Fidgeting Wildly

OK, so I guess it's high time I got around to wrapping up the last week of my time in Belgium. When I last left you I had updated you about my trip to Amsterdam, leaving me with three nights in Europe. "Three nights is hardly enough time for anything interesting to happen!" I hear you saying. "There's no more travel except the boring trip back to New York!" others are crying.

If you thought that, you would be wrong. (Well, okay, it does depend somewhat on your perspective on what defines "interesting," but I digress.)

Tuesday night I traveled to Leuven, roughly a 30-minute train ride east of Brussels, to visit my high school friend Miles, who has been a graduate student there for what seems like decades. He says he's almost done his Ph.D. I think he just likes living in Leuven, personally. He described Brussels to me as "a pit" I believe. Coming from New York, I thought Brussels was anything but a pit, I have to say.

Miles and I had a lovely steak frites dinner at a cafe in the town's Grote Markt, and a rousing discussion about the role of the media in political discourse. (He's a philosophy major...) It was quite fun, although given my early start at work it was a bit too brief.

The next night I met Roeland, a Belgian friend of mine, to go to Gent, where there is a 10-day outdoor music festival every summer. The entire town is closed off, and the city sets up about 10 stages. To my surprise, I learned that Centro-Matic were playing that night, so Roeland and I went to see them do a fine set. I've met a couple of the band members on a few occasions, so I had Roeland ask a Flemish-speaking security guy to get the attention of keyboard player Scott Danbom while the band was breaking down their gear. I'm still not entirely sure if the look on his face was bewilderment as to who I was (he's never seen me with a beard before) or just pure astonishment that someone he's only seen in New York and Austin, TX, before, was now at a show in Belgium. Either way, he looked mighty perplexed.

After their set, Roeland and I wandered about the city, which was quite fun. There are food and beer stands everywhere, and people just walk the streets drinking and eating. Roeland and I got a bit of a late start getting back to the train station for the final train back to Brussels, and we apparently therefore had to rush. Yet Roeland stopped and talked to three people at a tram stop for several minutes. We then hailed a bicycle taxi for about six blocks, but that was barely moving faster than people walking, so Roeland asked the driver to let us off. (Now, remember, we're in a hurry.) Roeland then said "I think we need to run.... but I'm going to get a beer around the corner." We both bought beers from a streetside vending machine, and then, yes, ran to the train station, arriving with just four minutes to spare.

And, predictably, the train was 25 minutes late.

Nonetheless, I made it back to Brussels, reported for work the next day for the last time in Europe, and went out with my colleagues the following night for a fun night. To Tina, Jones, Barbara and Jennifer, thanks for making it a fun five weeks. I caught the last metro back to my flat, and then realized I had forgotten to buy batteries for my travel clock (they had run out literally that morning.) I went to two night stores in hopes of buying some, but one had only one pack of D batteries, and the other didn't sell batteries at all. Still, I managed to wake myself up in time for the taxi back to the airport, and at 10 a.m. Friday morning was on my way back to New York, arriving just in time to share in the celebration of the wedding of my friends Jonathan and Heather. More on that later.

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.