A day in Brussels

So hello readers of this blog, my name is Elliott. So I thought I'd share a bit of the day that we had today along with some of the pictures that were taken today.

So far on the 2 days since we've started this journey of ours through the companies and countries of Europe we start off with the breakfast of the hotel. Today we got a bit of break compared to yesterday in that we were able to sleep in, and didn't have our first meetings with the companies of the day until the afternoon. If only the weather cooperated and allowed us to enjoy Belgium with the little time we have (tomorrow we depart for Paris after our visit to the European Council).


So in the pouring rain we went to the Atomium, and Mini-Europe. The Atomium is the free-standing structure that was built for the 1958 Brussels World Expo (World's Fair) similar to that of the Eiffel Tower which was built for the 1889 World Expo. The Atomium was modeled after a molecule of Iron Crystal and is quite a site to see, and fairly massive.


(Please Click on the thumbnails for a larger image)

After we went to the Atomium we visited Mini-Europe and had fun going around looking at the miniture versions of the landmarks of Europe, apparently this is the favorite place of one of our speakers today Mr. Linus Turner.




We rode the bus afterwards towards our meeting site, but before that we had our Lunch. It was a great deal, we had the Plate of the Day (Plat du Jour). It was a much needed warm meal, especially since we didn't not want to walk far in the cold, and heavy rain that we encountered after we got off the bus.




Mr. Turner was the speaker for the Brunswick group and explained to us about the lobbying system here in Europe within the European Union. Afterwards we met with Mr. Oliver Brissaud from Volkswagen Group Services.

Mr. Brissaud's presentation went into three topics, the first about Volkswagen Group Services, then about Harmonizing the EU's currencies, and finally about Derivitives. I personally found that his presentation was very amusing and that I learned a lot especially about VGS and how they operate within VW Auto Group. His explanations were very lively and animated, and allowed us to easily learn about what he was saying and trying to explain to us.




After our meeting, we were dropped off to the hotel, and a couple of classmates and I took some time to quickly explore the rest of Brussels, we were able to walk around the heart of the city within 2 hours, but this is another entry for another day. Needless to say it's been a busy day and a busy past few days, and sleep is needed to continue, but we continue to have fun, work hard, and learn a lot about Europe.