Chocomania! A visit to the Neuhaus factory shop

I have been ghosting you again, dear readers. Not much has been going on here, just struggling through the gloom of a Brussels winter. It got cold for a little bit, snowed a tiny amount, and now has gone back to quite warm, but rainy gloom has replaced the frosty sunshine we had in January. And it's still so dark all the time!

But not for much longer... We are almost in the final countdown to the NZ trip, less than two weeks to go. On the one hand, I kind of regret that we will be enduring most of the winter here anyway, but on the other hand, I didn't want to use up such a big chunk of holidays so early in the year, and when we come back, hopefully spring will be here. Plus, NZ in February is much nicer than January. At least, I hope so. Every time I check the weather forecast, it seems to be sunny but with rain predicted for the coming days. Not sure whether that means it has actually been sunny all the time or not...

Couple of quick things before I probably go into hibernation again and then hit you with an unending stream of posts from New Zealand. (Eeeeee!)

Our joint Christmas present to ourselves was a shiny new Magimix food processor. Points to note: my god, it takes up space! I knew the size of the processor itself (we bought online, but had seen it in a shop). What I didn't know was how much room all the blades and other accessories take up! It's true, by the time you fit the blade and clean the machine afterwards, half the time you could have just chopped the carrot yourself, but it's a lot of fun. And we've made some things like pommes de terre dauphinoise or sliced leeks or julienned carrots where I definitely wouldn't get the things as thin or uniform. And it does come into its own when you're making a big batch of whatever. We made soup yesterday with 2 cups each of diced carrot, celery and onion, and that saved a lot of grief. If you have any recipes that require a lot of chopping/slicing, send them my way!

Plus it's so shiny and red, and looking at it gives me a smug middle-class sense of self-satisfaction

About the only other noteworthy thing I've done this year is also food-related (surprise, surprise). I wanted to take some Belgian chocolates back home to friends and family, but the good ones (not cheap and nasty bulk-buy seashells) cost an absolute fortune. Like at least 25€ per box that you see in the photo below. Times it by maybe 10 people and you're looking at a cool 250€. (Geez, thanks for the maths help, Einstein.)

Luckily, I was talking to a colleague who let me in on a little Brussels secret - the Neuhaus factory shop! Neuhaus is already one of my favourites, so I was super excited to visit, especially when I heard you can eat as many free samples as you like. Basically, the boxed chocolates are not so much cheaper than what you get in the retail stores, but the real bargains come in plain, single-variety cardboard cartons. I picked up three kilos of chocolate for 40€.

You can eat as much as you want from the open boxes

And then splash the cash on the plain packaging

As far as I'm aware, the plain boxes aren't "seconds' in the sense of being defective or whatever. We were looking for later expiry dates on the boxes we bought, and they all expired by like the end of April, so I'm guessing that's more the reason why they are in the factory shop. Apart from that (I'll just assume my family will eat their chocolates quickly!) the only downside is that there's only three different varieties of chocolate in the three kilos and I'll have to fiddle around in NZ packing them into individual portions. On the plus side, it will be a lot easier to transport them than the equivalent in 10 different boxes. 

I suppose I've lifted the veil of mystery for anyone who may be reading the blog and also getting chocolates from me, but oh well. I figure most people would rather more chocolates in a less fancy package (and also that I don't bankrupt myself).

We went by car, but apparently you can take the metro to the last stop and walk a short way, so definitely an option if you're ever visiting Brussels. Beware though, we didn't have breakfast, and I would have thought I could eat basically endless quantities of chocolate, but I got sick pretty quickly! If you're coming on a mission, e.g. for the bulk-buy chocolates, make sure you taste those first, because by the end I horrified myself by having to take a bite of different chocolates and then throw the rest away. (A dark day for humanity.)

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!

Testing times at the IIO

I still have to write about my bologna trip, but I can't resist a wee post about Day 1 of my job interview at the IIO (Important International Organisation).

Day -1 was, unsurprisingly, marred with transport chaos since a bit of snow had fallen across France and Belgium. My train to Paris Montparnasse was about 25 minutes late, so I was relieved when I got to Gare du Nord 15 minutes before my next train left. There was a huge queue of people waiting in front of the entrance to the platform, but a worker I spoke to said they were just waiting to allow people on. It was, therefore, a bit of a surprise when the train just pulled off with no one on it and the information disappeared from the displays. Typically, no one told us anything that was happening, and I had to chase down several workers before someone told me to get in the queue for a different train that was headed to cologne via brussels. This wasn't leaving till 12 pm, 1 1/2 hours after my original train. I was nonetheless relieved to be allowed on this one, even if it meant sitting on a flip-down seat in the corridor (along with a family of five from New Zealand, funnily enough). Speeds were reduced because of the snow, so I ended up finally getting to brussels about 2 1/2 hours later than planned, but I was pretty happy that this had all happened the day before my test at the IIO, not the day of, so I wasn't too upset.

