If you were not already aware, Christmas is this week! How did that happen?? For some reason it feels like it should still be a few weeks away to me. That may be because it has been surprisingly warm here in Gent, in the 50's, and that I am not in my usual Christmas setting in upstate NY! It is quite strange hearing from all of my family being together and me not being there but we are trying to keep things festive here too! This weekend I went out to the Christmas market in Gent with a few of my classe mates from Dutch class. We have a break from class from today until the 5th of January, so it was nice to hang out with everyone outside of the classroom setting. We are also planning after new years to hopefully have a potluck dinner because there is a group of about 6 of us, all from different countries (USA, Thailand, India, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Nigeria) , so it would be fun to try a traditional recipe from everyones home!
Yesterday Simon and I took went to a fun little food festival filled with some of our favorite food trucks and then took the train to Brussels to check out the Christmas market there! It was very fun, they have lots of different light shows projected on the beautiful buildings that happen every half hour or so (I included a video of it below, I also included a longer version of the carousel video from instagram) and then of course lots of little shops and things to eat and drink. I also finally saw the famous Manneken Pis statue that Brussels is known for. If you are not familiar with it, it is just a very small statue of a little boy peeing...no one really knows why it is so famous but there are always big crowds huddled around it trying to snap a picture. On Wednesday Simon and I will drive his hometown and go to a big christmas party his family has every year which should be fun! Simon unfortunately has to work Friday and part of Saturday, but has most of the next week off. I hope everyone who is traveling gets to their destination safely and that you have a very nice and relaxing Christmas break!
Hello everyone! Sorry for such a long delay on my blog post, things have been a little slow around here. Winter is definitely starting to settle in, the sun is going down around 4:30 and we are finding it harder and harder to leave the warmth of our living room. But none the less I do have a few fun things to report! We have purchased a few new items, first of course would be Simon's new car which we finally have in our possession! He would like me to correct my previous post and state that the car is a black Mazda and is very nice indeed! This weekend we went to his parents house for a little Sint-Niklaas brunch and it was much more pleasant not having to take the train back and forth. (For those of you who don't know who Sint-Niklaas is, he is sort of the Belgian version of Santa Clause. He comes on December 6th by boat from Spain with his helper Black Pete, who has been subject to lots of racial discussion, and brings all of the nice children presents. The tradition I guess is the night before the children leave their shoe in front of the fire place with a carrot in it and wake up to presents!) Our second purchase is a wonderful new kitchen cabinet. As you may know our kitchen is quite small and there is not a lot of counter or storage space so we have been in the market for a new cabinet that could fit opposite the sink. We found the perfect vintage piece at a second hand store for only 40 euros and it fits perfectly! It really makes the kitchen so much for pleasant to use.
In other news the Gentse Winterfeesten has started! That just means the Christmas market here in gent has begun, there are little huts set up all over the center of the city some selling candy, or gloves, or handmade trinkets others selling bratwurst and hot wine. There is also a ferris wheel and ice skating! It really makes the whole city feel festive and is a good excuse to get our of the house! Also last thursday was Museum Night where all of the museums in Gent were open free to the public from 6pm-1am. We walked to a few places close to your apartment, first to the old fish mine that is now a restaurant and had some nice pieces in it. Then we headed over to the Design Museum which had a great exhibition all about lights. The museum itself is a beautiful old building from the 18th century with a modern addition. In the first floor there are all these spectacular drawing rooms filled with authentic floors, walls and furniture and then for this show they have this huge modern lights or chandeliers which really creates an interesting juxtaposition.
Dutch class is still going well, we recently had our first test in level two and received 17.5/20. We are now starting to learn the past tense which is pretty tricky with lots of exceptions! I am trying to force myself to practice using Dutch more with Simon but it is difficult because we are so used to using english at this point. I have also started up a small knitting project. I figured I needed to have a nice indoor activity to keep my fingers busy in this cold weather. I used the guidance of a lovely youtube video to teach myself how to cast on and now I am on my way to making a semi-attractive scarf! I hope everyone is staying warm where ever you are! Happy Sint-Niklaas!
Hello everyone! If you are reading this, you are going to want to settle in with your favorite pumpkin spiced beverage because this is going to be a long one!
The past two weeks has been packed with sickness, friends, travel, and lots of things in Dutch. I will start with the more mundane topics before I talk about my trip to Paris. The week before last I was feeling pretty sick, very achey and tired with a small fever. This was not great timing because I had my oral final exam, but luckily that only lasted 10 minutes and was pretty much all I had to do for school that week. The exam went pretty well even though we had a week off from class beforehand making we forget many important details; but none the less I ended up with 90.5/100 in level 1! On Monday I started level 2, it is with the same teacher and most of the same people which makes for a nice atmosphere.
In visa news, Simon and I were finally able to go yesterday to sign the piece of paper from the police saying we are legally living together! It is definitely a step in the right direction, but there still a long wait ahead of us. Tomorrow we have an appointment to start the process of getting a national residency number and card and hopefully get an extension on my tourist visa. Simon's dad is coming with us, so hopefully he can help us ask the right questions and make some things happen.
