The Expat Architect

Thanksgiving EU Style.

2009-12-05T20:10:00.010+01:00

I've been thinking about what I will do about thanksgiving since I heard about the previous office Thanksgiving: Overpriced fake Mexican food at ChiChi's. Mary and I decided we would attempt the task of cooking for thanksgiving with an added ambition... We wanted to introduce the Europeans to the concept as well. The logistics of the situation didn't fully soak in until I looked up "how much turkey do I need for 22 people?" on the google. The USDA suggests 1 pound per person fresh turkey. A few things went through my head: (1) Can I buy a turkey in lbs instead of kilos? (2) Where does one get a turkey? (3) How many thanksgiving recipes are written in metric conversion?

I then forgot what day thanksgiving was... only to remember about a week and a half in advance. The ONLY reason I remembered? A very good American friend from the beginning of my internship was flying from Berlin specifically for the event, and she asked me how everything was looking. Step one - write a menu, Step two - write a list of ingredients, Step three - look up new recipes for all the things that are pre-packaged and then get those ingredients. UGH.

Menu:

Turkey (which is not bred for thanksgiving, difficult to find over 14lbs.)
Gravy (I have french friends, they should know how to make a sauce)
Stuffing (no stove top in belgium...)
Mashed potatoes (we're in luck, they love potatoes here - just not the right kind)
Corn Pudding (no creamed corn, no cornbread mix)
Carrots (if this isn't easy I'm going to have a LOT of trouble)
Green Bean Casserole (covered by previously mentioned American friend)

Pumpkin Pie (you thought there was a canned shortage in America? no one here knows what canned pumpkin means, why would you put pumpkin in a can?)
Apple Cobbler (more complicated than one would think)

Preparation began a little more than a week before Thanksgiving when I took my French co-worker to a butcher to discuss turkeys. We learned that it was going to be difficult to get a turkey above 7kilos (15.5lbs) and if we wanted anything larger she (the butcher) was going to have to fight to get it. It could take over a week to get something as large as 8 kilos. Alternatively she could get us two 6kilo birds, pull the meat off turkey one and stuff it into the cavity of turkey two... making a 10kilo meta-turkey. This was unacceptable, and expensive to boot... I decided to ask my boss for help. It started as a request for financial aid, this was an Office event so I thought maybe I could get a party budget. She graciously OKed my proposed budget and also did some phone calls and found me a turkey for half the price of the butcher. The major problem was the size: only 6 kilos (13.5 lbs) for 22 people was a bit short. If you use European standards we've still got plenty of protein (200 grams per person) but that's if the turkey is made entirely of meat. In the end we decided to just make extra sides to supplement.

I thought it best to prepare the pies well in advance and just reheat during dinner so Saturday before Mary and I went out pumpkin hunting. Our only goal was a pumpkin, some crusts and pie tins. We went out to the 'burbs for grocery store fun and looked around to the produce section. There was a large selection of pumpkins, none of which looked like a pumpkin. I need round, unnaturally orange gourd in order to recognize a "pumpkin." Unfortunately the largest one they had was short, fat and very reddish. They also had a "turban" pumpkin but it just didn't seem right. We were a bit upset, we had no idea what the flavor of this pumpkin was going to be. Then while looking for parts 2 and 3, we saw a fall display with JUST THE RIGHT PUMPKINS! They don't sell them to eat, they only put our iconic American pumpkin on display. Ten minutes later we had an English speaking manager with us trying to understand why we want to buy a display pumpkin... he grabs the biggest one and says, "sure go ahead." We end up with a 7kilo pumpkin (larger than the turkey we are supposed to get). Pie crusts seem easy enough, they have plenty of pre-made pastry stuff.

Pie tins are last... aaaannnnddd non-existent. How did it turn out pie tins are the hard part of this trip. #1 Europeans don't eat pie. Europeans eat tarts. Tarts are very wide. Tarts are very shallow. Tarts are not coincident with pumpkin pie. #2 Why would you ever buy anything to bake in only once? Grocery store brand tart tins were close to 10 euros and we had lots of pies to make, at least four. Our next stop? IKEA the land of cheap anything. We learned at IKEA that #1 Europeans don't eat pies and #2 Why would you buy anything to bake in only once. Luckily the Ikea version of this is slightly cheaper and while we were there we picked up the largest roasting pan (one might say turkey sized) we could find.

We went through recipes a few times, first for how to extract the pumpkin goodness from the large orange gourd in front of us. A few hours later we had a roasted pumpkin and some fresh seeds to munch on. We scraped, strained, pureed, re-strained all the pumpkin we could get and chilled while we prepared to bake our pies. Which was when we realized we had absolutely no measurement tools. None in standard, none in metric. We have spoons, and a stupid starbucks 8oz. thermos. We proceeded to calculate and measure with our ridiculous tools and got incredibly lucky that one recipe fit exactly in these strangely proportioned tart tins. Our 7 kilo pumpkin yielded three perfect pumpkin pies, perfect because they tasted like pumpkin pie. Were they good? eh, they were ok, but damn it a six hour pie is gonna be delicious no matter what. Apple cobbler? Complicated because of the tin issue but we ended up with two clamp based tins used for cakes or something. These came with our tart tins and seemed conveniently shaped for our extra pies. *spoiler* Europeans loved apple cobbler and destroyed the two pies instantly... pumpkin? not so much, we've still got a whole pie in the fridge that we were happy to escape with.

Wednesday night goal: Make the corn pudding and chop up a ton of veggies to reduce prep the next day. Wednesday night accomplishments: Seeing an awesome lecture by a Swiss architect and eating a Mitriellette (hamburger sandwich with onions and frits on top). I'll claim my excuse to be based on a lack of can opener, but it was just a bit of pre-cooking jitters.

Thursday: Turkey is delivered to the office plucked (a happy surprise) and ready to cook. I've got a great American co-worker who deadlined previous to thanksgiving so he was able to take the day off from real work and help me out. The two of us covered the majority of the dishes... with the mashed potatoes being covered by Mary at home and green bean casserole being covered by Liz at another location as well. One of the fun parts was cutting up all the bread to be used in the stuffing and corn pudding... you can't really buy croutons here. I sat in the model room and chopped veggies for a few hours and directed the assembly of the dishes. Once all the sides were ready we covered them with foil and hid them in the back and started the turkey. Lots of butter, lots of aromatic veggies, salt and pepper and we're good. A few of my co-workers enjoyed watching me stuff the turkey with carrots, onions and leeks.

I threw the turkey in the oven and crossed my fingers. I actually crossed my fingers before putting the turkey in the oven; I was uncertain it would fit. Everything cooked up perfectly, the skin was nice and brown and the legs jiggled loosely. During a consultation session with my uncle, he gave me some hints on how to cook everything, including testing the turkey by jiggling the legs to make sure they were done. I had some co-workers go out and get wine and bread and then I got my french friends to start a gravy. I don't think I gave very good direction as the gravy was SUPER thick and soon after dinner started closely resembled meat pudding. Another American co-worker was worried about the amount of meat we had on the table so he ordered some great asian pork with the skin fried. The whole meal came together very well, and there was a very American moment where everyone was completely slouched in their chair, hands resting on belly. A few continued eating... more people showed up and then we ate dessert.

It was a great thanksgiving and I'm very happy to have shared it with lots of new friends.

Lots of news.

2009-10-27T21:36:00.007+01:00

I've been gone for a while. Not anywhere specific, just not here. I won't really speculate on why or if I will continue because I can't promise much. What I can do is give an update on my actual tourings since I've become a full time resident of Brussels. I hope to expand on a lot of what I've seen and done in the past few months, maybe even give some updates on the (ongoing) process of my visa. But for now just a teaser of the sites I've seen.

Where I last left you... Grandmas birthday:

Rotterdam:

Amsterdam:

Paris!:

Two days in Stockholm.

2009-07-05T16:34:00.001+02:00

For July 4^th this year I left Belgium to come back to the USA. I couldn’t really care less about the 4^th, but this year was a special occasion. My family has come together to celebrate my grandmothers 80^th birthday. Traveling 2000 miles for a 3 day weekend might seem a bit absurd, but my grandmother is part of my inspiration for living abroad. Through most of my youth, trips to my grandparents meant sitting in front of a slide projector seeing hundreds of images of worldly trips my grandparents took. After my grandfather passed away, I learned that in all my grandmothers’ travels, she never made it to the country of her heritage: Sweden. Later that year, I went on a trip with an aunt, an uncle and my grandmother. So this will be a special blog post, a description of two great days in Stockholm.

We stayed in Stockholm for about 10 days, and the trip ended almost exactly 2 years ago. I’ve written about the extended summer days in Brussels, but Stockholm is a completely different story. The sun doesn’t even start going down until 11 or 12pm, but even then it never fully sets. Two in the morning seems like dusk. We just barely missed the solstice parties that go on, but we got the benefit of the late nights. We celebrated July 4^th by ourselves and it happened to be two of the most memorable days on the entire trip. These were days that my grandmother showed me that she was game for anything, and really showed me genuine interest in learning about her heritage first hand.

The morning of July 3^rd we went through our normal routine of delicious Swedish breakfast: small pancakes (not pleta, but just small pancakes), a bit of muesli with yogurt (mine was lingonberry yogurt), and some cheeses and cured meats. I was accustomed to eating a large breakfast, but we ate so much filling stuff that we usually only needed a small lunch. My grandmother mentioned something about taking a ferry outside of Stockholm proper into the archipelago. We planned to stop at a small public island about an hour away at an island: Grinda. It seemed a bit like a local destination for beaches, and there was a school of kids going to swim. No cars are allowed on the island and they have to farm and tend to livestock for a small portion of their food. I’m not sure if there are any private residences, but there was a hotel on the island. This hotel served us one of the best meals I had eaten on the trip, which is impressive as my chef uncle was also on the trip as a culinary guiding force. Grandma downed a glass of champagne with us and we ate foie gras… at this point I can’t remember many more specifics. It was strange, the meal was memorable for its quality but I cannot remember for the life of me what I ate. We walked around for a good while, enjoyed some beautiful weather and got a little sun burned.

On our trip back we sat on the top of the boat in the sun, and got more sun burned. For the sake of comparison, I basically got sun burned north of Anchorage. This may come up in more blogs in the near future as I am a professional sun burn receiver, and have yet to receive a sun burn in Brussels. When we got back, Grandma needed a Fika. Fika is a late afternoon snack of a pastry and some coffee. I have no problems obliging to more delicious pastries with cardamom. During our Fika on the waterfront we discussed what we were doing that night. My Grandma seemed tired, but when we suggested seeing a Football game, her eyes lit up and she was ready to go. We went back to our hotel and changed, maybe I took a nap… and we headed out for the football match. We had an infamous “French hotdog” which I can guarantee is as French as I am. Getting to the game wasn’t easy, we had to take a metro… which was PACKED because of the game. Grandma had no issues sassing people if they ran into her, and she got much respect from the rowdy crowd. The game was great, but at the end of the night… we all just passed out from exhaustion.

The day before we left (July 4^th) we all did a bit more relaxing, we just showed each other some of the things we discovered when we were on our own. Grandma showed us around Gammel Stan, or Old Town, again because it was her favorite spot. I took everyone out near the end of a metro line to see a Gunnar Asplund designed cemetery. We also spent a bit of time in the posh shopping district where we all got open faced sandwiches famous in Sweden. The most important event of the day was going out for drinks! We decided to go out to the Ice Bar, a small bar comprised entirely of… well ice. You may have heard about the Ice Hotel in Sweden, and this is an urban extension housed inside of a hotel. We were required to wear big silver parkas and gloves, and we each got one speciality mixed drink in a ice glass. We sat on deer skins on ice blocks, and my uncle convinced the bartender to give him a copy of the drink menu. This is the first time I was really able to drink with my grandmother, and we all enjoyed it for about… 15 minutes. After that we were so cold from sitting on ice we were ready to go. After settling on a nice Italian meal we all settled on a nice walk until it got dark (a few hours) and saw some new areas of the city. A good end to the trip.

Since that trip I have also seen my grandmother in Dublin, but I don’t know the next time she’ll cross over the Atlantic again. I know she’s got a bunch more trips in her, and there are still a lot of grand kids that need to see a small part of their own heritage as well, so I expect more Sweden trips in the future.

I dedicate this blog post to my grandmother: Happy Birthday! Thank you for giving me a great reason to go to Stockholm and give me the travel bug, I love you.

Metrics

2009-06-14T20:05:00.004+02:00

I started using "google analytics" a few months ago just to track how often people read my blog. I soon learned that it also records where you guys are accessing my blog from so I wanted to share some of the statistics.

I've had visits from 14 countries: USA (obviously), Belgium (obviously), Portugal, Spain, Brazil, The UK, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Lithuania, Ireland and Denmark. There are about 35 countries that have accessed the site, but according to the records taken, these 14 countries actually logged a little bit of time reading the blog.

From Belgium: In theory about 53 different computers have accessed my blog from Belgium, most from Brussels. About 12 of those different computers could be me checking the blog from my office on whatever random computer I get that day. But otherwise, there are quite a few of you out there. Also on average you spend about 3 minutes per trip reading about my shenanigans. I've also got one reader from Northern Flanders. You should all let me know if I'm missing out on some magical Belgian thing.

From Copenhagen: Hi Guys... there are really only two of you... and I'm pretty sure I know who. I hope you're enjoying late days and Elderflower juice.

From Portugal: There aren't many individual readers here either, but the readers come from two different regions... Maybe Miguel went on holiday?

From Brazil: I have no idea who this reader could be, but it is pretty awesome that someone from South America spent time to read about an Americans awkward trip to Belgium. My sister wrote a blog during her short stay in Argentina, my Flemish blogger won't let me connect but it is also a good read.

From the US: There are a lot of you... for sure. There could be up to 65 different individuals reading from beginning to the end of the blog. When I look at the map, I've gotten real hits from over 15 states (16 to be exact... but one is listed as "not set"). I can recognize most of you from your cities, but from the looks of it there are a bunch of readers that I don't personally know. There are a few in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Virginia, Oregon, Connecticut, Washington, even some places in New York and New Jersey where I don't recognize the locations.

Thanks everyone for reading, if you're interested to hear about something specific... let me know! I've got some recent difficulties with posting via a busted laptop and shoddy *stolen* internet connections but the posts will continue. Up next is a slight retelling of a night involving American style barbecue, Belgian beer and tragedy.

American Food: Pics!

2009-06-09T14:39:00.004+02:00

1. Cheese Balls2. Dunkin Donuts3. Salt Bagel4. Fried Chicken
5. Cubano6. Buffalo Chicken Cheesesteak7. Burrito

Transitions.

2009-06-08T22:34:00.002+02:00

I was talking to an old co-worker today and giving him my new address, he's planning a fall European tour and I suggested the usage of my (almost) couch as a stopping point. I suggested he stop by for a day or two on his way through Belgium as the big tourist spots are relatively close. The Grand Place, along with the Mannekin Pis, seem to be the biggest tourist spots in Brussels and I'm right around the corner. My friend asked if I spent a lot of time at the Grand Place, and I compared it to spending a lot of time in Times Square. I then realized that I live WAY too close to the major tourist attraction, but then started to make some more New York comparisons.

What other regions of Manhattan are within two blocks of me? I've got Chinatown... A little bit of SoHo and/or East Village too. Granted, each of these exist for only a few blocks... and its Brussels. Clearly there is no comparison, but the important distinction is the type of person within each zone is still pretty similar. Grand Place = tourists... St Gery (east village) = people way cooler than me... Chinatown... you get the picture. The major difference (besides both quality and quantity) is transition.

It seems like while roaming in Brussels, neighborhoods can change instantaneously. Near the finale of Season 1, I had to go to the Ministry of Work to start up my working permits so I can get paid. I also had to do this on the end of an all night marathon. No sleep = poor planning and decisions. I knew where I was meant to end up, and I knew where I was starting. None of the mass transit seemed to be any faster on paper than just walking so I decided to go on ahead. I didn't remember that I had to cross under the train tracks of the North Station... Its important to note that the Brussels Red Light District happens to be on the "wrong" side of the tracks. In this case the wrong side is the east side, or the side I was on. This place snuck up on me; 1. I had no sleep, and 2. I was supposed to be in the BUSINESS DISTRICT. Well... the point is that the "transition" between the main financial district of Brussels and the red light district is a train track. These sneaky neighborhoods continually weird me out, not that they're worrisome or scary places but the drastic change in environment is a bit harsh. Some of the neighborhoods end up being almost as varied as the change from Chinatown to Little Italy.

In other news, Waffles? Not ubiquitous in all neighborhoods. Frites? Everywhere.

