Reading between the lines

Hello mes ami(e)s, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and are looking forward to the new year. I spent Christmas in Luxembourg with Jules's family. They do a family dinner on the 24th, with present exchange (this continued in bits and pieces through the night, between courses and so on). I think my presents were well-received, phew, and I got some nice ones too. On the 25th, they hosted dinner again with the extended family - aunt, uncle, three cousins and their girlfriends. This one was a bit more trying. Everyone is very nice, but it's hard to sit there for five hours while people speak a language you don't understand and (mostly) ignore you.

We came back to Brussels on the 26th, to give the cat some pats and fresh water. On the 27th, it snowed for the first time this winter.

Excited for snow!

On the way to the supermarket Jules got a warning light on his car and drove to a nearby dealership where they told him the garage was shut and he should call for roadside assistance. Informed that it would take some time, we took refuge from the snow and ice in a Greek restaurant that actually turned out to be pretty good. We were worried that Jules might be called away from his yummy beef, orzo and feta stew (youvetsi) (I had cod and squid ink risotto), but two hours later we decided to just give up and drive to the supermarket so he could top up with coolant himself. Upon which the roadside assistance guy called to say he was there and couldn't find us, obviously. But what could have been a major miserable pain in the arse if we'd just sat there waiting in the car turned out to be a lovely lunch, so we weren't too bothered :)

The 28th promised to be (below-)freezing cold but sunny all over Belgium, so we decided to drive into the countryside to see the Reading Between the Lines church/art installation I featured in my Buzzfeed list of Europe's most beautiful churches. It was pretty hard to find; we had an address from the internet but that just took us into the vicinity (eventually, after two false starts due to closed roads) and we looped around a few times before some locals actually reversed their car to give us unsolicited directions. I knew it was in the middle of a field, but thought you'd be able to see it from the road. Turns out you have to park (for reference, I think we parked on Sint-Truidersteenweg near Grootloonstraat in Borgloon, but you can also come to it from the other side) and then walk a bit on a path, and it's actually really quite small. But beautiful, and we managed to stay there for at least half an hour or so by ourselves, since people conveniently left just as we got there and arrived just as we were leaving. We were hoping there would be plenty of snow on the ground, but although it rested around Brussels, there was only a little bit on the ground here. But it was still a lovely landscape, and I think the bright blue sky definitely showed it at its best.

Driving - yes, driving - in the woods near Borglon

Slightly snowy fields on the way to the church

First sight of the church melting into the landscape. In general, it looked more transparent from further away, and more solid close-up

Who needs a selfie stick when you can do the old "self-timer on a fencepost" trick?

Inside

Really inside

We tried a few jumping pictures, mainly realising the truth behind "white men can't jump". *Nice up-to-date reference to a movie I haven't seen and don't know what it's about other than presumably basketball and the travails of "reverse racism"

Let me out!

Really see-through from this side

I know, I know, I took too many photos

It's modelled after the traditional village church in the background

After I'd finally taken enough photos from every conceivable angle, we drove to nearby Tongeren for lunch. We missed the weekly antiques market, but had a nice lunch sitting outside in the sunshine (near a space heater), visited the pretty basilica and climbed to the top of the one remaining medieval gate. It seems like a nice place - there's also a large beguinage and a Gallo-Roman museum to visit, but we didn't have time because we wanted to get back to Brussels at a reasonable time so Jules could relax and have dinner before driving back to Luxembourg.

Statue of Ambiorix and the Tongeren basilica

View of Tongeren from on top of the medieval gate tower

There you go, fun thing to do in Belgium #5. Happy New Year and see you in 2015!

Winter warmers

I'm, unexpectedly, writing this tucked up in bed in Luxembourg on a Monday afternoon. Unexpectedly because, although (thankfully) I had already taken the day off work today, I had planned to be back home in Brussels chilling out, rather than here. I took the day off because today is a nationwide strike in Belgium, and I thought I'd rather deal with that from the comfort of my bed than struggle to try to get to work and back. It's maybe 5 km between my house and work, so not really comfortable walking distance and I can't ride (and don't have) a bike, so seeing that I have around 7 leave days left for this year, it seemed easier to just call it a long weekend and opt out of the whole mess.

