I say "Aaahhh, Berlin!"

What a better way to celebrate the fall in Europe than a road trip to Berlin? Well, a cruise to the Mediterranean comes to mind, skiing in the Alps, and/or moving to the Caribbean come to mind, but a trip to Berlin was all that was organized by one of the student groups here in Bruxelles, so I packed my bags and left on a bus on Friday evening.

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Unfortunately, someone neglected to tell me that Berlin is rather further than it appears on the map, and so, 12 hours later, I arrived in a city that I fondly nicknamed "No, really, it's right next to Poland" (I'm lying, it wasn't all the fondly). At least I had a great group of people with me. Whereas many people go on exchange to meet people from different cultures and see strange new sights, I have gone on exchange to hang out with a bunch of Quebecois to drink beer and occasionally, cheap wine. Not that I'm complaining.

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Anyway, our small group of 40 students descended on the Reichstag on one rainy day, and waited for two hours in the rain to see a panorama of the city. Frankly, I was a little disappointed. I was hoping that there would be a tour of the Reichtag, maybe some discussion of its history. Instead, we got a view of a drizzly rather plain city. Afterwards, we wandered around the city for several hours, not so much sightseeing as trying to find the checkpoint Charlie museum. The museum itself was definitely worth the wait. It has expanded from a museum of memorabilia of the Berlin War, through art associated with the Wall to exhibitions on political movements resisting the Iron Curtain in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

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That night, we went to a club at the Postdammerplatz, the so-called hottest techno club in Western Europe. I don't really enjoy techno, but I danced anyway. The club used to be the sight of a XIXth century bank, and if you consider that an unlikely location for a club, you should realize that the club was in the basement of the old bank, where the stone walls lent the club a suitably grim and gritty atmosphere, and the club had preserved the vaults of the bank, with the dancing taken place behind ancient iron bars. Overall, the effect was more dungeonesque than anything else.

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The next day, exasperated with the slow pace of sightseeing, four of us struck out on our own: Adrian, Amelie, Emilie and me. That morning we did a walking tour of the Third Reich, which was completely worthwhile, and in the afternoon we went to the Pergamon museum as well as doing a fair amount of city sight-seeing. We had dinner separately, and started the long bus ride back to Brussels.

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Note: The Belgian students here tend to take frosh week to extremes. I has currently been going on for a month, and the plan is for it to continue until mid-November. This of course means that as a general course, the students are always drunk. This was highlighted when we were going to the club on Saturday. Of the 40 of us, about 30 had decided to go to the club. On the walk to the metro station, we lost about 7 or 8 students, who were too drunk to continue and stopped for a break at the MacDonald's we passed. A further 7 were left on the metro platform when the leader of the group (who was as drunk as the rest) decided to play "run-and-jump-into-the-metro-just-before-the-door-closes-and-hope-it-goes-to-the-right-station". Our remaining group of 16 lost another two students who failed to get off the metro at the correct stop. By the time I had my first beer, at the café we stopped at before going to the club, we were down to 14 students. And by the time we got to the club, we had lost another two, who, quite understandably, felt that 1h00 was a bit late to be arriving at a club, especially when none of us had slept the night before.

Thanksgiving in Brussels

It's Thanksgiving in Brussels, and all around the world (actually, just in Canada) families are coming together, and squabbling and making up, and cooking lots and lots of food. What can I say, I have a soft spot for family life, or maybe I just love to eat (cf. Heren und Herring) so, in the absence of my real family (enjoying a turkey in Washington DC), I assembled a ragtag bunch of misfits (aka my fellow exchange students) for a typical, traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

Apparently, most people don't have the warm memories and Thanksgiving cheer that I do, because among those friends who could attend, none ever celebrated Thanksgiving. Apparently, it's an Anglo thing. But at least they humored me (especially since I was making most of the grub) and we managed to create a decent Thanksgiving meal regardless (of course, this was achieved by liberal consumption of wine).

In addition to 4 students from Quebec, there were three Scottish exchange students, a Japanese exchange student, my roommate, his girlfriend and me. Preparing the food took me three hours, and that was with the very amiable help of my two assistant chefs, Amelie and Cinthia, who cracked walnuts while I sliced in diced. I couldn't find a turkey, so instead, I prepared three chickens. Our meal thus consisted of three chickens, stuffing (which I'm still eating, one week after the fact), cranberry sauce, two types of salad, potatoes and apple crumble. Plus the wine. There was lots and lots of wine. Not that I'm complaining, as it made my chickens seem a lot better than they were.

So, that's it for Thanksgiving. I still haven't planned what to do for Christmas, but you can bet it will be big, bold, and will not involve cooking for three hours and then cleaning up for three hours. I'm thinking of waterskiing.

Heren und Herring (Leiden)

I just spent this past weekend visiting Leiden in the Netherlands. Actually, I had intended to visit Leiden and see Joy, but, given that Leiden is a small town, similar to Sackville, NB, but with windmills, I ended up visiting Joy and seeing Leiden (and even then, only an a background to whatever we were doing). Unfortunately, though a record of my conversations of Joy would be of narrow interest to a few people (academics of Canadian culture at the beginning of the 21st century come to mind), I must concede that although we had frank discussions about such taboo subjects as sex, death, suicide and Belgian chocolates, the world at large, and my audience in particular, would probably be more interested in any hapless adventures that I might have had (the more painful and humiliating the better) than discussing my Zeitgeist. For those who are in fact interested in both our meandering conversations on existence and bizarre comical mishaps, might I suggest renting one of the videos by the delightful Woody Allan?