In other news, Simon bought a car this weekend! He has been looking for a long time now and was having trouble deciding between buying a practical car or his dream car (VW bus!). In the end the practical car won, but I have no doubts that one day he will be a proud owner of a bus. I have no idea what type of car it is, all I know is that it is black, has four doors, and no air conditioning. It is not in Gent yet, but once it is I will be sure to post some pictures. Having a car will definitely make life easier for when we need to go to his parents house, when Simon needs to get to soccer games, buying groceries, and taking more trips! Our bikes will still be our main mode of transportation but now we won't have to rely on the train so much which will be very nice.
And now for Taylor's visit! She landed in Belgium last Saturday, and came for a great week weather wise. It was pretty warm and sunny everywhere we went except for the last day it rained a bit, but we were pretty exhausted at that point so it didn't matter much. The first day she was here we wandered around Gent for most of the day, filling her with as much coffee as possible because she was jet lagged and we had a big concert/festival/party thing to go to that night. Strangely enough Gent is home to the largest techno festival in Europe and taylor happen to come on that day so we just had to go! Simon has gone a few years in a row with his friends, so even though taylor and I knew no one who was playing we figured when in Rome! It turned out to be very fun but very tiring, probably not the smartest thing to do on her first night in Belgium, but too late now. Sunday was filled with lots of sleeping with a small window of eating and walking around Gent some more. Monday morning, Taylor and I hopped on a train to Paris! On the Thalys it only takes two hours to get to Paris from Gent. We were staying in another Airbnb which was only a few stops away from Paris Nord and was very easy to find. I believe we were staying around the theater district, off of subway line 4 at the Strasbourg-Saint-Denis stop if that means anything to those of you who are familiar with Paris. It was a nice location, very easy to take the metro and not a bad walk to many sites!
The nice part about this trip to Paris was that we had both been before, we there was no pressure to rush to see Mona or climbed the Eiffel Tower. We of course still wanted to see many of the sites, but we were also very happy with just strolling around the small streets and discovering places neither of us had seen before. The first place we went to was the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Taylor is a very big fan of The doors and I am always down with a nice daytime walk through a graveyard. The cemetery itself is beautiful and huge, lucky they had a map of where all the important people were buried. After we snapped a quick pic with Jim we moved over to the Eiffel Tower. We were still feeling pretty tired from our techno experience, so all we really wanted to do was get some cheese, bread, and wine and sit in front of the Eiffel Tower for a few hours. Again we were really lucky with the weather, when I was in Paris this time last year it was definitely not warm enough to be sitting outside for a long period of time.
On Tuesday we made our way up to the Montmarte area. We visited theSacré-Cœur, which was breath taking. From there we wandered around until we found ourselves in front of the Moulin Rouge. I did not get to go to Montmarte last time I was in Paris, and even though it is a bit touristy I thought it was very charming. From there we took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe. We decided to go to the top since we did not climbed the Eiffel Tower, and man do you get a spectacular view. After that we walked down the Champs Elysees gawking at all the fancy thing we can not afford to buy. That evening, we had gotten some suggestions of a few hip bars to go to from a friend of Taylor's sister...or so we thought. We picked one off her list which was the hotel bar the the Bristol Hotel. Now let me just say, we should have realized what we were getting into by the Chanel and Balenciaga stores that were surrounding the hotel, but we thought this girl is around our age she must know what she is talking about! Wrong we were. We walked into by far the fanciest hotel I have ever been to and found the peacock lounge which looked like somewhere Marie Antoinette would have lounged. We were pretty much the only ones in bar, so feeling very awkward we sat down and decided we would have one drink. Needless to say that drink cost 26 euros each, and mine had popcorn in it! Trying not to embarrass ourselves too much we left as quickly as possible. Not exactly the hip Paris night we had in mind, but at least it makes a good story!
We had most of Wednesday to wander around Paris before our train at 6:30 back to Gent. We walked down past the Pomidou center, which I have always wanted to see in person. It really is a strange building to see in the middle of Paris but for some reason I don't hate it. From there we just walked along the river to the Notre Dame, then to the Louvre and the lock bridge where I found Siena's lock that I had put there last year! I was very surprised I was able to find especially because as I am sure you have heard the bridge itself is collapsing from the weight of all the locks so they have had to remove quite a few. It turned into sort of a long day carrying around our heavy backpacks, so we were happy once we finally arrived back in Gent.
The last two days of Taylor's visit were filled with lots of eating and drinking and walking. It was really nice to have someone to do things with around town or go to a new restaurant or coffee place that I have been wanting to try. But in the end there is still so much that I did not have time to show Taylor so she will just have to come back!
Ok I am sure I am forgetting many important things to tell you all, but my little fingers are getting tired and I am sure your drinks are either cold or gone by now. So I will leave you with the photos I took the past few weeks and a hyperlapse video I took on a boat ride in Amsterdam that I forgot to upload in my last post!
*Just a disclaimer, the drinks that look like shots below are not! They are a Belgian and Dutch drink called Jenever! It is a type of liquor that they distill and then add different flavors to. There are hundreds of different flavors, we tried apple, melon, cranberry, cactus, and chocolate! Also you are supposed to sip them not shoot them!
