January in Luxembourg Part II

The Sphere Room at the Trans Ardentes Festival, Liege, Belgium

The second half of January hasn't been particularly interesting, I caught a really terrible cold and spent the better part of two weeks either in bed or moping around the house. I did make it out a couple of times, mostly just to Liquid for live jazz during the week, and once on a Friday I went out with the intention of having a big night out dancing, but I didn't make it further than the free jager party at Scots.

Josh, me and Naz at Jager night at Scots bar, Luxembourg

The highlight of those last couple of weeks was going to Liege, Belgium for the Trans Ardentes electronic music festival. Josh and I drove up on Saturday afternoon, its only a little over an hour away, and after picking up Lena we headed just over the border to Maastricht in the Netherlands for a brief stop to go shopping and get KFC for lunch. I'd been to Maastricht once before, for a day, and it was freezing cold so we didn't stop to look around much.

The ceiling in the Elektropedia room, Les Trans Ardentes festival

Then we just headed home, fluffed around getting ready, and caught the bus to the festival. Having been sick, and being very tired from a couple of sleepless nights with crying children, I wasn't really amped until we got on a packed bus full of young people who were definitely much more in the party mood than we were! The festival is held indoors, at a big kind of hall, with concrete floors and steel sides and roof. It has separate sections, so there were four stages with different DJs performing at different times. Josh and I were both pretty into the Cube Room, which had kind of electro lounge music, more than the others, but the three of us, and Lena's friend Marion (who is awesome, I know her from past visit to Liege and the La Semo festival) and her friends, spent the night moving around quite a bit.

Lena, me and Josh at Les Trans Ardentes festival, Liege, Belgium

Like all the festivals I've been to in Belgium, you have to swap cash for tickets that you then swap for drinks. I guess it seems like a good idea, not having to mess around with money at the bar, but it really just means you have to join another really long line, and you can only get the tickets in preset amounts that aren't divisible by the cost of drinks, grrr. But, being sick (and broke!) I had resolved only to have a few drinks anyway. The other annoyance was having to pay an extra 2euros to be able to use the bathroom - not every time you went, you just had to pay for an armband that allowed you into the toilets all night. How stupid is that? Just raise the ticket price by 2euros! And sexist too, because there were free urinals outside for the guys. And even though it was smokefree, once the crowds built up everyone started smoking inside, so I was constantly afraid of getting burnt in the middle of the dancing crowds.

Boys Noize at les Trans Ardentes festival in Liege, Belgium

But, rant over, the festival was awesome, I'm now totally addicted to electronic music festivals. I don't think New Zealand has anything comparable, not with 12 000 people coming through the doors and with such high standards of DJs, like Birdy Nam Nam, Cassius and Boys Noize. The German DJ Boys Noize was the big drawcard for me, he's been my favourite DJ for about three years, and I was gutted to miss him playing at Rhythm and Vines back in New Zealand just after I'd flown to Germany last year! He played at 1.30am, and by that stage I'd been dancing for over five hours and I was dead tired and aching everywhere, but I stayed on my feet for the whole set, he was really amazing and actually better live than recorded. I couldn't say the same about Birdy Nam Nam, I thought they were terrible live and I didn't stick around! It must have been around 3.30am when we called it a night, Josh was really the worse for wear and Lena and I were both shattered. But, it was an awesome night, and one of my favourite experiences here in Europe.

Lena and Josh at "the cool bar" in Liege, Belgium

We slept quite late the next day, only dragging ourselves out of bed sometime around 1pm to find Lena's mum had laid that table with pastries and fruit for us for breakfast, so cute! We wanted to show Josh around Liege, but we were all so tired and it was absolutely freezing, colder than I've felt all winter so far, so we kind of dashed quickly through the centre into what me and Lena call "the cool bar" where we always go for a drink, and then we ended up playing a couple of games of pool before heading to Quick for dinner and then jumping into the car to head home. It was so cold I couldn't even bear to take my hands out of my pockets to take photos all day. An hour later with the car heating going full bore, I still couldn't feel my hands or feet, and just as we crossed the border into Luxembourg it started to snow.

Ollie playing dress-ups. Girly or what!

The cold weather continued the next couple of days, with highs of about -1 and lows of about -4, so even though more snow didn't fall, what we already had stuck around. I spent Monday recovering from the weekend, and running a ton of errands around the city. I babysat that night, putting the kids to bed myself which is uncommon. Unfortunately, Pepi's 'Baby Mozart' stuffed monkey was forgotten in Rogier's car and went off to him. Trying not to show my panic, I went through the whole bath/bed routine as normal, and it wasn't until he was lying with me in bed that he realised Baby was missing. I told him Baby had wanted to go to work with Papa, and he only cried for a couple of minutes before settling down, a pretty good outcome considering how attached to that thing he has been!

city hall buildings, Thionville, France

Tuesday I was up early and took to the bus to Thionville, 30km away in France. Remembering that international postage from France was quite cheap and knowing that nothing (ciggarettes, alcohol and petrol excluded) can be described as cheap in Luxembourg, I looked into the price difference last year and found that I could post up to 7kg in a pre-paid box from France for 40euros, compared to paying 160euros to post 7kg from Luxembourg. So, before Christmas I lugged 14kg of presents and crap I wanted to ship home over the border on the bus, discovered the handrawn map I copied of Google was useless and wandered aimlessly around town until I found the Tourist Office, and then spent a whole hour in the shop sorting everything out with a english-speaking man who told me that his daughter had gone to New Zealand on exchange, and reported it to be 'boring, with nothing to do'.

