Brussels

This past Saturday, I left Leuven for a trip to Brussels. The weather Saturday was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and mid-70s all day. It was such a beautiful day!

Anyway, the train ride from Leuven to Brussels was about 30 minutes. I got to Brussels around 11:00 am and as soon as I step outside the train station, I see a rather tall building with spires poking up. I decided to just head in that direction. It turns out to be the Cathedrale des Sts-Michel-et-Gudule. My travel book lists these cathedrals and museums in the native language, so sorry for the these not being in English.

Afterwards, I found my way to Grand Place. It's the largest and most popular square in Brussels. It's surrounded by guildhouses and the city's town hall. While I was walking around the square, there was actually a wedding going on in this building.


The picture below is the town hall, which is in the same square.


The buildings in the picture below are the guildhouses that I previously mentioned. All throughout the square, bars and cafes line the perimeter. This square was also incredibly crowded. I saw some Japanese tourist groups and a mob of Europeans. I actually ran into a segway tour as well. I didn't try to go on that tour though, it doesn't seem worth it since you can just walk around and the see the sights on a regular tour. The segway tour travels fairly slowly, so it's not like they're zipping through the city.


As I was reading through my travel book, it suggested I pick up a bag of homemade chocolates from this store called Wittamer. Wittamer has stores in several countries, as you can see from the cities listed on the awning. All throughout Brussels and Belgium itself, there are tons of chocolate stores, since the country is well known for this sweet. Some chain stores include Godiva, Leonidas, and Neuhaus.


So when I bought the chocolates, it was about 12 pm. I didn't get back to Leuven until 8 pm. After storing the chocolates in my bag this whole time, they now look like this:


I swear they were much prettier when I first bought them! Oh yeah, I bought 6 pieces for 3.60 Euros, so it's a little more than $0.60 for each piece, which I guess isn't TOO ridiculous. I realize there are only 5 chocolates in the picture above. I was too eager to try one before actually taking a picture of them.

Speaking about food, I indulged in another Belgian waffle. The store where I got it from was absolutely packed, and they had over 15 different types to choose from.

I ended up getting the strawberry with chocolate and whip cream. The waffle itself was glazed in sugar, with fresh cut strawberries, whip cream, and hot chocolate syrup to top it off. I thought the waffle I had in Bruges was good, this one was absolute bliss. The only drawback about this waffle was that it cost 4.5o euros. It's quite a bit since 1 euro is almost equivalent to $1.50. It was definitely worth it though!

Continuing with my travels, I found the Manneken-Pis. It's a VERY small bronze statue of a boy urinating into the fountain's basin. For certain holidays, the city dresses him up in costumes. There's a museum somewhere in Brussels that showcases all of his costumes, but I didn't see it during my excursion.

To put it in perspective, here's a picture of the crowd all coming to see this statue. The statue is literally just on the corner of a block. There are many legends about the origin of this statue, but none are believed in more so than the others. Legends date the original statue back to the 12 century up to the 17 century. The original statue was stolen and destroyed, however the statue was recast from the broken pieces and what we see now is that recast statue.


Wandering around Brussels still, I come across the Notre-Dame du Sablon. It's a late gothic style 15th century cathedral.


For lunch, I stopped at a restaurant recommended to me by my travel book. It was called Brasserie de la Roue d'Or. In terms of beverages, I made the mistake of ordering bottled water. Next time I need to remember to get tap water. That small bottle of water, 0.2 L, cost 2.25 Euros. That was my mistake, hopefully I remember next time. Anyway, for lunch I ordered the vol-a-vout. It consists of a flaky biscuit stuffed with chicken and mushrooms, with more chicken and mushrooms on the side, all doused in a house-made cream of mushroom. It even came with a side order of fries, which I didn't order. I guess here in Belgium it's customary to have a side order of fries, since it's one of the nation's most famous offerings. The food was delicious! Oh my, it was phenomenal. The entire lunch set me back about 23 euros, but again, it was well worth it.


I also found my way into a little garden in the middle of the city. There are a couple parks dispersed throughout the city as well.


