Reunion in Liège

The trip to Durbuy that I wrote about last week was actually a side excursion outside of the main trip that took place in Liège during my last weekend in Belgium. Seeing that Yi-Shiang and his family live in Liège, and that there are quite a few IDS-FunMat students in Liège, I figured I’d take the opportunity before I left Belgium to visit them. After all, it’s not so far from Louvain-la-Neuve (LLN), only 2 hours by train.

Ara and Alina found out that I was going to Liège, and decided to tag along as well. Then the group snowballed. One LLN IDS-FunMate joined after, and soon we almost had the entire crew from LLN going together, with a total of 8 people! The group would have a reunion (for some new guys, it’ll be the first gathering) with the people in Liège, about 7 of them. It certainly became a massive LLN exodus and a long awaited post-training school reunion!

I arrived in Liège on Saturday and stayed overnight while the other LLNers joined on Sunday. Yi-Shiang and Janet kindly hosted me in their home for the night. As they live on the 9th floor of a high-rise building, I was able to see the residential area of Liège from a high place (definitely included in the next “From high places” post 😉 )

Short stay in Liège

Last Saturday I went to Liège for the second time, again to visit my friend who studies there. I was getting a little stressed, and I felt like going some place where I could relax a little.

Last time I came, all I did was chat. There was no time for picture-taking, and in fact, that trip was made with the decision of taking no photos in mind. This time, however, I told my friend that I intended on snapping some photos of Liège as we strolled around the city, so he would know what was up if I stopped randomly in the middle of the street.

Compared to some of the other cities in Belgium, Liège is much less touristy. No water canals like Bruges, saxophone bridge like Dinant (although Liège lies on the Meuse River as Dinant does), and no Grand Place like Brussels. I can’t think of anything Liège is famous for other than its waffles. And once again I missed them.

I ended up taking not as many pictures as I had wanted because I wanted to focus on catching up with my friend, and when I did stop to shoot, they were quick snaps. Here’s what I’ve got.

The Liège Guillemins train station is probably the fanciest station that I’ve seen so far and as my friend says, the coolest looking thing in Liège (and there aren’t many). Pretty impressive welcome for a visitor.

Liège, among other things

This entry contains no pictures.

After that bit about travel fatigue, I immediately heeded some friends’ advice (not before re-visiting France, though) to kind of “take it easy” just for a day. Hence, on Sunday, I stopped by Liège to visit some friends and vowed to make it as relaxing a trip as possible. Unlike other trips, this one was purely intended to be a chance for me to say hi and reconnect with the buddies I met in Portugal. I like networking with my “classmates”, if I may call it that, especially over a couple of beers.

Yup, beer was one of the reasons I chose to go to Liège in the first place. It wasn’t that Liège was particularly known for beer, but one of the friends there seemed to be quite a beer fanatic, so I was sure that he’d know of some great Belgian beers. People who know me will probably be surprised that I was the one who proposed having a drink, since I almost never initiate any type of drinking activity, but I figured, we’re in Belgium, why the heck not? Then again, I can’t tell a good beer from a bad one, so even if my friend told me that the worst beer in the world is amazing, I’d probably have believed him.

Do I even like beer? I can honest say that at the moment I still prefer beer over red wine. I guess that’s one aspect where Belgium wins over France.