Excuse Me, Are You American?

I just spent three days in Amsterdam with my friends Ged and Carol from Manchester. It's a fantastic city, I have to say, although I had forgotten about how mindful you have to be of cyclists tearing about.

The first night in town, we wandered a bit, after I had a minor adventure trying to find the house we had rented. The owners had sent me keys and a map, but were kind enough to mark the house's location on the wrong street on the map. I of course followed the map and ignored the street names and the address provided, and then dutifully tried to open the door to this townhouse with the keys provided. After a bit of circling -- and yes, some cursing -- I realized I was on the wrong street and found the house fairly easily. After our wanderings, we found a nice little cafe on Spui, and settled in for a few drinks before calling it a night.

The next day we did some more wandering, including visiting this fantastic little house that had a church in the attic, essentially. The short version of the backstory as I understand it is that when the Calvinists took hold of the area, Catholics were forbidden from worshipping in public, so many of them worshipped in the privacy of their homes. The owners of this house obviously felt more strongly, and combined the top three floors of their house into a scaled-down version of a proper Catholic Church.

Shortly after visiting that house, we were walking along one of the canals when a young man who had, I am fairly certain, indulged quite heavily at a coffee shop. (Nudge, wink.) As three English speakers approached he came toward us, and said to me, I assume in reaction to my voice, "Excuse me, are you American?" I looked at him and politely said "No, I'm sorry, we're not." The look of confusion on his face was utterly priceless.

Before I forget, I should say Ged took us to a record store he had been to before, called Get Records. It has to be one of the better stores I visited in Europe, with a rather wide-ranging selection of Indie Rock from all over the place. (The Guided by Voices section was HUGE, and I have to say I was impressed by a few other sections, too.) I limited myself to just four CDs: "Disintegration" by the Cure; "Ocean Rain" by Echo & the Bunnymen; "Vivadixie..." by Sparklehorse; and the 3-CD reissue of "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society."

We got back to the house after a long day of wandering, shopping, sightseeing and narrowly avoided being caught in what was one of the nuttiest rain storms I've ever seen. It was like nighttime outside at 6 p.m. (and remember, sunset in Amsterdam in the summer is usually at around 9:30 or 10 p.m.) and the rain can only be described as torrential. Ged and I were totally fascinated by it.

The next day we tried to go to the Van Gogh museum, but the lines were just too long. We did, however, find a phenomenal Ethiopian restaurant called Axum that I highly recommend to anyone who goes to the Dam. You get to eat with your fingers. Actually, you kind of have to. Anyway, good fun, and great food.

Ged and Carol were off early the next morning, so I went back to the VG museum, which I enjoyed, and also visited the Anne Frank House, before wandering a bit more. I took the train home, looking forward to my last three days in Brussels, which promised to be busy. More on them later.

... It's Crap

For today's post, I'm going to get everyone caught up on my the remainder of my trip to Edinburgh, as well as all the excitement (earnings season, cough, cough) that has transpired since then. But first, read this and make a mental note to yourself.
 
In Edinburgh, I had precious little time to take in the city, so I went immediately to Edinburgh Castle, the highest point and easily the most frequented landmark there. It's really interesting -- the castle has been used for a variety of purposes, has been laid siege to by the English back before they were so chummy with the Scots. It's pretty elaborate, and I can't really do it justice, but my favorite odd part of it was the little walled-in dog graveyard that was apparently reserved for the canine companions of officers of a certain rank. I have a picture of that somewhere, though I can't find it right now, so you're going to have to do with the ones I'm providing.
 
To get to the castle, I walked up High Street, aka "The Royal Mile" because it is roughly a mile-long stretch that runs between the Castle and the Palace where the Queen stays when she's in Scotland. At the top of High Street, after waiting in line for about 30 minutes to pay my admission fee -- tip to future Edinburgh visitors, there is a bus that will take you up this hill for about £2 that will also sell you a ticket to get into the Castle. This will save you time if you are there in the summer. I imagine it's busy year round, but it was like being at a Ticketmaster outlet in the 80s when Sting or Peter Gabriel tickets went on sale. Anyway, after finally getting my ticket, and almost falling for about 14 different women with delightful Scottish accents, I walked through the entrance gate and toured the castle.
 
After touring the various parts of the castle and seeing the Scottish Crown Jewels, I paused for a few minutes to take in the fantastic views the castle's high perch provide, particularly of the Firth of Forth, which is the body of water you can see beyond the city in the picture here. It really was pretty spectacular, and provides one of the best views of an entire city I can remember seeing in a long time. Then again, I lived in Toronto for the better part of 14 years and have yet to be to the top of the CN Tower, so what do I know?
 
After finishing off the castle visit, I walked about the Old Town, which is full of gothic architecture, and actually in certain respects reminded me a bit of Barcelona. (Narrow streets, strange seafood, couldn't understand a word the locals were saying, etc.) High Street really forms the backbone of this part of the city, with a seemingly endless series of "closes" -- narrow paths that are like roads but far too narrow for any auto traffic in most cases, a good thing in my book -- that spread off it in either direction. I spent probably a good two hours wandering in and around here, before finding myself at the World's End pub, which aside from being favorably reviewed in my guidebook, is also the former workplace of my friend Steve Smith (Stephen Gordon Foster Smith to those that know him well. Steve is my friend who you may or may not have heard me reference as half a duo, along with our other friend Doug Cameron, that used to busk on Blvd St. Laurent in Montreal, playing -- perhaps exclusively, I can't recall -- Guns 'n Roses songs on accordion and tin whistle. let me tell you, Steve's whistle solo on 'Sweet Child O' Mine" was kickass.) The pub is so named because it is built on top of the remnants of the old wall around the city, and when that wall was there, Edinburgh's people never went beyond that wall, so for all intents and purposes, that was the end of the world. I had a fine meal and a pint there, and then continued on to see the rest of the city, including the spectacular architecture of the New Town.
 
I also finally broke down and went into a record store, the first time I'd done that since I got to Europe. (I looked through the window of one in Ghent to see how much the new Wilco album was and was scared off by the price tag: €18.50!) But, as fate would have it, Fopp, a chain of stores in the U.K. that were recommended to me by my neighbor (and renowned anglophile) Judith, turned out to be a pretty good store. A seller of books, CDs and DVDs, it also features a cafe. Sounds familiar, right? Well, this cafe sells beers. Why hasn't Barnes & Noble thought of this??? Who isn't more likely to buy CDs they don't really want when they have a beer in hand? Why not turn the record store into a quasi-nightclub. This could be HUGE in Williamsburg! I felt fairly good about walking away having only spent £22 for four discs, which for the record were:
the debut album from Scottish rock band Idlewild (very hard to find in the U.S.)
'I Should Coco' by Supergrass (also somewhat rare in the U.S.)
'Crocodiles' by Echo and the Bunnymen
'Aladdin Sane' by David Bowie
 
Anyway, this is getting somewhat long, so I'm going to end it here. On Sunday I visited the Palace, and looked around for trinkets and souvenirs, but decided they were mostly crap and didn't buy anything. (I was also out of pounds and didn't really want to visit the ATM again. The U.K. really needs to adopt the euro.)
 
This afternoon I head to Amsterdam for my final weekend in Europe. I remind you all, as my mother did me, that Amsterdam "is the drug capital!" Yes, Mom, it is.

Quest for Hire

A quick post, just to tell you all that the next time you're in Europe you must really try and see CNN International, if only to catch this guy, who is just one of the most ridiculous anchors I've ever seen. It's like CNN went out and hired an actor and said "we want you to play a Brit, but we want you to be SO over the top that no one will believe you're actually British and not just pretending to be British." He's really so over the top, it's almost difficult to watch the news.

And by the way, since you may miss it, I added this backdated post about Edinburgh. One more to come on that trip, hopefully later today.

Belgium Doesn't Exist!

I know, I know, I'm a few days behind in posting here. As soon as I have a few minutes to deal with photos and the like I'll post a blow-by-blow account of my trip to Edinburgh last weekend. I fully intend to backdate it though, so it could be confusing.

In any event, this expose on Belgium is one of the funniest things I've read in quite a while. As is this story, which reminded me of those days between high school and real life that the yanks like to refer to as "college" but the rest of the world thinks of rightfully as university.

If It's Not Scottish...

This weekend I visited Edinburgh, both to see more of a city I had spent far too little time in in the past, but also to visit an old friend from the WSJ, Will, who's been living there for the past few years.