This was all planned out weeks ago, since the strike was announced far in advance. What I didn't see explained anywhere was that the widely-advertised strike on Monday, 15th December, actually started at 10 pm on Sunday, 14th. And since trains, especially crappy Belgian trains, take time to get places, I turned up to the station yesterday to find out that the 7.35 train was only going as far as Namur, since the 22.10 arrival time in Brussels would have run past the start of the strike... I mean, how ridiculous for one. And for another, I checked the times on the website at around 6.30 pm and it showed the train going to Brussels just fine. It would have still been too late to catch a different train, but at least we could have avoided a 45-minute round trip to Arlon if we'd known.

There are definitely no trains going today, so I'm hanging at Jules' apartment while he goes to work and then comes home and drives me all the way to Brussels tonight. What a champion.

Between the strikes, and rain and cold and darkness and impatiently counting down to the holidays, we all need some cheering up. That's why, in this hemisphere, we're lucky to have Christmas. At home, frankly, Christmas is badly timed. It's not far enough into summer to reliably hit good weather, then offices often close for a couple of weeks for Christmas and New Year, which means you're basically forced to take summer holidays then, rather than later in January or February, when the weather's generally better, and then there's absolutely nothing to cheer you up through winter (which admittedly is not as cold or dark as it is here, but still). But here, there's really no excuse not to warm up with a mulled wine, hot chocolate or Belgian peket and enjoy what the festive season has to offer.

My first inclination was that Brussels Christmas market probably wasn't worth bothering with. For some reason, I thought a big-city market wouldn't have any charm, and we should head to a smaller town instead. But it was recommended by people at work and it turns out to be pretty good. For starters, it's really big and spread over multiple locations, so while it's crowded, it wasn't too much of a crush. We filled up on the aforementioned beverages, and (in several different trips) tried out some wurst, raclette sandwiches and what purported to be authentic Quebecois poutine, which was disappointingly unlike what I had in Canada. (Where were the cheese curds? This one had chopped up blocks of what tasted like Emmenthal on it! Granted, I tried poutine in Toronto or Vancouver, I can't remember which, so maybe it's different in Quebec. Any poutine experts out there?)

In front of the Grande Roue in Brussels

Christmas tree in the Grand Place

Oh, and by the way, we found where you can get a fantastic view of central Brussels for free - on top of the carpark at De Brouckere! It was so full we had to go all the way to the 9th floor to find a spot, but you're rewarded with 360 degree views of the central city. They should stick a revolving restaurant up there.

St Catherine church is lit up for the markets

The Brussels Christmas markets by night

One of the occasions we visited the Brussels Christmas market was on my birthday. We both had the day off, and we celebrated pretty quietly, just shopping and visiting the markets by day and then champagne at home followed by a trip to the same local restaurant we visited for Jules's birthday.

Prost! New LBD I bought that day :)

Birthday dinner

While I was waiting for the bathroom at the restaurant, I got chatting with two women who were smoking in the lobby. Normally that would annoy me, but I was in a good mood, and somehow ended up confessing that it was my birthday. The guy using the bathroom before me overheard and said happy birthday to me, and he then went inside and told the restaurant owner that it was my birthday. She ended up bringing me out a birthday moelleux while the bathroom guy sang me a (strangely ballad-y and intense) Mexican birthday song, and then the whole restaurant (a dozen or so people) sang happy birthday to me. I was really quite touched!

The day after my birthday is Sinterklass, or Niklosdaag, or Saint Nicholas's Day, in this part of the world. I'm glad it wasn't celebrated at home, since as a kid I already found my birthday to be way too close to Christmas, but this year it was fun to share a little of the tradition with Jules. In Luxembourg, the Kleeschen (Saint Nicholas) brings a Teller (plate) of chocolates to good girls and boys, while the Housecker (the equivalent to the French Pere Fouettard or Dutch Zwarte Peet) brings sticks to naughty children. I must have been good for the first time ever, because the Kleeschen brought me my first Teller.

A partly-eaten Teller

That brings us (finally) to this weekend, which of course was spent here in Luxembourg, mainly shopping and visiting the Christmas market in town for souvenir mulled wine mugs and gromperekischelcher.

Lucky the Kleeschen didn't see me being naughty at the Luxembourg Christmas market!

Jules's head fits perfectly into the chalet roof

And we had a lovely winter dinner of baked Mont d'Or cheese

Sunset in Luxembourg

Just six working days to go for the year before a nice long break and my first Christmas with Jules's family (prepare the champagne). I hope you're all finding ways to cope with the cold and gloom too (even in Auckland, where I hear it's miserable too!)