Thionville, France

I looked around me at Thionville, a town of 40 000 with nothing special and no exciting nightlife or activities of its own, and had to wonder where in New Zealand she had been living. Thionville was so unexciting, I didn't even mention going there in this blog. This time however, the town was covered in snow, and even the most boring and basic of places look pretty under snow, so I walked around for a hour or so taking photos, until the cold really got to me and I jumped on the bus again. Back in Luxembourg, I walked from the train station into the city centre to photograph the Petrusse Valley in between.

Petrusse Valley, Luxembourg Ville, Luxembourg

Arriving back home, I noticed that some of our neighbours had shoveled the snow of their driveway and the pavement. With it being sunny during the day, but still so cold, it was really icy and Rogier had hit the rubbish bin sliding while backing out the night before, and because I've never shoveled snow before I thought it would be fun to give it a go. I thought wrong! Shoveling snow is hard work, that stuff is damn heavy and it took me forever to work out how to break up the ice, rather than just trying to scrape it off the concrete. I won't even tell you how long it took me, but I was pretty proud of my effort.

So, not a very interesting blog post I know, I'l do my best to get out and about a bit more in February!

Photos from January are here. I've also just gotten into Twitter in a big way, you can follow me here.

Happy New Years - ending the year in Luxembourg

Christmas Market in Luxembourg Ville

I sit writing this at 11pm, at home alone with the kids and already a bottle of champagne down since they went to bed three hours ago. Christmas and New Years have kind of been a non-event for me this year, but I will get to that after I recap what's been going on in November and December, with links to the other blogs posts I've written about events along the way.

Me and Pepi on the train

After visiting Liege, London and the south of Luxembourg, the second half of November was pretty uneventful really. I managed to make it over to Saarbrucken in Germany to visit the Christmas market, and then the last Tuesday of November I had a 'Big Day Out' with Pepi. He'd visited the train station with me and Rogier when I collected my ticket to Strasbourg, and wanted to go on the train so bad that I promised him I would take him the following week.

Pepi on the playground in Noertzange

So on Tuesday when Ollie had gone for his nap we took off, taking the bus to the station and then the train to...who knows where! Despite trying to plan everything carefully, we pretty much just got on and got off at a stop where I could see a playground within walking distance! Pep didn't mind, he was quite excited about being on the train, we could have stayed on there for much longer than we did but I (correctly) thought that we were pretty close to hitting the French border. We ended up in Noertzange, population less-than 1000, resident ice-cream shops less than 1! After watching some diggers and 'Bob the Builders' at work by the tiny station, we walked down to the playground and I chased him around for awhile. By this stage he was getting quite anxious about missing Mama, so I tried to distract him with icecream, which turned into a huge fail as there isn't a single shop selling icecream in Noertzange. So, back on the train we went, and then it was onto a bus, then onto another bus after the first one crashed with a car (he didn't notice a thing!) and finally we reached the city, where the Luxembourg Christmas Market was in full tilt. A ride on the merry-go-round and miniature train later, we brought a scoop of icecream and finally took the bus home, where I collapsed exhausted - he had fun, but hauling a four-year old around in a push-chair and dragging that thing on and off the train and over the overpass is hard work!

cookie scrabble in my french class

I began December with a trip down to Strasbourg in France to see Hauke, but again, the first couple of weeks of the month were pretty quiet. I baked a cake with the kids, dismally failed an end of year French test (as did the rest of the class, and we can all continue, so not too concerned!) and then celebrated Christmas with my french class two weeks running. The french teacher isn't really a professional french teacher but an economist doing it in his spare time, so I think throwing two parties with us was much more fun than planning two more lessons. The first time, we celebrated 'Belgian Christmas' heaps of different Belgian sweets and a kind of scrabble, making french words with cookie letters. The following week we joined with the advanced class, and everyone had to bring something from their country. My pavlova looked like a cowpat both in size and colour, so I made a last minute dash to the supermarket and doled out marmite on bread instead - and yes, I did notice a few people spitting it out into their napkins!

Josh drinking Gluhwine at the Lux Ville market

December saw me meet Josh, an american accountant who has recently moved out here, and we've become good mates. He's introduced me to egg-nog, and led to me heading out to the Christmas market for Gluhwine and to Liquid for Jazz and Blues night a fair few times this month. Through a friend from the Dominican Republic/Spain, I've also met a big group of latinos, mostly Mexicans, who are living here and all party at the local spanish bar. I don't know how I didn't know that they were here until now, but I've since spent several tequila-fuelled nights dancing salsa with them until the early hours of the morning.