Back To Daily

2009-06-07T21:18:00.003+02:00

I've been back in Brussels for over a week. I spent a few days scrambling to get an apartment and then went straight back to work. I haven't really been out of work for 5 weeks ever before and I was starting to go a bit crazy. I was put back on my old project that was conveniently put on hold during the time I was away. This time around I get to do some design/presentation drawings though. Its a bit tough to imagine, but up until now (after all the square meter shenanigans) there were no real explanation drawings created. The drawings are a momentary distraction as I will also be put on a second French social housing project soon enough. In a few months I should know the french social housing system like the back of my hand... except I won't be able to talk to anyone living in them.

Other than a pretty sweet birthday party with Starbucks Coffee as a gag gift for an Italian co-worker, the week was uneventful. My girlfriend and I decided to celebrate our first "real" weekend with another trip to IKEA! It was a bit more crowded this time, but we had our game plan: Buy something to sit on as well as something to put things on. To clarify, we've been living in our apartment for almost a full week with mattresses as our only furniture. It's been interesting coming home every night to see some new improvised luggage furniture. Neither of us could last with a desk formed out of two pieces of luggage and a "chair" of books with a few shirts stacked on top. Similar to the kitchen gear, our goal was to minimize expense and maximize utility. We got two tables (one for the kitchen, the other for the office), two chairs, two metal storage shelves and a wooden storage/clothing hanger thing. We also got the mattress of a futon, but they didn't have the frame so we'll go another time. Our plan was to pay for a taxi service (flat fee of 30 euros, up to a stupid amount of Kilos), this is why we got the futon mattress without the frame. Everything rang in under 180 Euros, extending the cost of our apartment by about 15 Euros a month unless we can sell it all at the end.

I think we made out pretty well, but the place is still a little empty feeling. The proportions are VERY different than our previous place. We used to have a two bedroom that rang in around 500 square feet. It was simple, four 10x10 rooms around a central hall / bathroom. This apartment is pretty close to 400 square feet with only two rooms, no hall and a tiny tiny bathroom. That means the kitchen is much larger than we're used to, and the bedroom is HUGE. It is meant to double as a living room, but we still don't know how to efficiently use the space just yet. We've got a year to figure it out, but I'm not sure how much more furniture we'll decide to carry up our ladder like stairs. The place also needs curtains, not necessarily for the light but for the sound. We can still move our beds to the back room, but then there are PIGEONS! Seriously, those little winged rats make so much damned noise in the morning. Today we were woken by a pigeon death match on the roof next to ours. I'm also under the assumption that 7 foot tall windows won't keep the place warm in the winter, so we're looking into insulated curtains for long term usage.

Anyway, now that I'm trying to get back into the groove of things I should try to get myself into a shape. I won't say "get myself in shape again" because I definitely have yet to succeed at forming a shape. I've lost weight for sure, but I want to try to get healthier in general. Back to push ups? Maybe a jog or two? Total, not weekly. I don't know, there's also the matter of Tourism, Architecture, Money (ugh), French (double ugh). I've got plenty to DO in the near future, I've just gotta keep up writing about my attempts.

Comment!

American food is delicious.

2009-06-04T23:08:00.003+02:00

You only realize how delicious it is when you miss a few staple meals for an extended period of time. During my one month back in the states I had to "catch up" on all the foods I was missing out. I'm pretty sure I over did it, which is good cause it means I won't want anything in the categories for quite a while.

1. Cheese Balls: 1 enormous barrel, I don't really want to talk about it.

2. Dunkin Donuts: Cinnamon Coffee w/ Milk and Sugar does not taste like coffee in any way. It is also delicious and warm. Unless it's iced (also refreshing when my first day back in the US was 90 some degrees), in which case it is not warm.

3. Bagles: Ham & Cheese on a Salt Bagel. This is a classic combo that I've had for years, the Salt Bagel is a slightly new addition but the sandwich keeps hunger away for two full meal times.

4. Fried Chicken: Popeye's spicy blend & Biscuits. This is probably the grossest meal on the list as it consists of mostly fat and or fat. The grease is unimaginable... the biscuits are essentially layers of butter with salt in between.

5. Cubano: At the corner Cuban restaurant where the waiters barely speak English... a great roll with pork, ham, pickle and cheese. I'm not sure why I keep going back to this sandwich, though it does only cost 3 dollars. The best possible bite is right at the end, with a small amount of pork and ham, but a lot of pickle and cheese.

6. Buffalo Chicken Cheese Steak: From the famous Hoagie Haven in Princeton. A basic chicken cheese steak with a ton of Tabasco and blue cheese dressing.

7. Burrito: The last and probably biggest mess of all the cravings. My favorite combo includes spicy pork, rice, black beans, all kinds of salsa. Also... lots of cheese, guacamole and sour cream. I haven't attempted to eat one of these with my hands in years, fork and knife are key. I do enjoy a bit of Green Tobasco as well.

I will post up pics of these disgusting concoctions later as my stolen Internet isn't ideal for uploading photos.

Season Two

2009-06-01T22:29:00.004+02:00

I'm back in Belgium. I've written emails to my family and friends saying I'm back in the "+32." That's my dumb slang utilizing the Belgian country code; I like to think that I'm clever sometimes. Anyway, it turns out I was being a little optimistic suggesting I was all but done with my Visa. Long story short: I wasted a return flight and got a new flight for NO reason. The result was my girlfriend leaving for Brussels by herself for five days. I like to think it was better that she got to see parts of the city on her own so that she could discover things without my biases. Then she may be able to show me things in the city that I lived in for three months prior. She spent a little time looking for a long term apartment for us as well as being a tourist.

Once I arrived back in the city we did a bit of walking and more apartment searching. We were both desperate and unknowing but ended upon this cool little one bedroom. Its about 400 square feet with one front room (bedroom / living room / office) and one back room (kitchen and sometimes bedroom). There were two caveats with this place: one we knew before we paid our security deposit, one after. Before we moved in, and something that is pretty obvious from the photo: No furniture. Oh, we're also on the third floor of a walk-up. Walk-ups don't usually phase me, but these stairs are so steep I actually feel like I'm climbing a ladder. (Mom & Dad: we'll find you a nice hotel in the area cause I don't think it'll be easy for you guys to get up here.) So, no furniture in our new apartment and where do we go? IKEA! Seriously, this is where you go when you want cheap stuff in Europe. Its like a nice version of WalMart with no creepy people... well there's Eurotrash but I don't understand French still so they're still just "exotic." We were able to stock our kitchen with cooking supplies, two sets of eating utensils and two bed rolls for under 100$. That's Dollars, not Euros. We've got to do another trip to get "furniture" so we aren't sleeping on the floor, and so we have chairs. I'll go through a real breakdown of the "minimal kitchen" we've stocked in another episode for now I'll go onto the rest of the apartment.

The second caveat we learned about the first night we slept in our apartment. We spent the majority of the day moving our stupid amount of luggage from our temporary spot to our "permanent" spot (including the stairs) so we were pretty spent. Except when we got the apartment it was the middle of the day, and the three bars and restaurants that are immediately beneath us hadn't opened yet. We're right near St. Gery, which is one of the major nightlife spots in Brussels. Also, it just happens to be a big Jazz weekend... so there was plenty to keep us awake in our apartment all night. This is the moment where our kitchen (in the back) became our bedroom for a short while. Well, no matter what, we're pretty happy with the apartment because its pretty close to everything in the center of the city. I'm also about five minutes from my office... and that's worth the cost of the apartment by itself. Even with a trombone player standing right outside my apartment I will still get more sleep because of its office proximity.

I think Wednesday I will write what I promised and put down all the crap American food I ate while I was home. *Spoiler alert* cheese puffs and fried chicken. By the way, all you nay-sayers who thought the Waffles had calories: I lost over 10 lbs while I was in Brussels. Belgians don't lie: Waffles are 0 Calories and 0 Fat. Eat as many as you like when you come visit.

I'm alive and well.

2009-05-12T06:25:00.003+02:00

I'll apologize to everyone for the recent month long outage. Here's the deal: I had to return to the US. I last left with some words about an equine delicacy and a big french mess. Immediately following an extended work session I went to deal with "visa stuff," only to learn that 7 days later I would be escorted out of the EU back to the US. I basically had to rush to get all the paperwork done in Brussels that could get done there and then fly back and WAIT until my visa was ready.

That brings me to a month of silence. I'm sure it was based on a little disappointment that I had to cut my adventure a little short with a hiccup but in addition I didn't have many exciting things to write about. Since I've returned every day is Saturday. It is a wonderful break, but not one I was prepared for so it wasn't entirely welcome. I will shortly write an update on what I've done while I was home. It will mostly be about the disgusting but necessary food items I've digested while home. But I will be scaling back my writing a little bit. Once I return to Brussels (on May 21st) I'll be there for almost a year and it won't be as "new" as it was in January. I'm still going to be as American as possible and maintain a healthy amount of exploration into embarrassing myself. But I will only be writing 3-4 times a week. I plan to write M-W-F and the occasional weekend. This will allow me time to prepare and set up pictures and such.

I've also been a bit silent about the whole deal because I didn't want to write about how I "hoped" things were going. Today the final piece of the puzzle (working permit) was completed. I will be turning in the final paperwork for a Visa by the end of the week and returning to Brussels Visa in hand. What you see in the image (which is a little small) is a piece of paper that says I can work in Belgium for up to ONE year. I need to renew if I stay beyond that. I'll explain a lot more about how this works in a following post as this is more of a teaser. I will also be writing a post soon detailing all the 'catching up' I have done in the US as well as leaving Belgium shenanigans. I'll say this much, 8 hours in Dulles Airport is not awesome.

I was so hungry, I could eat a horse.

2009-04-16T22:42:00.003+02:00

So I went to the butcher down the street and bought a horse steak... I've been planning this one for a while. Both the horrible joke, AND the consumption of horse. Once I was told that there is a chance that any steak you are eating in a restaurant could be horse... I went out LOOKING for horse. But in my searching, I've learned that "restaurant with horse" is not the best possible way to find what I was looking for via GOOGLE. In the end, its best to go to the source and ask them.

My idea was to stop at a good looking butchery and ask what restaurant would be best for a foreigner to try out horse. I got way ahead of myself when I realized the only word I could communicate in that sentence was Horse... Cheval. The Butcher knew NO English, and all I could really say was, "I'd like some horse." He put a hand up (in a cartoonish way), left, and upon returning had a steak in his hand and insisted, "Cheval." Ok, I guess I can just cook it myself... why didn't I think about that sooner. It was priced about the same as a medium cost beef steak: 4.50 Euros for around 300 Grams (which is plenty for a serving).

I was planning on a steak dinner for Easter, with some new experimentation, but I decided to go with my classic tried and true steak cooking method. Sear in a pan with some oil, salt and pepper... nothing more. I was told to be careful with the horse as it is much more tender than beef and tends to over cook quickly. After doing a bit of research I also learned that horse can contain half the calories of beef by weight, and almost double the protein. Its like a super steak... but how did it taste? Hard to describe, but it was just different enough to exit beef territory. It was extremely tender, and had a very slight gamy taste. This was a mixture of venison and beef.

Horse isn't something I'm going to be looking for constantly, but its always fun to find culturally accepted things that just aren't available in the States. Next week? Waffles...

"Waffle Breakfast" or "The 25 Hour Day"

2009-04-15T21:29:00.003+02:00

Its been a while... I'll admit it. I've posted about 13 days LESS than I should have this month according to my average for the first two months. As you can imagine... this does not bode well for the rest of the daily habits: no blogging, no pushups, no spending reports, no french. Bleh. But If you remember from one of my previous posts I described one of my new habits/celebrations as the post-all nighter waffle breakfast. In the past two weeks... I've eaten a LOT of waffles. That said, this will be a post about a multitude of concerns that pushed me towards extra waffles and a "25" in the Wednesday column of my time sheet.

I'll start at the beginning: In the past three weeks, three people from my project team (of six) have left. Those three people were also the people who had the most long term experience with the project. It is also important to mention the fact that I have had four deadlines since the beginning of April. Oh... and my project manager got chicken pox and was out of the office for about six days during the last two deadlines. That sets the stage a little bit, imagine too much work with a shrunken inexperienced (on the project) team. At each of the previous meetings there have been so many changes that we have edited essential building elements (elevator location, entire building dimensions and proportion blah blah blah). That is our given environment, next I'll give a list of very generic requirements for this project:

1. Renovation to an existing building in Paris (we are adding a "new building" on the roof of an old warehouse/factory)

2. This is a "master planned" project. One team of architects set up rules, and about six other companies are each designing their building to fit within the rules. Our company has Two buildings, I am in charge of one of them. The master planners coordinate all project teams, they also change things for the lower floors which will be commercial space.

3. I have one neighbor, with whom I share a wall.

4. There is a restaurant shoved into the bottom two floors of my building... but I am required on floors 3-7 to go to a lot limit that is on TOP of the restaurant. This means I have a mechanical shaft (for the stove) running through my building to the roof. This mechanical shaft is as large as my bedroom in my apartment in Jersey City.

5. We have a client beyond the master planning team who have their own set of requirements.

6. These clients are building "social housing," or super cheap government subsidized housing.

6a. In social housing EVERY apartment needs to be handicapped accessible.

7. The client is also a savvy developer and has been making a lot of money for a long time building social housing, their requirements are intense.

8. We are contractually obligated to create a certain amount of square meters of housing as well as a certain number of apartments in that square meters.

8a. There is a chart that shows us how many apartments of each TYPE there needs to be (5% studio, 25% 1br, 35%2br, 30% 3br, 5% 4br)... also a sub chart that shows us that more importantly we need to have a mixture of 3&4 bedroom apts that adds up to 35% of the total.

9. Each apartment type has a prescribed number of rooms, each room has a prescribed maximum area, each room also has a minimum dimension for window space.

10. We need to have a magical efficiency ratio. We measure this by comparing the rentable space (literally the floor that you can rent... not space inside walls) to the total built space. This has to end up at 87% The calculation has a lot of complicated gimmicks and loop holes but this is the basis.

10a. This requirement makes me pull my hair out.

*11. The BBM (big boss man) needs to like the look of the project.

I starred 11 because it is a general office requirement, but makes this process unbelieveably more complicated. Usually social housing is designed as just that... social housing. I believe that when the project was conceived it was unknown what housing type we were working with... thus it was unrelated to its eventual programmatic function. So... hopefully if you've made it this far you have a sense of the complexities of the drawings, as well as the environment we are creating these drawings for.

About twelve days ago (soon after the three senior project team members left) a co-worker and myself decided to start from scratch. After a full three months of people working on it prior. With six days before a monthly presentation to the master planners. This was a response to a mis-understanding of apartment sizes and a requirement to cut the building from 5000 square meters (50,000 square feet) to 4400 (44,000 square feet... hopefully you're all catching the math). We had to keep the same number of apartments. We had to keep same rentable to built ratio. We had to keep the BBM happy, with a very similar form.

In addition to this, a consultant that will be on site working our project through the built stages stopped by the office and begged us to try to simplify the process and to use rational thought to make it work. We were excited by the idea, out of 63 apartments in the previously presented edition there were about 55 unique apartment types (this means a lot of drawing... a LOT OF DRAWING). After thoroughly disproving the ability for the previous building to be "fixed," we consulted the rest of the office for some fresh ideas. A few mentioned that the access to the apartments, or the public corridors off the elevator, seemed a little large or unnecessary. From there we drew about ten quick schemes of re-approaching the elevators and hallways in new ways. We found one we were happy with... but we had to also imagine a way to fit all the correct apartment types at the right size as well as keep the right percentages.

After our very basic sketches we spent almost four hours doing MATH in an attempt to predict the reality of the building. If you've made it this far you'll be rewarded to know:

A. Our ratio of rental to built space = 85% We were almost disappointed but,

B. We cut the total area down to 4300 square meters... 100 more than they asked.

C. We fit in 64 apartments... the last version only had 63 apartments.

D. Our apartments are within 5% of the "prescribed apartment size"

E. We have about ten different apartment types with minor variations on each.

I mentioned "about twelve days ago" for a specific reason. While, I know the exact time and date that we made the decision to re-work the base elements of the project I also marked 25 hours on my time sheet for a single day... making it quite hard to consider it a measly twelve days. That week deserved quite a few waffles.

Update!

2009-04-15T12:37:00.001+02:00

Check me again tonight. I should be filled with a shiny new post... Promise.

Spending Report: Week 10

2009-04-04T00:03:00.003+02:00

There are going to be two weeks relatively quickly here but oh well.