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So, to summarize, the weekend consisted mostly of our talking and I had a best time I've had in a while (at least a week! See "Un souper en famille"). Despite that, there was quite a bit going on during my visit to Leiden. It was the hutspot (pronounced "chutzpah") a festival extending from one end to the other of Leiden celebrating a gluttonous orphan. Actually, it celebrated the lifting of the Siege of Leiden after a hard winter, when the overflowing of the river caused the Spanish troops to withdraw (the Dutch call it "a great victory", the Spanish call it "bloody cheating"; or at least they would, if they spoke with an English accent). I'm pretty sure a gluttonous orphan was involved somehow, but I was pretty drunk when was told. Maybe the victorious Dutch ate him, I don't know. Which just goes to show you that history is written by the victors, not by the poor cannibalized gluttonous orphans.

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For the party, Leiden was transformed overnight from a small, sleepy little town to a small, sleepy little town with a large carnival in the middle of it. However, everyone loves the carnival, even people, who shall remain nameless, and who refused to go on the merry-go-round with me (This means you!!!). Hanging out around the carnival was fun in itself, and the roads were thronging with people watching the sights, buying cotton candy and beer at the stands, and going on rides.

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Joy and I partook in many of the traditional hutspot festivities. We ate broiled beef with mashed potatoes and cabbage. I bought stroopwafels from a sidewalk vendor because I thought the name was funny. Mmmmm......stroopwafels.... I even bought a raw herring from the herring man (or herring heren as they are called in Dutch) and tossed back my head and ate it. Of course, afterwards I felt vaguely like a seal. It didn't help that Joy asked me to balance a ball on my nose.

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Later on, we passed a sidewalk vendor selling small decorative tomatoes. My, these customs are getting weird, I thought. But I bought some anyway and we shared them among all the people out (Joy, Iyla, Tim, Oscar and a couple of guys whose name I can't pronounce). The people smiled when I gave them the tomatoes, took a friendly bite out of them and gagged when they realized the tomatoes weren't edible. And I laughed and ate one as well. Because we were laid back, and it was the Netherlands and it was hutspot. Because the Netherlands is just the sort of laid back place where you can laugh and then cannibalize a poor gluttonous orphan.

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Anyway, the morning that I left, there were fireworks, and songs, in particular the Dutch national anthem ("The hiiiilllls are alive....with the sound of ...... wait a second, my editor has just informed me that this song is not the Dutch national anthem. It is, in fact, the Austrian national anthem). Anyway, they were singing cheery songs. They were also waiting outside City Hall for their free hutspot herring.

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As I left Leiden on that early, misty morning, I reflected on all I had learned on my trip to Leiden. Yes, toothpaste will not wash out the taste of herring from your mouth.

Un souper de famille

Shortly after I had found my apartment, but before I moved in, I received a call from my uncle Marco Jonckheer. Technically, he's not my uncle, he's my grandmother's cousin's son, but after experimenting with several greetings (Marco, M. Jonckheer, Cousin Marco) I settled on Oncle Marco as a proper greeting for 70+ year old relation. He called and invited me to Antwerp that afternoon. He and his wife, Tante Poussette (I had resolved to apply my convention indiscriminately to all members of my Belgian family) had recently returned from Brittany and they were going to Antwerp to have dinner with their children and grandchildren and invited me to come along. I quickly accepted, and they came to pick me up at a metro stop outside of Bruxelles on their way to Antwerp from Asse.

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Fortunately for me, my grandmother had the foresight to be descended from a Francophone family (which meant that I could spend the evening participating in the conversation, rather than smiling and nodding) so the trip was quite pleasant. Before arriving at my cousin Tyl's house, we went into Antwerp to visit the house that my great-great-grandfather had built in the art deco style in a fashionable area in Antwerp. Unfortunately, we couldn't remember the number of the house, but we got an eye-full of the best Flemish architecture.

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We arrived at cousin Tyl's house with about 150 oysters. Tyl and I went to the back room to shuck the oysters. This brought back memories of home and New Year's to me, which was sweet, but I'm still a lousy shucker and so pretty soon, Cousin Tyl had shucked the double of my oysters. At least I succeeded in not skewering myself with the oyster knife, though I would have been well attended if I had, owing to the fact that Marco, Tyl and Cousin Carine are all doctors, and that Nephew Jop is in med school.

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After the shucking, I met the rest of the family, my cousin Carine (Tyl's sister), Tyl's wife, and my various nephews and niece. There was Catherine and David, and then Jop, Jim and Jan, which I think was needlessly confusing to inflict on a poor foreigner.

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The dinner was a huge success. The 11 of us sat at a long table which was just sufficiently large to fit all of us. In addition to the oysters, there were several different types of bread (including one which was home-baked) and many, many cheeses and lots of wine as well. The conversation was mostly about medecine, but once the topic turned to evolution, I got in some good quotes by Stephen Jay Gould and swore up and down to read Richard Dawkins.

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After dinner, Jim, who is a jazz pianist (he had shown us his studio earlier) gave us an impromptu concert with his cousin David. Overall, it was an absolutely incredible evening. I hope I get invited again.