Chocolate, Waffles, and TTIP?

It was our final day in Belgium so the McCloy Fellows thought it a requirement that we partake in some well know Belgium culinary items - waffles and chocolate. Guess it was a little early for beer. We started our day out at the Musee Du Cacao Et Du Chocolat. The museum was packed with interesting facts about chocolate and since it is an agricultural product, we felt it was time well spent learning about the chocolate industry. We did learn that the USA needs to step up its chocolate consumption as Germany eats more than double of what we eat.

At the end of our tour, there was a demonstration on how chocolate pralines are made, you know, those tasty little mounds of chocolate that have even more tastiness on the inside? Those were invented in Belguim and the chocolatier made it look much easier than it is. He did a great job showing us how to make pralines and an even better job letting us sample the final product.

After this is was off to grab the other food stuff Belgium is known for, waffles! They were amazing, covered in Belgium Chocolate, fresh fruit and whip cream, we gorged ourselves. The trip to Brussels, while short, was amazing. I have to thank Ludwig, Tiffanie, and Eugen for making sure our stop in Brussles was nothing less than fantastic. It is now time to hop a train, again, back to Germany where we will meet our host from a few days ago, Brigette and Gordon, to see the sights of Aachen.

Aachen is Germany's western most city and for you history lovers, the place where the first Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne, made the HRE's first imperial city. We toured around the city taking in the sites of the Cathedral as well as the King's Hall, built by Charlemagne, and still used for city council meetings today. We also saw the Cathedral's treasury with some amazing items from history.


And I cannot believe it took us two weeks to have this happen, but we ran into a group (Greenpeace) protesting TTIP. One of the guys working the rally made the unfortunate decision to chat with four Americans that support (and are very well briefed from our meeting with the European Commission in Brussels) TTIP and enjoy this kind of thing...yes, we may be a little on the ill side. As the "discussion" ensued, it started to become as we say, heated. Well, the top popped on our new friend when a picture of the action was snapped and he was in it. An even more confrontation came from this and I am not exactly sure what our 6'7" host, Gordon, said to him, but he went along his way. And we still have the picture. Guess he was afraid of the NSA tracking him.


All in all, it was another fantastic day. We left for Bonn for our hotel along the Rhine River. The trip is going sooo fast, yet it seems like we started it ages ago. I know I have learned an immense amount of knowledge and I keep looking forward to learning more. Now it will be on to Wittlich in the Rhineland Palatinate area after an Apple Festival. Lates!

Cheers,

Nick