Gwan's Year in Review - 2015

Can it really be time again for me to reflect on the year that's been? I think it's a fact of getting older that the year seems to fly by but simultaneously it must be going super slow since things we did back in spring seem like half a lifetime ago. Last year was another year of change - new job, new apartment, new country, so this year is...

2015: Finally a bit of stability

That's right, a whole year (and more) in the same job, same city, same apartment. That might not seem a huge achievement, but let's see, since the first time I moved to Europe in 2006, I've lived, at least briefly, in Prague, Moscow, London, Northern France, Chamonix, Wellington, Auckland, Nice, Tours, Metz and Brussels, and I think this is the first and only year since 2012 where I haven't moved at least once. Jules moved in here, and we're planning to move when my lease is up next June, but still. This year at least, I stayed put.

It was a busy year. Before Jules moved here, we aimed more or less to take turns, one weekend in Brussels and one in Luxembourg, so adding in quite a few holidays and long weekends meant that I was fairly frequently home only one weekend of the month or so. Which could be exhausting at times, but kept us out of mischief.

Last year I divided my travels into trips abroad, and "domestic" trips, in which category I included Belgium, France and Luxembourg. This year I can't really count France as a domestic trip any more, which leaves less to work with, so I'll divide it by longer trips and weekend breaks, with a little bonus section for the glories of Belgium.

PS I took literally hours writing this, putting the photos in, all the links etc. and then AFTER I published it I went back to tinker with some of the spacing and so on, and I managed to delete the. whole. thing. And there was no "undo/back", it just went blank, AND I managed to unpublish it as well. Thankfully I found online a tip to go into feedly and pull it off the RSS feed, which worked, but that's why the formatting is wonky. But thank Christ I at least got all the text back. This might be the final straw with me and Blogger though!

Onto the award portion of the review - 

Best proper holiday

• I kicked off the year's travels early, with a trip to Marrakesh, Morroco with my friend Liz in January. My overall impressions of the place were, um, not great. The constant badgering and cat-calling got old pretty fast, and while we saw some nice museumsand palaces and enjoyed some winter sun, there wasn't really any "wow" moment that compensated for the general experience of harassment. It was just after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but I didn't feel unsafe in anything except a gender-based way, but the sad events of the year might make me even less likely to want to visit in future (I know Morocco isn't Tunisia, but honestly there's nothing really coming up in the pro visiting column for me right now). Still, at least I've been there, done that, bought the lamp. 

• We spent Easter at Lake Constance/Bodensee, Germany, via Freiburg and a three-star lunch at the Auberge de l'Ill. Freiburg was super charming, I was sorry we didn't have more time there, but the drive through the Black Forest via Titisee toUberlingen was stunning. While in the area, we saw some beautifully frescoed old churches on a very rainy day on the island of Reichenau and finally got a bit of sunshine in the chocolate-box-cute village of Meersburg. 

• The really big trip of the year was our two weeks in Albania and Macedonia in June/July. Without giving anything away, this really was an amazing trip. I blogged about it at great length, so if you missed anything, start here and there's another dozen or so posts for you to enjoy. There was plenty of history and culture along the way, but what really stuck with me were the stunning landscapes, whether it be the"white city" Berat, stacked up on a hillside (the photo above is an old church on top of the hill), the gorgeous sandy beaches of Himare and Drymades, the Roman ruins of Butrint, the Blue Eye spring, stunning river and mountain vistas on the road toKorce or the amazing red roofs of the lakeside city of Ohrid, Macedonia. All this in a country not (yet) too touched by mass tourism and still as cheap as chips. We loved it.

• After spending the rest of the summer at home, in September we crammed in another longer break with an awesome road-trip to the South-West of France and back. On the way, we drank wine and saw the sights in Beaune, visited the Cathar castles ofCarcassonne, Montségur, Peyrepertuse (pictured above), and Quéribus, saw the picturesque small town of Lagrasse, stopped in at Albi to check out its beautiful and imposing cathedral, drove past and over the viaduct of Millau, and ate a lot in Lyon. If you have only time to do one thing, definitely go see Peyrepertuse. Just look at the amazing views in that photo and imagine how much better it is in real life!

And the winner is...