Band at the Christmas Market in Differdange

After developing a compulsion to collect Gluhwine mugs from every Christmas market I go to (these things are hideous and too small for a decent coffee, no idea what I will do with them back in NZ! Gluhwine party anyone?), I jumped at the chance to visit Differdange, a town of about 10 000 close to Esch-Sur-Alzette and Dudelange in the South of Luxembourg with a mate Markus from Austria and his greek neighbour. Turns out Dudelange or it's Christmas Market isn't all that interesting, but I scored a bizarre mug with a old guy sitting on a bench smoking on it, watched Markus do a couple of rounds of a fake ski slope, and had a bit of a day out.

Letting Pepi play with my makeup

The end of December saw snow fall a couple of times, but nothing compared to what I expected. Last year there was about a metre on the ground here and in Germany, but this year it didn't stick around for longer than a day, the snowfields within a couple of hours of here are still closed, and the weather forecast for tomorrow predicts 11degrees. Watching Ollie play in his first snowfall was a highlight of the month, as has him learning how to say my name. He can't quite do the whole 'Claire' thing yet, so I'm now known as 'Car', ever since I woke up one morning to him banging on the door wanting me to come and play, shouting 'Carrr, carr, carr' over and over. He sounds a bit like a crow really, but it's so cute, and it gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to know that I mean enough to him for him to learn my name pretty early on in his vocabulary.

I headed back over to Trier in Germany for an afternoon, to pick up a few things in the shops and check out what I'd heard was a great Christmas market, but again I was kind of disappointed. I think once you've seen one Christmas market here in Europe, you've seen them all, and especially after being at the really pretty market of Gottingen with Hauke and all of his friends, others kind of fall flat.

Lena and I drinking peket at the Christmas Market

I also went back to Liege just for an afternoon, to sort out some visa issues. As of late December, my Spanish working holiday visa has expired, and I am kind of an illegal immigrant. I'm exploiting a loophole that allows New Zealanders to have three months in each of a long list of European countries, rather than restricting us to three months in the whole of Schengen like most foreigners are, but this is kind of tricky considering your passport never gets stamped to say when you arrive or leave each of the countries. Normally you can bluff you're way through this kind of thing, but because I want to apply for another European visa at some stage I don't want to risk any issues further down the line. So, I went to Belgium to ask for a piece of paper saying that I had arrived there.

Memorial to victims of the grenade/shooting attack in Liege

Given my experiences in Spain, I was pretty dubious that it would work, but I rocked on up at the Liege Town Hall with Lena to do the translating, and asked for a Declaration of Arrival, normally only given to those on a real long-term visa. She asked "do you have proof of how/when you arrived in Belgium?", "Do you have proof of a visa?", and "Do you have proof of address?", I answered no to all three, and apart from a scary moment when the fake address I gave her turned out to be an apartment building, she just shrugged her shoulders and gave me the paper anyway - totally unlike Spain! Now I see how Belgium managed to survive over a year with no government! So unless they realise I was never at that address and give my name to Interpol, I reckon I'm safe for another three months! Lena and I spent a little while at the Liege Christmas market, where I scored yet another mug but this time shunned Gluhwine in favour of Peket, a kind of hard alcohol made from distilled grain in Liege, and shared the sobering experience of walking past the broken bus shelters and huge memorial to the victims of a grenade and shooting attack in Liege just two days earlier.

Ollie as a fireman/pirate/princess/spartan

And finally, like I said, Christmas and New Years have kind of been non-events for me this year. Christmas in the Netherlands is celebrated quite differently. There, Sinterklaas, or Santa Claus, sails on a boat from Spain on December 5th (Why Spain? Because centuries ago, Spain was the End of the World) accompanied by Zwarten Pieten, or Black Peters, black men with bright red lips and feathers in their caps that help deliver the presents. Sinterklaas leaves children presents and cookies in their shoes after the 5th - along with various small things, he left Pep and Ollie a toy kitchen this year, very cool!

Princess Pepijn

The night before Rogier and the kids went to join Jacquie in the Netherlands for Christmas I gave them my present, a big box full of dress-up clothes. I'd been planning this for ages, but as usual things didn't go quite to plan, and I found it really hard finding articles to put in it - what I did find I collected in the UK, Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and mum posted me some from NZ! I also wanted to put it in a wooden chest and paint 'Dress-Up' or something on the side, but Ikea has been sold out of wooden boxes for months, so its in a temporary fabric box for now - as usual, the kids are playing with the box as much as with the present inside, so I doubt it will last long! My attempt to use the present as bribery for good behavior for the day failed dismally, with me hauling a kicking and screaming Pepi out of the doctors office at one point. I had to laugh at all of the mothers with placid babies sitting there glaring at me, I was thinking "just you wait, one day this will be you!". The kids seemed to have settled on 'Fireman Ollie' and 'Policeman Pepi' outfits, but initially they were both into the barbie high heels and girlie necklaces, was very cute!

