Belgium - Brussels & Brugge

Elizabeth's political science class spent last weekend in the country of Belgium. After a morning train on Saturday, they arrived in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. The rest of Saturday was spent exploring the Grand-Place, as well as a visit to the European Parliament building. Unfortunately, the Parliament was not in session so they were unable to see the actual chamber; they were, however, able to tour the rest of the building.

On Sunday, Elizabeth and her associate professor organized a day trip to Brugge, another city in Belgium. A small group of students took the train out to Brugge, where they spent the day exploring the small city. The highlight of this day trip was definitely the chocolate; there were chocolatiers every other store front and they all ate too much!

Monday entailed a trip to NATO headquarters, where they had three back to back meetings with NATO officials about security issues within and also outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As a national security major, these meetings were incredibly interesting and provided Elizabeth with insight on security priorities in other regions of the world.

Belgium is definitely at the top of Elizabeth's list of countries so far. The architecture of both Brussels and Brugge was incredible beautiful, and the food was excellent. She tasted two of Belgium's famous dishes, waffles and mussels, both of which were quite good. She also visited Mannequin Pis, one of Brussels' most comical, yet famous landmarks.

Monday night consists of a train to the Netherlands, and specifically The Hague, where she will spend the next two days.

Belgium waffle

The best hot chocolate in Belgium.

European Parliament

NATO Headquarters. They were not allowed to take photos inside.

Switzerland - Geneva

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 6, Elizabeth's political science class boarded a 3 hour high-speed train to Switzerland, arriving around 9am in Geneva. After dropping their bags at the hotel, they rode the tram into Geneva's international district where they met with a representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the afternoon. They engaged in a lengthy discussion of the history of WHO, its core values and missions, as well as an in-depth look into the international affects of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines.

This was the first of 5 meetings over the next three days: on Wednesday, they met with a communications offers from the World Trade Organization, followed by a meeting with admissions representatives at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Interdisciplinary Studies. On Thursday, they met with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, followed immediately by a tour of the United Nations Headquarters.

This class trip to Switzerland was packed with official meetings and tours, however, some time was allotted for exploration of the city. Elizabeth and her friends managed to accidentally stumble upon the oldest restaurant in Geneva for dinner, sampled Swiss chocolate from various chocolatiers, and swam in Lake Geneva.

She found that the train rides in and out of Switzerland provided the most breathtaking views of the trip. While Geneva was an excellent city for us nerdy political science majors, it is certainly not as photogenic as the mountains and rivers the rain passed. 

Overall, Switzerland was incredibly educational, beautiful, and definitely flew by quick! Now it's back to Paris for one more day, then the back-to-back journey to Belgium, The Netherlands, German, Poland and the Czech Republic begins.

At the WTO

The famous Geneva Geyser

Spain - Valenci & Ibiza

During the program's first free weekend, students were given free rein to travel across Europe. Elizabeth and two of her friends took the opportunity to visit Spain. They stayed in Valencia, Spain's third largest city. Their lodgings were a small hostel within Estacio del Norte, one of Valencia's train stations, where they shared living and sleeping spaces with roughly 10-20 strangers. Definitely an experience!

Friday and Saturday, they explored the city's historical sites and landmarks. They spent significant time at La Oceanografic, Europe's biggest aquarium, as well as Valencia Cathedral, Museo Historico, Municipal de Valencia, and El Micalet.  After dinner, they also explored Valencia's nightlife. 

On Sunday, they spent the day in Ibiza. An unexpected thunderstorm altered their plans of spending a relaxing afternoon on the beach, but they made the best of the day by exploring Ibiza's many small alleys and climbing Ibiza Castle once the rain let up. Finally, three hours before the flight back for mainland Spain took off, the sun finally came out and they celebrated with a brief dip in the Mediterranean.
Although many of plans fell through or got rained out, they really took every opportunity available to experience Spain. Now - back to France for a week and a half and then off to Switzerland.

France - Versailles, Normandy & Paris

Although she spent a large amount of time there, France seems to be the place that she took the fewest pictures and wrote about the least. Below are a few of the photos that she did take.

Brasserie Au Metro

Elizabeth never got tired of seeing the Eiffel Tower.

Elizabeth at Versailles

Elizabeth got very car (bus) sick on the way to Normandy and was unfortunately unable to fully experience and appreciate her time there. She is very much looking forward to going back someday.

Elizabeth's European Adventure Begins

Elizabeth's big adventure for the summer of 2023 is her study abroad "may-mester" to Europe. Over the course of the spring semester at the University of New Haven, she took two level-4000 (senior special topics) courses in Global Convergence and Migration, the "lab" portion to be completed during a month's stay in various European countries, with a home base in Paris.  From May 22 to June 19, she will be visiting 8 European countries: France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic.