Hey all--
I must admit that the reason I haven't written in two weeks is that not very much has happened that I felt like it was worth bothering you about.
So I finally got out of bed on Thursday morning (two Thursdays ago) so that I could go to Chemistry class. When I arrived at the building where my class claimed to be, I was surprised to find it rather devoid of life. I was more surprised when this condition persisted until ten o'clock, when my class was supposed to start. I finally found a girl sitting on the steps smoking and asked her if she was in the inorganic chemistry class. She said she was. How many people, I wondered, were in the class? "Three, now that you're here," she replied. At least, I think that's what she said. Flemish accents are hard to understand. But indeed, I was one of three people in the class. This is not much of a problem, since the professor seemed to be happy lecturing to three people, and I imagine he would have been just as happy lecturing to the wall.
I'm trying not to pass judgement yet on the class, because I have no choice but to take it, and see what happens. I also have only attended class twice so far. "But it started three weeks ago!" I can hear you say. To this I reply that we are in Belgium, and that means that when the teacher decides to cancel the second week of class entirely, as well as half of the third week, no one bothers to ask why, they simply go with the flow. Everything he says is written up in a coursepack that we had to buy (for all of six euros fifty), which makes it easy to follow along with the lectures. Apparently on Mondays we usually get together and discuss some papers (next week we're talking about the position of the Lanthanides and Actinides, and whether they should be in Group IIA or IIIB), but we didn't this week because we have to catch up on the lecture. I asked about lab, and he said that we're going to definitely have one, and possibly two labs. Groan. It looks like I'm going to have to take Inorganic lab senior spring at Swarthmore,setting myself up for fun fun times.
My french class has been kinda lame, too. We've had the same kind of trouble where the class doesn't meet very often, because the professor was sick, and then because most of the kids were going on some trip somewhere. So I really only have two classes, and one of them is imagology, which is also lame in the face. I got back the only paper I had to write all semester, and one of the comments on it was "Excellent English!" I should hope so, I've only been speaking it for my whole life. Sigh. So I'll be lucky if I can convince Swarthmore to give me more than one credit for this whole semester. I'd better study for my Nationalism midterm this weekend, or I'm kinda screwed.
In other (beer) news, Matt and I went to to the Schaarbeek Beer Museum the other day, which was really fun. The best part, in my opinion, was watching one of the old men who works there explain to these two little girls, who were probably about five and seven, the process of making beer and all the different types of beer that are made in Belgium. I can't imagine that it would be interesting for someone who can't drink them, but his manner seemed to keep them paying attention.
I also discovered a beer store near the VUB campus that sells various Lambic beers (spontaneously fermented stuff, made with wild yeast that lives in the air around Brussels and no where else in the world) at excellent prices. My only problem now is how to get them back to the US. I am not 21, so it's illegal for me. I suppose I could give them to my parents to bring back. I have no idea what the duty is on beer, since the US Customs website seems to indicate that there is none, but elsewhere on the same site that it is $1-2/liter. This is not unreasonably high, but it would be nice to know whether one has to pay that or not. Who the hell knows? It's the Department of Homeland Security, after all. People like the freaking IRS better, just ask my dad.
In other (not beer) news, Leah came last week to visit. This was quite wonderful, although it did drive home for me the point that I am not at Swarthmore, and that we can't be together all the time right now, which is somewhat of a horrible feeling. But it was entirely worth it to see her. We went to the park in our neighborhood and saw a family of ducklings scampering around being fuzzy. We wandered around Brussels and saw pretty buildings and mostly paid attention to one another.
On Thursday night, we went to dinner at the house of Jacques Richelle, who was one of the brothers of the family that my dad stayed with when he lived in Belgium for a year after high school. Jacques and his wife Muriel are both very nice, and we had a nice conversation about Belgian identity. Here's the thing about Belgium: there are about ten million people living here, and every one of them has a completely different idea about what it is like to be Belgian, and is prepared to swear that everyone thinks the same way they do. I have heard Belgians claim that "every Belgian thinks of himself as either Flemish or Wallonian, not as Belgian" and others claim that "every Belgian thinks of himself as Belgian first, setting aside regional differences." I asked Muriel what it was like being Wallonian in Brussels, to which she replied somewhat indignantly that she was most certainly *not* Wallonian, she was Bruxelloise and that that was something entirely different. "Brussels is a French-speaking city," she insisted. "There are no native Flemish people here at all. The ones that are here don't want to be here. I just want to be free to speak French!"
