Local Cuisine.

Since I have been in Belgium I have not had a problem with buying things. As soon as someone has realized I only speak English they immediately switch over to accommodate. My interactions, while brief- I never want to push it past “how much?”, “that one”, or other short phrases- have not been too difficult or frustrating, but like I said I try to keep it short. While the people are nice enough to speak English for me, I can always see that twinge in their eye saying “Ah, an American who comes over here and expects us to speak his language, he should have learned some French.” Yesterday I went to the metro station to get my bus pass, but I apparently got there too late and they were out of numbers to get in line. So I left and planned on going back early the next morning. I began to think of this “twinge in the eye” and how I could avoid it. I thought maybe I could pretend to speak some other European language, like say German, or rather with a German accent. At least then I would be a fellow European and would be finding a common language that was secondary to us both. I began to picture this scenario with the saleslady I had seen at the bootik and this is what I was afraid would happen.

Saleslady: Bonjour

Me: Halo, how are you doing? (in my thickest German accent)

Saleslady: Ah, sprechen sie deutsch?

Me: (after a long awkward pause of blankly staring at her) G’day Mate!

 

Today I went on my first excursion into the heart of Brussels. It is an amazing city. One block is paved with old cobblestone streets and lined with homes that are centuries old, stacked one on top of the other, chimneys rising out of each one, and without a speck of daylight between them. The next block, or even the other side of the street, is paved with asphalt and lined with angular buildings all painted white with large windows and revolving doors. It is a spectacular sight indeed. I eventually made my way past the Belgian version of Le Arc De Triomph and into the center of the city, which today was filled with street vendors. I made my way around, enjoying the sights and sounds. The architecture here is really something. But the real story of the day, the real “something to write home about”, well that was food. Let me first tell of two items (masterpieces) I got from a bakery.

As soon as I pulled the first out of the bag I knew I was in for a surprise, it had looked soft and chewy, but it was crisp, without being crumbly. As I bit into this caramelized, heart shaped pastry I was immediately satisfied with my purchase. Even more than that, I was…well that one moment was worth the hours I had walked in the bitter, humid cold. If all of my walking and being cold had only produced that one moment, it would have been worth it. It was sweet and crunchy at the same time. It was not what I had expected but was better than anything I had thought it could be. I walked down the street, breaking bits of my pastry off and eating them, smiling until the last crumb. Next I pulled out the one that had appeared to be crunchy. It was a long, thinner bread with bits of chocolate in it. As I began to pull it apart I found that its golden brown crust was very thin and not crunchy at all, but soft and tasty. As I put it in my mouth, this moist, delicious morsel overwhelmed my taste buds. I had never known that bread could melt in your mouth. It was sweet, and doughy. By the time I finished both I was only a few blocks away from the bakery where I had bought them. I thought of returning for more, but I knew that part of their exquisiteness was that to me they were new, and novel. I didn’t want to ruin that by immediately returning for more to satiate my desire for their sweet, soft, crunchy deliciousness.  I have always liked bread, but this…well this is something else. In the true meaning- I can literally taste them now, hours later.

A few hours later I was heading home, but couldn’t allow myself to do so until I had tried what I had heard so much about, I REAL Belgian Waffle. I had been told that what Americans eat is not what the Belgians eat, and that is true. Why we eat the version we do, I will never know. The real version, the original, has no equal. This item I picked up from what appeared to be a sort of chain waffle place. I paid my Euro and 70 cents and walked away what was to be my first of many Belgian Waffles. I think from now on I will call the other stuff "American Waffles", or maybe even just “that bland crap you call a waffle”. While our waffle is made essentially from pancake batter, Belgian Waffles are doughy, caramelized, masterpieces (have I already used that term?). The outside glistens with a golden brown crust, caked in glaze. The crust is slightly crispy and the inside is soft and doughy (yes, made of actual yeast filled dough), and tastes better than anything that has ever crossed the Atlantic.

Now perhaps you think I have overplayed, overemphasized, my point. But you are wrong. Next up is chocolate. There are literally streets lined with gourmet chocolate shops. I’ve never been a huge fan of chocolate, but who could have ever thought a Belgian Waffle could be so good.

Getting Here.

For those of you who don’t know, Belgium is not so close to where I live. And accordingly it takes a while to get there. So instead of my usual routine of flying, which consists of packing hours before my flight and arriving just on time to walk onto the plane, often being one of the last people to get on the plane (which for Southwest can leave you with an isle seat since they somehow save money by not assigning seats. How that saves money I’ll never know- ink?) and arriving a few short hours later at my destination which is customarily somewhere in the West. But not this time. First off packing became a dilemma. I could only take so much stuff, two carry-on pieces and two checked bags weighing 50 pounds or less (which I have gotten very good at, having a number of bags coming in at exactly 50 pounds). As I had never been to Europe, I wasn’t too sure of what I would and would not need, and things here are more expensive, so I didn’t want to leave out anything important. So I spent hours going through everything, discarding tons of shirts, ties, and a suit, as I didn’t want to cut the 50 pound limit too close as I would like to have some leeway in bringing stuff back (you should get your orders in as soon as you can), but I had to be careful to take enough. Now, back to the aforementioned distance from California to Belgium. Most flights from the U.S. arrive in Belgium in the morning, Belgian time. This means a 6 am departure from California. And that means at 3:45 am departure from the house. So combine these two factors 1. Me packing and 2. Early departure and you get no sleep, at all.