Christmas Eve at Hardy's

So, they all headed off on Christmas Eve, the day when most Europeans actually celebrate, and I spent the day nursing a hangover and trying to sort myself out to head out for dinner. I had dinner with two strangers via couchsurfing, Hardy from Germany and Nicolas from Brazil. Hardy did a great job of hosting us, making salad followed buy wild pork and vegetables, and I made brownies with strawberries for dessert. It was another late night, followed by a 6am wakeup call to skype family back home, so I was struggling with the idea of heading out again on Christmas Day, but I made it to Markus' house for Christmas lunch, a big affair with ten of us, and a massive collaborative meal of lamb, beef, veges and salad, followed by a couple of different puddings and Austrian Christmas cookies. We represented about eight different countries, so it was quite an interesting day. Hardy and I attempted to go out that night, but there wasn't too much happening and we were both quite tired and called it a night around 2am, and then I rounded off my Christmas holiday by spending the next two days obsessively cleaning the house, even washing all of the kids' armchair covers and the inside of the fridge.

Christmas Day at Markus'

I'm not too upset about spending New Years working, New Years has never been my thing anyway, as I usually find it to be quite disappointing. Jacquie and Rogier went to Maastricht in the Netherlands this afternoon, so I spent the rest of the day with the boys, baking scones and building obstacle courses around the house. The went to bed without any problem, and somehow didn't wake during the tremendous noise of the fireworks half an hour ago (its now 1am!) although Pepi has been up since and is now waiting for me to come and sleep in the big bed with him. At least I'm not spending New Years alone...

So I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years in  whatever shape and form, and all the best for the year to come.

And greetings from Pepi..

Back to Liege in October

Lena standing on the promenade above Liege

I first visited Lena in Liege, Belgium, back in February, and have since dropped by in June and again in July. Here in Luxembourg (and other catholic countries), Tuesday the first of November was a public holiday called All Saints Day (the day after Halloween, it's a day commemorating deceased who have reached heaven, so you go put flowers on graves), and as Jacquie was in the Netherlands for work the weeks before and after, Rogier decided to take Monday off and go up with the kids for a long weekend. So, I decided to hitch a ride with them as far as Liege in Belgium, and then train back to Luxembourg by myself on Monday night.

Liege in Autumn

The trip up was probably the best car ride I've had with the kids, we got organised really quickly in the morning and they were really well behaved. I got there at lunchtime, so we went to a new Pakistani place and had tandoori chicken chapati kebab things, and then whiled away the afternoon drinking tea and hanging out in the park.

View of the Foire from the Ferris wheel

Lena's mum is an awesome cook, so after we had a delicious dinner at home we went to the Foire d'Octobre, or the October Fair. It's a huge carnival that runs from the first weekend in October until 11 November, all spread out along the city's main boulevard, with rides, games, food boothes and stalls selling stuff like crafts and clothing. The one thing I noticed was the lack of ittle wooden sheds selling beer or wine like you get at fairs in Germany or Luxembourg.

Lacquement

We went on what felt like the ferris wheel of death, I'm sure its the tallest one I've ever been on, and the seats were like buckets hanging from one pole, so they could rock and spin around in circles, and there wasn't a cage or anything to hold you in. It scared me more than the bungy ball back at the Schueberfouer in Luxembourg, much to Lena's amusement. I had a huge waffle, dipped in white chocolate and covered in strawberries, cream and more chocolate, and also tried the Liege speciality 'Lacquemant', a wafer dipped in syrup, allegedly invented in 1903. I'm not really a fan, tastes like a war, dry biscuit dipped in maple syrup, the texture really doesn't do it for me.

We'd planned on going out, but as most students in Belgium return from their university city to their home towns and villages on the weekends, and even more so this week with the holiday, the place was pretty dead and we were both really tired, and after a few beers we decided to go home.

Market

On Sunday morning we went with Lena's mum to the weekly riverside market that I'd gone to in February. She brought a few odds and ends, flowers and bread, and I brought a childrens 'my first words' picture book in French! We brought some roasted chestnuts as I'd never tried them before. Apparently these ones weren't very good, but I don't think I'd like them anyway, they are pretty flavourless and have a weird texture too, kind of like a moist scone. We sat at a cafe for coffee, and then headed back for lunch.

Alleyway

That afternoon, Lena and I walked along the promenade of the les Coteaux de la Citadelle, a walk along a ridge in the north of the city, behind the Palace of the Princes in Place St-Lambert and close to Lena's place. We started by walking through some crazy alleyways, with heaps of stairs to go up. It's kind of like Wellington, people live off these tiny alleys with no road access to their houses. At the top of the ridge, we walked through trees until we came out at a spot with a couple of buildings, I think the Citadelle was one of them, and a promenade with a great view over Liege. It was quite an amazing walk.

