Lost and sick

why did jack hit the damn button????

(sorry, i know i'm a full season behind).

All is malade. The server that has my email died on Friday and they replaced the drive yesterday, though apparently with no ill effects. My laptop waited about two hours after that repair to make quiet funny noises and then eventually squeal like a piggy. That's not normal, is it? All somehow related to the cold that I am fighting. WebMD says that moderate to severe ear pain after a cold is a sign of an ear infection. What about mild-but-present ear pain? Obviously if its severe people are going to go to the doctor. I want to hear about the gray area.

pause

I knew I should have recorded the feeling: waking up in my own bed; taking a shower in my own shower; seeing my roommate again. I think you can be comfortable anywhere but the comforts of Home envelope you.

There are so many people plagued by so many problems who never get to hit the pause button and just Be at Home.

charge, dammit!

sitting in the atlanta airport. am exactly 8 hours from landing in orange county. charging the old laptop, so stuck with this particular seat for a little while. You definitely notice the different look sported by americans compared to the euros. people are defintely thicker, people are not dressed smartly, generally, and the ones who are are really not working it - they all look like they all want to change. i think maybe you need a critical mass, otherwise people feel different and although one has to be different to be better, it sure isn't an instinct that comes naturally to many of us.

patricia was surprised that I got sick before the flight - usually its after - because of people like me, i guess. now here's a kicker... what do the kissing euros do when they are sick? i am sure that my host has no need to get sick this week.

hope this dayquil kicks in soon. i'm going to finish my organizing-my-data program today, that will give me a fighting chance to see how everything looks before my committee meeting, allegedly friday although my work email seems to not be working.

the guy sitting next to me just saw a friend of his who he never actuallly gets to see at home. funny thing how airports are like being in your home area but extended over the whole country. i just saw a 15 yrs younger cassie clone, that's as close as i've come so far.

crap, the liam lynch (the voice of olly (of sifl and olly, the best television show ever)) podcast i recently discovered is a video. i can't watch that on my screenless ipod now, can i! at least here i can put new music on my ipod.

ok, one picture. the canal-boat driver worked hard for this so here it is. if you look hard there are seven bridges that I am looking down.

I AMsterdam

Well Happy Thanksgiving! It turns out that Leiden has a special connection to the Pilgrims, who stayed here between their persecution in England and their future in the new world. That meant that I went to a Thanksgiving day service in the same old church (Pieterskerk) that the pilgrims went to. The same one! Crazy!

The service was a little weird, a little more we're-americans-in-Holland and a little less we're-thankful-people than I was expecting, but still had some important moments, and what the heck seeing a lot of americans in Holland (livng here) was interesting. And a big congratulations to the American School of the Hague band, who were really amazing. The second picture wastakn during the service.

The last couple afternoons I have spent in Amsterdam, the Van Gogh museum and Anne Frankhuis. Also took this picture that you wouldn't realize has way too much contrast to it. As i went down the alley to get a different angle on the church, i turned around and look! Two prostitutes in red-lit windows.

OK, sorry its time to go breakfast. Doeg.

gent ghent bruges brugge

so just got back from Belgium today, sitting in the Beldade/Dix living room again. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone if i don't blog again before then.

so brugge is a beautiful city with like several cathedrals and a castle, as is gent. i spent the last couple days taking pictures of them and of the town from on top of them. when the sun went down i enjoyed the belgian beers and food. actually didn't have any waffles, but did have fried mash potato balls, venison stew, chicken/mushroom/chorizo stew, and i think 6 belgian beers: La Trappe blonde, Westmalle Trippel, Primus, Stella Artois, Bier Miele, Kwak, and the Bierhuis's Huisbier. Seven! Rock on. and oh yeah, all-you-can-eat belgian spare-ribs (i was unprepared and could only eat one rack). and french fries met mayonaisse (yum).

the women in Belgium were also appealing but i sampled far fewer of them. beldade says the dressing nicely is a european thing but i think the belgians are more pristine than the dutch. not a value judgment, i myself look english (most people with whom i spoke assumed i was. to be fair they get a whole lot more english tourists in november than americans).

ok, enough of that nonsense. picture time.

first is another illegal picture i took today at cathedral St. bavo in Gent. I entered a side door so i didn't see the big sign saying no photos. this place was amazing, architecturally, plus it had a bunch of real cool art in in includeing a Reubens.

Next is the outside of that same cathedral. Huge.

Next is the bronze medallist of the Gent cathedrals. And yet its still pretty darn impressive.

After that is a picture of a street in Brugge that i passed on the way from the train station into the town. it turned out to be quite the little medieval-building decorated modern belgian metropolis, but at the time i took the picture i felt like i was the only one there seeing all these towers sticking up behind already-picturesque streets.

the interior of the main cathedral in brugge (Church of our Lady). y, pictures were OK in this one (talking was not). They even have a statue by Michaelangelo (they claim one of the few to have left Italy).

did i mention fries with mayonaisse????
i'm told the Royale with cheese thing is lies, though. they DO know what a Quarter-pounder is.