Gwan's Year in Review - 2014

It's that time of year again (a bit early, even), where I look back on the year that's been (and, via reading last year's round-up, the year before last) and reflect on my life and travels for another year. Last year's round-up was entitled "2013: A Year of Changes" - appropriately enough, since I had two different new jobs, moved across France and started working in Luxembourg. But this year I once again put the "where in the world is..." into my blog title, moving to Belgium mid-year for a new opportunity. And I don't want to sopify all over the blog, but obviously another big change was meeting the lovely Jules almost nine months ago, time flies.

2014: More stuff happened

Like 2012, I managed to be mostly upbeat in last year's round-up. But, you know, sometimes these things are a matter of trying to look on the bright side and convince ourselves as much as others that everything's okay. It wasn't like the worst time of my life or anything, but as time went on it definitely got harder to live in my dank box of an apartment, where I could never open the shutters because of being on the ground floor and where I couldn't own things such salt because it was so damp in there. Not that that mattered so much when I was out of the house every day from 6.45 am to 8.30 pm, too exhausted to do anything but inhale a quick pasta or pizza before going to bed. I remember it would take me like three days to watch an episode of Downton Abbey because it would be time for bed after 20 minutes of it. When Jules asked me out on our third date on a Monday evening, he (as he told me later) took it as a bad sign that I said I wouldn't be able to stay too long. Truth was that I just couldn't face starting out the week with a late night since I had to get up at 5.45 am every day.

And the job itself - sheesh, borefest, especially grinding out those last few months after I knew I had a new job to go to in Belgium. But you know, hard times make you appreciate when things improve, or at least to a certain extent. People are adaptable, both to good and bad circumstances. I find the amount of money I require to have a comfortable lifestyle is infinitely adaptable according to how much money I actually have. That is, I somehow find ways to fritter it away when my income goes up, but equally, I've managed to adapt to living on not very much money at all without my head exploding. So, it's helpful to think "at least I'm not unemployed" when your job kind of sucks or "at least I'm not working/commuting for 14 hours a day" when you don't want to get out of bed on a cold winter's morning, but that still doesn't mean you won't find something to whine about at least from time to time. Maybe I'm just a negative nancy, but that's one of the things that really annoys me about the whole "first world problems" meme. It's just human nature to have things in your life that you're happy about and other things that you think aren't so great, even if overall, yes, you should be grateful you're not picking litter in a slum for a living. Anyway, I'm way off track here.

Point was meant to be, that yes, things improved. I got a new job in Belgium that pays better, is more secure and more interesting than my old job, and the working conditions are much better. And I do have to remind myself of those points because everyone there bitches and moans constantly about how it's so much worse than it used to be in the good old days. I swapped the damp cardboard box for a bigger, nicer apartment that actually gets light and fresh air and doesn't make my chocolate stash cry or my bread go mouldy, and the cat is much happier here too, which is a bonus. I don't have any friends, so that's a bit of a downer, but I've got to take some of the responsibility for that in that I haven't been so motivated to go out and make an effort to meet people since Jules and I only see each other on the weekends, so we just spend them together, and I've never really been the kind of person who wants to run around doing a lot of stuff in the evenings after work. I always vowed I wouldn't be one of those girls who dropped all their friends for a new boyfriend, so luckily I can live up to that by just not having any, ha ha. 

Enough rambling, now on to the awards portion of the evening -

Best trip abroad

So, again, this is a bit complicated since I lived in two different countries this year and worked in a third, so I'll make an executive decision and put them all in the "domestic" category. Thanks partly to this decision, partly to the inconvenience of having to move countries and jobs halfway through the year, my international trips portfolio is a little thin for 2014! I already have plans to get out and about more in 2015 though, so watch this space.

• So that means that January and February trips to Brussels and Reims are out, for the moment, and we begin with a one-day trip to Trier, Germany. I'd been before, but this time I really had the time to explore the beautiful churches, Roman ruins and charming town squares. 

• In April, Jules and I had our first weekend away in Cologne, Germany. I wasn't exactly blown away by the city, but we had some nice meals, checked out a pretty cool Romano-German museum and discovered the world's greatest fresco in the cathedral.

• In May, I got an early taste of summer with a trip to Majorca to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday (although, looking back at my pictures, I see there was actually a lot of nice weather in April and May anyway). I was quite surprised by the beautiful, rugged scenery, although I wish we made the most of the good weather instead of going to the beach when it was a bit cold and grey. The reason for that was the interminable delays and haggling of group trips, so while I mostly had a good time, by the time it was over I was quite glad to be going home! I don't think I'm cut out for people, ha ha. 