Lena 'cooked' dinner for us (she's got quite a reputation for not being able to cook anything!), reheating her mum's boulettes a la liegeoise, and frying chips with my help, and then we sat around watching a movie.

me with the speculoos waffle and fries

On Monday we had a couple of beers at one of our favourite bars, and then went back to the Foire so that I could get Belgian fries and another waffle, this time dipped in white chocolate and covered with speculoos cookies, cream and melted speculoos spread. It was heaven, and I expect it's to blame for my pants not fitting so well after the weekend! And then I was off, the train ride home was kind of intense, I ended up on a non-direct train and had to wait around another city quite a bit, and they are doing roadworks near the Belgian-Luxembourgish border, so it took over three hours to get home to the empty dark house. A pretty relaxed weekend, but good to get away for a bit and to see part of Liege that I hadn't been to before.

More photos from this trip to Liege are here.

My take on the political situation in Belgium

Protest calling for the politicians to get their act together

As a former student of Politics, Belgium is really interesting. It has multiple elected bodies that have authority over different aspects; not only the Federal Government but three Language Communities, and three Regions as well. It also now has the record for going the longest time without a Government, beating even Iraq, as one has yet to be formed after the June 2010 elections, and it no longer seems implausible that Belgium will actually split into two. I've talked a little about this already, but its very difficult to understand, let alone explain. But, because so many people back in NZ asked me about it, here's my take on things - sorry it's so long!

On the surface, it seems like it all comes down to separatism, with the two sides hating each other and refusing to work together. What I had heard before I lived in Belgium was that the Flemish side were richer and saw themselves as harder-working and no longer wanted to pay high taxes towards the welfare money of the lazier french-speaking side.

Unlike Switzerland, which has two different and geographically separate language/cultural groups but has a collective identity and shared history, Belgium has no history of being a unified country. The area of Belgium was ruled at various points in history by the King of France, the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of Spain, the Austrian Hapsburgs, and the King of the Netherlands. It was only in 1830 that the Belgian Revolution took place, and Belgium became an independent country, officially catholic and french speaking.

'Communities' in Belgium

Back in the 1800s speaking French was required to belong to the upper class, and those who only spoke Dutch made up the lower classes. During this period, the Flemish half of Belgium was much poorer than Walloonia, and retained Dutch as it's main language while the rest of the country cemented French as their main language. There is also a small German-speaking population, in the area annexed from Germany after WWI. The Flanders region has the biggest population, around 6 100 000, Wallonia has about 3 400 000 and Brussels 100 000.


Belgian politics is currently based on the seperation of powers to three different types of body:
1. Federal Government
2. Language Communities (The Flemish, French and Germany speaking communities)
3. Regions (the Flanders, Walloon and Brussels-Capital region)

'Regions' in Belgium

So, there would be seven elected bodies ruling Belgium, except the bodies of the Flemish language community and Flanders region merged (typical germanic/dutch efficiency versus crazy roman buracracy of the french-speaking side!) making it six. Brussels kind of causes problems for this system. Most people there speak French, so its like a little French island in the middle of Flemish-speaking Flanders, but its actually offically bilingual, so while it is a region of its on, Brussels falls into both the Flemish and the French language communities. Also, while the German-speakers have their own language community, they don't have their own region, instead being a part of Walloonia. You can see these discrepancies on the handy wikipedia maps.

Protest by Flemish separatists

The Federal Government looks after things like justice, foriegn affairs, a large chunk of health care policy, defense, money stuff, social security, and public companies like the Belgian Post and Belgian Railways. The Language Communities have authority to control education, culture stuff like the media and assistance to immigrants, and some bits and pieces like protection of young people, some health policy, some social welfare. Regions control things related to territory, like transport (there is one bus company for the whole of Flanders and another for Walloon), housing, energy, employment and foreign trade. Confusing huh? Its made even more confusing by the fact that some things are split between the different bodies, like the language communities rule on their own educational policy, except that the federal government rules on mandatory aspects like minimum years of education and minimum standards to get a qualification.

Protestor calling for unity 'stop the political circus'

Belgium has a federal parliament with a Senate and Chamber of Representatives, with a small cabinet. Everything must be proportional, with an even split of French and Flemish-speaking politicians. The Prime Minister can be either, but for the last 30 years has always been Flemish.

Over the years, politics has become more and more seperated, with the main parties splitting into Flemish and French-speaking branches that represent the main interests of the different communities, so there is a Flemish Liberal party, and a French-speaking Liberal party, and so on. Since 1999 the governments have been large coalitions of multiple Flemish and French-speaking parties, like the 'Rainbow Coalition' of six, the Flemish and French-speaking Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens.

And this is where the big problem becomes apparent. The problems in Belgium aren't so much about two linguistically and culturally different groups not working together, it's all about the ideological difference, with the Flemish population and the French-speaking population wanting to take the country in a different direction. Walloonia is very left-wing, like other Roman states (ie France, Spain, Italy) wanting an almost socialist state with a lot of control and huge welfare provisions. Flanders is very right-wing, like other Germanic states (Germany and the Netherlands) wanting personal and market freedom. These voting tendencies have heightened in recent years, and now with the majority of Flemish politicians voted in being right-wing, and the majority of French politicians voted in being left-wing, they are struggling to come to an agreement.

