European Tour Day 8: Brussels
DAY 8, March 7.
It’s been a week already! Today is my first really big solo adventure. I found myself going to Brussels a day early, as a miscalculation, and that meant Véronique Pivetta was busy, and I didn’t get in touch with my friend in time to meet me.
Gordon Swartz is an old buddy from high school who is now living in Brussels. We re-met at a funeral for a friend of ours from high school, Dave Satter, who, sadly, had died very suddenly. I found out Gordy (as we called him) was living in Brussels and I told him I was going there and he invited me to stay with him.
Anyway, so I am on my own in Brussels and I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to get in touch with Gordy any time today to stay with him tonight. I figure, worse-case scenario I’ll pay for a hotel tonight. I’m open for anything and feeling fine about it. (Vince and Karen gave me explicit instructions for how to get there, and Karen put me on a bus in Paris to get to the train station, and I almost got on the wrong train because there were two different trains leaving from the same platform at the same time.) I’m actually relishing a day of not talking. But I also really started missing Amy today.
So I got off the train in Brussels, went to an information booth, find out where the library was, and began walking in that direction. I probably walked for more than a mile with my bags.
I loved what I saw of Brussels, which was a real surprise. I tried getting into the library to get online, but apparently it was not a common thing to do there and became too complicated, with nobody who spoke English around to help me. So I called Gordon, and at first it was no answer, but then he called me back, gave me instructions for how to take a taxi to his place and €15 later I ended up in his place. We had a nice time reminiscing about the old days, plus I was able to do my laundry and get a good night’s sleep.
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