Will lives in this really cool house in the "New Town" -- which, given that this is Europe, is still about 200 years old or something. His house was formerly a chapel and has been converted into a really neat living space. It's a short walk to Princes St., the main shopping strip in the city, and only about a 20 minute walk to get all the way to the top of the city where Edinburgh Castle is situated.

I spent about seven hours getting there, of course, because I chose to fly Ryanair, one of Europe's discount carriers. The flight was super cheap, only €80 round trip. Unfortunately, the "airport" in Brussels, which is actually in Charleroi, where I saw the Tour de France the week before, is about an hourlong bus ride from central Brussels. Plus, it looks more like a bus terminal than an airport. I think Ryanair may be the only airline that uses it.

I flew into Glasgow Prestwick airport, which is similarly far out of the city, though it at least resembles the airport in say, Burlington VT or something like that. From there it was a 45-minute or so train ride to Glasgow, and then another 45-minutes or so to Edinburgh. Friday night we just went for dinner and to this really cool old bar that has been where it is in Edinburgh for hundreds of years.

The other picture in this post is of Will's dogs, MacDuff and Cuillin. They're cute, and very energetic. The dark-haired one (Cuillin) is about two years old and jumps around a lot. She also likes to run in circles, I think mostly when she wants to go outside. They were fun to be around, although they both demanded a lot of attention.

Anyway, my next post shall provide some photos and detail from my sightseeing in Edinburgh, but I just wanted to get something on record here.

Taking It to the Streets

Good morning, dear reader. And I really do mean good MORNING. I got to work at 6:20 a.m. today. I can't honestly remember the last time I set my alarm for a time before 6 a.m. that didn't involve a plane. I can't really remember the last time I was up at 6 a.m. that wasn't the end of a day rather than the beginning.

Oh well, such is life.

Not a lot to report the past few days, so that would explain the silence. On Wednesday night, the English movie of the night was actually a good one, "Election". For those of you who haven't seen this film, the advertising campaign that promoted it at the time of its release really didn't do it justice. And everyone knows someone like Tracy Flick, don't they? I was actually struck, this being the first time I'd seen this movie since seeing the Lord of the Rings trilogy, by the similarity in duplicity between Reese Witherspoon's character and Smeagol/Gollum. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it. Regardless, if you haven't seen this film, rent it or get it from Netflix or something.

I have been promising a photo of the offices here in Brussels, so here it is already. This is the headquarters of the Wall Street Journal for all of Europe. Can't you almost hear the frenetic buzz of activity? Of news breaking? (And as a great "Daily Show" ad used to suggest several years ago, us then fixing it?) The sad thing is, you might think an organization with the vast global influence of the WSJ would occupy something grander than this. But we don't even occupy all of this building, just floors 1-3 (don't forget Europeans like to call the ground floor "0".) Among the other tenants in this venerable building are Scor, which I think makes trains or something, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka as the Mormons. I feel like I'm back in Brooklyn sometimes.

To get you updated, our office is fighting a collective cold. Jones, the senior editor here at WSJ.com, has been sounding pretty nasty, and Tina, the No. 2, just was out for two days and then had to leave early yesterday. I've had some nasty sinus congestion myself, though I'm starting to feel better, and just in time, too, since I'm off to Edinburgh to visit an old friend and former colleague for the weekend. So look for lots of blurry shots of the inside of a pub in a few days.

Heche Pipe

The past few days have been pretty uneventful, but I did finish reading "Unless" by Carol Shields, which was pretty good. Not wanting to read anything new before I'd had a day or two to digest that novel, I decided to watch some TV last night.

As I've alluded to before, the English-language programming here is somewhat limited. But I was really surprised by last night. Of the two channels that show English movies with Dutch/Flemish subtitles -- as opposed to the channels that show English movies dubbed into French, and, oddly, usually the same movies as those that are on the former channels -- both were showing movies starring Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn. BOTH OF THEM! What are the odds?

On one channel was Gus Van Sant's remake of "Psycho" which didn't much interest me -- aside from co-star Julianne Moore, who always interests me -- because I've seen the original quite a few times.