Growing separatism - the french words in the dual-language sign crossed out

As the politicians fight it out, people here are becoming more and more frustrated. There have been some protests attended by people from both Flanders and Walloonia calling for unity and cooperation, but there are also an increasing number of protests from frustrated people who are calling for the country to split, and polling shows more politicians that lean towards a separation will be voted in when the country next votes. When I came here in February, everyone insisted that Belgium could not split. Now we're in July and people are not talking about if it will split, but about when and what will happen to Brussels. French-speaking friends of mine who have attended the Werchter Festival in Flanders said that this is the first year that they were constantly abused by everyone around them for speaking French instead of Flemish. For over a year now, there has been no government to make new laws or reforms, and now the EU is talking about Belgium being next in line for economic collapse. It really feels like the country is tearing itself apart.

Please note that this is just my take on things, based on what I've read in the news over here and heard from everyone I've asked, so some of what I've said might not be accurate. Thanks Reuters for the photos!

Liège, Brugge and Festival La Semo

Maggy and Lena cooking lunch

Saturday was a crazy day as I ran all over Belgium catching up with different AFS returnees - five former AFS NZ students, from three different countries, in three different cities!

Anais and I woke up early and I packed up and shipped out. I caught a train from Gent to Liege and arrived at 11am, where Lena picked me up with Maggy in tow. Maggy is from Germany and lived in Porirua on AFS in 2009-2010, and was visiting Lena that week. We headed back to Lena's place and made pasta for lunch. I should point out that Lena made pasta for lunch, as her inability to cook is notorious! Then we just sat around talking until it was time to head back to the train station so Maggy could catch her train. We had tried to time things so we both spent a night together in Liege, but things got a bit messy and it didn't work out, but hopefully I can see her for longer in Germany sometime.

Lena, me and Maggy

Then Lena and I caught a train to Brugge, right back across the other side of the country via Gent again (see map below), so I could see Ophelie and Simon. Her parents thought I was mad, to them a 2hour train ride is a really long time, but riding in trains is still a bit novel for me, and I quite like to sit and look at the countryside going past. Compared to the rest of my travels, two hours seems like nothing! Ophelie was the first ever exchange student that I looked after for, back in 2008 when I got a phone call early in the morning and sleepily said yes without realizing what I was even agreeing too. She is from France, but studys in Canada and I was disappointed that I couldn't catch up earlier in the year, so when she came to Belgium to visit Simon in her summer holidays I went to say hello.

Simon and Lena at the cafe in Brugge

We met in a ridiculously expensive cafe in the square, one that obviously caters mostly to rich tourists and charged me 4.50euro ($9NZ) for a coffee and the pleasant experience of sitting on the terrace in the sun. Then we just wandered around for awhile, looking at the buildings and canals. I already visited Brugge in February, and while it was nice to see everything in the sun, I think I preferred going in the winter and avoiding the crowds of tourists, the place was packed! We had a look in some (very overpriced!) shops, and then had dinner at a Frituur. Frituurs are frie-shops, the Belgian equivalent of NZ fish and chip shops. In February I tried Frikandels with Tim here in Brugge and quite liked them, so it was interesting to learn from Lena that the deep-fried sausages are often made from the bad bits of horse-meat, rather than chicken, pork or beef! This time we had another kind of fried-sausage and some deep fried cheeseballs with our fries. Belgians are pretty into their deep-frying! Then we did some more wandering around, I had what will be my last speculoos ice-cream for awhile, and Lena and I caught the 9pm train back to Liege. Quite a random day, but catching up with everyone was worth spending six hours training around! I really love how domestic trains here only cost 5euro for under 26 year olds.

Dinner at the Frituur

On Sunday we headed into the Belgian province of Luxembourg, to a small town called Hotton that was hosting the La Semo music festival. All month the train stations have been packed with young people carrying sleeping bags and tents on their way to one of the many music festivals on here, so I was really excited to go to one myself. Along with a huge bunch of young people we piled into a tiny, decrepit train that slowly wound its way through the hillier and tree-covered region for an hour until we reached Hotton, the only train trip I've taken in Belgium that was pretty and interesting really. We jumped onto the festival bus and when it pulled up outside the festival, Lena jumped off, while I protested that some people carrying tents were staying on the bus and maybe we could stay onboard and get a ride to the campsite. However, Lena said we just follow everyone else, who turned out to be only one girl who was walking to her car. So back on the bus we went, and five minutes later we pulled up outside a field full of tents. Here Lena again made an ass out of herself, getting confused by people who were leaving the campground and asking them where the camping was. The look on the girls face who replied, 'just next to you, where all of the tents are, duh' was awesome. We found our friends, and pitched our tent next to theirs. Everyone here has those awesome tents that you just throw and they open all by themselves, so we were set up pretty quickly, and then it started to rain so we sat inside and drank a few beers before heading back to the festival itself. This time, we caught a ride on a horse-pulled wagon through the township, quite cool. Compared to festivals like Big Day Out and Rythem and Vines, security here was really lax, so the lines were small and we were soon inside.

