90 Days in Europe: Day Sixty-Three

We traveled to a city called Kortrijk in Belgium today with our professor. When we walked out of the train station we were surprised to find a carnival roller coaster set up right in front of us. Apparently there was a city-wide carnival going on while we were there and there are rides, games, and food vendors set up all over the city. It was really weird seeing carnival things all over because I am more used to the American way of just having everything in one place.

We met up with a Kortrijk city architect who started off our visit with coffee and a presentation. All of these meetings with architects are going to get me to actually like coffee if they keep offering it at the beginning of every visit. He showed us some pictures of various projects around the city that we weren't going to be able to visit during the day because they were too far out of the way.

After the presentation we walked around for a while looking at all sorts of buildings and pedestrian areas. We walked into a shopping mall in the middle of the city that from the outside you may not have even known it was there. It was really awesome how well it blended in. We also walked through a small section of the city that used to be a small monastery-like community and is still used in a similar way today. It was strange how when you walked through the archway into the central area all of the noise from the city just seemed to disappear.

We walked to the town hall and picked up some bikes for the second half of our tour. We stopped at a small cafe for lunch where they served your food in these weird glass bowl/jar type things. I had some sort of chicken and spinach pasta that was pretty good other than the hidden mushrooms in it.

Biking around Kortrijk was really fun. I'm tempted to get a bike rental pass for Antwerp just so that I can ride bike more often. We went to a few different places by bike. One of my favorite places was a new youth center that was being built. Inside the main building they were re-purposing and old bus and an old train into rooms for offices as well as music production. I wish we could see it when it gets finished because it seems like it would be a really nice space to hang out in.

Back in Antwerp I had dinner at a fast food place because none of us felt like cooking anything. After letting my dinner settle for a while I tried the "Insanity" workout with two of the girls that I am here with. I couldn't keep up with it very well and I felt like I was going to die the entire time. I feel fine now, but tomorrow will be a different story.