If...

You had to eliminate a single type of insect permanently from the earth, what would you get rid of?

Anybody Need a Burger?

  The sun has finally revealed itself from behind the clouds here in Belgium! You know what that means! Barbeque time! Unfourntinely for us we had left your good old Canadian Tire grill back in Chapel Hill. We spent the last season using an old charcol hibachi, which was not going to cut it for us this year.

  

That is were our new friends at 

Standard - AHZ come in and save the day. I didn't want to get another grill that was just going to rust and needed to be replaced in a year or two. We had looked at our local Brico and didn't like anything we saw, still don't know what that side burner is for. So we headed east to Leuven, just about 20 minutes from our house, to Standard - AHZ. We were greeted with more choices then we could ever imagine, and a few beers! We quickly decided upon a good old Canadian made Broil King Signet, no side burner in sight.

Anybody Need a Burger?

If...

... You could occupy the world described in a novel, which would you choose?

Neef Matt Bezoeken België

...or he might say "Kusin Matt besök Belgien" since he now lives in Sweden.  For those of you in the Americas that would be "Cousin Matt visits Belgium."  Anywho we had our 1st visit of the year, we are off to a good start.

  We had grand plans of going to Ghent and enjoying some pintjes' and some traditional Flemish food at "Het Grote Vlees Huis" but after our night of heavy snow here in Vlaams we only made it to Tervuren.  

We had been decided to check out some of the trees at the Arboretum.   I often ride my bike or run on many of the trails but I had never been down there with snow on the ground.  Not being prepared for the snow we wrapped up as best we could and set out for a little trip to check out the Giant Sequoia Grove.  Nothing like what you would see in Northern California but still massive tress.

It was great visit but short.  Jane and I are planning a visit up to Sweden in the summer.  We hope the weather will be nicer then it was for Matt's trip here.

It has been how long?

  Wow we made it through our 1st year.  As we settle in here in Belgium and become accustom to the customs we have neglected our pour blog, sad.   However,  with the new year we are going to commit to posting more.  We may not always be posting about Belgium, the Beer(me) and the Chocolate(Jane) have a few adventures in the works.  As well, we have our up coming 20k of Brussels at the end of May, fun!  I have already started training and Jane will be starting soon too.  Where else to display our training progress but our lonely blog. 

We are looking forward to an interesting year full of adventure.  We extend our best wishes to everyone in this year of the OX.

Straks.

Entropa

Entropa

Today was the official unveiling of Entropa.  Entropa is a satirical sculpture created by controversial Czech artist David Černý and commissioned by the government of the Czech Republic.  Having been alerted to Entropa by Jane earlier in the morning and after reading the NYT story about it I had to go.  Justus Lipsius, the building where the exhibit is being hosted and also the home of the Council of the European Union, is only a short bike ride away 10k.  With the sun shining and a clear sky (yes I said clear sky in Brussels) I set out to see what this hoax was all about.

The design is that of a brand new set of model or puzzle pieces each, "lampoons the socially activist art that balances on the verge between would-be controversial attacks on national character and undisturbing decoration of an official space".  

Austria, a known opponent of atomic energy, is a green field dominated by nuclear power plant cooling towers

A view from under Entropa

United Kingdom, known for its Euroscepticism and relative isolation from the Continent, is "included" as missing piece (an empty space) at the top-left of the work

Sweden does not have an outline, but is represented as a large Ikea-style self-assembly furniture box, containing Gripen fighter planes

Spain is covered entirely in concrete, with a concrete mixer situated near the Basque country

Slovakia is depicted as a Hungarian sausage (or a human body tighten by Hungarian tricolour)

Slovenia is shown as a rock engraved with the words first tourists came here 1213

Motto for 2009 in French

Motto in English

Sardinia

Romania is a Dracula-style theme park

Poland has a piece with priests erecting the rainbow flag of the Gay rights movement, in the style of the U.S. soldiers raising the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima.