Lena, Simon, Ophelie and I in Brugge

La Semo is a bit hippy-ish and green, they are big on being ecologically friendly and more people were running around in harem pants and barefoot than wearing shoes. Apparently La Semo means 'the seed' in Esperanto, a language that was invented in an attempt to create a world-wide language (more on Esperanto here, it's actually quite interesting!). Compared to the big Belgian festivals like Pukkelpop and Werchester, it's quite small and was only attended by french speakers. It ran for three nights but we were just there for the last. It had a big main stage and two smaller stages, and a whole lot of stalls that we spent a while checked out when we first got there. Food was around 5-8euro and drinks 2-3euro, so not great but not bad either. It was lightly raining for most of the afternoon, but it didn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits and it was still really warm, so we cruised around soaking in the atmosphere. It had a really good vibe, really relaxed compared to festivals in NZ where everyone is 'drinking to get drunk' and taking harder drugs, here everyone was still drinking, and there was heaps of pot being smoked a lot more openly than it would be in NZ (like only meters away from a couple of police officers that turned up briefly and then disappeared) but there was no one falling over drunk or puking on the sidelines or getting loaded into ambulances like you see at NZ festivals. Continuing with my theme of always commenting on the toilets over here, they had port-a-loo urinals which I've never seen in NZ, and ecologically friendly port-a-loos, which scared us at first because they use woodchips rather than water, but they were actually a lot cleaner than normal ones. Reading about 'the poo cycle' on the wall made me not want to eat food produced locally though!

Brugge and Gent are to the west, Liege is to the east

We only really watched three bands, on the main stage, Les Fatals Picards, which I guess I'd call an average rock band, then a reggae band, Danakil, and finally a kind of alternative/reggae, acoustic band called Tryo. It's an interesting experience to go to a festival knowing nothing about the acts that are playing and not understanding anything they are singing about, it makes you quite objective about their performances but its really weird to be in a crowd that's going crazy for a band whose name you don't even know. There was also a MC who kept coming out and doing 'simon says' type things, and of course I had no idea what he was telling us to do. The crowd went crazy singing this 'chaud boulette' thing and spinning around in circles. I knew boulette meant balls, which combined with the word chaud (pronounced 'show') to make me quite confused, but apparently literally translated it means 'hot balls'. I still don't get it.

Lena on the train

I quite liked all three bands, but I think the order was wrong and the reggae guys should have performed before the rock band. Tryo are famous enough for Lena's dad to shake his head when I said I didn't know about them, a five-piece band with a singer, drummer, sound producer and a couple of guitar players (usually no bassist!) who had a guest celloist and drummer along with them. The drummers were awesome, they played a whole range of percussion instruments, including tapping out some amazing beats on cajons (wooden box drums) with both their hands and brushes, and the cellist did well too. I haven't heard their recorded stuff (although I will hunt it down now) but I thought they did a good gig, they just looked like they were having fun and playing around with each other. At the end they played a random famous-although-I-can't-remember-the-name pop song and danced away to it, it was quite funny. The only bad point about the Tryo gig was that they pulled in a huge crowd and everyone got really pushy. We'd waited for over an hour near the front, so I wasn't happy about everyone trying to push in front of us, and a lot of people learnt the hard way that trying to take on someone from a country where girls play contact sport isn't a good idea.

my first Belgian waffle

Then it was around midnight, and they finished off with some fireworks and dudes in freaky costumes, and we walked back to the campsite and went to bed. The other nights went for longer but because Sunday was the last night they finished early, apart from everyone messing around with their own music back at the campground. I actually slept pretty well considering we were camping, and we got up around nine the following morning. By the time we had packed up, everyone else had packed up, we waited for the festival shuttle bus, and then waited for the hourly train back to Liege it was after midday, but it was really sunny and we weren't feeling so bad. We went back to the house and dumped the stuff, had showers, and then headed out again so I could pick up some stuff to take to Germany, meet up with Lena's friend and her brother, and try Belgian waffles for the first time. There are two types, Liege waffles and Brussels waffles, with the Brussels ones being softer. I am not really a waffle fan normally, probably why I've lived so long in Belgium without trying one, but the crispy cinnamon Liege waffle I had was awesome. We had a couple of drinks with Mathilde and her brother in 'La Cour St Jean', a bar in Liege that is famous for being the exchange student meeting point, every Wednesday exchange students from all of the different organizations come from all over Belgium to party here, a friend who did AFS in Brussels three or four years ago told me about it. Even though it wasn't Wednesday an Australian currently on exchange was sitting at the table next to us talking to a couple of Belgians who had only just returned from Australia.