Overall: 68.20

Restaurant: 18.10

Groceries: 17.80

Fun: 14.00

Transportation: 8.00

Miscellaneous Food: 4.80

Stuff: 3.50

Beer: 2.00

Restaurant: This was lunch and dinner for a few days because of some late hours and au revoir parties. Not bad for multiple meals, but I should be cutting it down post April.

Groceries: This included a 3.50 Euro bottle of wine and a bunch of onions.

Fun: GIRL TALK!

Transportation: Au Revoir Liz night = Beer and Taxi's

Miscellaneous Food: I was pretty sick so I downed a few bottles of good juices through out the week.

Stuff: My previous 3.50 Euro umbrella suffered a fatal accident so it needed to be replaced with another flimsy 3-5 use umbrella.

Beer: Beer.

I started off really well last week doing both french (over an hour two days in a row) and physical stuff (like 150 sit ups and 90 push ups). Then I got sick on Wednesday and I'm still getting over it now... I'll blame some Belgian devil weed that decided it was pollination time.

This week was considerably worse as I'm still sick and I've been pulling mega hours again. The time change was not kind to my sickness, but sun until 8pm is very welcome.

What do I do?

2009-04-02T22:54:00.004+02:00

I thought maybe I should finally talk specifically about some of the work I'm doing. I've avoided talking and showing the work I've done up until now because of the starting exhibition date of the work: Tomorrow. Now I can show you guys what I worked on for the first month of my time in the office. I'll explain it a bit tomorrow, but for now just pictures. Most of the drawings I had a very direct relationship with . IE there was a team of three for the majority of the project, and a team of four for the final night of work. Only two of us were permanent fixtures in the project. I took photos of the recently completed model, but took no part in building it. My computer model was used to build the physical, but the whole thing was done by the BXL model building team: Congratulations guys, you did a great job. If you happen to be reading from northern Holland... you can go see the exhibition opening tomorrow.

Lets take care of some tasks!

2009-04-01T22:56:00.004+02:00

The previous weekly spending report will return tomorrow, its been a busy few days. For now I'll cover two of the fun events from the past few days. #1 Successful European Bank Account event. #2 The Worst Apartment I've Ever Seen. I capitalized them for dramatic effect.

I didn't work on Tuesday and took care of some of the items on my "to do list". A quick side note: I went to the US Consulate to get finger prints. It was on "Consulate Row," which is a long street with a ton of security and lots of different consulates. Each member of the security force had to stop me on my way and all I really wanted to do were finger prints. I got it done, Step one complete. Lesson learned? The ring finger is pretty useless when you're trying to control it alone. Moving on, the next step? Paying rent. I've finally been requested by my landlord/flat manager to pay my rent correctly. The past two months I've paid in cash, and this time the flat manager decided to not let me be lazy. I went to finalize and start using my European Bank Account.

I accomplished three things during this trip: 1. Depositing money into my account. 2. Receiving and activating a card. 3. Payment Transfer. The first was the simplest, I gave them my account number and a bunch of cash. They told me the money would be noticed by the internal computer system within 20 minutes. The second step was easy, I didn't even have to show ID. I gave a separate person my account number and they handed me the card... which the clerk referred to as "she" because again, there is no gender neutral pronoun in French (I have to make note of gender based references to inanimate objects as they usually fascinate me). I put a PIN on the card and signed for it and I was good to go. I then went on to step 3 which was the most interesting. I went to a different bank (because it took 20 minutes to get there and was on my way home) and went in to use the automated banking service. I had a little personal desk and computer that I put my card into. I was able to do account referencing and investing, but more importantly was money transfers. This is the main way to pay bills in Belgium. I was able to input my landlords bank account number and set the account to personally pay him on a specific date with a receipt. SO! Bills paid. I've also got to say I learned about an incredibly unnecessary Belgian card system. I'm not entirely sure what it is called, but I can load a preset amount of money (under 50 Euros) to my debit card on the "chip" in front. With this I can pay small fees at most convenience stores and really most contemporary shops. I wouldn't need to use my pin and it is instantaneous. But here's the weird part... if your card gets stolen or lost, you LOSE the money you've preset to the card. I'm pretty sure I've heard of this before: Cash... weird.

The second event of note was apartment searching. I've finally found a "reliable" source of apartments to scan through that has a reasonable selection and is still in English. Prices are included along with photos and lots of other info. It isn't an individual real estate service, but an index. The caveat being that you deal with a second individual not linked to the index. Anyway... There is another American in the office that I discussed looking for an apartment with. Two bedroom places are much cheaper per person, but he was on a short time frame and we weren't restricting ourselves to two bedrooms only. He eventually signed on a one bedroom today because he had to get a place for April where I need a place for May... oh well. But this isn't a story about what he got... this is the story of the WORST APARTMENT I'VE EVER SEEN.

We should have been tipped off by the single photo included on the website looking out the window. We walked down to meet the land lord and take a look at the 670 Euro Two bedroom Apartment. Before entering I'll make note of the context: Avenue Anspacht is like the crappy part of Broadway that goes past Chinatown. Its crowded with people looking for awful urban discount stores. I believe there was a dollar store (euro store) about two storefronts down. Upon entering, I was relatively impressed at the in-progress upgrade to the foyer of the building. Then we walked through the second set of doors into the foyer of a 1990's urban horror movie. There was no "finish" material to be seen. The floors were original, unfinished lumber and we had to walk up six flights of stairs past a few very nice looking (or really scary) gentlemen. I'm pretty sure the door wasn't even a door... but a piece of plywood with a door knob hewn into it. We entered the apartment to see that there was still no "finish floor." Maybe you're unsure what I mean by "unfinished" floor. To make it easier: generally you can't see through the floor boards into the apartment below, untrue in this occasion.

I also made note that the land lord was very creative with his listing of square meters on the index. Within each of the bedrooms (that couldn't have been 6'x10') there was a loft above the entrance. I recognize that this is common in New York to achieve a sleeping space and still have a fully accessible bedroom. Those aren't usually made with 2x4s and plywood. I believe he used these lofts to add square meters to his listing. At this point I've become a master of apartment sizes in meters because I've been drawing them for the past two weeks constantly. The developer I'm working for would be impressed to hear that this land lord fit 64 square meters of crappy apartment into a 45 square meter space. Also, physicists are soon to question his ability to fold space and time. I've been pretty generous (nice) while describing the apartment so far. Onto the negative side: it reeked of what I imagine death smells like. I may have achieved a lifetime of asbestos poisoning in a single sitting upon entering this place. My American co-worker didn't have the patients to be nice to the land lord and I only humored him for about two minutes. We soon left and Ryan said to me, "Thank you Scott. That could be the worst apartment I've ever seen." I will forever be proud of that moment.

Flowery Experiments

2009-03-29T00:51:00.002+01:00

I've been sick for a few days and wanted a good bowl of soup for dinner tonight. Sad news for me: canned soup sucks here (many might believe it sucks in the US, but you need to try it in Belgium to know how much soup can really suck). So I did a bit of research and decided to make myself some french onion soup. No time to consult my uncle so I went with an old favorite: Alton Brown. A mixture of his advice and some of my random side steps and we've got a solid bowl of happy warm onion broth.

At the store I ended up with a bag of onions, I didn't look for anything specific. I got a nice baguette and some cheese. I can't remember what I got, but it was a nice soft french cheese to melt on the baguette. I got a bottle of white wine. I got some bouillon cubes. I was specifically told not to do this by Alton, but he wasn't shopping in Belgium so I've gotta work with what I've got.

The overall process was really easy with the only painful part being the onion cutting. I followed Altons process of prepping all the onions to start and leaving them cut side down on the board. This meant that the major pain was during a relatively short period of time. I sliced the onions in a radial manner to make nice little half moons... not sure why I was supposed to cut them this way, but it was fun. While I was doing all this I had a diluted chicken broth started on the stove. Then I put a bunch of butter in a big pan and used the "low and slow" cooking method for the onions. After about half an hour of light sauteing I ramped the heat up to get some caramelization (or almost burn) on the onions and then put in a bunch of the white wine. After letting the white wine reduce I added the chicken stock.

The final addition was the cheesy toast... it ended up really good, and not too salty at all. The color wasn't great because I didn't caramelize the onions enough to give it the nice deep brown, but otherwise it was hearty and made me feel warm.

Anyone who's enjoyed the food editions in the past should go back and find the older food posts and head to the comments. My uncle has finally "stopped by" to comment and you can see some real criticism in place.

To do list:

2009-03-26T22:38:00.002+01:00

I'm sick so I'm gonna keep it real short tonight... but i've got a to do list that will hopefully provide some interesting future posts.

#1. Acquire a work visa!

#2. Look for a new apartment.

#3. Sign up for real French classes.

I should also mention I don't think I'm sick, but maybe allergic to some mutant European vegetation. I've never really been one with allergies before... but this sickness comes just in season.

Also, fun story... I forgot to sign into my blogger account in English so the spell check is correcting me straight into Dutch.

I enjoy hot chocolate too often.

2009-03-25T22:54:00.011+01:00

I'm a sucker for hot chocolate, I won't lie to anyone about that. But when I saw this new hot chocolate medium... I was astonished. Simple concept: put Belgian chocolate on a stick and melt it into a cup of hot milk. Not hot water, hot milk. Also, while stirring the choco-stick you can sneak a bite or two of the melty chocolate bits straight off the spoon/stick. I first saw a stack of flavors in my favorite chocolate shop near my office metro stop.

I soon found a tourist locale where one can purchase both the stick AND the hot milk at the same time. I ventured with the Honey & Seasalt which was probably unnecessary, I should have gone with a simpler flavor. There wasn't enough salt to cut the sweetness the honey added to the whole business. Never the less, it was thick, creamy and a great warming treat on a cool day. I noticed that there were also liquor based concoctions that I may try on another occasion. As the chocolate melts it allows the liquor to flow freely into the brew. This said, I think we need more innovation in warm chocolate beverage delivery. Thoughts?

GIRL TALK!

2009-03-24T23:07:00.003+01:00

Another co-worker is leaving. Goodbye Liz, you leave a big American legacy behind. I was invited by Liz to a Girl Talk show and having been to the show before, I knew it would be a good time. Brussels was nice, we went to the Botanique venue.

Now, this venue was awesome. The show itself was in a rotunda (a big cylinder) that couldn't have been more than 40 feet across (or 12 meters for the Europeans). This meant that the "standing room" was about as large as the stage and by the end of the show they were one and the same. Also, I was standing in the back... and During the show Gregg Gillis (girl talk himself) decided to grace my shirt with his man sweat. He jumped down from the stage and hopped around into me... I may never wash my shirt again I'm so honored. Then again, I got chocolate milk on the shirt today and I don't want it to stain.

Also, instead of french tonight I'm mentally roaming around online classes. I'm watching a class on "Introduction to Starcraft and Competitive Gaming." Droz was right (16 years ago) when he said, "you can major in gameboy if you know how to bullshit."

Sell everything you own.

2009-03-23T23:11:00.002+01:00

Seriously. Before you consider the big move across one of the oceans (or Mexico) please look at the solid objects you own. Trust me when I say you don't need 90% of them. Near the beginning of this blog I wrote about "things to do before you leave." The list talked about banks and other "on paper," things to consider. I think this is more important, but not as easy to do. Sell everything... and then when you feel comfortable with how much stuff you have, sell more. I certainly didn't follow my own advice and brought WAY TOO MUCH with me. I'm eyeballing my three pieces of luggage that are overfull with stuff: Clothing, wires and books.

It's important to note that I love books, and I read often... my library is unnecessarily large and full of books I want to read. I knew I couldn't carry three book shelves worth of stuff with me overseas so I put a bunch in cold storage, promising the books I wouldn't abandon them and that someone would read them soon. I sold a huge portion of the library and sold my entire childhood collection of video games. This step was very necessary for me to feel the "cleanse" bug and soon after I felt good trashing everything I had. Not only was this a pretty good source of bonus cash, but it helped me rationalize leaving things behind. It started the process of mentally preparing myself to change my day to day existence into something new. I still ended up with a bunch of books that were on the top of my mental "list to read." The library was a starting point and it extended to a lot of the stuff I had avoided trashing for years.

I began a process of examining things that I thought I needed at all times. I brought about 18 paperback books with me and 3 DVDs. I brought a gameboy, two external hard drives, cameras (digital & slr) and a cache of charging/converting devices, daily clothing & "nice" clothing and some bedding. One of the pieces of advice I read in a book suggested taking a list of books / movies you want to consume and just rebuy them in the new place when you need them. This makes a lot of sense as I haven't gotten through nearly as many of the books as I'd like. But now, when I finish the books I donate them or sell them. Once I've finished a novel there is no reason to keep it. If it is non-fiction and something I'd like to reference I plan on scanning the important parts and backing them up. If I need to reference it in the future, I can probably find the same book in a library. I've also realized I was a little over-ambitious with the "nice" clothing. I think I packed about 90% more than I will ever use, and I could have saved myself a few pounds on the trip over.

I'm writing about all this as I begin to look for a new apartment and contemplating moving the same three pieces of luggage again. All I want to do is sell or donate enough to bring myself down to one large bag and a backpack.

Ok, well today I did about an hour on Rosetta Stone learning a bit about plurals and conjugation. Its pretty useful to help picking up on the sounds of plurals since its a bit more subtle than I'm used to. I've also been looking at details the past few days in French, and hopefully soon I'll be able to tell a contractor what materials he should use... but not be able to say "Hi, how's it going?" Also, this past Friday I went to Pecha Kucha night (a Japanese presentation style for designers). This was a fun event because there were English, French and Dutch presentations. Among the francophone presenters there was one Canadian, one French and one Belgian; I was very able to notice the difference between each of the regional variations on French and it was fun to hear them so close to one another. I also realized that I can get the general idea of a presentation in French, but in Dutch... whoa, I have NO idea what's going on.

I'm a Tourist: Photolog

2009-03-22T21:22:00.007+01:00

Spending Report Week 9

2009-03-21T22:38:00.004+01:00

*Announcement* Rotterdam won, it will be the first trip though I still don't know when it's gonna happen. I found out I can take a round trip on a bus up there for 22 Euros which is a very good price.

I've officially been in Belgium for two months today. Brussels decided to celebrate by having a no-jacket weather weekend. I had a day planned with a cool walking tour of a neighborhood I haven't been to: Etterbeek. I did something dumb though, I checked my camera after walking out of my apartment to learn that it was dead. Thus, a good day of tourism un-documented. I means I'm just gonna have to go back and do it again... (maybe it was a good mistake, I really enjoyed the area).

Personal Development: Not bad, push ups and sit ups were done on schedule. On the other hand, French... not so good. At this point I'll chalk it up to laziness and re-plan this whole thing. Starting Monday I'll put a tiny extra post purely to explain what I've studied on a day to day basis for french. Maybe the daily writing commitment will help.

Spending = Good. In fact, I brought it below last week. I did an average mix of take in lunch and a lot of cooking for dinner. My "celebratory" lunch today didn't break the bank either.

Overall: 57.39

Restaurant: 19.70

Groceries: 18.47

Miscellaneous Food: 15.82

Beer: 3.40

Restaurant: This is really only two lunch days and some pizza today. I went to a place where you order pizza by weight and had a big chunk with some nice buffala mozzarella on top (not melted).

Groceries: The usual, I'm going to go to Gare Du Midi tomorrow (big market on Sundays) to get some good cheese and some produce to add to the week

Miscellaneous Food: Waffles et al

Beer: I had to celebrate St. Pattys with a few Guinness.

This was an interesting week for money though as two opposing events occurred. #1 I got my tax return back (yay). #2 One of the largest weekly changes in the dollar EVER (boo). Essentially all the growth the dollar made in the first seven weeks I was here was erased on the eighth week I was here. Luckily I pulled a bit of cash out last week so I have a reserve but if I have to pull any out soon I'll lose an extra 10 cents on the dollar UGH.

The BIG map

2009-03-19T23:07:00.003+01:00

I wanted to give a little idea of where I am on the bigger map. I've marked places I've been to in Green and places I want to go to in Red. I don't necessarily want to go to Groningen but the first project I completed for the office was there... so I thought I'd put it on the map. So far I've stuck to the classic Flemish travel destinations in Belgium, with Liege as a Wallonian destination. Koln (or Cologne for the Americans) is the closest major city within a train trip into Germany. I've marked Rotterdam and Amsterdam as my northern trips, Rotterdam first. Then London and Paris are pretty obvious choices. The most interesting part about this map is that the furthest place (Koln) is Two hours and twenty minutes by train. Paris is only 1:22 but is one of the only trips you've gotta book in ADVANCE. If you guys had voted Paris for the sooner trip I'd be outta luck as the cheapest round trip was still over 100 Euro (not worth it). I found out if I book at least 15 days in advance I can get it closer to 60 Euro on the Thalys (super fast train).