• In September, we made a long-anticipated (by me) trip to Aachen, Germany to see the exhibitions put on for the 1200th anniversary of Charlemagne's death. The historic significance was huge and some of the exhibits were amazing, but I also kinda went into full freak-out mode with all of the crowds, so I didn't always have a great time. On day two, however, we visited an empty museum (sigh of relief) and I fell in love with the gorgeously-mosaicked cathedral - definitely worth a trip to Aachen to see it.

• Weirdly enough, I realise my international trip section has been left with only Spain and Germany in it, particularly strange since I'd only been once overnight to Berlin (didn't see anything) and once to Barcelona for a weekend before. This time, we took a family holiday to Madrid, which I really enjoyed. Tapas, sangria, sunshine and fine art, what's not to like? Well, the Reina Sofia museum, but hey, can't have it all.

And the winner is...

Boring as it is, I'm going to have to go the family holiday again! I didn't really have any big expectations of Madrid, and it turned out to be so relaxing and lovely, and a really world-class destination. I'm surprised it doesn't get more press, really.

Best domestic trip

• The year began with an international trip that magically transformed into a "domestic" trip, as I came to Brussels for a job interview that led to me getting a job here and of course, moving here in June. I didn't stay long (in fact, I took an early train home because I just wanted to basically crawl into bed after the trauma of the interview), but managed to burn my retinas on the world's ugliest painting at the Musée Fin de Siècle.

• In late February, Liz and I took a trip to Rouen, which turns out to be just beautiful! I loved all the amazing half-timbered buildings and beautiful churches. We also had a bit of a Big Night, ending up making friends with bartenders, crashing a teenage party, and, the next day, discovering the Worst Hangover Food in the World. 

• By May, my plans for moving to Brussels were solidifying, so I realised the clock was ticking on seeing the sights of Eastern France before I moved father away. We packed quite a lot in those last few weekends, including a daytrip to Nancy, which is lovely and has a great Art Nouveau house museum.

• Next up was Colmar, which is as picturesque as everyone says it is, but also just as touristy as you'd expect. We enjoyed wandering the streets and seeing the Issenheim Altarpiece, but decided to leave quite early the next morning to check out some of the surrounding villages.

• The way home took us through the amazing scenery of the Route du Vin, including the small but also touristy villages of Riquewihr and Ribeauvillé. The weather was perfect, the landscape was beautiful and the food was great, so this was a very good day.

• We topped our Alsatian weekend off with a visit to the Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, which isn't that amazing inside (Jules liked it though), but has an incredible view.

• In June, I moved to Brussels, and over the past five months, I've got to explore a bit of my new home, with trips to Antwerp (twice), Ghent (twice), Namur and Knokke. I loved the elaborate statues of St. Paul's, Antwerp, on both my visits, and we managed to find the beautiful part of Ghent the second time round (sorry about that, Jess). Belgium definitely has some nice things to offer!

• At the end of August, we had a great weekend away in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, exploring Ambleteuse, Wimereux and the Caps Gris Nez and Blanc Nez. The weather didn't always play along, but the scenery was really beautiful and we had a fabulous weekend.

And the winner is...

It was a real toss-up between our Ambleteuse and Alsace trips. I think I probably had the overall best time in Ambleteuse, and was pleasantly surprised that a place that I thought I knew, and that has a pretty terrible reputation turned out to be so scenic, but I think a lot was down to the company and just chilling out with Jules and Susi the dog. So I think if I had to do it as a recommendation, then the prize should go to Alsace.

The weather was great, we had a fantastic lunch in Ribeauvillé (after a disappointing dinner the night before), and it seemed a breathtakingly picturesque vineyard, or cobbled street, or medieval building was around every corner. It probably gets a bit much in the height of summer, but it's definitely one for the bucket list.

What's next?

Travel-wise, we have a few ideas floating around, probably starting with a weekend trip to Lisbon early next year, Champagne at some point and we're tossing around longer trips to "Cathar country", France, and Albania (I've been banging on about Albania for ages and probably would have gone this year if not for the move and everything). After that, it will be time to start saving some pennies and leave days because I'll almost definitely be heading home to New Zealand for the first time in (by that time) over six years in early 2016.

Life-wise, things will hopefully be a bit more settled. My position has been confirmed after the probationary period, so that's several more years where I don't have to worry about having a job, which is nice. Longer term, obviously it would be nice to live in the same country as my boyfriend, but we don't have plans for that yet. Just looking forward to a bit more stability and a year without upheaval!