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Celebrating Mandy's birthday in Brussel

Brussels Travel Blog › entry 1 of 1 › view all entries

After 10 weeks in Australia and New Zealand, Mandy is coming back to Europe exactly on the day she is turning 20. She arrives in Brussel, so a few travbuddys decided to surprise her there.

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World › Europe › Belgium › Brussels

Celebrating Mandy's birthday in Brussel

May 9, 2009

G E F E L I C I T E E R D

A few weeks ago I was talking with Gejah about not having a meet-up in May. She said then, why not having a meet-up in Brussel with a few TB's on may 9th? Because then is Mandy coming back from New Zealand and it will be her 20th birthday. But it must absolute be a secret for Mandy. So not creating a meet-up link on TB, not talking about it on TB, not talking on MSN with her, not talking at all! A meet-up and only the 5 of us knew. On the 9^th I left my house at 8am to drive to Nijmegen for picking up Devika.

Manneke Pis

We then drove to ‘s Hertogenbosch because that was the place we should meet Mandy’s parents and Keiko and Walter who are coming by train. The others were there before 10am and Devika and I were just in time there, after a little bit sightseeing. After saying hello to each other I followed Hans’s car to Brussel. We programmed the centre of Brussel to park in a garage. The ride was good. I had company of Keiko and Devika, so enough to talk. Haha. I t took us just 1,5 hour and we arrived in Brussel. A little traffic jam in the centre but that was all. In the garage we prepared the balloons, the hats and the whistles to surprise Mandy. It was only a 10 minute walk to the centre and there we found Mandy sitting on the sidewalk waiting for her parents. What a surprise it was when there were 4 people more for her birthday. I think she really liked it. I got rid of the balloons by giving them to a few children who really liked them. There was free terrace outside a bar, so we found a place somewhere inside. Then out guide Chris arrived also. Now we were complete.

Mandy and Devika

We started our tour through the city centre with Chris in front. First stop was of course Manneke Pis. We just walked around for a hour or so and found a terrace where we had a drink and a talk about Mandy’s vacation, but also her parents vacation to the

USA

. After Walter broke a glass and got applauded for it, we continued our tour. We found a few chocolate stores for the girls. That’s a thing the girls have to do if you are in

Belgium

. After seeing Jeanneke Pis, Chris brought us to a nice restaurant and he had to say goodbye to us. After getting rid of Mandy for a few minutes to discuss a special celebration, we started to eat and the food was great. The surprise for Mandy was a desert with icecream and fireworks, music playing happy birthday and a neon lightshow saying also happy birthday we had to say goodbye to brussel. We headed for Mandy’s hotel picking up her luggage and we found our cars back in the garage. We decided to drive all together back to ‘s Hertogenbosch and say goodbye over there. This was very short because it was a little crowded there. I brought Devika home and drove back to my home. At 23:30 I was back, after a great day in Brussel and again a successful “secret’ meet-up!