We shall see how all this works out. Until tomorrow!

the expat ARCHITECT.

2009-03-18T23:00:00.002+01:00

Yes yes, I've been missing the posts based on the title. There are a few reasons, #1 once I get home the last thing I want to think about is work. But more importantly is #2- Sometimes it is difficult to separate what I'm doing as an architect versus what I'm doing as an employee of an office. I don't really want this to end up being a blog about the company I work for, but about my experiences learning about a culture by learning how to design for the people within the culture.

I bring this up after spending quite a few hours drawing apartments for French (Parisian) social housing in the past week. The new project I am on is fortunate enough to have two completely separate guidelines: The Master Plan and the developer client. Each presentation we prepare has to be aimed to appeasing the coordinators of the plan while showing the developer we can make them money. The rules from the developer are especially confusing and detailed, but have helped me get a 1:100 grasp on Metric. What I mean is that until now I've been converting meters-feet in my head whenever someone gives me a dimension, I haven't had to be that precise just yet. But this past week I've been shoe-horning 6 lbs (or grams) of apartments into a 5lb (gram) bag. This means I've gotten more accustomed to seeing a hall as 90cm instead of 36 inches. I did specify that I'm comfortable with metric at 1:100 (or 1/8th scale)... this week I'm starting on details which will help me understand materiality proportions in metric as well.

In order to work on the apartments, the developer designed this fancy little chart which ranges from T-1 to T-5. T-1 is a studio where a T-5 is a 4 bedroom apartment. Each of these apartments has specific square meter counts PER ROOM in addition to minimum dimensions for handicapped accessibility. So, in the past five days I've been drawing and putting puzzle pieces into the footprint of the building we've designed and hoping that they all fit. It is tedious and boring but an incredibly effective learning mechanism. There is also one more little rule that seems increasingly more obscure to me: There has to be two doors between the living room and any bathroom. I guess this is the french fart barrier, or at the very least an aural separation between bathroom and living room. That added rule makes the space planning geometrically more complicated and sometimes my head hurts while I'm trying to make some of the larger spaces.

I'm glad I got a fart joke in there. Also, European daylight saving is different, but its also going to be much different for us. I realized today that the sun doesn't set here until almost 7pm anyway and haven't had daylight saving yet. Next week the sun will be up LATE... summer late hours should be great with all the extra light. As long as I'm not drawing T3's.

Cool Food

2009-03-17T21:25:00.004+01:00

After a long week at the office I wanted to relax a bit on my Saturday. I also didn't spend much so I thought I'd maybe splurge and go out to a nicer restaurant and try some fun foods. After looking through my guide book and taking some local suggestions I decided on comocomo. This is a tapas bar that takes a huge influence from restaurants in Japan.

COMOCOMO is Spanish for "how do I eat," which is fun to say. The Restaurant serves Pintxos is explained as different from tapas because they are meant to be eaten with your fingers. What this really means is that they put something normally eaten with a fork, onto a small piece of bread. This doesn't necessarily work with all the dishes but I mentioned a Japanese influence, this occurs in the delivery (not the bread). The entire restaurant is like one big bar that wraps around. What makes it unique is the conveyor belt that also weaves its way around the space. I went for lunch, I've learned this is the best time to try great restaurants, and was luckily placed right in front of the chef. He spoke English and was very helpful with the dishes. The idea is that the chef prepares a bunch of small colored plates of food and places them on the conveyor. The colors represent a category of food (black = meat for example) and you pay based on how many dishes you've consumed by the end of the meal. This is commonplace in sushi restaurants in Japan and the system is almost exactly the same. Pay per dish, at COMOCOMO they have set rates for 3-6-9 dishes and any extra dish is 2 euro.

A quick run down: 1. Pork, Bacon & Potatoes, 2. Quail breast & Mint, 3. Sobressada, Cheese & Honey, 4. Manchego, Honey & Quince, 5. Quail Leg & Star Anise, 6. Lamb Rib & Rosemary, 7. Frog Legs & Sesame. By far the most memorable dishes of the night were the Sobressada with Cheese and Honey, the Quail Leg with Star Anise and the Quail Breast with Mint. The rest were very very good, but seemed like something I may cook for myself... pedestrian dishes. Before the good is the bad: the Frog Legs weren't great mainly because the sesame completely over powered the frog itself, I was basically eating a sesame chip with a little bit of frog. Also, the lamb rib with rosemary... it was good and is a classic pairing. Instead the dish needed to be considered a Pinxtos (eat with your hands) so they put it on a piece of bread. It still has a rib in it. You can't eat it with a piece of bread underneath. The redeeming quality was that I watched the chef cook the lamb dish start to finish.

Ok, Sobressada is a Majorcan (Spanish island) pork sausage and with this dish it looked to be taken out of its casing and just used as a ground spiced pork. The cheese was... unnecessary but the key to the dish was the honey. The contrast between the spice of the paprika and pork and the sweetness of the honey was beautiful. I could have eaten seven plates of that one dish and been very happy. The Quail Breast & Mint was nice. I'm pretty sure the mint was put into a yogurt or mayonnaise, but the absolute subtlety of the cool sweetness was very refreshing on a nicely cooked savory quail breast. I liked the Quail with Star Anise because it was a slightly different take on the chicken drumstick that I've had so many different ways. The flavor of the dish seemed very Indian, but much simpler, I imagined that star anise is a major portion of the spice within a curry based dish.

The food was but one part of the journey. I got to sit and watch a chef prepare a huge portion of appetizer portions and he explained each one as he placed them on the conveyor belt for me. I spent an hour and a half drinking some wine, watching him cook and tasting some small plates. For under 20 Euros... I wonder if a certain uncle of mine would care to comment on the idea as this post is mainly for him. I want to try some more interesting places about... apparently Horse Steaks are relatively popular here so maybe I'll try to find one.

Antwerp: With Friends pt. 2

2009-03-17T08:35:00.008+01:00

Another Late night, but after a quick nap I'm making an effort to still make my "Monday" post. Its St. Patricks day and we've got two Irish folk in the office so I may be celebrating tonight and didn't want to miss another two days. Also someone mentioned that my posts seem to be "slowing down." That's motivation right there. Also, 4 votes for Rotterdam... If there happen to be 5 people looking for Paris they'd better speak up in the comments today as I'm planning on going this weekend.

So, we last left our architecture heroes at Hangar 26 where they looked at the architecture building. Little did they know, but in the near vicinity was a brand spankin new piece of architecture by Neutelings called the MAS Museum. We got to see it mid-progress and I think we all decided if they stopped building right where they were it would end up as a better building. In the photo (and rest of the photos in the album) you'll see that there is this cool spiral void cut out of the mass. Unfortunately you'll also see that they're beginning to close off the awesome void with stupid wavy glazing. One of the most impressive (and unshowable) parts of the project is the site: On a platform in the middle of a secondary canal heading out towards the main river. This makes it partially isolated and providing the visitors with awesome views of lower Antwerp. Unfortunately, the stupid curved glass will ALWAYS be in glare. It would be like surrounding the top of Rockefeller Center with frosted glass so you only get a blurry view of Manhattan.

After the mini excursion we headed back towards the "downtown" area of Antwerp to catch the end of a cattle show. I met a Belgian Blue here... This is a cow with a mutation including a secondary layer of muscle that has been breed mainly in Belgium, hence the name. Awkward and true story: After seeing the cattle, our native Belgian tour guide (and co-worker) decided to show us the Red Light District. We weren't the only group on a tour, but that didn't make it any less awkward. One of the reasons he brought us was that one specific corridor was designed recently by a Belgian architect specifically to function within the district. Lots of tiny "storefronts" with the ladies standing by the door. No photos though... for obvious reasons in addition to the fact that a member of the group brought out a camera and an angry larger woman popped outta nowhere to yell, "NO CAMERAS!" Fun times.

Like any tour of a city by a group of architects, you eventually end up at the cities architectural book store/museum. We were determined not to go in the museum, but I still took a pic of the cool entrance space. We also just did some aimless wandering, and I'd love to include some more pics but in reality there are just too many. At the top I included a picture of a cool graffiti park, there should be a bunch more in the album. Also... Obligatory waffle photo. It was good, but my waffle guy does a better job.

From this point on a bunch of people went their separate ways, a few remained to continue trekking through Antwerp. There was nothing of note to comment about, just a few cool projects that you can see in the album. We ended up getting pizza at a relatively inexpensive pizza place, but were very confused by the menu in the process. It turns out Prosciutto pizza is just the name of the pizza as it does not include prosciutto, just ham. I wasn't sure what to make of this, but the pizza was good anyway so I was happy. We took a later train back and got to see the station lit up, which was again impressive.

Everyone enjoy their St. Pattys day and drink something green... preferably alcoholic.

Spending Report Week 8

2009-03-15T20:19:00.003+01:00

*Announcement* I'm going to go on a weekend (instead of day) trip soonish. Its up to you guys to determine where I'm going. Vote in the comments on Rotterdam or Paris. Rotterdam is supposed to have a ton of beautiful contemporary architecture where Paris is... well Paris. *End Announcement*

Ugh, another bad week for Personal Development. I did push ups and sit ups Monday but then stayed in the office all night Wednesday and Thursday so I slept through Friday. I'm not doing well... I'll keep you updated, but I'm still going to push myself to finish everything. On the other hand, I did finish a book. This is the first book that I've started and finished while I've been here. Sometimes I need a motivational (meaning easy to read) book to get me into a reading mood, I'm already 20% of the way through another book since finishing the last.

Money was good this week as I spent most of my time in the office, and as a group we didn't go out but cooked in. I decided to go out for a cool meal on Saturday, but otherwise my spending was minimal. I'll post about that meal later this week, after the conclusion to Antwerp.

Overall: 63.36

Groceries: 27.06

Restaurant: 24.80

Miscellaneous Food: 11.50

Groceries: This was last Sunday and this Saturday, a bunch of veggies and rice and some good protein.

Restaurant: I went out for a lunch once with the office and then I spent 19 Euro on a cool lunch Saturday

Miscellaneous Food: This is covering the stuff I bought to help cook dinner every day of the week. In addition my post all nighter routine is to walk home with a Waffle from my waffle guy at Schuman. If you don't have a waffle guy, you should get one.

That's all for the week. Oh, almost forgot, TAX TIME. A good friend of mine suggested TaxACT and he was right on the money (get it... money? taxes? ugh). I paid 0$ for federal and 13.95$ for state. I'm pretty damn happy with that versus stupid H&R Block.

Antwerp: With Friends pt. 1

2009-03-14T23:10:00.008+01:00

This week a co-worker and friend left the company and Belgium to go back to Portugal. A lot of the office came out together to spend time with Miguel and to go on a trip to Antwerp. Hopefully the trip wasn't a one time event, and hopefully we can go see other locations with even more zebra horses.

SO, on to the trip. We all met at the Central Station around 9am and took a 9:30 train to Antwerp. It was a 9.80 Euro "weekend round trip" which means one way each direction to be used whenever during the weekend. If we happen to stay in one of the clubs all night we could come back in the morning. That didn't happen, but it was an option. We ended up in Antwerp around 10:30 with very few plans for what to do. My guide book wasn't very helpful, but thankfully someone had a tiny print map for cheap/free things to do in the city. We ignored our first destination as we were completely distracted by the intense scale of the central station in Antwerp.

This station was by far the most beautiful I've been in. The depth of the space was overwhelming, it also maintained a wonderful contrast in age. The 19th/20th century steel shed was maintained, but the ground hollowed out beneath to make a massive canyon of train tracks and platforms. I don't mention it much, but this was truly an inspiring design to see. I could have stayed there for half an hour, eaten a waffle and came back to Brussels feeling accomplished. BUT, we did have another destination. The mini-guide suggested we could take a quick detour off the main stretch after exiting the station to see into the Antwerp Zoo. We were going to go see the giraffe! Alas, the "free viewing" area of the zoo was mostly under construction but we did happen to catch a glimpse of a zebra horse (or zorse as google corrects me). While fascinating, I came to see a Giraffe... and was disappointed. We moved on, aiming for the main pedestrian concourse of Antwerp. We were determined to avoid any cost based museums and just roam all day. This is a little bit backwards for Antwerp as the main drag is based on Shopping.

I've been told by some of my roommates that if you want to buy things you should not stay in Brussels, you should go to Paris OR Antwerp. Also, for those of you that have seen Snatch, diamonds do come from Antwerp. There is a museum... we did not go. Instead we continued walking until we found a cool church and square and our next destination: Frites. I won't include a pic because I've already got too many to include but know this: they were frit-tacular. I split a mayo-based dish with someone while another group tried the ketchup. I tested their ketchup concoction to learn that it was basically tomato jam... super sweet to the point that it tasted like NutraSweet was added. I'm not going to lie, it was kinda gross. Luckily I had some mayo left to remove the flavor.

Our next stop was the water front with a cool dock office building (hangar 46 in the first pic), an awkward Belgian statue and some cool new architecture. While we aimlessly wandered around on the waterfront, Miguel noticed something afar and whispered, "I think I see an architecture building." We were intrigued at what this could mean, and while walking towards the destination we first passed this weirdo. When I receive the photo, I'll post up a strange loop version of the statue (ie a recreation with Miguel and myself looking up at the statue from a similar vantage point). After this we found our way to the "architecture building," we were heading towards. It turned out to be an old warehouse building with the ground floor cleared out for parking and the second floor finished nicely for offices (mostly design based). Along the back side on the waterfront all the old cranes are still in place, probably still functioning and must provide an interesting view for all the employees.

Well, it seems this post would be quite long if I decided to continue on. So I've added a pt.1 to the title. This gives me a way of extending the usefulness of these photos into ANOTHER day. Fabulous. I'll say its been a bad week for posts... it was also a 72 hour work week with not so much sleep in the latter half so I didn't even try. I've got a bunch of things to write about in the back log including something related to being an "expat architect" for once.

In Antwerp: Teaser

2009-03-11T00:02:00.009+01:00

On Numbers

2009-03-09T23:17:00.003+01:00

An old co-worker (JustFoster) set up a blog and in one of his first "public" posts he wrote about Daylight Savings. I'd also like to look at Daylight Saving as a way to ruminate on the concept of numbers in a foreign place. On first glance the most obvious change: Time Zones. I am six hours ahead of the east coast (most of my friends and family), and nine hours ahead of the west coast (a select few). I'm also a full twelve hours ahead of Hawaii (an extremely select two). This all changed during Daylight Saving. For a long time I took for granted the idea of Daylight Saving. Yes, we turn the clocks back and forth... don't know why, don't care why, the sun is nicer in the spring because of it. This was until I said to my boss last Friday, "hey, its daylight savings this weekend." He replied, "no... no, its not." I learned that Europe in fact has a much later daylight savings than the US, and this is only a recent event. Pre-2007 the US had a later Daylight Saving adjustment, the US moved up the date because of both conclusive and in-conclusive evidence (not sure how this works) that there will be a 1% reduction in energy usage if we pushed Daylight Saving earlier into the spring. I won't argue, but it got my mind working on other differences.

A co-worker casually mentioned that "numbers are the same everywhere." For a long time I had a similar belief until I really thought about the differences between Metric and Imperial. I'm going to go a bit abstract for a moment but bear with me: Metric is based on the number 10... simple. Imperial is based on the number 12... also simple. The truly important portion of this is the factors involved. Take Metric and 10, it has the factors 2 and 5... and 10 but that's not really a factor. Metric is an extremely easy system because to change powers you just add or subtract a 0 from the end and halves are easy as well. Imperial on the other hand is a bit more complex. There are Four factors: 2,3,4,6. This makes life easy and complex. Easy because more factors usually means it is a lot easier to create fractions and teach the addition and subtraction to youth. Complex because you have to choose between a standard factor of 2 or 3.

Lets look at a ruler. If you are designing a ruler and take one inch you have two options within your factors for how to split things up. 2 is much easier because every knows a half. 3 is a little tougher. On the other hand, you can never split a number using the factor of 2 alone and end up with 1/12. This results in a ruler usually being divided into 16ths or 32nds. Now we have to do math based on the number 12 as well as the number 16 (or 32... and so on). Dumb.