So I decided to watch the other channel, featuring "Return to Paradise," a 1998 film I'd never heard of before last night. It was fairly unremarkable, and if you've seen "Brokedown Palace" or whatever that movie starring Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale (I think) as American backpackers who get thrown in a Thai jail after being duped into muling drugs, well, you've basically seen this movie. Except that it takes place in Malaysia. And the ending isn't very happy. I guess it presented a somewhat interesting moral dilemma, but it was so Hollywood that it was really robbed of any gravity it might have had.

Tomorrow, Fahrenheit 9/11 opens in Belgium, and I hope to go see it if it's not sold out. I'm interested to see how it plays to a European audience, though I can pretty much guess it will be like watching England rout a Euro 2004 opponent in an English pub.

On that note, for your amusement (and to pad this ridiculously boring entry) here is something from michaelmoore.com:

Letterman's Top Ten List: Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit 9/11":

10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing
9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election
8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words
7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported
6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger
5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true
4. Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe
3. Where the hell was Spider-man?
2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth

1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball

Tour de France, Tour de France, Tour de France!

And with that title, I hope I have saddled all of you with the endlessly repetitive 1983 Kraftwerk song of the same name. Incidentally, 'Kraftwerk' in German means 'power station' which is interesting if only because their electro-pop inspired a lot of what became the New Romantic movement in music in the early 1980s. And Duran Duran members John and Andy Taylor were both in a side project called The Power Station (also featuring noted Renaissance man and women's lib proponent Robert Palmer on lead vocals, no less.) Coincedence? Probably. I doubt any of those guys were consulting a German-English dictionary too often, to be honest.

In any event, the reference to Kraut electro-pop does have a purpose, which is that yesterday, after spending the morning and early afternoon reading most of Carol Shields's "Unless" -- a very good read so far -- I met up with a few friends from Brussels for a trip to Charleroi, where the first stage of the Tour de France was finishing. I was a bit surprised, after the train ride of 45 minutes, to find the town so empty. There were people about, certainly, but I really expected their to be big crowds to see such a massive sporting event. I guess Belgians are tough to impress.

Acting on Web research that suggested the "first group" would arrive in Charleroi at around 4:30, we got there shortly before 4 and walked to where the race's final stretch was. And, at 4:30, we did indeed get some riders. But they were mostly on motorcycles and in ridiculous parade-like floats advertising the sponsors of the race. Many of these floats contained young volunteers (I presume) who were distributing various tchotchkes and the like -- keychains, candy, etc. By tossing them into the crowd. To say there was a bit of a mob scene over some of these little trinkets would be to undersell it. I actually managed to snag a hat for a supermarket chain, but only because it almost hit me in the face where I sat, on a railing above the fray.

This marketing blitz went on for at least half an hour, if not longer. And all the trucks had megaphones and PA systems, all screaming about this product or that in French, and completely drowning out the race updates that were supposed to be telling us how far away the riders were.

So we waited and waited and waited, and then, after seemingly 1,000 cars and floats and motorcycles had passed us, suddenly there were riders coming down the hill, under the "1 km" sign a few hundred meters from us. (We were about 500m from the finish line.) And they got closer, and closer, and then blew by us, about 180 riders of the 189, all tightly packed in a peloton, as the French call it. And then they were gone.

Still, it was kind of neat to be there. Charleroi itself was pretty unremarkable. We went to a pizza joint for dinner -- it was the only place we could find that had vegetarian options, necessary for my friends -- and then took the train back to Brussels just in time to get to a very Anglo bar that had the Portugal-Greece Euro 2004 final. Greece scored about 10 minutes in to the second half, and despite Portugal's best efforts, made that lone goal hold up to become champions of Europe. Perhaps a good sign with the Olympics set for Athens later this year.

Ghent Gone Again

Let's see... what's happened since my last post? Well, I met my colleague Jennifer for dinner and drinks in the Sablon, the most overtly French part of Brussels that I've found so far. Along the way, I encountered a large group of monks, including one who was carrying a ventriloquist's doll on his arm. I didn't ask.