After spending hours walking around and sight seeing, I decided to shop around a bit. When I came to Belgium, I wasn't expecting the weather to be so chilly, so I didn't pack a whole lot of warm clothes. So I went out to some stores and picked some up. There's a big department store here called Inno. It reminds be of a Nordstrom's. There are lots of expensive brands, with some more affordable brands as well. I tried going into some boutiques, but as expected, their prices were outrageous. A pair of jeans at these shops was about 190 euros. A little too much for my taste...

That pretty much concludes my trip to Brussels. Once again, the architecture here is very gothic, seeing as how most cities over here have a lot of history. I imagine I'll be back here eventually. There are so many restaurants over here and I'd like to try a couple more.

Random observations

In my previous post, I had mentioned how I was a little worried about finding housing. Maybe I misunderstood the situation, but everything is all settled now. I've moved into a new efficiency that's probably 27 square meters. It's clean and all kitchen utensils, pots, pans, and microwave are all provided. I'm actually renting this place from a landlord, I'm not subletting from a student. Although I initially have to pay the bill for housing, I'll be reimbursed later by IMEC.

Anyway, there are a lot of interesting things that I've noticed while I've been here in Belgium and I wasn't sure how to go about describing them, so I'll just list them.

-At a lot of public restrooms, there is an attendant that you have to pay something like 0.50 euros in order to use the facilities. I didn't want to pay to go to the bathroom, so I can't say anything about the cleanliness of it since I never went in.

-Since I'm already talking about bathrooms, all the stalls I've seen have actual doors on them that fully close, so you don't have that awkward gap between the swinging door and the rest of the stall.

-Also, the sinks in the bathrooms over here at IMEC only have cold water. I can't attest to other public bathrooms since I haven't used any of them.

-That's enough about bathrooms. As I mentioned earlier, bikes are the dominant form of transportation throughout this city. Next to the main roads, there are dedicated lanes for vehicles on 2 wheels (including motorcycles, scooters, mopeds, bikes) and separate lanes for pedestrians. Riding my bike around the city, cars ALWAYS yield to bikes unless there are dedicated street crossing signs. I've never seen a car accelerate through a cross walk to beat the people on bikes. Even though they would have had plenty of time to pass the crosswalk, they still stop and wait.

-A large majority of the taxis that I see here are Mercedes. I've seen several Volkswagon stationwagons, but I'd say approximately 90% are Mercedes. I just found it odd that the cars used as taxis are more expensive than the cars everyone else drives. Also, tipping here isn't necessary. Even for taxis, you only pay the fare on the meter. When I was switching my housing, I needed to take a taxi in order to transport my suitcases. In total I traveled about 4 km, with an additional 5 minutes of wait time for me to retrieve my luggage. The fair ended up being 17 euros, which is about $25. I feel like that's rather expense, considering at Hopkins you can get a taxi from campus to Fells Point, which is significantly further away, for about $16.

-The education system here is a little different than the States. In most European countries, it's customary to go to a university for 5 years to get both Bachelors and Masters degrees. Very rarely do students go to a university just for a Bachelors. Right out of high school, they expect to be at a university for 5 years, regardless of the school.

-All the digital clocks here use 24 hr military time.

That's all I can think of right now. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Oy

The last couple days have been a little hectic. On Monday, I was told I had to vacate my current housing by Thursday. On Tuesday, I started my frantic search for a new place to live for the next 3 months.

I'd like to mention that I was aware that I was only temporarily placed in my first dorm until Thursday, and that I was told by people at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven I would need to find other permanent housing. By the information that I received from IMEC (which is a separate entity than the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), I was lead to believe that I could actually stay in the dorm permanently. Everyone else in the dorm is foreign, and everyone permanently settled there, for durations ranging from 3 to 9 months. Somewhere throughout all this housing shenanigans there was an unfortunate miscommunication.

In this INBT IRES program, I was formally enrolled at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as a visiting scholar. This university essentially makes up the entire city. Offices, lecture halls, and whatnot are scattered all over the city, and students bike around everywhere. During the academic year, a very significant portion of the population are students. I was told by some of my colleagues at IMEC that I should expect the city to be noticeably more empty in a couple weeks, when students are finished with their final exams.