These numbers pervade our existence in many other ways including money and time. For now I'm much more interested in Money. There are people who would prefer if the American money system moved to a base 12 system in order to create simpler math for lower denominations. The issue is that we are in fact close to the system already with our coins. Even though our money is based on 100 cents in 1 dollar, our coins are still very confused as to which system they would prefer. The most obvious is the Quarter. 25 is clearly a factor of 100, but 1/4th is not an easy fraction created with the factors of 2 and 5. The coin is a relic of an older time. The Euro for instance contains a 20 cent coin (1/5th) as well as a 2 cent coin (1/50th) also a 1, 10, and 50. The Metric (base 10) system remains consistent in their coins.

Christ, if you've made it this far you deserve a picture. That's a picture of a bronze man riding a camel... in Antwerp. This isn't meant as a lesson by any means... just me thinking about the confusion w/in the American system. I'll write again soon about how I'm progressing in the Metric system via architecture/food/temperature. Hint: not well.

Quail

2009-03-08T23:00:00.005+01:00

I went to the grocery store today and bought: A Quail. I was wrong about the partridge, they don't have those. In addition to Quail they also have Pigeon. Was I ready to eat the flying rat? No. I asked my uncle for some culinary aid in preparing these tiny birds. After he mentioned Mirepoix I had to remind him that I have the culinary training of a 9 year old. So, he went step by step and this was the result.

Step 1: Take the birds out of their packaging. DONE!

Step 2: Boil a bunch of salt in water. He gave me numbers, I couldn't find measure cups... oh well.

Step 3: Chill the water and dunk the birds. Let them sit for a period of time. I did cover them so they would stay under water and left them for two hours. This was because I got hungry and decided to cook. This step is called a Brine and is meant to add moisture and flavor.

Step 4: Prep the birds for cooking. I decided to do one in our "oven" and one in a pan. The Oven bird got a big lemon shoved up its butt. Both also got a bit of oil, salt and pepper.

Step 5: Oven bird goes into the toaster for about 35-40 minutes on 180 degrees (Celsius... yea, again just guessing). I did this until the "juices ran clear." The pan bird was a little tougher. I put a bunch of butter in a pan over medium heat. After melting I let it foam up a bit then seared both sides of the quail. I left it in the pan on medium and basted it with a spoon. Basically I just spooned the excess liquid back on top to help crisp the skin. I'm pretty sure I #1: burned the butter and #2 undercooked the pan quail.

Step 6: Rest. The birds keep cooking for a little while post direct heat. While I was doing all this I prepared some garlicky green beans.

Result? Moderate success. Like I said, I undercooked the pan bird and I think the burned butter didn't help the overall flavor. The skin was crispy and nice. The bird was pretty fun to eat but I actually did eat two as they were pretty skinny. I enjoyed the oven bird a bit more. I think putting the lemon in the cavity wasn't nearly enough, I should have put some of the juices over top of the bird before cooking as well as continuously basting the bird with the leaking lemon juice. The left over "gravy" at the bottom of the oven dish was fantastic and I've become a true believer in the strength of flavor acidity adds to food. I may cook these guys again if I've got a full Saturday or Sunday and go figure out what the whole mirepoix thing is, the price was just about right and if I can prepare a starch I'd only really need a single bird. Oh, it was 3.25 Euro for the package so they're priced pretty well.

Spending Report Week 7

2009-03-07T22:24:00.003+01:00

I'm going to double up the Spending Report with the Personal Development Report from now on on Saturdays. I think Sunday is a much better day for me to write about Tourism and such because I should be back home from any trips I take.

Push ups: I sucked this week, I didn't actually do them Wednesday and Friday was kind of a half job. I'm going to redo the first tier of week three to re condition myself.

Sit ups: I'm goin strong with these, Friday was tough as the total was over 130 with all the sets together.

Language: I'm frustrated that I again didn't go anywhere with French (the Scottish language teachers singing numbers didn't help). I'm also frustrated with myself because I'm not making an effort to attempt to pronounce anything correctly. I was talking to an Italian co-worker about cheese and pronounced Burrata as any American would and it took her about 10 seconds of thought to understand what I was talking about. She kinda laughed and pronounced it in a way that made it sound pretty... I didn't even attempt correct pronunciation before hand though. On a positive note I have been asking the store owners at my regular shops for the names of products in french and make sure to ask for it in French. I'm still not communicating, but I'm not ignoring anymore either.

Overall: 96.49

Stuff: 20.00

Transportation: 19.20

Miscellaneous Food: 15.59

Restaurant: 15.00

Tourism: 18.50

Beer: 7.00

Groceries: 1.20

Stuff: I got a web-cam. It helps a lot to see the people you miss in real time. I'm not big on photos so the web cam was a lot more natural way to say hi to family and friends.

Transportation: One round trip ticket to Bruges AND one round trip ticket to Antwerp (post tomorrow)

Miscellaneous Food: I'm pretty big on waffles when I'm being a tourist, and I had two tourism days this week = a lot of waffles.

Restaurant: I bought lunch twice this week and then got dinner while I was in Antwerp. A toasted panini with prosciutto, cheese and tomato is 3.50 Euro at a store right around the corner from the office. This is my go-to sandwich. They're also pre-assembled and I don't have to think too hard about naming what I'd like in the sandwich.

Tourism: This includes the two dumb museums in Bruges. It also includes a ticket to the Cinema on Friday. I went to see "Watchmen." I would have liked to take advantage of the Belgian release date (Wednesday) but didn't' have a chance. The theater was impressive, but I found it strange that it cost more to see the movie than take a round trip to Antwerp.

Beer: I got a few bottles (3) from the "Bottle Shop" in Bruges. There is some stupid number of beers there, and its usually very easy to find the Trappist and Abbey beers but a little harder to find the Lambic beers. I should have gotten more of the Cantillon Gueuze but I thought it would be cheaper at the factory here.

Groceries: I didn't go grocery shopping today because I was in Antwerp all day instead. I'm going to have to go all the way to the Sunday grocery store (most aren't open). That one purchase was a loaf of bread I got for sandwiches.

Anyway, It should be obvious that I took the planned trip to Antwerp. I had a good time with a bunch of folk from the office. I may actually include a picture of myself being a tourist this time around.

I'm a Tourist: Bruges pt. 2

2009-03-05T22:26:00.004+01:00

"If I had grown up on a farm... and was retarded, Bruges might impress me," -Collin Farrel in In Bruges. While in Bruges one walks and looks at pretty things. I mentioned yesterday Bruges kinda skipped the Industrial Revolution, and maintained its medieval appeal. I'm pretty sure the short of it is that Antwerp (over Bruges) became the economic capital in Belgium in the 15th century. Thus, no one built factories or any industry at all in Bruges. In fact, until 2002 the goal of the planning department was to maintin the "historic aesthetic." A portion of the people living in Bruges put up signs declaring they wanted more contemporary work. I'm pretty sure I found every piece. All four of them. I found them because I really just wandered aimlessly for about five hours. I also mentioned that I went to the Chocolate Museum and the Frites Museum.

The two museums were not worth the entrance fee. They were relatively small and didn't spend much space on the Belgian aspect of the products but on the overall history. I would have been much better off just roaming around a bit more and finding chocolate. Because I wasted a good ten Euro on those two museums I skipped out on one of the obligatory tourism events: Climbing to the top of the tower at the central market. It would cost me five Euro to walk up stairs and look at the city from above... but the cost and the incredible line made me avoid it all together. Basically, I picked a direction and walked till I hit a canal. Then I spun in circles a bit and picked another new direction and walked till I hit a canal. I followed a few canals until I hit a waffle. Then I picked a direction and walked till I hit the hot chocolate place. I imagine you can see the trip in your head from where you sit. Eventually I started picking tall buildings and aiming for them. All in all I think I roamed down a bunch of the secondary streets, which were still just as pretty as the main ones.

During all this I went through a range of emotions. The beginning of my trip was, "yay, I can take pictures of all these pretty places." By the end I so saturated with pretty that I craved angry looking things. Every moment of contrast became wonderful. I had a great time looking for those products of contemporary life stuck within a time warp. The bridge and covered space aren't not really within the main city, they were nice but independent of the city. I really enjoyed the Toyo Ito pavilion with the honeycomb structure. I also liked the private moments where Belgians actually made sure to put up something new.

I realized I didn't have too much to say about my roamings so I tried to keep it short. I'm going to Antwerp with a few people from the office this weekend so I may have some social action shots for next week. Also, I didn't get to take advantage of Belgium's early movie schedule. We got Watchmen two days early, but I just couldn't make it out early enough to catch the movie. Oh well, Let me know how it is... I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to go.

I'm a Tourist: Bruges pt. 1

2009-03-04T23:39:00.009+01:00

I've given you the introduction: Train ride outta the city on the IC. I gave you some teaser photos that gave a general overview of what I did. I've got two posts worth: Sweets and Walking. I was recently told I've generated a sweet tooth since arriving here. I have always enjoyed sweets, but never in as much abundance as Belgium. I've actually realized that its almost an economic decision: Waffles and Chocolate is super cheap to try. Belgium has one of the largest populations of Michelin Starred Restaurants... which I'd love to try, if they weren't over 100 Euro per shot. Heck, if I don't eat or make any purchases at all next week, maybe I'll go to a Two Star so I don't go too far over my weekly budget. But I've digressed, halfway through writing this post I was able to edit a sentence in the introduction, "there isn't that much to write" was changed to: There will be TWO posts.

Bruges is a bit strange in that the train lets you off way outside the main quarters, I imagine this is because the city famously "missed out" on the industrial revolution. I had absolutely no idea which way to go post arrival so I just followed the crowd. Yes, there was a crowd of people getting off the train on a Sunday morning at 9am to see Bruges. Yes this is a good indication that Bruges is pretty popular with the foreigners. It took about fifteen minutes to make it towards the center, though I could have taken a bus there in about five... for a price. That price being 1.20 euro, which I didn't want to spend on a three-quarter mile walk to the Central Market.

The main attraction to Bruges is both in its lack of Industrialization as well as its title of "the Venice of Belgium". Which is an overly specific way of saying, "there are canals here." Most of the time the canals are on the outer edge of the main town, but they do break in every now and then. One could almost consider the canals being polite as to not bother the rest of the infrastructure. There are boat tours, but I'm pretty sure that is the only function on the canal. There seemed to be no private access at all save for a back yard fronting the canal itself. I didn't see any cafes with patios facing the canal. My photos may have represented them in a better light had it been summer, but I also believe there are well over one billion photos of the canals online. People also enjoy the city as a relic of older times, everyone except the people living there. I can imagine it is like trying to live a normal life as a resident of an apartment above the Marrakesh portion of Epcot Center in Disney World. Also, you work in Finance and on your way to the office you have to stop into the Future World for your cup of coffee and Newspaper.

I read up on Bruges in a very cursory way and decided I wanted to do two specific things and two generic things and leave the rest of the day to chance. I wanted to go to the Belgian Chocolate museum and Belgian Frites museum. I also wanted to consume some Belgian chocolate and look at some lace (this is not a euphemism, they are well known for lace). Chocolate and lace are supposed to be very popular and high quality in Bruges in general. The common problem seems to be the tourist trap versions. I didn't really know how to avoid the tourist traps so I went into a self proclaimed tourist trap, "the most popular hot chocolate in Bruges," for my chocolate fix. I produced a photo yesterday of the completed cup of hot chocolate, so today I wanted to give the origin. For 3.50 Euro I got a hot chocolate a tray of Belgian chocolates and a dish of whipped cream. The hot chocolate is really just a mug of steamed milk and a dish of melted chocolate. You are meant to dump and stir. There was sugar on the saucer... for those who don't find chocolate sweet enough. The whole process was interesting, but seems like a disappointing waste of dish chocolate. If you look closely enough at the completed image, you can see my attempts at removing the last morsels of chocolate from the dish without licking the dish directly.

I have to be honest and review the hot chocolate in regards to similar versions I've had in the past. #1: City Bakery hot chocolate- I think the belgian was a little better, I had a very strong flavor of the chocolate but the City Bakery hot chocolate looks better while drinking. One reason I imagine the Bruges shop serves this way is to make it look delicious to start. Once you pour and stir the melted chocolate it isn't the most attractive mug. There are bits swimming about and such. #2: Starbucks Chantico- believe it or not three or four years ago Starbucks served Chantico, a very heavy drinking chocolate. I used to imagine the espresso sized portion as a warm liquid brownie, but I'd give the Belgian drink the tip again because of its texture. I'm not sure they used whole milk alone as it tasted a little thin. But I actually enjoyed the viscosity of the drink in contrast to the strong chocolate flavor. I think with the Chantico you get overwhelmed with the density of the drink itself before you can appreciate the flavor. Also the Chantico was too sweet... but oh well.

Enough on chocolate, BRING ON THE WAFFLES! I only ate one, don't worry. I don't have much to say about the waffle except the vendor was kind enough to mention the waffles are different here. I mentioned that I did not want my waffle dipped in chocolate and he replied, "well, you know they come with powdered sugar on them." This is already a sweet pastry with sugar syrup heated onto of it... now covered in powdered sugar. I'm not sure how they do things in Flanders, but I like my waffles here in Brussels thank you very much. He also served it with a fork. I won't go much further, I don't want to get too frustrated with this new waffle experience. But I did want to share this photo I took of a waffle store. I'm also curious why there is a Chocolate and Frites museum but no waffle museum. We actually call them Belgian Waffles. Maybe someone else invented waffles and they're frustrated with France for stealing Frites so they don't want to steal the thunder from someone for waffles. New rumour: Belgian Waffles are actually from Luxembourg, you heard it here first.

In Bruges: A Prelude

2009-03-03T01:06:00.000+01:00

I want a good hour to write about my trip to Bruges. I also don't want to try to link all the photos so today I'm going to upload a teaser of photographs and soon I'll upload the whole album for you to peruse. You may also have questions about things that I didn't originally notice that I can address when I make the full write up. I promise the write up will come this week, I would do it tonight but we have work early tomorrow (think normal people mornings).

I'll leave it up to you to decide whats important in there. That's a pretty typical Scott walking tour of a city. I was thinking about doing a blog or two on previous trips to give some background on my inspiration for taking this trip.

Oh, last but not least... I'm gonna go to Antwerp this weekend so my Tourist days are continuing at a pretty steady pace. I only hope I never leave my tourist status behind... if only they still sold fanny packs here in Europe.

Pommes Frites Part 2: Belgium

2009-03-03T00:21:00.006+01:00

I'd like to clarify from yesterday. JustFoster mentioned that IC was InTerCity which makes the inner city joke a lot less funny. But he also suggested they are like "interstate highways" and run all over Europe. This is true and not true. They do run all over Europe, but within the individual countries. Most countries have their own IC that connects their major and minor cities to each other. There is usually a separate line that leaves the country, though in the case of Belgium we are connected to Luxembourg and Holland (what is called Benelux, I learned that from JustFoster too).

On to the Frites. I've got two trips to write about, the first is a local and the second was in Bruges. I found out one of the more popular and classic Frites Stands in Brussels wasn't too far, within walking distance actually. It was down near the EU quarters to take advantage of all the lunch based folk. The weather was nice and I was in the mood to try communicating with people who didn't speak any English. The place to do that is Maison Antoine. They've got frites and a TON of snacks and sandwiches. Frites run around 2.00 euro for a bag and sauces range from .40 to .60

euros. I was told to try the house tartar sauce, which was very nice. I read that one way to tell a good frites stand is if they ask you if you want salt. What would have helped is if they told me what that sentence was in French... so I don't know if they asked me about salt. I know they weren't salty and found some salt packets in my bag, so I'll guess it was up to me. To be honest, the pommes frites needed no salt and the tartar had just enough acid to cut through the heaviness of the potato.

It is a little unfair to call them heavy, but the tartar sauce did levy something so I'll stick with the gut reaction of heavy. Antoine's frites (as are most belgian frites) were double fried to give a fluffy interior and a crisp shell exterior. They're also relatively thick cut, at the Frites Museum in Bruges they actually had a measurement scale to determine the frite classification. Someone in the late 80's liked Bucky Fuller so much they used the magical hexagon shape to make a frite. Apparently they absorbed significantly less oil but no one cared for them. I'm gonna go for a little shocker here for a second, bear (does anyone know if its bear or bare) with me. Think about Belgian Frites like the best and most fresh McDonalds fries you've ever gotten. These are probably the ones you remember from when you were a kid and they just aren't as good anymore. They had a crispy tasty shell with a potato powder snow interior. I actually haven't received frites that were too hot either, which I credit to the toss method. Post oil bath, the frites glide through the air out of a bowl for no other reason than to rid the excess oil and cool them a bit. They're served in a paper cone with a funny fork for stabbing.