I did have one moment of worry as I arrived at the airport. I bought my ticket on studentuniverse.com (which is a great website for cheap flights if you are a college student or a professor), which means that I didn’t have any interaction with the airline in my purchase. Well when I arrived at the US Airways ticket counter, there were only flights listed to Phoenix. Well I started to panic a little bit; I knew my first leg was to Denver. Initially I started to wonder if I was at the right airline, check- yup, US Airways. “Oh no, am I at the airport on the right day?” Check e-mail, yup, January 25^th. So I get up to the counter and slide my card. No surprise, “Your reservation cannot be found. Please try United.” Ah crap, did studentuniverse.com mess everything up? Well turns out they had contracted out the flight, but you can imagine my no sleep-worried about getting to Europe, state of mind. The only other incident at the airport was my flagging for extra-security. I guess when you buy a one-way ticket to a foreign country at the last minute it looks a little suspicious.

Needless to say, I slept the entire first leg of my journey to Denver, where I had perhaps my last American mushroom-Swiss burger for 4 months (mmmm….I can taste it now). Then I slept from Denver to Philadelphia, not even remembering passing out. In Philly I learned that the flight to Brussels had been delayed, by an hour and a half. Well that sent me into a bit of a panic as my host family was leaving for a 10 day trip a few hours after I arrived. I had gone through a bit of trouble to ensure that I would be there in time to meet them before they left. So I sent off an e-mail to my boss informing him of the change (he had arranged a driver to pick me up and had a schedule worked out for my arrival) and to my host family letting them know I would be late and to hopefully have a contingency plan ready. I clicked send and boarded my plane, knowing I wouldn’t’ be able to get their responses. I slept 5 of the 7 hours of this flight, which was greatly facilitated by the fact that I had an entire row to myself and could lie down.

Ever come off a plane and had a guy there waiting with a sign that has your name on it? Well now I have. The Embassy had a guy waiting for me, which instantly abated any fears of my wandering around the streets of Belgium searching for NATO or for a big white house in Kraainem. Needless to say everything from there went smoothly. My boss and driver were outside customs waiting for me and drove me over to NATO. My first impressions were that it looked much like I thought it would. When we were coming in for landing I noticed that there would be clumps of houses, then vast areas of country with only a few houses sparsely scattered about. There is no urban sprawl here. And the houses and the general architecture were generally what I had expected. It is very beautiful here, but has been very foggy and overcast most of the time I have been here. It is also cold, very cold. I knew this before I came and expected to be prepared for it. I have lived in Utah for over 4 years and survived 2 Canadian winters. But Belgium has something that neither of those places has, humidity. And it certainly makes a difference.

My host family is very nice, Marianne and Pierre. They speak good English, but would like to improve. So we made a deal that they would help me learn some French and I would help them to improve their English. As I said before, they left shortly after I arrived here. They have a house in Southern France and have gone there for 10 days to escape the cold.

Well this post has gone on long enough, but I have just begun. Some things for next time… making breakfast when you can’t read anything is harder than you think, riding the bus when you can’t read anything or communicate with anyone is also harder than you think (and leads to wandering around from bus stop to bus stop trying to figure out where you are), and some other comical adventures, most involving language and customs barriers.

I have enjoyed every minute of my time here and my internship is going great. I have already learned a lot and look forward to some rewarding projects.

I Have Arrived!

Well it has been several months since I updated this thing. I was waiting for everything to fall into place before I started writing about my internship, and that seemed to take a while. Then when it all the ducks started to get blown out of the sky, well they all came down at once. So here I am, in Brussels at 3:40 am wishing I had gone back to sleep when I woke up- the time change can be a difficult thing. But I have heard that it is more difficult to come this way than to come back. For those of you who don’t know, I am currently in Brussels, Belgium doing an internship for the US Mission to NATO in the office of Civilian Emergency Planning, which is under FEMA (I have learned too many acronyms in the past 2 days I think my head might explode). As of two weeks ago I still didn’t have my interim security clearance because my fingerprints had not yet arrived at NATO (they took 4 weeks to get there). Once my security clearance went through I immediately contacted the housing coordinator and requested a place ASAP. They had a house set up for me pretty quick, and within a week of getting my security clearance I had bought a plane ticket and was packing for Brussels. So here I am now in my room in Kraainem, which is just outside Brussels, wishing I had fallen back asleep sooner. Well I wanted to let everyone know that I had arrived safely. I also wanted to get the ball rolling with this blog. So I will post more about my trip and my first few days at work later. But for now it’s off to get a few more hours of sleep before my first full day of work, the past 2 have been full of traveling around and signing documents and getting security badges and the what not.