Luxembourg
Some of us went to Luxembourg City this weekend. I'll get a real entry up later, but I found some good pictures of the places we went to on their tourist site:
Panoramic Views
Sites & Attractions

today is a belgian holiday - i didn't catch the name. gilbert and paquita really didn't know what it was for, but at least it's an excuse to make tons and tons of crepes. the tradition is that you hold a golden coin when you make them and it will bring you wealth. they just laughed about that, but paquita showed me her coin as she was making them today...
one good quote i forgot to mention:
i mentioned how i was thinking of going to one of the old cathedrals for mass, even if it was in french. gilbert said it didn't really matter - you know how it goes anyway.
his exact words about the catholic mass was that "it is the world's favorite play"
i thought that was pretty funny.

Gilbert and his daughter express their shame over jean claude van-damme
first of all, i have some pictures of ghent posted.
ghent was great, except for the weather. we first went to the MIAT, which had the old machines that the textiles factories had. during our lunch one of the lafayette kids managed to break three beer glasses after the tower he made toppled. way to go.
after that we made our way to st. bavo's cathedral (gothic style), which was beautiful in its own right, but also housed jan van eyck's "adoration of the lamb" from 1432 (try link 1 or link 2). in the crypt you could see the foundation of the romanesque church that was there in the 1150s.
then on to the castle! we went to gravensteen castle, where the count of ghent used to live. it was finished in 1180. this wasn't even necessarily a big castle, but it was still impressive. it was a real deal with fortifications and a torture chamber.
the rest of ghent was nice as well. we saw the belfry and town hall, and we got to walk on our own for a while. it was a relatively low-key city, which was nice. we walked by a bunch of kids that were rolling up shirts and whipping each other with them, locker-room style. that was a little bizarre. the view from the bridges going over the rivers was great, and in nicer weather you can get boat rides along them.
that night a group of us went to meet dr. pribic and dr. katz at a little place called the anchois vert on rue stevin. pribic treated us to dinner, which was nice. the place probably only holds about 30 people, and had a great atmosphere. pribic and katz are regulars there since it is right across the street from their apartments. at 10 these two men from paraguay came in to play guitar and sing. they were incredibly talented and were really jovial.
on sunday we tried to go to the vieux marche downtown, which is a big daily flea market. we got there later, so most of the people must have left already. we struck out there, but paquita's sunday meal made up for that. we also asked about places in the south to visit since all of our art trips (and all you ever hear about) are the cities in flanders (ghent, bruges, antwerp). they suggested namur, dinant, or durbuy. we might look into them for a weekend trip.
i found a french cheese i liked - camenbert - give it a shot.
today was class as usual. i need to run some errands and that's really it. there's not much action between monday and thursday.
if any of you have some time, could you send me an email and let me know how everything's going/what's new/what you're up to? i'm not sure that i have everyone's email address with me, so it's easier if you contact me. my email address is on the "View Profile" page.

the english-language literature is a dead giveaway
sunday i got to drop by some of the museums. all in all it was pretty interesting. first I went to the musee des instruments de musique. it has a huge collection of instruments from all over the world. they give you a pair of headphones to wear as you walk around. when you stand near a display, you hear the instrument playing in the headphones. it was fun but a little confusing if you were walking by a bunch of things and got bombarded by bagpipes and trumpets and accordions and whatnot.
after that i went to the site archeologique du coudenberg. it's part of the old palace from the 1100s-1700s, a road, part of another nobleman's house, and the aula magna, where charles quint abdicated. it's all underground - you're actually under the place royale. you can even walk along part of a road - rue isabelle. there's arches everywhere and you can see some of the other things they found when they were excavating the area, like old armor and helmets from the 15th century.
after that i was directed to the bellvue museum by an overly-excited employee (you have to go in there to get to the underground site). the bellvue has things from the different belgian kings, but i couldn't really get into it. there were things like a letter from the prince saying what he wanted for his 8th birthday.
from there i headed over to the modern and ancient art museum. they had an exhibition on fernand khnopff, who must have been a famous belgian painter. it was nice, but i didn't have the audioguide to explain the paintings to me. i headed to the modern art museum first. it goes eight floors underground but has natural light from a big opening at the top of the building. i saw a dali painting and some other interesting things. after that i went back to the ancient art museum to try to find stuff by the few flemish painters we'd talked about in art class so far, but i didn't find much besides peter paul reubens.
the rest of this week has been pretty normal. classes are going fine so far. i want to try to get to the comic strip museum and the natural sciences museum some time soon. this weekend is our art trip to ghent, where i have to do a presentation on medieval guilds.
i've still got to check out some jazz here, but i've got to get the bulletin (an english-language weekly in brussels) to see what's going on.
i'm wondering if they have any kind of anti-smoking campaign for the kids here. it's an easy 70% of the VUB and vesalius students that smoke. it's nuts. they also seem to be fans of finishing the professor's sentences instead of just waiting for them to finish what they're saying.
it snowed last night and actually stuck to the ground. it's only about an inch or two. i'm glad i have waterproof shoes.
lunch time.

comme des connards
possibly the worst french song / knack cover i've ever heard:
http://www.mcm.net/clipbox/index.php?incId=851
click on the video icon next to "michael youn - comme des connards"
wow.