The second frites I got at the Frites Museum in Bruges, and they were good too but they salted them a little too much. I got just plain mayo, and I was proven wrong about the no ketchup thing when it was the #3 sauce on the menu. The saying must go to snobby Belgian Americans who need to show off their Belgian-ness... or Americans who just love mayo and want a reason to eat it (--> this guy). I never knew that potatoes thrived in Ireland because they were the only crop not torched (cause they're underground duh) during tax raids in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Oh well, like my continuing dedication to Beer and Waffles, I will boldly eat as many frites as I can find. Also Mayonnaise, I like mayonnaise. There wasn't anyone around to take a picture of me in there. I actually wish I was lying, I'd love to be the Frite ready to commit cannibalism next to his out of scale children. Also, why does the wife frite have a flower pinned to her head? hair?

Spending Report Week 6

2009-03-01T22:53:00.002+01:00

Make sure you catch up with the last post, I wanted to make sure I put down the spending no matter what.

This week was a little high but hopefully I can amend the numbers soon. I spent money on food and a taxi this week that may be reimbursed by the company. The week is also a little high because I had to get myself a new metro monthly pass. I still haven't been checked once, but I've heard its a pretty expensive ticket.

Overall: 108.68

Transportation: 51:80

Groceries: 38.68

Restaurant: 16.80

Miscellaneous Food: 1.80

Transportation: Hopefully I get reimbursed a portion of this for the taxi ride.

Groceries: This number is high again because I bought groceries last Sunday and this Friday do it is basically 2 weeks worth.

Restaurant: This covers a bunch of lunch and dinner because I spent way too much time at the office. Some should come back to me.

My first full month I spent about 860.00 Euro with rent and everything else. I think for long term this isn't feasible. I've learned I'm over paying for rent and if I'm to stay here longer term I'm going to need to find a much cheaper place.

Defeat at the hands of an Alarm Clock.

2009-03-01T21:33:00.005+01:00

I went to Bruges. I slept through my alarm clock on Saturday and deemed the trip not worth the money if i was going to be there so late. I have time, oh yes. Instead I decided I'd take a trip to one of two locations: at trial trip. I would go to Bruges or Antwerp, and I flipped a very special coin to find out where I'd go. The toss ended up pointing towards a sleepy tourist town:Bruges. Yes there was a Colin Farrel movie about Bruges in the past year, and no I haven't seen it yet.

This was a good trip for me because it helped me understand how easy the trains and

tickets and such are. I've got two or three good easy local trips that I can do for a single day. I woke up nice and early, walked down to the train station and bought a ticket. There are two major trains out of Belgium that I understand: IC and Thalys. IC is 'innercity' which is a strange phrase for Americans but it goes to most of the cities in Belgium and a bunch in Holland from what I can tell. Thalys is the high-speed; I may use this for a trip to Paris. One fun fact on Belgian train travel... weekend trips are super cheap. My round trip was 11.40 euros and took about one hour each way. I was really happy with the day because the weather was so nice, it ended up around 50 degrees the majority of the time. And SUNNY!

I had a relatively short walk into the center of town around 9:30 and saw the main square relatively empty. That was the last time during the day I was without tourists. Bruges is a really tiny place, I don't have anything to scale against it. Take my word though, I was able to walk around the entire city in half an hour. It is also one of the most popular tourism city's in all of Belgium. By mid afternoon the place was packed, mostly Brits.

This was a nice contrast from the usual French, but I have actually just started getting used to French signs. Bruges is in Flanders though... which is dutch instead of french so I've gotta figure out dutch signs now. Though, at the same time... everyone speaks English because of how important tourism is. I actually watched the waiter in a cafe greet all the people that came in, he kept his hand on one of three different menus (English, french, dutch). Depending on how "bon jour," "hello," or whatever the dutch greeting is, he would grab the corresponding menu.

Anyway, I'm gonna leave you guys hanging for the real information from the rest of the week. I've got at least one more post on my four hour tour. In addition I have to put in a follow up to to Laurens post on Frites (I went to a frite museum today to study up). I'd also like to write a bit about my deadline week at the office.

Oh, I'm not gonna do a real "personal development" post. The short of it is this: I did my m'w'f of push ups and sit ups even during the dead line. It was a little rough doing 80 push ups and sit ups at 4am but I got them done. I didn't do any language stuff... which is frustrating. I really would like to get somewhere with french before I leave and I'm afraid I won't. I'm going to make this a week where I push a little harder with it.

I'm back pt. 2

2009-02-27T18:30:00.003+01:00

Clearly the first "I'm back" was a lie. At the same time, I'm pretty sure I worked 80 hours so far this week. I did keep up with my push ups and sit ups and I've finally got a clear enough mind to write, but unfortunately I'm just too tired to write tonight. So, I'm back, but not. In addition to the "but not" portion, I'm going on a trip. Depending on how confident I'm feeling tomorrow morning I may end up anywhere from Antwerp (close) to Rotterdam (that's my goal).

I'd like to be an architectural tourist and enjoy the city a bit, but with my week the way it was I'm not entirely sure I'm going to be confident with the planning of what to see and do for a weekend. It looks like the weather could be nice and I really want to go up there. But I don't know... like I said, I'll find out when I get to the station. This means I will have a HUGE backlog of stuff to cover once I return on Sunday. Next week should be a good writing week.

Side note: In Belgium, iced tea (Lipton variety) is carbonated. True Story.

Pommes Frites Part 1: NYC

2009-02-24T23:50:00.007+01:00

This post has been a long time a comin but it is finally here. Two weekends ago I took a trip down to a place that is proclaimed to be on of the best Frites based locations in Brussels. Near this time one of the readers: Lauren, thought she would help me out and compare them to "Belgian Frites" in New York. This will be a 2 Part post: Today I'll put up Laurens post and some photos and tomorrow I'll put up mine.

From Lauren:

After a disappointing inability to locate the Belgian Room (apparently it's address was listed incorrectly online but I still think it is gone) on Friday night we returned to 2nd Ave on Saturday afternoon to indulge our taste buds in some double fried wedges of potatoes at Pommes Frites. Since it was nice out we were already in a good mood and rode our bikes over from Brooklyn so we worked up a bit of an appetite. At around 2pm the line was already out the door. This little shop is usually pretty busy but we didn't expect to see much of a crowd since we usually see everyone show up

here after a night of drinking. They have a menu set up on the outside of the shop which is convenient to figure out which sauces you want before squishing inside. We chose the Rosemary Garlic, Sweet Mango, and Curry Ketchup sauces. There are three sizes: Regular ($4.50), Large ($6.25), and Double ($7.75). Justin and I ordered a double (which we later realized we didn't need) and Viren and Mike shared a large. It's important to point out that our frites were not from the same batch. Inside the shop they have a bar with holes cut into it to hold your paper cone of frites. Since it was crowded and the weather was nice we sat on the steps of a church across the street to eat our pommes frites. Although this caused us to miss the experience of utilizing the paper cone holding contraption it did put us in a pleasurable mood. The fries were super hot and steaming since they were just pulled out of the fryer. The frites were pretty decent chunks of potato and they seemed nice and crispy from looking at them but they weren't as crispy as they should have been. Viren and Michael's batch were the right crispiness, perhaps our batch was only single fried? Justin forgot to order the Curry Ketchup so now we only had the Rosemary Garlic and the Sweet Mango sauces. The sauces were good but I can't help but think we missed out on something by not just having a regular mayonnaise and ketchup mix. Even though our batch wasn't crispy, they were still delicious. I like to pretend that the bigger the potato chunks are the less unhealthy they are for you because the insides haven't been totally reached by the frying. I'm sure that it seeps all the way through but it feels better to be ignorant on this topic. We ate every Pommes Frite, even the

shriveled up ones on the bottom that look like they have been through the fryer 6 times. As expected they were a little greasy (as you can see from the photograph I sent along). I would say they are definitely better than your normal fries. I still wish we just got normal European mayo and ketchup though. I feel like we tried to dress them up too much with these other sauces. Plus ketchup and mayo are free while the sauces are $1.00 each, and in a floundering economy who can afford fancy sauce? We'll be on the streets in a week.

WELL, I've been to Pommes Frites in NYC and I remember the sauces were really good. I will say this... I think its bad form to use ketchup here... pure mayo is the way to go. BUT, I'll save the real info for tomorrow when I publish my own Frites based experience. I hope we'll get some more people to go out and find Belgian things and let me know how they end up in the US.

Random Musings

2009-02-24T03:25:00.002+01:00

This is definitely going to be a tough week to keep up with. I've got my first really big deadline coming up and I got back to my room around 3am... I almost skipped out but pushed through the urge. I'm going to answer a few related questions I've gotten about my trip here. These are usually related to my day to day life and are somewhat different than the US so they deserved a post.

Homeless People? Whats the deal with them?

I may have mentioned in a previous post (probably the one about the Metro) that I'm actually pretty safely guarded against pan handling. I have a very easy time completely ignoring people when I have no idea what they're saying. In NYC there are plenty of times that pan handlers are able to convince you they're speaking normal human language when they are in fact speaking gibberish... French gibberish doesn't get the same message across allowing me to escape unscathed and without paying off the homeless. They are very strategic in Belgium though. Women make sure to hold their children (who could very well be in their teens, and also look healthy) to convince people to donate money to them. Others stand at the exit to the escalator, which is very devious because its like a yuppie pez dispenser. I've also seen a very different breed of pan-handler/musician here: the grinder. Seriously, they've got an accordion / weird music box thing and someone dances in front of it. They move around to different store fronts and Metro stops. Its fun, but I still have no care to give them money. Finally there is the pick-pocket. Apparently Belgium has one of the largest populations of pick-pockets in Europe. There is a big produce market on Sundays at one of the large train stations and I've been told that I should basically staple things to myself before going so they don't get lifted.

Well, that's one question answered for the night. If I get home a little earlier I'll try to lay down a plan for my trip this weekend. I also have some Frites based text to put down "on paper," and I'm not sure how long that'll take so we shall see what goes up tomorrow night. I'm also happy to blog that even though I got back super late I still kept up with my workout for the day. Honestly, doing the push ups and sit ups was what gave me enough energy to push through this post.

I'm here I'm here.

2009-02-22T22:09:00.002+01:00

SO, I've missed two days. In a row. Don't worry, all is well and I'll catch up. Friday I went out with the company and wasn't really "awake" enough to post when I returned home. We all went out to celebrate. Celebrate what you may ask? Well, Friday of course. It doesn't really have the same effect since I went to work Saturday and Sunday, but I enjoyed the night anyway. Last night I made it home early (from work on a Saturday...), unfortunately our building had some weird Internet outage that delayed my posting until today. Instead of trying to catch up in a few different posts I'm just gonna put up my two weekend posts (personal development & spending report) into one.

I brought my spending WAY down this week, and it woulda gone down even further without Fridays get together.

Overall: 58.15

Restaurant: 27.80

Beer: 15.30

Miscellaneous Food: 13.55

Groceries: 1.50

Clearly restaurant and beer have gone up. This is what happens with a super busy week, it could very well happen this week as well. I went out to lunch more often because our office had some US visitors and it was nice to be a little social. The only thing that went down this week is Groceries. Basically I was a little hung over and then worked Saturday and missed my chance to do my grocery shopping. I went today and kept it pretty low. Then I spent some money on Sesame oil and Soy sauce to flavor up my fried rice cooking. Overall I'd like my spending to stay this low from now on, maybe lower if I can but not soooo much on beer.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT:

I'll keep it short for this week. I'm happy to report that I've followed the push ups and sit up schedule almost exactly this week. I skipped Friday but caught up on Saturday. In addition to my regular M-W-F schedule I added things on the "off" days. Total for the week I ended with over 300 sit ups and over 150 push ups. Most of the push ups were under the scheduled daily events and next week I'm on Week 3.

As for French? I'm getting there pretty slowly. I did about two hours of Rosetta stone which is starting to sink in a little bit and five lessons from the "coffee time." I haven't really tried using it but I'm starting to "hear" things a little differently while I'm on the streets or in the office.

That's about it for this weekend update. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled posting this week. I've got one partial guest post (about POMMES FRITES) and a back tourism post or two to fill in. I've also scheduled a trip to Rotterdam for next weekend so I should have some good content for next week.

OH YEA, I'VE BEEN ABROAD ONE MONTH! WOO!

I'm Learning French.

2009-02-19T23:30:00.003+01:00

So after ALMOST a month of being here I finally decided to dive into the whole french thing. I'm very motivated to learn a language while I'm here because I'm not sure when I'll get another opportunity to learn a language in a native environment again. I've been frustrated with myself since I got here just because I haven't been able to make the time to fit in the french. THUS, I will add my french language time to my weekly report on my "working out." Not only will you know how many sit ups I do in a week, but how many hours/minutes I spend trying to learn french.

For those of you that are interested, I'm doing two things to start. I'm trying to spend half an hour to an hour on Rosetta Stone every day to get a weird basis of vocabulary. Rosetta stone is really good for vocabulary because they never give you English words just images and you pick up the language through context. I haven't gotten far enough to see how useful it is for conversation or grammar just yet but hopefully I get there soon. In addition I've downloaded a "coffee time lesson" set from Itunes. There are almost 60 lessons and they're around the range of 20 minutes. This is perfect for me because I can listen to one going each way on the Metro in the morning and sometimes I can repeat them during the day for reinforcement. The podcast is free and I'll let you guys know if I like it soon. Know this: If you follow the same program, you will also be taught French by a Scottish guy. Think about that accent.

Once I work up the courage, I'll start embarrassing myself in the name of education. It won't be hard, I can already guarantee embarrassment. The hard part will be making sure I learn something from ever occasion.

If anyone has tips on learning sources leave them in the comments or send me an email. I'll share how well I deal with them.

QUESTIONS!

2009-02-19T00:22:00.003+01:00

I wanted to open up the "floor," and answer any questions you guys have. I usually leave a bit out of each post to give me some room in the future to elaborate so if you have questions ASK THEM. I got a few this week and I'm gonna answer a bunch from Philly and then make some promises I'm not sure I can keep.

Shannon (Philly, USA):

What is the music scene like over there? are you going to go to any shows? or perhaps see one of your fav bands that happens to be playing there? what are the kids listening to over there. roommates, coworkers...

I like this question because I had a conversation on my flight about popular music. We didn't really talk about specific bands but about the differences in the culture of music in Europe v. US. It all really boiled down to marketing: The EU doesn't have genre specific radio stations. They may have genre specific shows within a single day, but very there is usually a very wide variety of music on the different stations.

On Shows: I can only hope I'll be around in July and August. Two of the biggest festivals in Europe take place IN Belgium. There is Pukkelpop and Rockwerschter. Pukkelpop last year was Metallica, The Killers, Sigur Ros, Bloc Party, Soulwax, The Editors... I could keep going for a very very long time. I kept scrolling and kept seeing names I'd love to see. The list looks to be about 80 bands long. Rockwerschter has recently announced a portion of their lineup with Oasis, Kings of Leon and Limp Bizkit (seriously, I can't make that up). These festivals are pretty serious and I'd love to go to one.

Shanna (Outside Philly, USA)

Maybe you could let us know what is going on in Brussels right now, current event things- it could even go beyond Brussels to Belgium and some neighboring countries.

Well, As much as I don't want to admit it... I don't really know French. This makes it difficult to read news papers or watch the news on TV. In her question she also added I should look up expat news sites and English papers in my area. I found them, they weren't very interesting. I have basically absorbed two pieces of news since I arrived here. The first was that the EU Parliament got robbed. This is pretty spectacular because there are banks and bars and shopping necessities within the parliament so that dignitaries don't have to go OUTSIDE to do their errands. This means that someone was able to sneak a weapon into the facility and then hold up the bank within the Parliament and then get out. Why not just steal from a bank that is only attached to the outside through one set of doors? Unsure. The majority of the article covered the fact that no one knows if the bank was held up with a real or fake gun.

The second piece of news may or may not be global at this point. A Dutch diplomat to the EU publicly stated something (I wasn't sure what was said I'll guess something negative) about Islam. Because of this he was banned from England. I had a discussion with one of my room mates that I'd love to be important enough to get banned from a country. Its said he was banned for the public safety of all English, but that makes the assumption that a Muslim will decide to take a violent action against this diplomat because of what he said. No one questioned this. I'm not sure how the saying goes, but I think its: "The more things change, the more they stay the same"?

Greg (Patterson, NJ... in a very sassy tone):

Night Life... Do nightlife you jerk.

I admit, I'm not "living it up" very much while I'm here. I work late and then come home and write. This is a promise that I'm not sure I can keep, but post deadline I'm going to try to go out with a few co workers. I'll chalk it up to more beer related research.

