Brussels...an unexpected stop

First of all I just want to say that everytime I open this blog it's a new adventure in trying to figure it all out in a different language. I don't even know what language it's in right now...German??

We had sort of an unexpected change in plans but it's not like this trip was really planned out to begin with so I guess the unexpected change was well, expected. I'm not much of a planner, I mostly just deal with the re-active instead of being pro-active. I'm not sure what benefit that gets me but it certainly isn't apparent in this situation.

Our "plan" was to get breakfast, make train reservations for an overnight train from Paris to Munich, Germany and then spend the day in Versailles, France visiting the castle and grounds there. Well, last night we had a piece of paper in our hotel room telling us that there was an upcoming train strike in all of France that would start on Thursday. We kind of laughed at our luck since we had planned to leave France Wed. night. Well, this morning the concierge at our hotel informed us that the strike would actually start tonight at 8pm. Since the train we wanted to take left around 11pm, our plan was completely shot. They also told us that the train station would be complete chaos and that we should probably go there as soon as possible to get any reservation at all. When we got there it was difficult, to say the least, to try and figure out where to go since it was so chaotic and everything was in a different language. Everything in between that and where we are now is a big mess and a long story of buying tickets, switching tickets, switching destinations, coming up with new ideas and switching again, etc. I guess all that needs to be said is that we finally ended up deciding to take a train to the closest country that had available tickets (which ended up being Brussels, Belgium). We took the chance that Brussels would have an overnight train to Munich which is does and we did get tickets for (phew). So here we are in the the Brussels train station waiting for our overnight train to Munich. Unfortunately for us, Belgium isn't even mentioned in my "Europe for Dummies Book" which talks about all of the best places in Europe to visit. Hmm. And no matter where we go in this station we can't seem to get away from the annoying, drunk, nasty people who won't shut up! Oh well. I have had a lot of time to read which is something I was lacking before so that's good. We're actually still "on schedule" it's just that we had to spend the whole day on the train or waiting in the station instead of visiting Versaille. Stupid French train strike!!! :) I guess if this is our biggest inconvenience of the trip, I'll take it. And I'm trying to remind myself that regardless of everything, it's still a break from doing dishes, laundry, grocery shopping, making dinner, changing diapers and dealing with whining kids!! And I can NEVER complain about a break from that!

Oh yeah and the bathroom here you have to PAY for. There are these little doors and you have to insert a 50 cent Euro piece and then the doors magically open to you so that you can use the bathrooms. Weird!!

On another note, if you want to see some pictures from our trip you can go to lazan.smugmug.com.