Not much room for suspense here. Our French roadtrip was great, but we had an absolutely fabulous time in Albania and Ohrid, I really can't recommend it highly enough. Go before everyone else does! On second thoughts, maybe I should keep it as my little secret... Go to Morocco instead ;)

Best short break

• Our first real weekend away of the year was our anniversary trip to Champagne, France in mid-March. We had a Michelin-starred lunch in Reims, enjoyed a spot of light wine-tasting in Hautvillers and again in Epernay and toured the de Castellane domaine. I think my favourite part was taking the scenic route from Reims to Epernay. Almost makes me wish I were the cycling type!

• Our next long weekend wasn't until late May/early June, when we took our traditional annual pilgrimage back to Tours, France for the Vitiloire wine festival. On the way, we took our first trip to the stunning château Chambord, well worth a detour. I feel a bit nostalgic looking back on this trip. My sister has come over, often with friends, several times for the wine festival, and I know she won't be there next year as she's moving back to New Zealand (exciting!) With that and the fact that a lot of my good Tours friends have also moved away (Caro will also be gone in NZ), Vitiloire next year just won't be the same...

• Still, there was some time to catch up with family this year, with not one but two trips to London. I've seen quite a bit of London over the years, but there's always more to explore and revisit - we saw an Escher exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, went to the British Museum, Natural History Museum and the National Gallery, and still had some time for shopping, and most importantly, eating and drinking with family and friends.

• My Tours friends and I, now being scattered throughout Western Europe, try to find the time to catch up together a couple of times a year. This year, Liz, Mel and I met up in Bordeaux in October (how nice to have the convenience of a large airport on my doorstep). Relaxing was higher on the agenda than sight-seeing, but we highly recommend the Maison des Vins where you can taste great wines at a great price in a very salubrious atmosphere - just make sure you come early!

• My last little trip of the year was to Edinburgh, to visit my friend Caro and spend my birthday weekend in style. I loved the shopping, enjoyed the Edinburgh Dungeon and a free walking tour, and had a weekend full of warmth, friendship and laughter. (Dear God.) Couldn't have asked for a nicer birthday, and the weather was even good some of the time!

And the winner is...

This is a tough one! I do love a weekend break, maybe even more than a longer holiday since they can come around more often and bring a special little bit of sunshine to everyday life. I could really name any one of them, but perhaps because it's fresh in my mind I'm going to give the nod to Edinburgh.

Belgian delights

• Remember back when it was cold? I shouldn't jinx things, since the current winter temperatures are about what winter is like back home, and it suits me just fine. But on a very cold and snowy day last December (so, yes, 2014, but after last year's roundup), we visited the Reading Between the Lines church in Borgloon, which I have to mention here because it's such a beautiful spot, it doesn't deserve to fall between the cracks of 2014-15. 

• Sticking close to home, I have to give another Belgian shout-out to the spring delights of the bluebells in the Bois de Halle/Hallerbos and also the famous Royal Greenhouses at Laeken. At Easter, we also stopped by Luxembourg to check out the traditional Easter fair at Nospelt which revolves around clay bird whistles.

• In May, we took a daytrip to Bruges, where unfortunately my suggestion to take the train was unheeded and we got stuck in some awful traffic. We saw some pretty/interesting things at the Memling Museum but overall the impression was: Bruges on a holiday weekend, never again.

• By contrast, somewhere I think is seriously underrated and I'm surprised I haven't been back to yet is Mechelen (Malines). There were so many interesting sights we didn't have time to see in our brief morning visit - the cathedral with its belltower you can climb up, the deportation museum and the De Wit tapestry workshop, to name a few. But the city is also great just to walk around, particularly its floating river walkway and grand place. It's so close to Brussels too - we really have to pick a sunny day sometime soon for a return visit.

• I should have called this "Benelux Delights", as I'm going to sneak a bit ofLuxembourg in here. (Talking of Benelux, we haven't managed a trip to the Netherlands yet, will have to remedy that next year.) We visited the castle ofBourscheid on a beautiful June weekend and were wowed by the stunning views of the surrounding countryside, traveresed by the river Sauer. 

• I'm a very lucky girl, and this year I got to go again to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps. The unpredictable gods of Belgian weather really smiled on us this weekend, and we had the most perfect sunshine to finally see Lewis Hamilton win. Going General Admission was a different experience, one with added stress but also added fun finding different spots to take in all the action.

What's next?

