Brussels/The Hague/Amsterdam

Last week I went on my study tour to Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam, which was so much fun!  The majority of our time was spent in Brussels since the EU has most of its dealings there.  It was very cool getting to meet with representative from te Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Danish ambassador to the EU, the European Commission, NATO and the European Parliament just to name a few.  We really got a first-hand look of the meetings and got to hear the perspectives of the people working there.  After intently listening and taking notes about what they had to say, we were always happy to have some delicious dinners and snacks: Belgian waffles, fries and beer...all the famous foods of Belgium!

At nighttime, Brussels has a lot of fun things to do.  There are so many restaurants to try, but whenever we walked down certain alleys, some of the men who tried to pull us into their respective restaurants were very sleazy.  One of them, who was about 35 years old, even bought my friend Becca a rose and made her kiss him.  Besides eating though, there are tons of bars and clubs open all night, and two of the nights in Brussels we went dancing at the Irish Pub, and I met lots of other Americans from a study abroad group that my friend from school (Shanthi) is studying at!  Unfortunately, she wasn't there but I talked to lots of people who knew her, which was exciting.

After Brussels, we headed to The Hague, where we had the most delicious dinner ever.  Our group leaders bought us tons of pitchers of wine, too, so we were all pretty happy by the time we left.  After dinner, we all went out to the bars together and had a good bonding experience with the whole group.  The next morning we went to the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) and learned about some of the terrible crimes that had been committed in the former Yugoslavia and what they were doing to bring justice to the victims.  We were supposed to attend a case hearing, but unfortunately, it was cancelled for the day so we were all a little disappointed about that.

However, we got to head to Amsterdam a little bit early because of the cancellation.  There were definitely a lot of cool sights to see there, but I didn't have much time to do anything but eat dinner and go on the canal tour with my group because I had to catch my plane to London.  I had been planning to hang out with my friends for a while longer, but I'm extremely glad I played it on the safe side, since I ended up getting pretty confused in the Amsterdam airport.

Overall, though, my experience in Brussels and The Hague was so much fun and academic at the same time.  The only bad thing about it was how fast it all went by: we were shocked to wake up on the 17th and realize it was our last day!