Photos: Europe Trip – Brussels, Belgium (again)

Since WORLDS pretty dominated our first go-around in Brussels, it was decided that since the return flight was (originally, thanks KLM) departing out of Brussels, we would get back a little earlier in the day, so that we could actually spend some time and possibly enjoy the city, aside from the few sparse hours spent after the semifinals were over.

Needless to say, it was a pretty relaxing day in Brussels after we managed to get into the city (Brussels’ own regional train is a little suspect too), as the mythical girlfriend and I were able to leisurely wander around without (as many) deadlines of things threatening to close on us so soon, as it was, once again, a Sunday afternoon.

The one downside I would have to say was that there was this one street seafood vendor that I really, really wanted to try. But upon arriving at their location, their entire building was steel shuttered up, with a paper sign on the walls stating that they would be closed from that particular point, until three days from then; so the bottom line was that I was denied the one thing I really wanted to eat in Brussels. 🙁

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Photos: Europe Trip – Berlin, Germany WORLDS

For quite a long time, whenever anyone would inquire about where in the world I would like to go, if I could go anywhere at the drop of a hat, I always responded that Germany was where I would want to go. I didn’t really have much basis behind it, other than the fact that I suppose I wasn’t aching to go visit the Motherland or be all weeabooey and say I wanted to go to Japan; ultimately, I think I always wanted to go somewhere where I could look and feel like a complete foreign tourist, and in my mind, Germany seemed to fit that bill.

Well, thanks to WORLDS, I had my excuse to visit Deutschland, and fulfill that line of thinking. Ultimately, I think I was certainly right, because I was very much the foreign tourist in Berlin, not speaking a lick of German, and aside from the litany of fellow Korean tourists also visiting for WORLDS, being very much in the minority of mostly white people faces.

But the thing is, now in hindsight, I don’t necessarily think that it was everything I had thought it would be.

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Photos: Europe Trip – Brussels, Belgium WORLDS

The first leg of the Europe trip was Brussels, Belgium, where the semifinals of WORLDS was going to take place. It was pretty much a hit the ground running kind of trip, since as soon as we settled into our hotel in Brussels, we power napped for a while due to the jet lag I’d never experienced in my life before; by the time we woke up, it was pretty much time to go to the venue.

There’s nothing I haven’t already said about the WORLDS experience that wasn’t in my prior post about the event as a whole, but at least now I’m putting up some of the pictures from the event, which include my hot mythical girlfriend, as well as some shots from within the arena itself, attempting to show some of the atmosphere, the championship Summoner’s Cup, as well as some post-victory pictures from SK Telecom’s victory over Origen.

The rest of the pictures are more or less a litany of mushy couple selfies, as well as some of the places we hit up in our free time in actual Brussels, and not the shitty area surrounding the Brussels Expo area.

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Thoughts on Disney World

During the brog’s layoff, one of the things that I did was what’s apparently been somewhat of an annual tradition in recent years, which was a trip down to Florida to visit Disney World as well as Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights.

It’s something I enjoy greatly, because I enjoy Halloween-themed events, roller coasters, and ultimately most of the evenings result being spent in Epcot’s annual Food and Wine Festival, which is pretty much one of the greatest events in the world to me, since by the time I’m done with it, I can typically claim that I’ve eaten the entire world, and lots of the countries’ kiosks brings out some excellent quality grub and booze to begin with.

Except for South Korea, which is pretty much the biggest disappointment since like the 2007 New England Patriots. Seriously, just about every booth in the park has people indigenous, or at least of the ethnicity of the country’s booth they’re working for, except for South Korea’s. Furthermore, the food is about as good as one might expect from a place that says “Korea” but has a bunch of white people working it. When your options are the disappointing “Asian” pork taco from last year, and a “Kimchi Dog,” it’s like offering a Mexican person visiting from Mexico, Taco Bell or Del Taco.

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Thoughts on New York

Over the weekend, I went up to New York. The reason for the trip was to visit Yankee Stadium, and take it off of my list of MLB ballparks, which I can happily say that such was mission accomplished. Otherwise, the rest of the trip was more or less a whirlwind of cabs, trains, booze, chicken fingers and cash flying out of windows.

I guess it could be said that I had a pretty New York experience, and I have no regrets about anything. I look back at the weekend fondly, and naturally I’m writing about it now, which says something too.

As for Yankee Stadium, I’ll get more in depth of what I thought about the place as a whole when I write about it for my ballparks page, but when my friend and I had planned the dates out for this trip, we didn’t even think for a second about the fact that this was the start of Derek Jeter’s final homestand. Not that either of us are remotely close to being Yankee fans, I have to admit that is something cool about having been there for a little bit of what people are perceiving as somewhat historic. Needless to say, tickets were pricey and the crowds were massive, for what essentially were games between two non-contenders, and I thought the vaunted Yankee Stadium was pretty okay, overall.

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Photos: Yankee Stadium, the Bronx, New York

[2020 note]: the following is lost content that I never uploaded even back in 2014 when the brog was still up and running; that’s how much of a whirlwind things were between Dragon*Con and juggling between the ballpark site and other content.

Anyway, this is the photo dump of Yankee Stadium, that I realized never got uploaded whilst I was going through all old content, and looking back at these pictures takes me back to a time where I still really loved baseball, and this was one of those weekends of fate in which I got to score some bonus time with the girl that would eventually become mythical gf, wife and then babymama.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Sunday

In spite of all of the mad rushing and hard work put into the weeks and days prior to the coming of this year’s D*C, there was a surreal moment on Sunday morning when I woke up, and thought to myself, “is it really Sunday already?”  Needless to say, the weekend quite literally felt like it flew by way too fast, and there was that melancholy feeling of wanting to see as many people as I could during the day, and to empty out my cooler as expediently as possible before the end of the convention.

And after feeling like I had too tiny a number of photos taken on Saturday, I really wanted to spend a good chunk of Sunday doing what I really enjoy doing the most; simply walking around and taking pictures.  Eventually the daylight hours gave away to night, and as has been something of a thing I’ve enjoyed doing, felt the compulsion to dress nicely.

Really, I just wanted to wear my wingtip shoes, that there is probably zero photo evidence of anywhere out there, but if I was going to wear wingtips, I needed to dress accordingly to match it.  Which brings us to the suit vest and tie.  I LIKE TO DRESS NICE, OKAY?

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