After an exhausting Friday spent gazing at the glamorous sites Paris had to offer, my friends and I decided to take a break from the big city life, and take a trip to somewhere completely different from the rest of the group. After inquiring about different cities to locals, we bought train tickets for Brugge. According to travelers who had been before, we learned it was best to just go and explore, without making any plans. This didn’t sit very well with me, because I have always been the type of person to go to bed with a detailed plan for the next day, especially when exploring a new city.
One thing we did know was that Brugge, along with the rest of the Belgium, was known for its chocolate, beer, waffles and French fries (or “frites” as we later learned). So we began our adventure, only planning to eat lots of food and walk around. That is exactly what we did from 1pm when we arrived until about 7:30pm when we hopped back on a train to Paris.
It was amazing to me that within a matter of 24 hours we went from exploring huge cities with bright lights with thousands of tourists, to a tiny town with old architecture, surrounding canals, and family owned stores and shops. In Paris, the locals are not crazy about tourists crowding the city and blocking sidewalks to take a picture every four steps. In Brugge, the locals were extremely friendly and welcoming to those of us who were clearly tourists. We became those people taking pictures in the middle of the streets…oops.
In the main areas of Paris (Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, etc.) people at those sites were often hustling around, trying to get the best pictures, and to see as much as possible within a short amount of time. I must admit that the group of girls I toured the city with had done the exact same thing. However, in Brugge, our demeanors, as well as others tourists, seemed to change. Perhaps because there weren’t as many famous sites or museums to see, we discovered the best way to enjoy Brugge was to sit, and take in the architecture, and enjoy the people around you.
When we decided to just relax and sit in the town square enjoying the famous frites and Belgian beer, I felt more at peace than I had in any other city we had been to. Up to that day trip we had spent a few days in Paris and Barcelona and also made a day trip to Madrid in between. In all three of those cities, we constantly felt rushed to get in as much as we possibly could in one day. And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved all of those cities and thoroughly enjoyed all they had to offer, but there was something different about my love for Brugge. Visiting the city of Brugge gave me the chance to sit back, relax and just enjoy every single moment of the day; especially the moments when we were taste testing all of the different chocolate flavors… yum.
Traveling with Forum-Nexus gave us the confidence to visit a city we had never even heard of, let alone visited. After getting acquainted to big cities like Barcelona and Paris, we knew that we could easily take on visiting a smaller city like Brugge. What we weren’t expecting was how two cities in such close proximity could be so different from each other. I will always remember Paris as a big, glitzy city, but Brugge was a city that taught me to truly appreciate every moment, no matter how big or small.
By: Brooke Hofer, Forum-Nexus 2014 alumna
