Day 126 - Brussels (Everix Bakery!)

January 7th, 2013
 I had planned on waking up early to go into town and explore on my own, but unsurprisingly, that didn't so much happen... Haha. The thought of having to repack my tiny strawberry suitcase combined with the thought that I would have to wake up by 8am for the next five days was enough to keep me curled up in bed for as long as possible! I had told Laurelia I would be up at nine. When I finally was up, ready and packed, it was eleven... And she was still asleep herself! She had told me that she was an insomniac and didn't really sleep well that weekend, so the thought of waking her up just to say bye felt so wrong. Instead,  I wrote a cute thank you note and drew a giraffe. I felt a little guilty for not saying goodbye in person, but I know how amazing sleeping in is - especially after a few sleepless nights.

The other thing about not waking her up was that I had no idea how to get into town. None. I had two hours to get there, explore, eat, buy my train ticket and get on the train. But then, I am always one for adventure. ;) I started walking in the general direction of what I assumed was towards the city and found a bus stop. I took the first bus that came and the driver told me which bus to transfer to and where. Of course, I never asked where to get off that second bus and ended up getting off two or three stops before I was supposed to. I aimlessly wandered the streets with my giant duffel bag, four jackets (which were now in a shopping bag, thanks to an older, French speaking lady who gave it to me on the bus when she saw how much i was trying to carry most unsuccessfully!) and purse until I finally found a metro!

Ten minutes later, I was finally in the city center. I looked up my train trip and bought my ticket then was off to explore for all of 45 minutes. The first and most important thing i had to do was take a picture with Dulcinea in front of the oh-so-important Manikin Pis (literally, this is the statue that Brussels is famous for - it is a statue and fountain of a boy perhaps a foot and a half tall who is peeing water into a little basin... O_o).

I also got some last minute souvies for people and had a final Belgian Waffle (yummmmmmmmmy)! And then all of a sudden it was already time to go back to the train station.

 

 

Now, I consider myself fairly proficient when it comes to public transportation in foreign countries and foreign languages... But you would never know from what was about to happen. See, the first issue is that European rail systems never seem to feel the need to provide passengers with any sort of maps of the stops. In fact, you are lucky if the screen in the train flashes the upcoming stops more than once every ten minutes. And so, I was rather blindly going in the general correct direction, with the only bit of helpful information being the fact that I knew I had to catch the second train at 2:23 pm, meaning I would most likely have to get off the current train a little before that. And so, by 2:25, it was  becoming pretty apparent that I had missed my stop - or, more accurately put, the stop I was supposed to have gotten off at had a different name from the stop the "Plan Your Journey" kiosk had given me.

Eff.

I got off at the next stop I could after the train changed its final destination information on the screen and I'd realized that I was SOL. Of course this station was in the middle of nowhere and all I could do was figure out how to cross the tracks (this was a surprisingly huge challenge, as there weren't any bridges and the tracks were too far down to safely cross them on foot and be able to climb back up with three bags in tow - finally I found a highway bridge down the road to cross over... Brother!), and wait for the next train going back in the other direction. The only cool part of the whole thing was a yarn-bombed sign! :) 

 

By this point, it was now 2:30 - the time at which Nico and I had planned on meeting at the Beveren - Waas station. I had no working cell phone... Heck, I didn't even know if I had his number (magically, I did). Thinking back to the stations I had passed, I could figure out which one was most likely the one I was supposed to have gotten off at to change trains, but it was pretty small. Now the question became this: Do I get off at the big, Central Antwerp station in order to hopefully find a pay phone to try and call him? OR Do I go to the following station and catch the next train - whenever that would be - and hope either Nico would still be there waiting or I could ask someone to borrow their phone or ask for directions to the bakery.

I went for the first choice, and after a fifteen minute search for a pay phone,  a ten minute search for where to buy a phone card to use it, and an exchange with a guy all in French helping him figure it all out, too, I finally called Nico, only to get his voicemail.

