we komen aan in Brussel-Centraal

traveling in Belgium could read somewhat like a MasterCard commercial:

1 GoPass (10 one-way train fares to anywhere in Belgium)= 46 EUR
1 BuzzyPass (unlimited bus and tram as long as it's a DeLijn bus/tram)= 162 EUR
1 waffle from Panos for the train ride= 1,60 EUR
the ability to travel anywhere in Belgium within an hour= priceless

Belgium is a country with about 10 million people (that's 3 million more than the San Francisco Bay Area) and has just a little bit more land. Therefore, everything is compact- cars, travel times, houses, supermarkets etc. When I first got here, I was told that Brugge was a nice day trip, but that Brussels is a little farther, and might not be as easy. Coming from California, where you can drive for 9 hours and still be stuck in LA traffic, I imagined a 2 or 3 hour train ride. But no, from Gent-Sint-Pieters (a gorgeous train station, btw) to Brussel-Centraal, it is approximately a 30-45 minute train ride.
So now take Belgium (little bigger than the Bay Area) and divide it in fifths. 3/5s are Wallonia and 2/5s are Flanders. Now take Flanders and add approximately 150 AFS students. As you can see, the population density of AFSers is very high. This makes for lots of fun outings/ chance encounters with everyone else.
A few days ago, I went to Brussel with Bryan (AFSer from Cincinnati) after school (we get out at 12 on Wednesdays). While walking around, we saw a ton of police officers in front of some royal/ official building, so we stopped and waited to see what would happen. We ended up waiting for about 30 minutes in the rain under some tree in the park across the street, but all we saw were a few guys in business suits give us strange looks as they walked back and forth from the cars parked in front to the building. But I do think it was something important- probably something to do with the king. It's little things like this that make wandering in Belgium so much fun: being surrounded by Spaniards all decked out and already celebrating for the Spain/ Belgium World Cup Qualifying Game (Spain won, 2-1), finding some random Roman ruin next to the economic department building in Brussel, buying a bunch of bananas in Antwerp so we could get in to the zoo free and then being on TV as we gave them to a Belgian actress, running into all the Brazilians at the kathedral in Antwerp, listening to a mariachi band in Brugge and then getting lost for an hour on our way to the chocolate museum etc...this is what makes being an AFSer so much fun.