Portugal is shown as a wooden cutting board with three pieces of meat in the shape of its former colonies of Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique

 Netherlands has disappeared under the sea with only a several minarets still visible; the piece is supposed to emit the singing of muezzins

A closer look at Entropa

Luxembourg is displayed as a gold nugget with "For Sale" tag^[7]

Malta is a tiny island with its prehistoric dwarf elephant as its only decoration

The lower left hand corner

Lithuania has the Brussels landmark of Manneken Pis urinating on its eastern neighbours

Latvia is shown as covered with mountains, in contrast to its actual flat landscape

Italy is depicted as a football pitch whereupon the North and the South of the country play against each other, with moving players holding their balls in the "strategic position"

Ireland is depicted as a brown bog with bagpipes protruding from Northern Ireland; the bagpipes play music every five minutes

Hungary features an Atomium made of its common agricultural products melons and Hungarian sausages, based on a floor of peppers

Greece is depicted as a forest that is entirely burned, possibly representing the 2007 Greek forest fires and the 2008 civil unrest in Greece.

Germany is a series of interlocking autobahns, described as "somewhat resembling a swastika", though that is not universally accepted. The cars move along the roads.

France is draped in a "GRÈVE!" ("STRIKE!") banner

The Floor

Finland is depicted as a wooden floor and an [apparently drunk] male with a rifle, imagining various animals 

Estonia is presented with a hammer and sickle-styled power tools, the country has considered a ban on Communist symbols

Denmark is a face depicted in Lego bricks, reminiscent of the cartoon controversy

 Czech Republic's own piece is an LED display, which flashes controversial quotations by Czech President Václav Klaus

Cyprus is jigsawed (cut) in half

The Crowd

Crete

Bulgaria is depicted by a series of connected "Turkish" squat toilets

Belgium is presented as a half-full box of half-eaten Praline chocolates

Captions curtisy of Wikipedia

A wedding in Romania!

We were very lucky recently to have been invited to the wedding of two of our good friends from UNC - Calin & Amelia. The wedding took place in Calin's home town of Blaj, Romania, and it was simply amazing. Calin had always told us that his father worked in a winery, but we were never expecting to be treated to such an amazing night of food, drink, dancing and singing, all catered by the local winery!

The wedding started off at 7:00 with a glass of champagne and a plate of cold meats, cheeses and vegetables (I think we all started in on the wonderful cognac at this point too).

Soon traditional Romanian singers and dancers arrived to entertain us, and the Bride and Groom made their appearance.  The dancers were really neat -- Michael took three videos of them, and if you want to see the rest, they are up on YouTube (search for Calin's Wedding Dancers).  These dancers re-appeared several times throughout the night in different costumes; the last costume of the night consisted of sequened jeans and cowboy hats - I think it was their American dance.  :)  Another note about the video below -- about two-thirds of the way through you'll see a little blond boy wandering through the video in front of the dancers - this is Henry, the two-year-old son of our friends Mark & Miranda, and he is just adorable!

At about 8:30pm the soup course was served. Each time a new course came out, music that I can only describe as "Canada's Wonderland music" started to play and lines of waiters and waitresses emerged from the kitchen carrying plates of food for everyone. The soup was followed by more dancing, which was a mix of traditional Romanian music and current hits.

By about 10:00 we were all happy to hear the Canada's Wonderland music start up again, and we all sat down at our table again to enjoy the fish course. By this point, Henry, the two-year old son of our friends Mark & Miranda, was fast asleep on the chairs by our table. How he slept through the rest of the party, I'll never know, but he was out for the night despite the loud music and singing and dancing. Once we finished the fish, it was back to dancing until about midnight when the meat plate was served - it was a selection of pork, chicken and veal served with vegetables. By this time, not a single person had left yet; the party was just getting started!

At 1:30 the cake appeared and once again everyone sat down to enjoy a slice and a much-needed cup of coffee. We assumed that the cake marked the end of the dinner service, but the best was yet to come! At 3:30am we enjoyed our last course of meat wrapped up in cabbage rolls and served with sour cream - the traditional pigs in a blanket that Michael had always enjoyed as a child.

All of us finally made our way back to our beds at about 4:15am.  Calin's mother had arranged for the whole UNC group to stay together in a small hostel run by local nuns.  We had the whole place to ourselves, and it was perfect for sitting around and chatting and catching up.  The night of the wedding had been absolutely fabulous, but our trip to Romania wasn't over yet!  The next day we were treated to a wine-tasting at the vinyard, so we spent Sunday afternoon in a castle drinking even more wine and cognac.