I expect next year's travel will mostly consist of short trips, since Jules is in a new job and can't get a lot of time off. Short trips except, of course, our month+-long sojourn in New Zealand next February/March, which is really coming up right around the corner! I really want to go to Georgia and Armenia, but it's looking like it won't be next year, due to the difficulties in getting time off. I need to get them under the belt in case it goes all war-ry again though - I'm so pleased I went to Ukraine back in 2011, although not so happy that I didn't make it to Crimea. I think a compromise for a shorter-haul trip might turn out to be Iceland.

I got promoted recently, and officially start my new job in January, so that's something to look forward to. And as mentioned, we will probably be apartment-hunting once we get back from New Zealand. My current apartment has been good to me, but it's a wee bit too small for two people, particularly the half-size fridge. Definitely not looking forward to a move, but kind of exciting to start dreaming about our new home.

Hope 2015 has been good to all of you, and I wish everyone a very Happy New Year 2016!

Family fun in Luxembourg and France

The weekend before we went to the Belgian Grand Prix, my parents came for their first visit to Luxembourg, to see Jules's home country and meet his family for the first time. It was nice to show off what is, I think, a pretty underappreciated destination. The weather wasn't playing into our hands, but we still enjoyed walking around the key areas of Luxembourg City with them. We even went over the fortifications to the other side of the Grund valley, where I'd actually not been before (obviously I had been on that side of the river plenty of times, but not specifically the part straight across from the Bock). The large amounts of green space, the different levels between valleys and plateaux, and the old city fortifications makes it a very picturesque city for a walking tour.

View of the Grund

Ha, me and a small child

It got a bit drizzly by the time we got to the far side of town

The next day, we went just over the border to France, to visit Château Malbrouck. The route passed through the town of Schengen, in Luxembourg, and you can really understand why it gave its name to the Schengen zone. When you're in Schengen, you drive onto a bridge across the Moselle river and you're in Germany for 100 metres or so, and when you get to the bank on the far side, if you turn left you stay in Germany, but if you turn right, as we did, you're now in France. After we visited the château, we had lunch just down the road in Germany before driving back over into Luxembourg for a drive along the Moselle. It really made you realise just how inconvenient things would be if they ever did end up going back to proper borders.

The Château, which is actually named after the Duke of Marlborough, Churchill's ancestor, who came here at some point during the War of Spanish Succession or something (there was an explanation of this in the château but I got a bit lost in all the details), is mostly reconstructed, but it's been done really well. One interesting thing in one of the towers was a display of the methods used to reconstruct the site. The level of detail and the care they took to make sure they used authentic methods and tried to reconstruct exactly what was here before it fell into ruin was very impressive. I think it's one of the biggest and most expensive castle renovations undertaken in France.

On the walls of Château Malbrouck

View from the Château

The main reason for visiting the château on this occasion was that I saw a friend's photos of its current exhibition, Knights and Samurai, on Facebook. It's a pretty interesting concept for an exhibition - to compare and contrast the culture, lifestyle and history of European Knights and Japanese Samurai. On one level, the similarities are obviously - both noble classes of fighting men. But it went deeper to show how the two groups fit into the wider culture of their homelands - the influences of things like courtly love poetry and adventure literature in Europe and the place of knights in Japanese art and literature, knights and samurai on film, the different ceremonies that took place to become a knight or a samurai, the codes of honour - chivalry and bushido - etc.

There were some great displays of samurai armour and masks too. I'm usually not that interested in displays of armour and weaponry, but the intricate Japanese armour really was a work of art. Interestingly, most of these pieces came from a single, private collection, which I imagine must be someone's lifework and passion (or maybe they're just really rich?)

Samurai armour

I liked how you could really see the influence of traditional Japanese art on things like manga (not that I'm an expert)

Got to have that fake moustache

Cute 19th-century owl

We finished off the weekend with a very nice dinner with Jules's family in the heart of Luxembourg - with our old friends the péckvillercher standing guard outside. I think it was a pretty successful family visit!

Péckvillercher outside the restaurant

One year on + a lovely weekend

I just looked up my Gcal for a year ago, because I knew it was coming up to my first anniversary here in Brussels, but I couldn't remember when exactly. Turns out it's not for a few days - moving day was Friday the 13th, which wasn't an omen of anything in particular, unless you count that the movers broke my "Bio t'y foule" wine glass that I never understood what it meant anyway.

