We all have our favorite brands of chocolate; Twix, Snickers, Reeses, just to name a few. We can also easily indulge when we have a sweet tooth. I’m even guilty of having my own chocolate stash when I need a quick fix for my cravings. However, since I began my study abroad experience in Belgium, I’ve learned two essential lessons.
First, Belgian chocolate is simply the best sweet treat I have tasted. During a trip to Brugge my friends and I went on a chocolate tour. Yes, as we toured the city we had a bite of different chocolates on the way.
Brugge is a northwest city in the beautiful country of Belgium. With cobblestone roads, a canal streaming between houses and buildings inspired by mediaeval architecture, one can say Brugge is a typical European town, but one thing that sets Brugge, and many other Belgian towns apart from the rest is the chocolate.
Throughout the tour and many chocolates later, I thought I would never eat another piece of chocolate again. We indeed indulged in a world of chocolate not even Willa Wonka knows about.
And that’s when I realized my second lesson. This sense of indulgence is not a staple part of the Belgian lifestyle, even with some of the best chocolate in the world made right here. Anyone can travel to Brugge every weekend touring the city and eating a new piece of chocolate every five minutes. Oddly enough, it is not something to really care about. Instead it is about having that one, special piece of chocolate, and enjoying it. During my stay abroad, savoring each moment of every experience is a lesson I tell myself everyday. It will not matter if I ate 10 pieces of chocolate or just 1 piece, because there is going to be only one bite that makes the best experience.
My favorite chocolate during the tour was a piece from The Chocolate Line. From the photo below, I picked the the tall, cylinder shaped chocolate. It was milk chocolate on the outside, topped with white chocolate and with a strawberry filling. It was the best combination to one of my favorite trips thus far.