Lena and Matilde at La Cour St Jean

We had dinner with Lena's parents, her dad is still as funny as ever and kept laughing at the way I say bonjour, so it's now a joke between us, and then we messed around all evening packing and sorting things out. This morning I took the train to Gottingen, Germany. I will miss Belgium, while the country has downsides like being really polluted and having a mostly flat, uninteresting landscape, and the racism and separatism that's really starting to show as the political situation worsens, it has a lot of good points as well, like really easy and cheap transport, friendly people, and a good friend being only 5 euro and a couple of hours away. I guess Liege is only a couple of hours away from Luxembourg too, but the train trip costs a lot more! I am looking forward to sitting around in Germany and doing nothing much, and it's quite cool to be going back to where my trip began just over six months ago.

I did take photos at the festival but on a disposable camera that I will have to get developed. Photos from Brugges and Liege are here.

Gent

Anais and I

Anais was an AFS student in Christchurch, she stayed with me last year when she visited Wellington. I left the house early on Thursday morning, had another awkward goobye with Jan, and took the bus and then train to Gent. I had heard great things about Gent and was quite excited to see the city. The attitude towards smoking is really different here in Belgium compared to in NZ, and on the way there we passed another train with the driver leaning against the open window smoking a cigarette! Also, the guy inside the train station who was sitting on that big machine they use to clean the floors was smoking. They've only just made it illegal to smoke inside bars here this month, NZ really is a lot more advanced than Europe on that one!

Gent

I arrived in the early afternoon, luckily Anais lives really close to the train station and it wasn't too far to go to dump my bags. I'm already over the 'backpack' part of backpacking again! Her house is another of those tall, skinny, four story places that I love! We spent some time just hanging out there and catching up, and then headed into the city for a quick look around. We biked in, Gent is really well set-up for bikes but it's a bit tricky at the moment as there is heaps of road works going on. We visited some shops and I managed to find some summer shoes that fit (shoes here go up to 41, and Im usually a 44 or 45!) and then we just wandered around for awhile to give me a quick look.

Then we headed home, and I had a near-miss with a car that pulled out of a side road and stopped on the cycle lane, then in avoiding the car I swerved and skidded on some tram lines, and I ended up hitting the ground! I just got a few grazes and bruised my pride, but not wearing a helmet makes that kind of thing so much scarier, all I was thinking about as I was going down was how unprotected my head was if a car coming down the road didn't see me there! We took the dog for a walk, they have a gorgeous nine-month old boarder collie, he is really cute even if he's still quite naughty! He ate half of the speculoos muffins off the bench while I was there! Anais' mum taught her how to make roast chicken french-style, so we had a great dinner and I spent a long time just sitting there with a few glasses of wine talking to everyone. Her parents are amazing and really interesting, her mother is English, her father is Belgian and has done AFS to Alaska, and they lived together in France where he worked as a Programme Manager for AFS, so they had a lot of cool stories and we discussed a whole lot of different topics. We'd kind of talked about going out that night, but after talking for ages and it starting to rain, we stayed in.

Castle in Gent

Friday morning we headed back into the city centre and this time walked around a lot more slowly. Gent has some canals running through it, I think not as many as in Brugges, and has a big castle in the centre. There are a lot of really old buildings, and some unusual ones like a big hall that they used to use for trade, that I took a million photos of. It is a really lovely city, one of the prettiest I've been in for a long time, and I really like how it isn't as touristy as Brugges is, but I can tell that now I've spent so much time in this part of Europe my level of excitement just isn't what it was when I had first arrived. 

One thing that took some getting used to here is how acceptable taking dogs everywhere is. They can go in the trains, buses and trams, and into shops and even restaurants. I think that's illegal in NZ? Or at least against the rules of the bus companies. Here, shops owners often take their own dog with them to work, we went into a few clothing shops where there were dogs just chilling under a rack of garments!

They have a huge market there every Friday that sprawls out of the 'Friday Market' square into the surrounding areas, we had a look around and it was only the cost of international postage that stopped me picking up a few things! The antiquey stuff that you can get over here is really amazing. We also looked in some second-hand clothing stores and same deal there, a lot of it would fetch big money under the labels of 'retro' and 'vintage' in NZ.  We had vegetarian burgers in a little cafe in a side street, and went to a chocolate-bar: amazing! Everything there is chocolate-based, both drinks and food. Anais had bread sticks with chocolate dip, and I had a white chocolate praline hot chocolate. Only speculoos flavor hot-chocolates could make that place cooler, someone should open one in NZ! After another walk with the dog, we went out for dinner at a local greek place. I tried the greek wine, retsina, that is flavoured with pine resin for the first time, I quite like the flavor, and we split a big plate of different greek dishes. Then it was time for bed, with an early start the next morning to train to Liege!

So it's been a pretty chilled out couple of days, I really needed the change to unwind a bit after working so much recently and the stress of packing, and I'm glad that we spent time just talking and soaking up the atmosphere rather than doing the mad-dash-to-all-of-the-tourist-sites thing. I think this weekend is going to be a bit crazy as we are going to a music festival and camping there, and I'm getting sicker by the day, I'm just hoping my body can hold out until I reach Germany where I can relax and spend a couple of days in bed really getting rid of this cold!

More photos are here.