Les Bandes Dessinees!

So last night was uneventful, and today was exhausting. Josie and I wanted to go to the market in the area that they have on the weekends, but the guy at the hotel sent us to one that was way farther than expected and not what we had in mind. It reminded me of a market I went to in Mexico—lots of random fruit and meat stands, and everything else was clothes and shoes and watches and household items that they probably get super cheap and sell for 10 Euros or less too—super sketch. Then we decided to walk to the Comic Strip Museum but ended up at the Comic Strip Café instead, which was quite a hike in the wrong direction. When we finally found the Comic Strip Museum, it was really interesting. They had original drafts of comics and history of certain popular strips like Tintin, Gaston Lagaffe, and The Smurfs. My favorite is Titeuf but turns out he is actually French and not Belgian. The book store was pretty interesting too and I probably would’ve bought a bunch of funny comics if I had the space in my suitcase, so I might see if I can find smaller ones at bookstores or something. We then walked back towards the hotel in search of food. We stopped and got frites and then I did some souvenir shopping before returning to the hotel. I finally caved in and bought a little mannekin pis with a bottle opener on his head and a corkscrew from you-know-where.

In the evening we met up with the group for the final two presentations—Caleb’s and mine. Caleb’s was about trappist breweries in Belgium—though I’m still not positive what the difference between a trappist brewery and a monastic brewery is… My presentation was about how Belgium culture influences its brewing. Most of my presentation focused on how Belgian beers have a lot of influence from the surrounding countries as well as the history of its overlords. Also Belgium, unlike Germany, never had a beer purity law to limit the ingredients in their beers. I’m glad to be done but it was super intimidating giving such a casual presentation in a conference room—normally we’ve done them in bars or in the lounge of the hotel, so the conference room was overwhelming.

After the presentations we went out to an Italian restaurant for pizza. It was really different from the pizza in the United States, and super delicious. I got a salami pizza and the salami was really spicy, so I had to order another shot of Sprite (they serve 0.2 L at a time). After dinner my roommates and I found “27 Dresses” on TV in English with Flemish subtitles and watched that until bedtime.