Anyway, where I'm going with this is that since I'm enrolled as a visiting scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, I have access to their facilities and their housing services. On Tuesday I went to the housing office and picked up a list of available rooms/studios for rent. That's all the help you really get. It's the individual's responsibility to find housing once you get to Belgium. This list comprises of addresses and costs of the rooms/studios being rented or subleted from students and landlords. Wow, that was a lot of conjunctions in one sentence. Anyway, on Tuesday I sat in the housing office, googled the addresses, and began calling away. They have a dedicated phone for students to use to call places. Good thing, because the roaming charges on my phone would be been astronomical.

The rooms/studios on the list weren't very helpful for me since a lot of the rooms were unavailable until July, so my options were very limited. I got a little bit of help from the people over at IMEC, in that they provided me with websites of some local companies that rent flats (studios/efficiencies). After viewing several places, I finally settled on a studio on the east side of Leuven. Biking to IMEC from this studio should be a little less than 15 minutes, so I guess that's not bad at all.

I would have preferred to have just stayed in my initial housing. There's always people around to talk to and everyone is foreign and working at IMEC. We could all really relate to each other. Additionally, it's close to the IMEC facilities and there is a grocery store about 300 meters away. This location was just very convenient. Oh well, I've tried everything I could to stay here, but alas I'll be kicked out by the end of tomorrow and moving over to a new flat. Speaking of which, I haven't exactly figured out how I'm going to transport my suitcases. It's a 1.5 mile trek from my current location to my new studio. I don't really trust myself to ride my bike with one hand and pull my suitcase with another, although I have seen people doing this. I feel like biking around is already dangerous enough, I don't need to complicate it by dragging a weight behind me. I guess the tentative plan right now is to go to IMEC and call for a taxi to usher me around everywhere.

Antwerp

Today, me and 2 other interns from IMEC went to visit the city of Antwerp. It's in the north eastern part of Belgium. When I asked some coworkers earlier last week about Antwerp, they told me that it was a popular area for shopping. I would soon see that for myself after an hour long train ride.

Seeing that it's Sunday, the majority of the stores here in Antwerp were closed. The only ones open were some restaurants, souvenir shops, and museums. All we could really do was walk around the city to sight see.

The above buildings are 16th century guildhouses.
And next to them is the Antwerp City Hall.

I'm not quite sure what this structure is suppose to symbolize. I tried looking it up after I got home, but I haven't found an explanation yet.
This is the Het Steen. Antwerp used to be a completely fortified city, but all that remains of those fortifications is this restored building.

For lunch, we stopped by at a Greek restuarant, where I got this lamb shank, with seared vegetables, rice, and square of feta cheese. The menu did not have a single word of English on it, so we had to ask the waiter to go through each item and explain what they were. This dish was 14 euros, which is approximately $19.50 USD.

Bruges Take 2!

After briefly seeing Bruges this past Monday, I wanted to get a longer stroll around the city. So I hopped on the train and an hour and a half later I was back in Bruges. Today was a rather cloudy day, but at least it wasn't raining.

Walking around in Bruges is like taking a step back in time. As I had previously mentioned, the medieval architecture in Bruges is still intact, so this makes an excellent sight-seeing trip.

This is Béguinage. Founded in the 13th century, it was a place where several sisterhoods of the Roman Catholic Church resided.

The above is the Basilica of the Holy Blood. It was built in the 12th century as the chapel of the residence of the Count of Flanders. Wikipedia tells me that it houses a "venerated relic of the Holy Blood allegedly collected by Joseph of Arimathea and brought from the Holy Land by Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders."


This building is called the Belfry. You can pay 5 euros to climb the 250+ steps to the very top. I think I'm going to save that for another day when it's nice and sunny outside so that I can get a better view of the city. As you can see, it was very cloudy over here today.

This is the city hall building.


As I mentioned before, there are literally thousands of bikes parked outside train stations.


While walking around the city, I saw a lot of people in line outside a store getting waffles. I couldn't just stand there and not get one, so I bought one! I guess it was fairly priced at 2.50 euros, considering how yummy it was. Freshly made waffles with hot chocolate topping, yum.


In addition to waffles, Belgium is known for its fries, mussels, chocolates and beer. Considering Belgium is the size of Maryland, it's amazing that it's famous for so many things!

First week at IMEC

As with any internship or job, there's always a ton of paperwork to fill out. With weeks of preparation and two days into the internship, I was still filling out paperwork and sorting out housing arrangements.