Where I live

2009-02-17T23:37:00.005+01:00

This is Brussels as seen from Google Maps. I'm gonna be using it pretty often soon to let you guys know where it is and to demonstrate things like the subway trips and such. Just for a little more perspective I'll give a comparison. Brussels is located at Longitude 50 where New York is at Longitude 40 (about). The equivalent city as far north as Brussels in North America is Vancouver just north of Seattle. Also, as a measure of scale the width of the big Ring in the center is about half the length of Central Park. This is a tiny city.

It is relatively easy to see the big "ring" in the center with yellow lines going out. The ring is the old town and the city proper. This is where much of the historical and financial areas are located. Near the south is Gare Du Midi (Noon Station... doesn't make much sense does it). Gare Du Midi is where the Eurostar leaves, I will eventually be taking Eurostar to Paris. The Northern portion has Centre Deux, a big shopping mall where I purchased a duvet cover and network cable my first day in town. These are the only two landmarks I know well enough to share. I'll say again, this is a tiny city but there is a catch. When you begin to look more carefully at the map you'll realize there are almost no thoroughfares or boulevards. When you look at the distance as the bird flies you have to add almost 40% to that distance to account for zig zagging your way through the city. This makes for fun moments where you discover things you weren't planning on. Frustrating moments occur when you realize you got onto a side street that starts south and ends north when you wanted to go only south. I've learned at this point I'm much better off just taking the Metro and Trams every where I go because trying to traverse through certain parts of the city is just CONFUSING.

The main purpose of this first map is to show my route to work. The Green dot is pointing to where I start my trip: Avenue Brabanconne. I walk south to the Cyan dot, and if you look closely you'll see a pretty cool park at the center of the trip. I hope I'm around when the trees start to bloom because this park will be absolutely beautiful. This park is elevated in comparison to the main city and provides an OK view. If I were a jogger, this would probably be the start point of my trip. The Cyan dot is my Metro stop, Schuman, and favorite waffle man; the walk from apartment to metro is around eight minutes. From Schuman I take the metro goes to St. Catherine, the Blue dot. The Metro ride is usually around sixteen minutes and from there I have about a six minute walk to the Red dot on Rue Des Fabriques. The whole trip is almost exactly one half hour. Unfortunately there aren't really any variations in the trip as every other road I take would be very very out of the way. Walking can take up to an hour even though its barely two miles away. We'll see what happens when the weather gets a little warmer.

I've gotten a bunch of emails so far and I'll probably do the Mail bag tomorrow but I could always use more questions for future weeks. scott DOT corey AT gmail DOT com.

Going out with the office

2009-02-16T23:15:00.003+01:00

This may not be much of a post, but I thought I would cover some of the social events we have in the office. This is not to say that we have social events beyond the office, all social events are within or related to office business. This is usually the only reason I will not eat lunch or dinner prepared by myself. There are two kinds of eating events: IN office and OUT but the most fun events are within the office. I've been around for two full meals and a lunchtime snack.

On Fridays in the office we've had two meals prepared by our own staff. I will get a mass email asking who's interested in lunch and for a donation of three euro. Following this one of my co-workers made some couscous with pesto with some good veggies a fruit salad and bread.I will always spend three euro for a meal like this. Another day we had "poisson puttanesca" which is a take on an Italian dish with a lot of tomato and olives baked with some fish. I don't often go out for lunch because I don't' want to spend the money, but it is a lot of fun to have lunch in the office. For a snack one day someone actually made Crepes with brown sugar and lemon. This stuff was all very good for morale during a tough week. Finally to break things up a bit we celebrate each Friday with FRIDAY BEER or wine... this is when I get to try the worst beer in Belgium and work at the same time. I have actually gone out to lunch and dinner once with the group to celebrate the finish out a big deadline.

One more social event that wasn't food related but still a lot of fun was a valentines day prank. Some of the employees that have been around for a little while thought it would be fun to pull a prank on the Copenhagen office and one of the dorky, awkward employees. Every single person in the office was "required" to create a loving valentine and mail it to this employee in Denmark. I spent my time writing semi-erotic Haiku's for a few of my co workers cards. My prized piece of niche writing was based on a card someone made with some dinosaur cookies:

In the Ancient Past

A horny Triceratops

Primal Love and Lust

This is how we show our love to our sister office.

Beer!

2009-02-15T23:34:00.009+01:00

The first time I saw the shop "250 beers" I realized I was way out of my league. I started looking around online and contacted a blogger by the name of Chuck Cook (http://belgianbeerspecialist.blogspot.com/) who admitted he may not be the best person to point out places within Brussels and aimed me towards Joe Stange (http://www.thirstypilgrim.com/). Chuck is a blogger from the US who writes about all beer from Belgian origins, he's been to Belgium on more individual trips than I've been here days and I imagine he can probably drink me under multiple tables. Joe is an American Expat living in Brussels who is literally writing a book on Belgian beer. He suggested two different places to start in Brussels: Cantillon Brewery and Chez Moeder Lambic, the latter he will join me at when I get there. I don't think I will take a trip there for a week or two to get past a big deadline so for now I just tried my best with Cantillon and some store bought beers.

Cantillon was one of the better alcohol based tourism events I've participated in. On a previous trip I went to both the Jameson and Guinness tours in Dublin and they aren't really worth it in comparison to Cantillon. The pull of this trip is the reality of the beer production. At the Jameson tour they tell you it is a farce and just show you some historical artifacts. Guinness wasn't much better, but at least they are situated on the site of an existing factory. Cantillon is a functioning small brewery, as you walk around you can smell the hops and see the storage barrels foaming because of the fermentation. It was wonderful and ended with a tasting of two classics: Gueuze and Kreik, Lambic beers.

I've decided I'm entirely unqualified to discuss the subtleties of these beers in depth so I'll give you the technical explanation first. Lambic is a "spontaneously" fermenting beer. I'm not sure what that means and guess its similar to how the Baby Jesus was made: Magic. There is no added sugar or yeast to this beer and all fermentation occurs naturally. After spontaneous fermentation they barrel up the beer for one to three years. Afterwards they mix it all to make Gueuze and some of the other mixed beverages or bottle just the three year old Lambic for the special reserve. You can actually store these beers in a cellar and they will mature for up to twenty years. My father is now thinking that instead of having a wine cellar, he needs a Belgian beer cellar.

The tasting was interesting, Gueuze is literally the "champagne of beers" and I'm not talking about Miller High Life. I really can not begin to describe it beyond this very cryptic statement: It doesn't taste like beer at the beginning, but by the end of the glass it does. It is sweet and sour, but still beer. The Kreik may be a little easier for me... It is mixed with cherries for almost six months and it makes the beer smell horrible. I can actually see my fathers face scrunching up a little at the thought of Cherry Beer. I'll say this though, it was not sweet. It was more like cider and had a sour bite to it. Needless to say, I bought three bottles of different types and drank a bunch to "test" them out. I did save one bottle of Grand Cru for a personal celebration later. Those of you in NYC can try out Cantillon beers at (http://www.beermenus.com/beers/cantillon-bruocsella-grand-cru) a few fine establishments. Know this though... you will pay at least four times what I paid. I would suggest the Gueuze to start as it is very accessible and tasty.

Today I decided to buckle down and do some more research. I went down to my local corner store and bought some Chimay and some Grimbergen. These are examples of Trappist and Abbey beers. Chimay, as a Trappist beer, is produced under the supervision of real life monks. When you purchase a Chimay you are helping to pay rent for their monastery... seriously, their monastery. Grimbergen is an Abbey Beer living a dirty lie. Abbey beers were created to look like they are from a monastery and are usually commercially produced under a licensed name. When you purchase something like Grimbergen or Leffe you are supporting a lie and should be ashamed of yourself. I enjoyed Chimay before I left NY but wouldn't get it very often as it was cost prohibitive. Eight dollars for a smallish bottle was a little much for me at my well priced beer drinking locale. Now that I can get the same bottle for 1.50 Euro I'll drink it at lunch if I'd like because its still cheaper than the bottle of water you may get. I tried out Chimay Red and Chimay Blue. I prefer the Blue, but after finding out that its 9% alcohol decided it may not be the best choice as a lunch based beverage. The Blue is still one of my favorite beers in general, though I won't begin to try comparing it to Guinness they are different beers for different occasions. I didn't actually like the Grimbergen very much. This isn't because refuse to support a lie, I actually don't mind the lie. I didn't like it because it had a metallic taste to it that I couldn't get over.

I promise I will continue to test as many beers as I can as often as I can. I can also promise my blog entries may start to get a little funny if this I keep up with that much beer. I will document my struggle between Lambics and Trappists, you guys should send me beer types that say "Belgian" on them and I'll do my best to research them here. LaurEm posted a suggestion last week that we do a Pomme Frites comparison and because of that you guys don't get the Frites write up until some States Side folks send me some images. Anyone can send me pics and descriptions of their favorite Frites in the US and I'll try to put together an objective comparison. We all know the French version is also a dirty lie, so try to only show me Belgian style.

Spending Report: Week 4

2009-02-15T21:57:00.003+01:00

Numbers are up a little off the usual.

Overall: 89.90

Breakdown:

Restaurant: 34.30

Groceries: 23.25

Beer: 11.00

Shipping: 10.90

Misc. Food: 5.45

Tourism: 5.00

Restaurant: A little high this week because of the moderately expensive appetizer sized portion of mussels that taught me that I'm still allergic to shell fish. I also went out with the office for lunch for the first time to celebrate an all nighter (that I didn't participate in). Finally I bought some pomme frites at a famous place on Saturday. In accordance with a recent request, I'll save that for a comparison to a NYC Frites shop.

Groceries: A lot of the normal stuff... nothing to add this week really. I added some shampoo to the list also added a day where I bought peanut butter and jelly from a corner store during my lunch hour to make lunch.

Beer: I bought a few bottles of a Lambic Beer. There will be a post about beer soon, and you may have already read it. I had to buy a bunch of different beers from the same brewery to make a good comparison. During a discussion with some friends in NYC we tried to find bars that also serve the beer I purchased... I bought a few bottles for around 3 Euro a piece. In NYC the bottles go for 12-18 dollars. Quite a mark up.

Shipping: I sent those chocolates out for valentines day using the normal post with great success. It cost me a little over Ten euro to ship regular, and the package made it on Friday after being sent Monday.

Misc. Food: Waffles and cookies... I've never had a sweet tooth like I've had here. I found my favorite waffle stand so far. It is very convenient, maybe too convenient. I actually had a conversation with the owner at my metro stop, he is thinking about opening a shop in NYC after his friend graduates from Yale. I may actually be facebook friends with him soon. I will let you guys know if he introduces Belgian waffles to the NYC Public.

Tourism: I went to the Cantillon Brewery and there will be photos up. This trip was entirely worth it and there are some special people who are going to get credit for it later.

I've only gotten two emails with proper questions so far... You guys are the inspiration I have for doing a lot out of the ordinary. Some time this week I'll answer questions but email me. scott DOT corey AT gmail DOT com.

Pushups plus

2009-02-14T17:48:00.003+01:00

Time for the weekly mini-post. This wasn't a great starter week, I definitely slept in a little more than I would like almost every day. There are two causes, the first is a perfect black out shade on my one window. The second is staying up super late calling the US to deal with some banking issues. Oh well, I still did my Monday Wednesday Friday. My overall goal is to do my push up and sit up schedule M-W-F and then T and Tr do supplementary stuff like the indian pus ups and maybe some cardio... but I'm pretty sure we all know that won't happen.

According to my msword diary I followed both the 100-push ups and the 200-sit ups schedule perfectly. Sit Ups: M-18 W-25 F-38. I recognize this is a small number, but there's no reason to rush into something. Moving slowly helps me see that its not so hard and I don't get frustrated with it. I didn't really feel much Monday, but Wednesday I noted that I felt I was doing them correctly. I'm still feeling a little bit from my Friday session, so I'm excited to start up again Monday. I didn't work on breathing or my break times yet because it was a low number but I will need the correct break starting soon. Push Ups: M-28 W-43 F-51. This wasn't hard, like I mentioned in the first post about push ups, I need to get back into the rhythm. Friday I did the normal sets, but in the fifth set they tell you to do as many as you can with a minimum. I think the minimum was around six and I decided to see what I could do and went for twenty straight. This isn't my max number, right now I can probably do twenty eight to thirty in a row but it is a good start.

Like I said at the beginning, I didn't wake up as early as I wanted but before the end of every day I accomplished what I aimed for. This is a good start for the following weeks. The image at the top of this post is a hint about the weekend post. If I am sober enough before I go to sleep I'll try to write it up. Otherwise, everyone enjoy their Valentines Day; I'm gonna go cook a romantic meal for one.

Caffeine.

2009-02-14T00:57:00.006+01:00

This is one of my new best friends. Don't judge me for befriending a machine, she speaks the only language I need: Caffeine. A side note: Romance languages assign sexes to all objects animate or otherwise. This makes for very interesting conversations between myself and my new Portuguese friend (not the pastry, an actual human). The coffee machine is a She, and vacuum cleaners are male. Anyway, I have become fast new friends with this machine for a few reasons. The first is that she speaks in signs, not french, not english. There are really only two buttons, "strength" and "amount." Second, she is a free source of caffeinated goodness.

Before leaving NY I had a full fledged addiction to coffee from Starbucks. I weaned myself off, not because I didn't want the coffee but because I wanted the two dollars every day. I replaced it with tea made in my office. At one point out of the blue I decided to see if I could stop drinking caffeine all together. I have absolutely no idea what drove me to this, but I just wanted to stop the addiction. After a few days of pounding head aches I was clear. Fast forward to my third twelve hour day in a row and I need some coffee.

I stared at the machine for about five minutes before someone came by to give me an idea of how the dials worked. It is a genius machine that everyone should have. The dial on the left controls the amount of coffee/espresso you want. The dial on the right controls how strong the coffee is. After the Italian in the office leaves the left dial is turned way down the right dial is turned way up. It is basically hot espresso syrup. After I leave, the left dial is turned all the way up and the right dial is turned way down. I also use the "double cup" button at the top. This is the American/Irish coffee. I sometimes have an issue with bitterness in coffee and kill it with a little milk. This is never the case with my new best friend. The machine makes coffee that is almost sweet outta the tap even without sugar.

This machine has become a necessary part of my morning and day. It is a money saver because I no longer purchase coffee and I still get my needed caffeination. Though, I've learned that Brussels is one of the only places I've been so far that doesn't have much of a "take away" coffee culture at ALL. I have only found two shops that will sell me a coffee to go, and it is not a coffee, it is an espresso. I actually crave a large cup of coffee from anywhere... even Dunkin Donuts. Alas, this will not happen until I take that trip to Antwerp, Paris (which is known for having the nicest Starbucks in all of Europe) or Rotterdam.

Tomorrow I will be heading around to do three things: Buy some quail, find the best pomme frites and Brussels and go to a Belgian brewery. I will surely blog about one of them tomorrow in addition to the promised update on my personal development. I have a request of you guys. I want some help writing posts once every week or two. This can happen very easily. I just want you to email me questions you have about things I've already talked about or things you want me to talk about. scott DOT corey AT gmail DOT com.

What I eat: Daily Edition

2009-02-12T23:29:00.007+01:00

By now it should be pretty obvious I don't go out to eat all that much. In Belgium it isn't too hard to find a bargain for a meal, but the best bargain is in preparing food for yourself. I imagine this strategy is not location specific. I will consume a meal or two outside of my my own creation but it is either in the name of tourism or The Office. Since starting work I have kept up cooking at least four out of five nights a week. I've only left the office for lunch once, though I only make myself lunch four days a week so far. I have eaten every single breakfast since I arrived in my apartment... and I don't buy coffee. I'll write an entire post about European caffeination habits at some point, but I don't have the time or patients to do that tonight. I think this has been a pretty good way to save those euros for better usage.

I've usually got a few minutes in the morning to have breakfast while I make my lunch. It is multi-tasking I enjoy. I'm a cereal guy, and I usually prefer kids cereal to start my day. I was in for a huge disappointment when I arrived in Brussels. There are two kinds of cereal, really expensive and really bad. The really expensive cereal isn't very good either, but they have an amazing looking cereal filled with nutella... those boxes are an obscene five or six euro. I tried some choco-wafers that were much cheaper and they actually tasted like cardboard. Seriously, cardboard, I could have cut up the box near the end and sprinkled it on top for flavor. Since then I've just gone with corn flakes with some banana for sweetness.