After getting lost slightly and trudging through the snow in my slippery tennis shoes, dragging a suitcase, I made it to the luxury suite of a nice hotel located in a lovely central square not far from the Grande Place and the central station. (Thanks IIO!) I'm definitely enjoying the huge bed, jacuzzi bath (complete with jets which aren't actually all that strong but which create a helluva splash all over the floor) and swanky surroundings! It is not like me to travel in such style, so I'm making the most of it!

Anyway, after experimenting with the trouser press and hair dryer (I despise drying my hair, which is probably part of the reason it's always such a mess) the night before, it was up bright and early this morning for breakfast at the hotel (which I was too nervous to eat, I should go on the stress diet) and a taxi to the IIO (which of course was late, so thankfully I left plenty of time to get there). I would love to give all the details about the IIO - it's somewhere that I would never have dreamed of visiting behind the scenes, and it was really quite exciting as well as intimidating to go inside - but I don't want to put too much out there on the blog. (If any of you whom I know are dying of curiosity, feel free to email for more details.)

I will say I had to go through airport-style security to get in. It was quite funny, because the woman who took my bag to go through the X-ray machine asked if I had a cellphone. I said no, but I had an ipad, which she took out to go through separately. When I got through the metal detector, the guard on the other side of the X-ray was talking to the woman about my bag, and he asked me again if I had a cellphone. Still no... Then he poked at the iPod sticking out of my bag. "Oh, that's an iPod", I said. He picked it up and looked at it suspiciously as though it were the first time he'd seen such a thing (maybe I'm the only hillbilly left without an iPhone for my music needs) and asked me if it took photos. "Nope..." I replied, "oh, but I do have a camera!" The camera was swiftly confiscated (although not the iPad, strangely enough), but I had to laugh at how long it took us to get there!

On to the test - first up was a 3 hour written exam (on a computer) which was mainly questions to do with information management, unsurprisingly. I thought it all looked hugely daunting when I first looked at it, but after some initial hiccups with not being able to say what a whole bunch of acronyms stood for, I managed to take some deep breaths and give at least adequate, I think, answers for the other questions (one of which had to be answered in French). I was expecting there to be some on the IIO specifically, but I think I managed to work in some of what I studied up on along the way. After lunch, there was a one-hour French multiple-choice french test, which involved listening and written comprehension/grammar sections. The good part about this is that it gave you your grade straight away, and I pretty much aced it :) It said I had near-perfect grammar and excellent comprehension (although clearly it's never heard me speak or seen me try to write). Hopefully feeling like I did okay will help with some confidence for the one-hour panel interview coming up tomorrow.

It's really hard to know where I stand - of the other two candidates I had lunch with, one was only doing a studentship, while the other seemed already to be in a very similar post. I guess I'm somewhere in between, so who knows. I feel like I've already done really well to get this far - I had to pass an online test already as well as the usual application process - so I suppose I can just cross my fingers that the interview goes okay tomorrow and see what happens. Whatever happens, it probably won't be quick, sinc I applied for this back in August!

London: Art! Art! Art!

I do like a good gallery, and I went to two new ones this time around, the Courtauld and the Wallace Collection. Both were a good size to enjoy without getting exhausted, although probably if I were by myself I would have paid a bit closer attention to stuff in the Wallace rather than getting distracted with chatting. There's only so much you can say about walking around a gallery, so I'll mostly let the photos do the talking.

My first stop on Wednesday, after dropping my bag off at my sister's, was the Courtauld Gallery. As noted the other day, they didn't want me working for them, but they still have a nice wee gallery with some real artistic treasures. I thought the medieval section was going to be bigger, but never mind. I also surprised myself by really liking a lot of the Impressionist paintings, which I'm often fairly indifferent to. Some highlights:

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet. I don't know if I noticed before that in the mirror image, she is leaning towards a man. I think this painting must be some sort of comment on French customer service, because she could not look more disengaged

I loved this portrait by Gabriele Münter, a German Expressionist painter who, along with Kandinsky (my fav artist) and Franz Marc, founded Der Blaue Reiter group

I love miniature medieval carvings, they're just astonishing in their detail and virtuosity

I'm not sure what that is peeping out from under the arches, the sun?

