, and Lizzi right behind me, so when we tried to follow them/get off the bus, too, the driver thought 5 seconds was long enough and closed the doors on us. He began to drive away and we rang the bell to make him stop. He yelled at us en français and basically told us that we need to make a decision (only said that in much less friendly terms).

We got off the bus rather quickly to avoid the angry, inconsiderate bus driver. But we were now an entire bus stop away from the starting point of our directions...so after the bus we began walking. And walking. And walking. We found the first street we needed to turn down. Off in the distance, storm coulds were looming. Oh yeah, and it was 7:30 right then.

At 8:00, we're still walking down the street trying to find our second turn. For some reason, we still couldn't find it, even after 15 minutes of walking (which is supposedly how far the walk is from the correct stop to Gareth's house). The street just didn't exist. Google Maps, you're not supposed to make things up on me! That was why I switched to you from MapQuest! Serious fail...

8:00pm--the rain starts. This wasn't the nice misty rain we'd had earlier in the day. No, this rain rivaled the angry droves of Missouri rain. This rain came was falling HARD and from all directions. We threw our hoods up, Nicole even had an umbrella, and we kept walking.

8:15--the hail starts. Driving rain is one thing. Driving rain doesn't sting through 4 layers of clothes when it hits you. Hail is a breed of its own. The hoods no longer work. Neither does taking momentary shelter under the convenient trees. The four of us huddled under Nicole's umbrella. I think my left shoulder might have been slightly drier than my right, but that's about it.

We reached the end of the street. Not "we kept walking and eventually had to turn around because we weren't finding anything." No, we literally reached the end of the road. Still no correct street to turn on, so the four of us entered a pub on the corner dripping wet and looking more than a little pathetic. The bartender gave us directions to a place just down the street past the Two Brothers.

That's something we haven't caught on to yet about Europeans. "Just down the street" can be as far as a couple miles. We're walking, it's still pouring rain, and we're lost. We didn't know that this was one of those multi-mile cases.

We then went down the wrong street for a few hundred feet before turning around and correcting ourselves. We went down the right street for about a third of a mile before Lizzi got frustrated and went into a restaurant for help. She initially wanted me to come with her to double-check translation, but there was no way I was going to stain the establishment of such a nice restaurant with my dilapidated appearance.

Nicole, Brandon and I waited outside for her. She was shucked out by a rather irritated waiter who was obviously of the opinion that she had defiled his restaurant. Regardless, his directions were that the street we wanted was just "300 or 400 meters on down the road." Please note, that's most of a mile.

We kept walking and the rain let up to a dull, thick drizzle. At long last we found the Two Brothers! Turns out this was a restaurant/pub and the street was supposedly just after it. No, the street we were looking for was not just after the pub. The street we wanted to end up at was just after the pub. All along we'd been given directions for our endpoint, not the second street on our list. I guess that's pretty helpful, but it was slightly deceiving.

Regardless, we found Gareth's house and weren't even the last ones to arrive. The Poli Sci kids had already shown up with Marvin Overby and one of the intern students came just after us. Within an hour, everyone had shown up and we all socialized, eating and drinking and talking and laughing, sharing stories of the US--debating baseball teams, comparing states--and improving our own knowledge of Brussels...we hope.

Everyone was wonderful and I got my first taste of couscous--delicious, by the way. And homemade hummus! Gareth basically rules at life. We took the safe route home: we called a taxi.

Best part of all this? We have to meet Gareth at his house again tomorrow at 10am. We'll see how that turns out, but I think the plan is to get another taxi just for ease.