Pain(t)balls and bike falls

Yoyo People of the Palace! So my days since Easter have been quite uneventful, thus no reporting back for a while! However, I come bearing news – not very much though!

So last week we went to play paintball at Paintball Gent. Nice place… until you get hit by the first burning paintball! To make matters worse, my South African ally, Johann, was on the enemy team and shot me on the ass. I now have a nice purple bruise right there to remind me of his betrayal. Even though it was painful, I enjoyed running around like a crazed soldier and slipping on paintballs! I would’ve loved to test my barrel roll and diving skills, but unfortunately my left knee was not cooperating. See, what happened was that I wiped out again on my bike while heading to catch the bus for paintball. This fall was not as mild as the previous one and my knee and ankle is still blue and uncooperative!

So since I have no real interesting news, here’s a video that gives you a 5 minute tour of Ghent. It’s really awesome! (Kudos to Julianne for sharing it on her blog)

On the agenda for the next few weeks: Beerbowling, Lieven’s choir concert, Budapest, Dinner at Lieven’s house and, of course, THESIS – DUM DUM DUUUUUUM! Peace J

Easter break in Germany

As part of my Easter vacation I spent 8 days in Germany. I went to Munich, Berlin and Potsdam, which is a city close to Berlin. I had an awesome experience, mostly travelling on my own, meeting up with friends and meeting new people!

So at first I started my journey on a low-cost airline and before I knew it I was landing at Memmingem airport. What I didn’t know however, was that the bus trip to Munich was going to take an hour and a half. Not the end of the world though and when I arrived in Munich my South African friend, Nico, was there to meet me! We had an awesome time together exploring Munich and on the second night we went on a Beer Challenge/Pub Crawl organised by New Europe. We visited Augustiner Brauhaus, as well as the Hofbrauhaus. This was an awesome experience. What makes Munich and the rest of Bavaria awesome is that the people there are still quite traditional and it’s not weird for them going out in their traditional lederhosen. That was really really awesome as we saw some well-dressed gentleman and ladies! The biggest party happened in the Euro Youth Hostel Pub, where the Beer Challenge ended. This was also the hostel we were staying in. The next morning I had to get up early to catch the bus to Berlin, while Nico was heading to Dubai to visit friends.

So after an eight and a half hour bus ride I arrived in Berlin. Eight and a half hours on a bus was at least not as bad as I expected and I got to see more of Germany, even though it meant just passing through. So arrived in Berlin all alone, but luckily the hostel I was staying in was really easy to find. There I met one of my dorm-mates, Ahmed from Egypt. The next day the two of us went on a free city tour, but halfway through we were so cold we returned to the hostel. I then decided to go find a shopping centre, not that I had any money to spend, but at least it was warm! Then it randomly started to snow! On Saturday night an American guy, Drew, arrived in our dorm, so Sunday the two of us went exploring once again. With no trace of the previous day’s snow and the sun shining we walked and walked and walked and saw everything awesome, returning to the hostel with sore feet. I would highly recommend a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Site and the museum under it to anyone visiting Berlin! That was definitely a the biggest highlight of all the sites I saw and very moving. By the time we got back to the hostel another Egyptian, Sherif, had arrived. He is a friend of Ahmed’s and, of course, in true Egyptian style we found a shisha bar (hubbly for the South Africans, or hookah for anyone else) and each smoked a pipe. They taught me how to blow smoke rings and shared all their shisha secrets, so I’m a pro now! Dan, my friend from New Zealand, arrived on Monday and on Monday night we went to the shisha bar again.

So then on Tuesday morning I bid Berlin, and my new-found friends, goodbye and went to visit Julianne in her hometown of Potsdam. We spent the day exploring the streets and sights of Potsdam and later the day Dan also joined us. The night we went to dinner with Julianne’s German friends and also celebrated one of her friends’ birthday with her. Wednesday led to more exploring and doing random things like taking silly pictures and falling of random turning chairs in parks (right Julianne?). We ended the day playing Rock Band on Wii and having dinner with her mom and brother. Potsdam was definitely my favourite city on the trip and I would recommend a visit to it if any of you ever end up in Germany!

Thursday morning we woke up at 4:10 to catch our plane back to Belgium. Since we were so tired we didn’t pay much attention to the trains when we arrived in Brussels and ended up taking the train that takes almost 2 hours to get to Gent since it stops about 15 times! Finally we made it home and it was good to be back in Gent!

So last night I attended the birthday of the Parochiaal Centrum PAX in Aalter where Lieven lives. Had good food, met the parents (and the rest of Aalter) and had a good laugh at Lieven on a video they made for the birthday of the centre. Just a shame my camera's battery was dead, otherwise I could've had some incriminating evidence! All in all I would say I had a pretty awesome Easter break. Plus it’s awesome to have proper frietjes (Belgian fries) after a 40 day Lent fasting!

Back for more!

Hello peeps! So it’s been a while since I wrote anything here – sorry, my bad! It’s been quite a busy month for me and since the sun was shining most of the time, I preferred being outside rather than inside.

So since the last time I wrote many things have happened! First there was the weekend in the Ardennes (which is the Belgian “mountains”), then there was a lot of social time which included enjoying the spring sun on the Graslei with friends, eating ice cream and, of course, hanging out in Porter House (the Irish Pub where the exchange students meet on Wednesdays).

So spring has finally (and briefly) arrived in Gent. I was sick in bed for most of the first few sunny days, but it wasn’t long before I was up and whizzing around on my bike enjoying the sun. The students like to spend their lunch time on the Graslei enjoying their lunch and a beer. Of course everyone went crazy when they saw the sun, so the Graslei was super busy, but the atmosphere was amazing and it made for an awesome lunch time!

So then we went to the Ardennes. Basically what this entails is assembling 70 exchange students, getting on a bus, driving about 3 hours to the other side of Belgium (in the South) and having a massive house party every night with unlimited beer on tap! This was no doubt one of the most fun weekends I’ve had the pleasure of attending. So after arriving in Arbrefontein, which is a really small town, we had dinner prepared by the owner of Porter House, after which we had a music quiz type activity with the girls against the boys. Of course the girls won – probably due to their amazing dancing skills ;) After this the house party continued until the next morning. Everyone slept till the afternoon and then we went for a “hike” in the mountains (which is basically just very high hills). Then came the much awaited “Bal Marginaal” where everyone was supposed to dress as silly as possible. After which another huge party followed. It is probably unnecessary to mention that most people were either still drunk by the time we got on the bus, or very hung over. It was quite a funny experience for me! We then drove to Dinant to see the famous Citadell Castle. Some of us were brave enough to climb the more or less 250 steps to the top while others opted to take the cable car.

A few Sundays ago we went to Leuven, which is a university town in Belgium kind of like Stellenbosch (probably just less awesome). Another Stellenbosch student, Stephanie, is studying there and she spent a night or two with us in Gent, before we went to Leuven to see where she lives. The weather was great and we had a drink on the Oudemarkt square, where many other people also came to enjoy the sun. After this we played some Rummikub in a little pub/coffee shop close by. Once again the town’s atmosphere was amazing, even though most places were closed since it was Sunday.