I'm amused by the lady on the bed, who seems to be thinking, "Can I just have ONE moment to myself here!"

This unfinished painting by the Mannerist painter Parmigianino was another favourite. The elongation of forms was a feature of his style, rather than a flaw

This medieval painting is supposed to show the martyrdom of two saints, but the one lying in the middle looks more like a kid who's eaten too many sweets to me

Outdoor ice rink at Somerset House, next to the Courtauld

I was happy to remain a spectator. Ice skating was mysteriously in vogue for much of my teen years, but I never liked it. It's cold, it hurt my ankles, I'm bad at it, and if you fall down, it not only hurts, but it's especially humiliating (for teen Gwan at least)

London skyline from Waterloo Bridge

View from the other side of Waterloo Bridge

On Friday, it was off to the Wallace Collection for more (free) art. I'm not sure either where I came across the idea to come here, but it's well worth a visit, not only for the collections, but also for the beautiful interiors. I was meant to meet Rick and his girlfriend Sonya at 11 am, but ended up waiting in the lobby for them for half an hour before going in by myself. I think by the time they finally turned up, they were about an hour late, but very apologetic, so I was just happy that they found me. (My stupid Free mobile does not work in the UK, a cause of frequent annoyance!)

Highlights of the collection include the famous Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals, although I think Smirking Cavalier would be more appropriate:

and lots of lovely decorative arts pieces from the Middle Ages and Renaissance (and beyond). Also a lot of boring French and Dutch paintings from the 17th and 18th century and armour and stuff, but no-one was forcing me to look at those.

Sonya and Rick admiring some paintings

I was excited to see some pages from an illuminated copy of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius was mega big in the Middle Ages, especially his idea of the Wheel of Fortune. That's right, before it was a gameshow, it was a serious concept seeking to explain life's ups and downs and to remind even the mightiest king (who you can just make out sitting on top of the wheel) that tomorrow he could be in the gutter.

BOOM! This is literally the best painting known to humanity

Awesome. And you can't really see, but he has a little lamb with him, further adding to the awesomeness

There were some beautiful rooms

After the Wallace Collection, it was time to get some lunch, and we had a perfectly serviceable pizza at Pizza Express before I had to rush back to Jess's to get changed for my birthday drinks (of which more next time)...

Frozen Loire

I had the day off on Friday, which I promptly wasted by helping someone move. Sucker! It was meant to take a couple of hours, which it did - if by couple, you mean 7... I hope the gods of moving karma were looking down on this event! At least it was crisp and sunny instead of snowing, and - bonus - I got to see inside my first HLM (State/council housing). Engrenages led me to believe it would be a den of drug dealing, murder and prostitution. There was a mysterious yellow puddle in the stairwell, but otherwise it seemed basic but decent. Where can I sign up?

My good deed done for the week (year?), on Saturday I made it down to the Loire to take some photos (along with everyone in Tours and their dog, it seemed). The Loire is much more frozen than the Cher - I think cos it's shallower?? (I'm not even 100% sure it is shallower, looks it though, especially at the moment.) We're probably all sick of snow photos, so good news - although it did actually snow again a little bit overnight, temperatures are rising. When I got up this morning and saw it was 0 degrees, I thought spring had arrived!










My videos have a reputation for being highly exciting, which I'm pretty sure will be preserved by the following offerings:

Hadn't seen nothin' yet

Turns out the snow the Monday before last was just a dusting compared to the snow on Sunday (which had already fallen by the time I blogged, but I hadn't been out in it yet so I didn't really realise). According to what I read online, we got about 10 cm of snow - the local newspaper had interviews with a bunch of people saying that this was the most they'd ever seen in 20 years or whatever. And it has been fu-reezing. This morning when I walked to work it was supposedly -11 ("feels like -14") Celsius, but actually it didn't feel quite as cold today as it has been. It was sunny today, so technically a bit colder, but definitely more pleasant than yesterday when we had wind and light snow falls all day. Consequently it's been taking ages to get around town because I'm petrified of slipping on the icy pavements! It is still kind of cool to have snow though!


For some reason, the park has been shut since it snowed on Sunday, so the snow is pristine (took these photos through the gates)




One possibility is it's shut to avoid accidents on the frozen lake


No work going on on the new tram in this weather






Ice on the Cher