I have had several people ask me what Leuven is like and it is extremely hard to explain. The town itself is not very big, I think at its wides point it is 1.5 miles wide. However, it feels very metropolitan. They cram a lot of stuff into that small space. The city is marked with tiny winding streets, beautiful gothic architecture, and a lively bar scene. The town is considered a student town. KU Leuven is one of the biggest universities in Belgium and is the reason for Leuven's success. I will let pictures show the rest! Read the captions for explanations!
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| This is the big square in front of the Leuven Town Hall. The town Hall is the beautiful gothic structure on the left. This square is the Center of Leuven. |
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| Another view of the Town Hall. The kids running in front of it are from a group similar to the youth group I'm helping Sepp with in Meerhout. |
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| A closer look at the town hall. The carvings on this building are amazing. |
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| Across from the town hall is the Church. Very Beautiful as well. |
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| The little gold man actually moves and rings the bell when the church clock hits the top of the hour. |
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| Wide view of the little gold man and clock on the church. |
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| Inside the church |
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| This is the Old Market. Belgians boast that this is the longest bar in the world, because in the warmer seasons everyone sits outside and it is indeed HUGE. |
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| This is the street I live on called Naamsestraat. It is one of the wider streets in town. |
And now we will move on to a tour of the inside of our apartment! Its a strange little place but so far very nice. The apartment originally was a show room for a store and therefore it has some oddities. For example, the light switch to our study room is two rooms away in the bedroom. There is a cabinet that makes all manners of strange noises (It has some kind of water pipes in it, but the noises are very weird), there are little stars ceiling with no apparent purpose, In our bedroom there is a switch which allows us to open and close the gate into the back yard, and the apartment has now oven.... we use a toaster oven. All of those things taken into consideration I actually do really like our apartment so far. So here is the tour:
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| The Bedroom. Sepp and I picked the most colorful comforter we could find in IKEA. We like color. |
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| Sepp's wardrobe and the door into the kitchen. Another Strange thing: the wall behind our bed is actually foggy glass... |
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| My wardrobe on the left and all my scarves. If you couldn't tell Belgium is cold and scarves are a must! |
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| The bathroom is tiny. The toilet is to the left, but I didn't think it needed a picture. |
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| The kitchen, small but useable! The biggest problem is that we only have two cookers on the stove. It makes it pretty impossible to cook anything that requires more that two pans. |
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| The kitchen and the living room are really just one big room, separated by a couple of stairs. |
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| Living room. Most of the furniture was donated by Sepp's family. |
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| Our most decorated wall. :) as you can see colorado is represented. There are little pins on the map, of places we have been. Unfortunately we ran out of push pins and have not finished it yet. |
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| Another view of the living room/kitchen. As you can see the whole left wall is glass again. Gives us more light, but doesn't hold in the heat well. |
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| My desk, I'm still working on printing photos for my wall. |
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| The full study room. Its probably my favorite room in the house. I like all the light from the windows, and my desk is lovely. |
So that is the apartment! I promise the next posts will be more of an update of what I've been doing! I hope everyone is well!