When I first got to IMEC, I was surprised to see that the majority of the employees were very young. In total, there are about 1,600 employees, with several hundred being PhD students. The average age here seems to be around mid-30s, which is surprisingly low for a corporation. At my internship at ExxonMobil last summer, the average age was easily in the high 40s to low 50s. Additionally, the dress code is surprisingly casual. On my first day, I came in wearing a tucked in button-up. I figured business casual would have been the most appropriate. When I was waiting for my supervisor to pick me up from the lobby, I saw people coming in wearing t-shirts, shorts, jeans, and even sandals. Apparently I had overdressed. The next day, I figured I would dress 'appropriately' with jeans, a polo, and sneakers. I don't know how common this nonexistent dress code is in Europe. It may have resulted from the fact that the majority of the employees are so young and the company has adapted itself to the younger generation, but that's just my guess.

For these first two days, I didn't do much other than fill out paperwork and take care of some formalities to get into the company's system. I vaguely have an idea of what project I'll be working on. The whole point of being here at IMEC is to work on a collaborative project combining the research we do at the Gracias Lab at JHU with some of the research done here. In the Gracias lab, we lithographically fabricate 3D self-assembled nano/micro structures based on 2D templates with sizes ranging from 100 nanometers to 2 millimeters. For more information about our research, please visit the group website. The group that I'm working with over here has experience with plasmonic nanostructures, which, with relevance to optics, are structures that induce field localization to generate strongly enhanced local hotspots. The end goal is combine our two structures to develop a plasmonic nanoscale 3-axis sensor.

This past Tuesday and Wednesday was all about finishing registration and paperwork. Thursday and Friday I spent a large amount of my time reading papers that the group had published to get a better understanding of their plasmonics research. I had a lot of discussions with the group members about their research and IMEC facilities. Additionally, I got a tour of the clean room where I'll be doing most of my fabrication. I was impressed by the shear size of the clean room. The total area of all the clean rooms is 5,200 square meters, where 1,750 square meters is considered a class 1 area. This is all compared to the 14 square meter clean room that we have at the Gracias lab in the Maryland building.

One of the little neat things here is that, similar to the Jcard at Hopkins, the access badge serves as a form of payment. There are vending machines here that dispose coffee/tea/water/hot chocolate into a small plastic cup that probably holds 3-4 ounces. You can manually alter the strength of the coffee/tea and the amount of sugar/milk by pressing the touchpad. Everyone also gets 1 free drink per day, if you get more than 1, I think it's 0.25 euros for each one after. Although I don't really think it's worth paying for the small volume of the beverage you actually get, I'll still take advantage of my free drink per day.

I know it's a bad picture. It seems like whenever these badge pictures are taken, they never tell you when they're actually going to take the picture. The woman just said, "This is where you look." As I said "Okay," she said, "we're all done!"

Whit Monday

In Europe, June 1, 2009 is Whit Monday, a holiday celebrated the day after Pentecost. It's a public holiday, so a large majority of stores are closed. The only stores that are open are in places that surround popular tourist destinations.

Today, my floormates and I would take the train to Knokke, a city on the Belgian coast lined with beaches. Our group consisted of 7 people, originating from France, Italy, Macedonia, Finland, and the US, so it was quite an eclectic mix of individuals. The train from Leuven to Knokke is approximately 2 hours. One thing we didn't realize on the train was that at a certain point, the train splits into two, one half heads in to one city and the other heads to a different city. Unfortunately we found ourselves on the wrong half of the train. We ended up being stuck in Bruges for an hour. Bruges itself, however, is a medieval city with much of its architecture still in tact. The architecture is purely stunning. There was actually a movie based in this city called In Bruges. It came out in 2008 and stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780536/)

One hour in Bruges was all too brief. I'll definitely be making a full day trip to this city later in the coming months.


After getting on the train, we arrived in Knokke. It's a very touristy and posh area of Belgium. There are plenty of expensive condos with ferraris, porsches, bentleys, bmws, etc. lining the streets. The beach itself was not the prettiest that I have seen. The sand had a muddy hue and the water was far from crystal clear. It was a rather windy day in the high 60s, so it wasn't ideal swimming weather. We all relaxed and laid out on the beach for several hours. We had actually met some other Americans interning in Brussels, Belgium.