The next evening was our other colleague Tina's birthday, so after work Friday we went out for drinks across the street, and had some dinner. We later decided to move to the city centre so some others could join us, and as seven of us were about to enter the Montgomery metro station near our office, we heard tires squealing. I turned to see an automobile bounce off a curb at the corner nearest to us, swerve toward the tram tracks, swerve back toward a grassy island in the middle of the road, jump the curb there, and plow right into a tree. The tree got the better of the collision, I assure you. The driver appeared to be alright, and one of our group called an ambulance to check him out. Saved by an airbag, though he did appear to have a cut on his forehead, and his windshield was a bit cracked, too. Regrettably, I didn't have my camera with me.

We took the train downtown, and as Thorsten (Tina's husband) and Anya (WSJ colleague) and I were walking and discussing the merits of deep-fried ice cream, I opined that anything deep-fried tasted good, and offered a "snotball" as an example. A man walking next to us, who I was later told was Flemish, started asking us what a "snotball" was, wanting to know if it was distinctly American cuisine. I was laughing too hard to explain, and he seemed thrown off when we revealed that none of us were American (Thorsten is German, and Anya was born in Slovakia.)

In any event, several bars later, I finally made it home around 3:30 in the morning, which impinged somewhat on my plans for a Saturday day trip to Ghent and Brugges, two smaller Belgian cities to the West of Brussels. When I finally was awake and alert enough, I headed to Gare du Midi and took the 30-minute train ride to Ghent, a beautiful city which is home to several universities. There are a couple of canals in the city, as you can see in the photo. Unfortunately, a combination of renovations and short time only allowed me to see a few things, but I still greatly enjoyed walking about the city, which is a lot lower key than Brussels.

One really beautiful church stood out, St. Baaf's Cathedral (aka St. Bavo's). It was really impressive, and was built upon the foundation of a church that was originally constructed in 1150 or thereabouts. You could go downstairs into the old church, which is currently housing some art from the local museum while it is under renovation. The cathedral itself was really cool, and was, as near as I could make out from the mostly Dutch inscriptions, the burial place for all the bishops of Ghent. Each had a separate compartment with one or more paintings depicting a biblical scene, so it was almost like a gallery within a church.

After I saw that, the Belfort (the watchtower, essentially) and the Castle, I visited a cafe or two, walked around some more, and had a quick dinner before returning to Brussels by about 8:30. Worn out from the night before, I decided to stay home and catch a good movie on television. There being very limited choices of English television, I watched "America's Sweethearts." I had hopes for this, if only because it featured John Cusack, but let's just say it wasn't that good. Though it was better than "The 6th Man" which followed it. A movie about two college basketball player brothers, one of whom dies of congenital heart failure. He comes back and makes his team better by divine intervention. At least that's what I got from the 30 minutes or so I could bear.

Frites Don't Fail Me Now

OK, so time to get back on track and up to speed on what's happened since I got back to Brussels late Monday.

Well... not much. Tuesday I spent a sleep-deprived day at work, struggling to keep awake. I was lucky, I suppose, that the U.S. handover of power in Iraq happened sometime around the time I was wandering about Parc Guell in Barcelona, so at least there was none of that news to deal with.

After work, I met up with Mike Williams, a British ex-pat who is an old friend of my friend Judith. (Judith knows someone in every port. And I don't mean it that way. Get your minds out of the gutter!) Mike is currently working for an EU agency. We met for frites (which I suppose could be simply explained as French fries -- or should I say freedom fries? -- but the Belgians cook them some special way that involves frying them twice. I'm not sure what this actually accomplishes from a gastronomical point of view, but they are mighty tasty.

Mike took me to Maison Antoine on Place Jourdan, more or less near where I live and work. There was what I thought was not too big a line at the place, which is really just a kiosk in the middle of the square. After getting our frites and four varieties of sauce for dipping (curry, mustard, ketchup and sauce au poivre -- basically mayo with pepper in it) we went to a bar on the square and had a few beers as we ate our frites. It was quite a nice night, and I learned a lot about the EU and Mike's life. He was a very interesting guy -- has lived all over the place.

Yesterday I paid my first visit to a Belgian post office. That was about as exciting as my day went. I also watched Portugal beat Holland in the Euro 2004 semifinals. The winning goal was absolutely spectacular. Even I could appreciate it as a football neophyte.

Anyway, tonight I am visiting the Sablon, arguably the most Parisian neighborhood in Brussels, for dinner and drinks with a friend from work. Tomorrow I will get back to once a day posting.