gerard depardieu is everywhere
today i saw a french-language magazine with a picture of michael moore on the cover. the title said something like "michael moore: the american that one likes"
classes have been going pretty good. i am going to do my presentation for art class during our trip to ghent (next saturday). it's on medieval guilds.
today i went for a walk downtown. i went in some music stores (instruments and records), then eventually found myself at notre dame du sablon. it is a 16th century church. the stained glass inside is probably the most impressive that i've seen so far. it's everwhere, and all of it is beautiful. the woodwork and pipe organ is magnificent as well. gilbert told us that the stained glass is illuminated from inside at night, and that it is quite a sight. i'll have to check that out.
i also went by all the museums in the area. i think i'm going to try to go on sunday and get the ticket that lets you visit all of them.
the machines at the laundromat are ridiculously small. either people wash their clothes often, or just don't wear clean clothes too much.
i noticed that i haven't seen bagels anywhere so far.
paquita told us that she is going to have us try to eat rabbit one of these days. i don't know about that.
well, back to the house.

brussels is punk rock
someone spraypainted (with a stencil) the Crass logo on one of the main doors in this building.

in the city in the rain you vanish without a trace
more photos: PHOTOS 2
saturday was a tour of the city, in a bus and walking. it was pretty nice. our art professor told us a lot of history which was nice.
sunday we walked down to the parc de la woluwe, not far from our house. it's very calm there, i like it.
stuff at the school is slowly getting organized. my european dictators class seems like it'll be very interesting. i haven't had my european studies class yet, but the first talk and tour were good. econ, ethics, and strengths should be ok.
another great belgian treat: speculoos - they're like ginger/almond cookie things. our art teacher gave us some at the grand-place on saturday.
i'm still surprised by the amount of dog poop everywhere.
here are some of the cars that people drive in brussels:
opel
citroen
peugeot
renault
smart
fiat
and a lot of mercedes and bmw's
well, i guess that's it for now

finally got onto a VUB computer.... but it's got the french/dutch keyboard.
time to try one of the other labs.
edit: yeah, you can just switch keyboard maps on the computer.. good stuff.

here comes the sun
i had my first class yesterday - history of european dictators. dr. pribic seems like he'll be an interesting teacher. there are a lot of regular vesalius (non-lafayette) students in our class. everyone is an international affairs or politics major. dr. pribic decided there wouldn't be a midterm or final because "ve all vant to be friends heah, ohhkay?"
i walked up ch. de wavre and found a nice chocolate shop that gilbert and paquita had recommended to me. now i just have to figure out how to send stuff to people.
all in all, the day was pretty slow. i just walked around the neighborhood and campus, dropping in to the computer lab at veco (which apparently is the cool way to abbreviate vesalius college?). Right now about 300 students are trying to share 3 computers.. ha! once the VUB accounts get activated and we get our IDs it should be ok - then we can use the vub computers.
still, the interesting stuff from yesterday came at dinner. it was a big belgian meal. it was the three of us, gilbert & paquita, the one daughter and her boyfriend, and the other daughter and her son. we had some kind of dish that was noodles, ham, and cream. some of them put ketchup on it and got a kick out of the sounds when the bottle was almost empty. it's really entertaining how silly they get when they're all together; it's kind of neat.
there is a painting of paquita when she was 15 in the formal dining room. she told us the story about it:
(i think she was still in spain at the time) she was someplace and this painter came up to her and said that she had an interesting face and asked if he could paint her. the painter got permission from her dad, and paquita and her dad would go down together while this guy painted her. later, the painter was selling all of paintings to this one american man. but he wouldn't sell the one painting of paquita, because he said it was "the daughter of a friend". so eventually he gave the painting back to paquita's dad as a gift. paquita never wanted to ask for it directly, but her father gave it to gilbert for his 50th birthday.
i thought it was pretty interesting. gilbert joked about how the eyes follow you or it's one of those paintings where you poke out the eyes and somebody is there looking at you.
so when the ketchup was making the pbbtthh noises they were blaming it on the painting of paquita.
after the dinner we tried some belgian and french cheeses. they were pretty good.
then coffee and a little piece of some kind of apple dessert thing. they don't fool around with their coffee here. it's ridiculously strong - almost espresso, but a whole cup's worth.
the other night paquita and gilbert were also telling us about all the places they have been to. they've been to the US a lot (new york, atlanta, hawaii, florida, washington), mexico, france, germany, bankok, hong kong, morocco, tunisia, south africa, and more. i asked if they had been to luxembourg and paquita's reply was "ah, oui... c'est triste"... she called it sad there! ha! her explanation was that there isn't much to do there, but it is still very pretty, quiet, and full of small villages.
we also found out what gilbert's job was. he was a programmer for mainframes. he spent most of his working years with the belgian bank.
i found out that there is an american counterpart to lactaid that i can get at the pharmacy. i don't think they knew i spoke english until they saw the fact sheet for it (which is in english). so that was a plus. so they wanted to talk to me in english instead of french, and the main guy spoke it fluently. it's just nice to know if there's ever a problem and i can't remember the right french words.
no real plans for today. i was going to read for my dictators class and then try to go to one of the parks or something (but i think it is going to rain later today).
there are still tons of churches and museums that i'm looking forward to seeing. the churches are all so beautiful inside and actually feel holy. it's not like lafayette's colton chapel. there's still the comic strip museum and all the history & art museums in the city. i think i'll wait to get my student ID - gilbert said a lot of places will give you discounts.
i guess that's it for now. i'm going to go be productive and free up this computer.