Gcal is how I organise basically my entire life, from little reminders to put something in my handbag to take to work, to travel plans, to organising an international move, and looking at my calendar a year ago reminds me of how stressful it was, but also kinda makes me feel organised and adult, so that's nice. I had forgotten just how much was going on around the move as well - I was in Mallorca three weeks before the move, Tours two weeks before, Brussels for one night the week before and Luxembourg the week after, seems crazy (most of that was booked before I knew I was moving though).

The past year has definitely flown by. On the minus side, I don't really feel any more integrated into the city (i.e., no friends). I haven't been trying, and am mostly fine with it, since I spend all my weekends with Jules and after work I'm pretty much okay just vegging out, but there are obviously times when friends would be nice. I've never really been in the situation before of making *no* friends in a new city, so I'm trying to take that as a sign it's down to lack of effort rather than inherent lameness, but that thought's always floating about somewhere.

On the plus side, oh my god is it better living in a nice apartment, getting paid a decent wage and not having a hellish international commute. We had a barbecue at Jules's place this weekend and invited one of my old colleagues and I found myself going on to another guest about how awful that used to be and then kind of had to bite my tongue because my colleague still does the commute (although she does live closer than I used to).  It's been fun visiting a few places in Brussels and around the country too, although inevitably you always end up feeling that you don't do half the things you would do even spending a week here as a tourist. It's a pretty good hub for travelling further afield too - for once, I don't have to tack on a trip to a major airport like Paris in order to have a wide choice of destinations. The cat is way happier to have me around more as well :)

Further to the "not integrating" bit, I don't really have any great observations or insights into Belgian culture. There are probably people (Flemings?) who would hate me for saying so, but day-to-day, things are pretty much exactly the same for me as when I lived in France. Being a national and EU capital, you hear a lot more languages spoken on the street, but everybody speaks French in supermarkets and so forth. It's relatively rare that someone will just start speaking Dutch to me. Honestly, most of the time I feel I could be in any given French city instead of in Belgium.

Anyway, I should be blogging about my trip back to Tours the weekend before last, but I can't find my camera cable, so I'll have to fill you in on this weekend's visit to Bourscheid Castle in Luxembourg instead. The weather this weekend was fabulous, hence Saturday's barbecue on Jules's awesome terrace, and it was still great for our Sunday morning trip to Bourscheid. It's in a fantastic location, perched on a hill 150 metres above a valley where the Sauer/Sûre river loops by.

When we were setting out in the car, Jules promised to tell me the "story of Jules and the Sauer", but only when we got to the river. I was quite excited, expecting a tale of derring-do, or perhaps an embarrassing mishap. When we finally got to the Sauer, he told me that he used to go fishing there a lot with his granddad. "And...?" And that's the story. Not to toot my own blogging horn, but that's why only one of us has a blog enjoyed by fives of people.

Source - we didn't get this aerial view of it, unfortunately

There was a really detailed autoguide to the place, but I found it really confusing so I don't actually know anything about the castle, oops. The audioguide was in the form of a dialogue between two guys, and either I didn't listen properly at the beginning or it wasn't properly explained, because I had no idea who they were meant to be. According to Jules the premise was that one of them was from the nineteenth century or something and one from the present day and they were like comparing notes on the state of the château through time, but I just got really confused with their dialogue e.g. "Was that tower there the first time we visited?" "I don't really know, but someone told me it was reconstructed during the renovations in 1972". Okay, that doesn't sound too confusing, but they lost me with all the talk of "in my day" and "our first visit". Plus I found it hard to follow when they pointed out different parts of the castle, like "in the back left corner there is X". How are you meant to tell where the back left is?

So anyway, I'll just recap what it says on the tourist website, which is that the stone castle was started around the year 1000, it underwent various renovations and expansions over the years before falling into ruin as early as the 18th century. The government acquired it in 1972 and has carried out extensive renovations. I always feel a bit cheated by big renovation works, as though I'm seeing a fake - this is one reason I've never been to Warsaw, although it's allegedly quite nice - but I suppose the bones of the place were more or less always intact.

Rebuilt or not, it's a stunning place, and the views from the top are magnificent. Something for everyone who thinks there's nothing to see in Luxembourg -

Bourscheid Castle

Jules amongst the ruins

Jules took forever to take this photo, on purpose I think!