>_<

I left a message, telling him I had gotten a bit lost but would hopefully be in Beveren - Waas at 3:30 pm. And then I was off again, hoping he'd get the message and I wouldn't arrive at the station only to find myself all alone and in the middle of nowhere (not that this hadn't happened to be before on this trip and I still survived... I just was sort of over the whole enigmatic adventure thing after 16 days and while weighed down by all my luggage. At least the station I stopped at to catch the second train had really cool graffiti. :)

I managed to catch all the trains in a timely manner and was in Beveren - Waas in no time. Nico had told me in an email to look for a guy in a Harley Davidson jacket. To me, a girl who has lived in Wisconsin - home of the Harley - I was expecting a biker guy with a big grey mustache, big red nose, slicked back pony tail, dark plastic glasses and a leather riding jacket. I hobbled down the platform, feeling a bit disheartened that the only guy who seemed to be in a quarter of a mile radius of that station was a normal looking, 40 guy in a little black fleece. I walked passed him and smiled, and then I saw it. On that little black fleece were tiny orange letters that humbly read, "Harley Davidson."

^_^ Yay!!

"Nico?" I asked. He smiled and said hello. I hadn't known how much English he spoke, as his emails had been in rather broken English and I didn't know if they were a reflection of his oral proficiency, if he'd Google Translated them, or if he spoke well but just wasn't a big writer. And so I was relieved when he said, "I was looking for a girl with black glasses with diamonds, but you are not wearing your glasses like you told me you would! Haha!"

Phew!

He immediately took my bags for me (relief!) and we climbed in is Mercedes to head to the bakery (which, as it turned out, seems to also be their house in the back). While normally getting in a random 42 year old man's car after knowing him for two minutes would be a rather fishy, after this whole trip, it really seemed like the most normal thing I had done in awhile! Haha!!

The bakery wasn't far away at all and as soon as we pulled up to it, I am pretty sure I squealed! ^_^ How amazing to realize I was at Everix Bakery - my family's bakery- in it's original country... in Belgium!!! Every once in awhile when I travel, I have a moment when a map seems to pop open inside my brain and little pins are dropped where I am from and where I am, and I have a brief epiphany of just how crazy/awesome my life is in that moment. Standing outside of that bakery, gazing up at that sign (with my middle name in it!), I had one of those surreal moments. I mean really! What if I am the only Everix to have returned to the "motherland" since some of the Everixes moved to the US 200 years ago!? What if I am the only Everix to have seen an Everix Bakery in American AND in Belgium!? Thinking about it now, I wonder if there were any ancestors looking down and thinking, "Wow! How cool! Welcome back!" :-P

Nico showed me all around the bakery (which was considerably smaller than the bakery in Fond du Lac, from what I remember of it) and introduced me to his wife and one of his daughters. He showed me family genealogy information he'd received (including an old bakery bag from the Wisconsin bakery over a decade ago!) and we read through a rough family timeline together. According to the document, the first recorded Everix (or, rather, Evericks, I think it was??) was an abandoned baby found at the turn of the 19th century on a bridge over the Seine River in Paris! Aww!

He asked me to show him pictures on Google of where I come from in the US, and asked me where the Harley Davidson Museum is (he was beyond excited when I informed him it's an hour away from where Everix Bakery was in Wisconsin - haha). He gave me a bakery fresh croissant with a sausage inside (apparently it was a traditional food for some holiday that they had just had there) for a late lunch and was most amused when I informed him that in America we call that "Pigs in a Blanket." :) I took lots of pictures (and some with Dulcinea, which the three of the found incredibly strange, but ultimately became enchanted by and the daughter even took a picture of my stuffed crocheted cupcake on her own phone - haha). I especially liked putting her on a bakery bag from Wisconsin's bakery and one from Belgian's bakery and taking a photo. Haha. I also found out that none of them had ever eaten a cupcake! Imagine! A family of bakers and not one experience with a cupcake! It seems almost sacrilegious! ;)

