Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Partie 2 de ma Semaine et la Nourriture!!!

     As a final note on my week, I went to Antwerp (Anvers en Français) Yesterday!!! What a grand first impression of the city I recieved when I hopped off the train at Anvers Central!  It is undoubtedly the most marvelous station I have had a chance to see so far! It Exudes European aristocracy while also being just as large as Liège Guillemans. C'est magnifique!!! The train ride was a little long (2.5 hours counting the 10 minutes of waiting in Bruxelles Nord for our train when we switched), but it wasn't bad. Now for an explanation of my use of the words 'our' and 'we' in the previous sentence! Luckily for me, I wasn't alone on my train ride! (Or else it would have been rather boring and seemed much longer) My friend Dan decided to come to Anvers as well, and caught the train at Verviers (one stop after mine on the Ostende{name of particular train}).  So we arrived in Anvers and met up with 12 other exchange students from the US, Mexico, Brazil, and Finland. Then our adventures began! We decided to start by going to the Diamond Museum (After all, Anvers is the center of the diamond industry) ,plus, it was next to the station. I must say my A.D.D. side was kept busy with all of the sparkly display cases! Not to mention that we received necklaces with devices attached that gave spoken explainations and history on the items on display. (In english, woot!) It was very informational on both the specific diamonds (and replicas) and the industry and processing. After we had finished there we had lunch, and continued on to our next destination, the Cathedral of Antwerp. Despite the number of photos I took of both the inside and outside of the building, none of them could truly capture the sheer size of it. Or just how beautiful it is. Unfortunately, only I and one other person were willing to pay to enter, which meant we didn't get much time to look. (I could have stayed there for hours) Once we had regrouped we went and picked up one more person from the station (a girl from South Africa) and got a drink and chatted until it was time to leave. Great day and well worth the 5 hours on the train!
    
     Drumroll, please!!!!! Here it is, the long awaited food notes!!!!!! <----- My excessive use of exclamation marks is totally neccesary here.
     First, Les Frites! To start off, Friteries are the best way to go when it comes to frites. They are great for when you are eating out on a budget, as well as having the art of frite-making mastered. Not to mention that pretty much anything you order at a friterie is going to be fried. As for my personal thoughts on frites, they are better than the average fries you will get in the US, but I have also had better fries at home. (Kudos to my grandma's amazing, made from scratch fries!) But it isn't the frites themselves that give them their reputation, in my opinion, it is the mayo that you get with them. (There are other sauces as well, such as Samurai, Americain, and Brazil, but they are just not the same) Now, I am going to be honest, mayo in the US is pretty terrible, never liked it and probably never will. But the mayo here is spectacular! Combined with the frites, it makes for a pretty amazing meal!
     Next, La Chocolat! Forget Hersheys, Belgian Chocolate is the real deal! I don't think any chocolate will ever be as good again! My favorite chololate here is the chocolate made by Galler. Each bar is seperated into 4 parts and filled with mousse. It comes in a wide variety of flavors from Dark Chocolate with Coffee Filling to Milk Chocolate with Praline Filling to White Chocolate with a (Dark Chocolate and) Coconut Filling. AND SO MANY MORE! I haven't tried many yet, but the White with Coconut is my favorite at the moment. I want to try the dark chocolate with orange filling next! These chocolates will probably be the source of most of my weight gain. :)
     Now for the drinks! Belgian beer is very good**! It is a large part of the culture here as well! At any social gathering or for any (even slightly) out-of the ordinary event, you will find lots of beer. The most common is Jupiler (also usually the cheapest) It's okay, but not my favorite. Another Belgian beer you see quite a bit of is Kriek. This one is my favorite. It is dubbed as 'a beer for girls', but is also popular amongst the male population. It is a fruit beer (made with sour cherries) that is pretty sweet and is made with the lambic fermentation process that uses airborne yeast said to be native to Brussel. It can be a little expensive, but is well worth the euros. Also on the list of Belgian beers I've tried are Pecheresse (a lambic peach fruit beer that is really tasty), Hoegaarden (a wheat beer) and Maes (basically Jupiler, but a different name) There are many others, but I have yet to try them, so I can't comment. 
 ** let it be noted that I have not had alcohol before coming here, so my opinion is probably a little skewed/biased/so on.
     Now last, but not least, WAFFLES!!! The waffles are quite possibly my favorite part. (It is hard to decide between the chocolate and the waffles!) In the states we simply know of "Belgian" waffles, but there is much more to the story than that! There are many varieties, including Liège waffles and Brussels waffles. Liège waffles are made with a thick dough (similar to that of bread) and are sweet, chewy, dense and rich, with a beautiful caramelized exterior due to the pearl sugar used in the dough. They are incredibly delicious! The best thing I have eaten here was a Liège waffle with chocolate from Pollux in La Place Cathédrale in Liège. A fresh-from-the-waffle-iron waffle in vanilla or cinnamon (both are amazing!) which they then inject with 2 sticks of Belgian chocolate. SOOOO GOOD!!!!! I am going to correct my previous statement, the waffles at Pollux are the best thing I have EVER eaten! If you are ever in Belgium, go there!!! It is the best 2 euro 20 you will ever spend! Now, I have not had a Bruxelles waffle (Bruxelles is an hour and fourty minutes by train), but I can give you a description! They are made with a yeast dough and are typically light, thick, and crispy with large pockets. These are the waffles that we Americans typically dub as 'Belgian Waffles'. Waffles are sold everywhere by street vendors as finger food, sometimes with powdered sugar. The two varieties I described are easily told apart by the the fact that the Bruxelles waffle has rectangular sides, where as the Liège waffle doesn't.
     So there you have it, two lengthy posts in one day! à tout à l'heure!

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