Some of the castle wall was carved right out of the rock

Views from the tower of the gatehouse and ruined castle interior

We climbed up to the top to take the photos of the view below

Looking down on the Sauer

View from the other side of the tower

Pale tower selfie

Of course, the only photo where I was smiling normally was the one adjusting my sunnies (I finally took them back to the shop to get them tightened up on Monday°

Tower panorama - we had lunch at the hotel in the valley immediately to the right of the tower

The reason we actually were at Bourscheid to begin with was because I happened to spot that it was restaurant week in Belgium and Luxembourg, and the only participating restaurant in the Grand Duchy was at the Cocoon Bel Air hotel in the valley nearby. It was pretty much the same as the Dining with the Stars thing we did last year, in that you pay a fixed price and get a surprise menu (except this place didn't have a Michelin star). It's in a beautiful location below the castle, and the food was pretty good and reasonably-priced, at least with the special deal - I didn't see the normal prices.

Looking back up at the castle from our lunch spot

Our salmon entrée was a bit bland, to be honest #wewantplates

But the sea bass main was tasty!

I don't like crème brûlée, so I was glad that the "revisted" strawberry CB was actually not very crème brûlee-y at all

Ahhh, so much easier to kick back and enjoy life when the sun is shining and the long summer days stretch on forever. I feel so much more motivated to get out of the house and go exploring, and we really reaped the rewards this weekend. It was great!

A very Luxembourgish Easter

Much of the time, I hardly feel like I have an Exotic Boyfriend™ at all. He understands and speaks English so well that there's no scope for those cutsey mistakes and understandings you often hear about (barring the occasional habit of saying "bowel" when he means "bowl"). But one good thing about having an Exotic Boyfriend™ is learning about traditions in another culture. Or teaching him about your traditions. Or, in this case, telling him about traditions in a third country and he doesn't believe you.

When we had our first Easter together last year, we had only been dating for just over a month, and he decided to torture me by inviting me to Easter lunch with his entire family - cousins, aunt, uncle, grandma, brother, mum, the works. He claims this was being nice, as otherwise I would have spent Easter alone in my dank apartment, probably scrubbing a fresh pee stain off the couch (probably true), but it was all kinds of horrifying for someone as socially awkward as myself. Anyway, the point of this is way back then, I told him that in France, Easter Eggs are brought by church bells, not the Easter Bunny, and he didn't believe me. I'm not sure why, as on one of our first dates I was famously proven right on the fact that there are about a million feral camels in Australia (or, rather, there used to be - apparently they've gotten quite killy on the feral camel front in recent years (and the refugee front, badoom tissh), but that wasn't the part of the fact that was in dispute, so victory was still mine). So anyway, I was probably trying to pretend to be a good girlfriend and repress the part of me that likes to be proven right at all costs, and the matter was apparently dropped. Until this year, when I brought it up again, and he still wouldn't believe me until we watched a really frustratingly slow YouTube video on the subject.

He brought it up at this year's Easter dinner, and his Grandma informed us of the rest of the story from the Luxembourgish point of view, which is that the church bells do indeed fly away to Rome to confess their sins (really, how much can you get up to as a bell?) and, furthermore, while they're gone, kids go around the villages making a racket with wooden rattles and so forth and sing a little song, to make up for the missing noise of the church bells.  They then have the effrontery to demand money for the task of annoying everyone for the past few days. Which makes me extra happy that we were in Germany, not Luxembourg, in the days leading up to Easter.

Another Easter tradition in Luxembourg is the Easter Monday fair of Eemaichen, held in Luxembourg city and in Nospelt. We headed along to Nospelt to check out this very popular event - there was even a free bus, as so many people descend upon this tiny town for the occasion. The fair revolves entirely around clay whistles shaped as birds, called Péckvillchen. You wouldn't think that would be enough to pull in the punters year after year, but I suppose tradition's tradition. And the bird whistles were cute, plus we watched a demonstration of how they're made.

Demonstrating how a péckvillchen is made

I wonder what happens to the giant bird the rest of the year?

A plethora of péckvillchen

And of course, I had to select a lucky péckvillchen to come home with me to Brussels. I can't get it to whistle though! (In case you're wondering, you blow in its bum...)

One last tradition is to dye hard-boiled eggs (as in many places), and then you each take one and tap them against each other's, the loser being the one whose egg cracks. The punishment is having to eat the egg. Kind of like conkers, if you had to eat the conker afterwards. We got given some eggs from a bunny at the fair, so we played, and I lost, but declined to eat an egg that had been festering in a bunny's pouch.

Any interesting Easter traditions in your part of the world?