~Doeg~

brugge

For those of you planning to leave the Netherlands, never get on a Randstad Reil as part of your journey. It's just a mistake, no matter what lies the conductor tells you and vice versa.

staying in a youth hostel here, indeed near Gravensteen, a big-ol' castle, in Gent. While the weather looks nice I am going to head to the next town (Brugge). Probalby no Belgian pictures until i return to Patricia's well-connected guesthouse.

internect connection 2 euro/30 min. gotta go.

and the snake said, take picturesssssss

Dag. Sorry I didn't post yesterday. Did finally make it into Amsterdam, mostly walked around and ended up having just a fantastic dinner (except when they forgot my chocolate mouusse... the whole dinner i was close enough to Dutch that the maitre'd and waitresses didn't speak to me in English, but damn i was not expecting to be asked "would you like your dessert or would you prefer that we remove it from your bill" that's not in the guidebooks). I had parelhoen, a bird like a quail that has little white spots on its belly, like pearls (parels). Marcel couldn't remember the English for the bird. It was very tasty, turns out that is the dutch word for Guinea fowl.

Turns out the world is still spinning and i've spend a bit of time today getting a just-announced scholarship application together so that it will be in before i am (ooh, scary) potentially out of email contact in Belgium through wednesday. I don't have reservations to sleep tomorrow night... exciting! I'm wild and free. woo.

Rembrandt would be 400 years old this year and Leiden, city of his birth, is doing exhibitions at the Lakenhal. Attached is the photographic evidence that I was there. I think it (De vlucht naar Egypte) was the 2nd piece I looked at (after Landschap met a harmhartige Samaarittan), and in both I swear I saw figures or other shapes that definitely didn't seem right in the picture. In the trees, one can see the remnants of a figure on horseback, whcih doesn't make any sense of course. I'm guessing the artist re-used the canvas/other medium? Anyway i was going to ask corey about it. But even turning off the flash, its a horrible picture per the glare of the glass. More importantly, the security guard came over promptly to tell me "No Photos."

Now look, in retrospect, that makes perfect sense. it interferes with other patrons, it is probably bad for the art (y, i did have the flash turned off, but it still casts some weird red light, and most of the time i and everyone else forgets to turn off the flash even when they don't want it). its just kind of gauche.

which is why i am still feeling horrible about it. for me, that is the worst; doing something basically rude; not realizing it but seeing so afterward; getting caught. In reality there were no signs or notes on the literature, i tried to be very polite (although it doesn't help that i chickened on trying 'het spijte me" which i think is I'm sorry) and i certainly had no desire to continue to deliquently take pictures. but i certainly could have asked beforehand instead. hmm, just thought of that. it will have to be my forbidden-fruit-ade, now i will certainly not forget to ask.

well i didn't come to much of a point there but itis 1 am. I keep sleeping until 10 an that's no good, i have to get out of town tomorrow!

Doeg

blogje

caption: furniture still must be moved in a bicycle economy.

i will be a good friend. i am a good friend? i am a good friend.

strangercat in a strange land

so the guide books are just crap for the netherlands. first of all, in neither the dutch phrasebook or the lonely planet does it mention that the dutch pronounce their w with a "v" sound, more like germans. luckily that is what they do, as the words just look like that's what they should be anyway.

in case you haven't noticed, its very late (for me, 0114 is rather late to be up). tonight beldade's friends from work went out to get a beer or 2 and i joined them. it is true that after restaurants or bars, one smells like smoke, although the experience of being in the bar is not so nasty, you don't really notice it. one of patricia's lovely friends asked me if i'd gotten used to being kissed.

the guide book said that the dutch don't really kiss. somehow i'd been projecting that outward and i didnit' have to get used to kissing because no kissing had happened. then when she left she told me that it was one of those moments when you awkwardly decide whether to kiss the american... so i learned that its three kisses, which would have been a much more useful thing to put in the book than zero. (when leaving the bar, i said my goodbyes to a frenchman and an american woman. in retrospect, i suppose we should have gone through the kissing thing there, i'm still hesitating on my bold and emotional side taking over in situations when it should be in the drivers' seat.)

ok, the promised picture (assuming i figure out how to put it up)... apparently the cat doesn't read Dutch either (you can guess what DICHT means).

~Doeg~

bicycles, vacation, fall

Dag... from Leiden. My command of Dutch is dreadful. I'm working on a sentence that is very polite but will clearly indicate that I will not be able to continue the conversation.

As you know i've never written a blog entry before, it is still an open question whether i've actually achieved making my life exciting enough for a weblog. However, at the moment I am sitting at Universietere doe scent (phonetic) Patricia Beldade's computer in the Netherlands, and during my two weeks in Europe something worth writing about has got to happen.

Today i visited the naturalis history museum. Lovely collection of specimens, all dead. I think my favorite discovery is that there is a Sea Spider species (Pycnogonum littorale) that the Dutch common name is Michelinmannetje. And yes, it is aptly named.

As for the blog, I am going to make the following committment: I will never hit "Save As Draft." I know that's going to make for some lousy posts, but otherwise I'll revise these to death. The first time they will be honest and momentarily accurate, so that's what'll get posted.

Maybe some pictures tomorrow.

OK, I should reliquish computer back to Beldade. ~Doeg~