In our email conversations, Nico had told me that he would take me to the airport after our visit. What he didn't anticipate was that I would be flying out of the discount airline airport, which, instead of being a half hour away from his house turned out to be almost two and a half hours away (when you calculate in getting a little lost despite the GPS a few times... Haha)!! >_< When we discovered this, I told him I was happy to take a train there, but he insisted on driving me. Right before we left we got a photo together. :)

We talked a bit on the car ride there, and he got me dinner and a beer when we finally arrived at the airport. :) When it was time for me to go to the gate, he said it was really nice to meet me and that he would be in touch and mail be two books a guy in Antwerp had written about the history of the Everix family! :) Cool!

And so, it was alas time to board my last flight of my amazing journey. Maybe this should have been a bittersweet moment for me, full of reflection and the beginnings of "saudade," but jeeze louise I had much more pressing issues to deal with: like the baggage limitations of Ryanair. See, the first two flights I had taken were with Ryanair and things were just fine (I hadn't exactly had time to shop when I was in Dublin... tee hee), but from London and Amsterdam, I had flown with normal companies and had not had to worry about crazy baggage restrictions (which was a serious relief considering the adorable, larger purse I bought in London). But this last flight was back to the rule of only one small bag and nothing more - no purses, no jackets on your arm, etc. Originally I thought I could hide my purse under my five layers of sweaters, hoodies and jackets, but when I put everything on, I quickly realized I looked like an extreme version of Quasimodo! >_< This wasn't going to fool anyone...

And so I got in line to board, realizing I had about three minutes to come up with highly clever solution or pay the fine of €75+ and have to check my duffel. I scanned the fellow passengers in line and zeroed in on a guy with a duffel that clearly had a little room in it. Without thinking, I summoned all the ballsiness I had marched right up to the guy and asked, "Excuse me - do you speak English?" The guy, who was around my age, removed his headphones and replied with a bit of confusion, "Yeah..." "Awesome! Do you think I could pay you to try to fit my purse into your bag!?" The guy looked at me slightly incredulously, and then said, "I can try to fit it in here, but I was having the same problem... 'cuz it needs to fit in that box the make you put your box in." Sure enough, my purse fit in his bag perfectly, but when we got to the front of the line, they made him cram his bag in their metallic box to prove it would fit. I told him to run when the lady wasn't looking, but he kept at it. It took him a minute or two, but at last he made it fit and they told him he could board!

We walked a little ways down the hall and then he removed my bag and handed it to me. "Oh my God! You are so badass! Seriously, how much do you want, cuz you just saved me so much money!" He just smiled at me and said, "Oh no - no problem. Ryanair totally tries to screw people out of their money and it's not right. Glad I could help." And just like that, he was off.

Awesome!!!

On the flight home I wrote a reflection blog (which then got lost - rawr), which occupied me all the way until the announcement came on in Spanish (!!!) that we would soon be landing in Madrid. I immediately squealed. The guy sitting next to me stared at me. I hadn't realized how happy I would be to be home until I was ten minutes away!!

When I got off that final plane I did a little jig. I skipped all the way to the metro (a system of public transportation I am familiar with!? BLISS!!). I laid on my bag and didn't give the tiniest crap what anybody thought, because I was back home and I could once again feel free to be me and do as I please. ;) I got to the night but just in time and tralalaed all the way home. And when I turned onto my street and walked up to my front door, I was bursting with excitement. I literally almost shed a tear I was so happy to be back. I really hadn't missed it for a second while I was away, but now that I was back, I was so very, very grateful. <3 When I travel, I travel as an American, so to be able to go home and still be in Europe is an amazing feeling. :)

When I got inside everyone was asleep (by this point it was around 2:00am), but Abby had left me the sweetest welcome home note on my desk! ^_^ It made me feel not so insane to be so excited to be home again. <3

XOXO