I didn't want to ruin the evening by pointing out that I lived with a Flemish woman and her Dutch boyfriend, and that both of them were quite happy here. Then Jacques insisted that only five percent of the city speaks Dutch, and that ninety percent of the city speaks French. Asking Erik about this later, he claimed that it was 10% Flemish, 70% French...and 20% Turkish and Moroccan. Jessica claimed that she had heard it was thirty percent Flemish.
So with all this discussion, you might ask, why don't they just take a census. Because this is Belgium, and you can't simply do something like that. There hasn't been a linguistic census of Brussels since the mid-1960s, and the Flemish are perfectly happy about that, and they have veto power over anything that happens. I am quite serious that the only reason this country hasn't split in two is that no one knows what to do about Brussels. It's surrounded by Flanders, it's clearly a French-majority city, it's officially bilingual, and it's the seat of four parliaments: the parliament of the province of Brussels, the parliament of the province of Flanders, the parliament of Belgium and the parliament of Europe. It's a bureaucratic nightmare to do anything here, so often, I think that people simply don't bother.
On Friday night, we went to Leuven with Matt, Erik and Jessica for dinner, where Leah and I finally had moules frites, or as they call them in Leuven, mosselen met frites. Then we went to a cocktail bar, where we had goofy-named fruity cocktails like "Singapore Gin Sling" (wikipedia informs me that this contains 4 parts gin, 1 part cherry brandy, 4 parts pineapple juice and some lemon juice, although I suspect that mine was not mixed according to the original recipe) which had a lot more alcohol in them than they tasted like they did. Then we went to another bar and had some beer. Then we came home and had another drink, and then I discovered that I was not walking quite straight. Shocking, isn't it?
On Saturday night, we went to a Russian restaurant for dinner which featured a gypsy band playing the accordion and what looked like a highly overgrown balalaika (sort of like an upright bass, Russian style), and a buxom Russian woman dancing and singing. Occasionally this other woman, who it seemed was just there with her friends but who must have had some kind of connection to the place would get up and dance, too, a whirling spinning sort of dance that made me want to be Russian. The food was quite good, and we stayed there for about four hours feeling relaxed and happy. Then we went to a pub situated right by the Manneken Pis and drank Lambic and got home at 3 in the morning. It was fantastic.
This week, life has pretty much just been going normally. I bowed to peer pressure and went with Matt to karaoke night at O'Reilly's Irish Pub on Sunday, where I embarrased myself by utterly butchering Born in the USA. It was kind of fun, but I had that sense that I get a lot here when I go out with people of feeling alone around a lot of people. I'd rather go out and have fun with my friends, but since they're at Swat or dispersed about the globe, I'd rather do stuff by myself than with people I don't really care about one way or another, and who seem to feel the same way about me. It's not that I don't like them, it's that they don't interest me very much as people, so I'd just as soon be by myself.
Today I went for a walk to the park to see the ducklings again, and on the way I met an orange striped cat who seemed to like walking around my legs and being petted, so I let it walk while I took a lot of pictures. See it for yourself, along with the ducklings, who were just as cute and fuzzy as ever.
And that pretty much brings up to the present. Matt is going to sleep in my room tonight, I think, on account of some kind of complicated situation involving a girl with whom he is emphatically Just Friends spending the night here for some kind of complicated reason that I don't understand at all, given that she has a place of her own to live. I don't get it, and I have my suspicions about the manipulative nature of her relationship with him, but since it's none of my business, I'll butt out. Anyhow, look at the pictures of the fuzzy things and smile.
--Nathan