While I'm eating my breakfast I prepare lunch: A sandwich and apple. It is basic and satisfying. Until you go to the grocery store and can't decipher what kinds of deli meat and cheese they have. I was baffled at the fact they didn't have American cheese... I learned non-aged Gouda is a pretty close substitute. Europeans love cured meats so its much easier to get salami or pepperoni or PROSCIUTTO. I'm pretty sure I never made a prosciutto and Gouda sandwich for lunch before my day in NY. There are only two portion sizes in the stores though: super mega tiny and enough for that family of eighteen that has their own TV show. Bread has become an issue during sandwich construction. I've purchased two loaves of packaged bread and been disappointed by their shelf life. Almost half a loaf of bread has submitted to mold under my watch so far. I have discovered a new solution: real bread. Lately I've been getting a baguette which is long (think your whole arm) and thin (think your whole arm). I slice off a hoagie lengthed portion and prepare my sandwich. The end goes stale by the next day so I slice off about a quarter inch and make another sandwich. There are about three or four sandwiches in a single baguette that costs about 80 eurocents. Plus its fresh bread from a bakery, so the soft inside portion is like cotton candy: wispy, light and sweet. The crust is hard but not tough... it makes a damn good PB&J.

I got back to my apartment last night around 11pm. I still cooked myself dinner. This is probably not the best habit for digestion, but entirely necessary for sleep. I used to have the bad habit of unwinding from a day at work by watching unnecessary television or some other media source. That isn't so easy any more, so the cooking of my meals every night relaxes and pulls my mind off of work. My dinners are usually incredibly simple. I make some jasmine rice, maybe enough for three portions. I'll eat the first portion cooked normally and then usually make fried rice with the other two portions. If I'm eating fresh rice I will steam some veggies: carrots, green beans, broccoli... usually a good mix. If I'm making fried rice I'll stick to carrots and green beans with some garlic. Lately I've only cooked protein on the weekends. I have been purchasing small single portions of pork or steak but this weekend I'm going to get a little adventurous and try to cook a Partridge. That's a small bird, or Danny Bonaduce. I'll throw an egg into the fried rice to get extra protein during the week, but I'm not overly concerned with how much or how little protein I'm consuming.

This is a pretty basic diet that I enjoy day to day and is very easy for me to prepare quickly. When I have the chance to get home early or have a weekend off I may cook something a little special, but usually I stick to my basics. The next "what I eat" will cover those few meals I don't prepare for myself and are outside the range of "tourism." I think I cover the tourism food pretty well so far, but I've gotta find something else to try next. MAYBE BEER! Ok, I'll work on my ideas on how to test out a lot of beer for you guys while trying to criticize (and remember) the experience.

The Metro, pt. 2

2009-02-11T23:57:00.011+01:00

After two weeks of constant Metro usage I thought I'd bring an update with a little bit more on the nuances of the Brussels Metro. I think one of the most fun things about the metro so far is the unpredictability. Sure, they have the timer showing when every train is coming in the near future. You can even see exactly what stops trains are at before and after your stop. I'm not entirely sure why you'd need to see trains that are beyond you... but you can. The unpredictability comes in with train types and crowd. I've been on 4 different train types so far. I'm pretty sure you can measure their age by their colors, sea foam green is clearly 70's... white and beige: 90's.

The image to the right shows what I think is the newest train. This is probably the coolest subway I've ever been on; they've got the neat tri-peel hand pole in the middle. This means that those jerky lean-types who hog an entire pole with their love handles can be bypassed with a bifurcation (this sentence was very self indulgent, the rest of the post won't be like that). That's not all folks, the cars are not separated and the image looking down the train corridor was not produced with smoke or mirrors. If you've ever been on a double bus where they have the accordion thing in the middle so they stay attached... think of an entire train like that. If you happen to get on the train near the end, you can actually walk up to the beginning (which is usually where the escalator exits are) while you are still ON the train. Neat idea. Now, the unpredictability of Brussels: This is only ONE of the FOUR train types. The older train actually has no doors between cars. That means, when the oddly scented homeless guy wanders onto the train you can't easily pass to the next car. I do have the luxury of being unable to understand his pan handling catch phrase, so I can completely ignore the homeless man anyway.

Another interesting contrast between these two trains is seating. The picture above shows parallel seating, in line with fitting more people. The no-door cars have perpendicular seating, like an airplane. This conceptually makes sense in a car that is based on lower transportation. The similarities in the trains are completely antithetical. I have been on each of those trains at every time of day/night/weekend/whatever. This means high traffic rush hour: Big train = comfortable. It also means high traffic rush hour: Small Train = dumb. It is completely random which train type will come at which time. I am completely baffled by the efficiency involved in running both train types during all times of the day. Then again, I have yet to nail down the regularity of the traffic. I have seen two busy mornings and they were not similar in time. In New York I could, with some accuracy, predict how much available space there would be on a train at any given time in the morning. Here... no such luck.

NEXT! There is a button on the doors. This doesn't sound too complicated, unless its your first time using the train. The first or second time I used the metro I wasn't paying too much attention... The third trip I stood outside the closed doors that no one was coming out of... then the train just left. I didn't pull the handle (older trains have handles... newer ones have buttons) and tell the train I wanted to enter it. The trains have become fickle and don't want to waste their time opening all their doors if no one is getting on or off. I'd love to see the system implemented in NYC to stop all those late entries that block up the door. There's no way you can run down stairs and jump through the closing doors if the doors haven't opened to begin with.

I think that's a pretty good representation of some of the fun facts about about the Belgian Metro. I'd like to make a nice map of my route and the places I've visited in the surrounding area. How about this, if I get outta work "early" tomorrow I'll make the map. It may not be a part of the daily post and may go up later but I'd like for it to be ready for a nice long post about my walk to work.

Critical Updates

2009-02-10T22:59:00.007+01:00

Instead of writing a true update tonight (I had some ideas but got in late) I thought I'd upload some proper pictures and maybe a link or two. On the right hand side ---> You should notice I've moved and added things since the beginning. I thought it would be nice for you guys to follow the Euro and Dollar with me and see how much it changes on a daily basis. Also, you can be a voyeur and check up on what the elements are doing to me hour by hour... I guess that's only if I happen to be outside. I also added a link to my Picassa photo albums that I've finally gotten around to uploading. I will usually keep that as the link to the latest days album, you can navigate around and find the rest of the photos in there if you'd like. Sooner or later I'll also re-link all the old photos in the blog so you can click to larger, more visible images.

Next, some links. I was asked by many people (or just my mom...) to put up some links that I follow for the math and push ups etc. The math simple: http://www.freemathworksheets.org/ Go through it start to, chapter 4 or 5 or whatever. I think I only made it to chapter 7 but its more important to read the early chapters than the later ones, this also means reading the introduction. Next: Push Ups: http://www.hundredpushups.com/ That's pretty easy, same with Sit Ups: http://www.twohundredsitups.com/ Duh.

That's all for maintenance, I've gotta learn a little HTML so I can make those links look better next time. UPCOMING: Cooking, Multi-culturalism... Tourism and The Metro pt2.

I'm a TOURIST! Pt. 2

2009-02-10T00:31:00.012+01:00

The subtitle to this weeks episode of Tourism is "Wherein Scott finds out he is still allergic to shellfish." I was born in Maine, both of my parents are from New English. This means I am genetically required to enjoy shell fish and sea food. Unfortunately genetics also decided to throw a cruel wrench into those requirements and made me allergic to most shell fish. My parents thought it was a passing phase when I was young and kept feeding me Scallops... Einstein said insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. I do enjoy shell fish (except scallops, I am psychologically opposed to scallops) from time to time.

But it has become a bit like alcohol, if I consume too much... well, you get the picture. This weekends adventure brings us to Ste. Catherine. I am lying a little, this is two different weekends that I happen to put into one. This is probably a secret most travel writers wouldn't tell you.

A few days ago I told you guys I was starting to get into a morning routine: Wake up, shower, breakfast, headphones, work. This is kinda like NYC except I've got a real commute and time to actually get into my music. When I decide to TOUR things, I ditch the headphones because I want to pay attention externally not internally. I only made this a conscious decision when going to Ste. Catherine as it is the same Metro stop as I go to for my office. Immediately after getting out of the train, I took my headphones off so I could see my routine walk in a different light. While I have noticed my surroundings during my morning routine, I haven't really examined them.

It turns out (according to mr. Time Out Brussels) Ste. Catherine is the old fish market, with the mass of restaurants as the only relic of that age. I went to two separate places, one known for their Mussels the other for something different. Now, if we were to consider mussels liquor, I have an extremely low tolerance so I found a place that had Appetizer portions. I still ended up insulting the waiter by eating half a bowl of mussels, "You only ate Six." I corrected him, "Huit" (that's eight in french, and I'm a jerk). I'm unsure if he would have preferred the alternative had I finished the entire bowl.

The second place I stopped at was Mer Du Nord, or North Sea. This place was awesome for a lot of reasons. You stand outside at a bar and order small plates. This isn't necessarily a physical small plate, but more of a metaphorical small plate. The plates are meant as a tasting... going to a "small plates" restaurant you would usually order a bunch of small plates and enjoy the ride.

Mer Du Nord is a ride in the North Sea: Cold, lots of seafood and wine for lunch. I watched the chef cook some shrimp on the grill while he fried my Haddock. They had a wine list stocked with both White House Wine and Red House Wine. I spent like seven Euro on that plate of fried fish and an OK glass of white wine. I actually really enjoyed the experience because it was more about being social than it was about the food itself. Don't get me wrong, I liked the haddock and the tasty salad with tartar and mayo, but the food wasn't the highlight.

That's all for today, I thought I was gonna add more of the tourism in but there was plenty of content with just the two restaurants. I've got some blog posts planned for the next few days, but we'll see what happens with office time. Oh, I pulled 70 hours last week... AND got sick from Mussels yay! I think I just need more waffles.

Spending Report: Week 3

2009-02-08T22:22:00.003+01:00

So this week I paid my rent. This brings my number WAY up for the week.

Overall: 941.09! UGH! or 71.09 sans rent...

Breakdown:

Rent: 870.00

Transportation: 0.00

Groceries: 26.79

Miscellaneous food: 20.05

Restaurant: 9.25

Rent: I had to pay daily for the first 11 Days I was in the apartment and then I had to pay my first month so all in all it was a lot. Also, my bank account wasn't fully set up so I had to pay in cash. I will say one nice thing about the ATM's here, they give you options of what bills you want down to a 5.

Transportation: I just wanted to show that I spent nothing on transportation this week... This and Rent should be done for the month unless I can take a trip out of the city.

Groceries: This number is a little high because I got some long term ingredients like Margarine and Parmigiano. The first time I shopped I got butter, but I hate putting butter on bread and sometimes don't like it for other applications. Margarine was NOT easy to find though and using logic to decipher the terms... not really gonna help. I also decided to get garbage bags (the wrong ones) for the apartment. Belgium has a crazy recycling scheme where you have 3 different color garbage bags: White for trash, Yellow for paper and Blue for plastics. All glass has to be taken to bins placed throughout the city. I knew we needed bags and got Blue... even though we needed Yellow. OH WELL.

Miscellaneous Food: This was just things like Beer, Chocolate and Pasteis De Nata... all pretty acceptable.

Restaurant: This number is way down, I only ate "out" twice. One time I'll write about during a tourist blog the second is in the Office. On Fridays someone usually cooks lunch for the office and collects about 3 Euros to gather food for the meal. I considered it "restaurant" because I paid for cooked food. It was very nice because it breaks up the monotony of the sandwich and it was relaxing.

Again I'll bring a call for comments. If you don't want to comment publicly and you want to suggest a post, email me: Scott DOT Corey AT gmail DOT com.

Pasteis De Nata & Chocolate

2009-02-07T22:34:00.010+01:00

I believe you've met my friend Pasteis De Nata... I'm sorry I didn't introduce you guys the first time around. I'm amazed that I've found one of my favorite pastries in Belgium, and its a Portuguese pastry. This is a tiny little custard creme cup thing. It tastes like pudding flavored with toasted marshmallows. OH MY GOD!

I found a Portuguese speciality store around the corner on my way to the Delhaize (the grocery store). I walked in, looked around at some three euro bottles of red wine, some of the meats and cheeses, and then noticed pastries. I'm a sucker for pastries so I ordered two different ones and Pasteis De Nata was by far the winner. I got some more today for my office and they went over very very well. Its kinda like the best Boston cream donut you'll ever eat for 1.05 Euro. I've been told that there is an entire city in Portugal devoted to this one pastry... though it still pales in comparison to the Danish.

I think there were only two things I knew about Belgium before I arrived: Waffles and Chocolate. We all know about my penchant for Waffles, so I thought I would look into the other Belgian Icon. Near the Metro stop on my way to the office is one chocolate shop that I stopped in my first or second day in the city. While I was there I tried a small sampling of the "popular flavors." I got 3 especially unique flavors: Chili, Wasabe and Basil. I guess chili isn't too far off the deep end, it was very good spicy but still mild. Wasabe was not good, there was no spice to it and the flavor does not lend itself to chocolate very well. Basil was a very very happy surprise. I never thought the herby flavor of basil would work well with chocolate but I would suggest it to anyone if they get a chance to try it.

This past weekend I went looking for the real chocolate shops. I've been told the best place to get chocolate in all of Belgium is Bruges, but that's another trip all together. I found my guide book had a section on chocolate and there was one square they mentioned. I took a trip to this square and went into and out of about five or six shops absorbing the scent of chocolate. I decided to get a box to send back States side and ended up at Wittamer: the canonical Brussels chocolate shop. I think its been around for almost 100 years and is very classic. Some of the avant garde (see I am learning french) shops were interesting but really only to look. At Wittamer I purchased a box of 40 pieces (100 grams) for only 15 Euros, which is a steal considering that is priced just above a Hershey bar by weight. I also purchased a small sample for myself to know what I was sending.

I decided to try three of my choice and one of the employees choice. My selection was Earl Grey, Passion Fruit and Cannelle, the employee picked one without a name on it. They were all very creamy and had the same exact texture (except unnamed). The shell itself was thin but strongly flavored and had a little snap to it. If you're given a choice of the same four I ended up with, I would suggest the Earl Grey first. It was unique, I will definitely aim for more aromatic flavors to mix with chocolates for any future purchases. The Passion Fruit was well done, it didn't have the pucker some passion fruit dishes share and was very subtle. The Cannelle was cinnamon, I did enjoy it but it wasn't my favorite. Now, I don't really know what to call the last unnamed one. I'm pretty sure it was a praline, or a crunchy hazelnut flavored piece. I know it wasn't a "hazelnut" flavored one, because they have those. This is why I think it was a praline, and it seemed less sophisticated than the rest. That doesn't mean I didn't like it, but it was much more sweet than the others.

As with all other food based blogs, I will continue studying and repeating these experiments to make sure they produce similar results. I want to be absolutely sure that the chocolate is very chocolaty... and that the waffles are very waffley. I should have a post about some fish tomorrow, along with the weekly spending (ugh... rent). The BBM (big boss man for future usage) will be in the office around 6 or 7 pm tomorrow so I do get a day of tourism before work, I hope I find something good.

Personal Development pt. 2

2009-02-07T13:21:00.004+01:00

I've been told that last post may have been a little over the top. There was a little more nervous energy than usual, that's because I was nervous writing the post. It isn't really very difficult to document what the City of Brussels does to me, while it is much more difficult to admit things that I am doing to myself. I imagine these posts will be few and far between, and I think most of them will have to do with my push ups and trying to fit in french lessons. The main reason I am keeping up with the personal development end of the posts at all is accountability. Making things like this public (as public as this blog is) makes me accountable... I don't want to fail but if it is a private only failure oh well.
On to lighter things: This won't count as my post for the day, this is more of an update to tell you guys I'm not going crazy. Today I'll either write about a tourism day I had last week or more about food. I'd also like to write about beer, but I need more experience first. Or both since I think I have to make up for Monday or Wednesday or something. Also, tomorrow The Big Boss Man will be in the office, so we're cramming a little for the informal meeting.

Routine, Pushups and Personal Development

2009-02-07T00:05:00.004+01:00

In my first blog post I mentioned that I'd like to speak about Personal Development. So far I have yet to "tag" anything in such a category. I'm getting there... slowly. Before I left NYC I started quite a few things that I think were helping me grow into a smarter, stronger person. I believe this was because some portions of my life had become SO routine that I was able to start to push those routines around a bit to make room for new ones. My life in this new place is different. It is starting to feel better, more comfortable and easier every day. In a later post I will write about my problems with this concept but for now I'll say this: Pushing myself into new personal growth routines is difficult when I have to move towards an entire new set of routines that are just based on Survival.

I talk about one routine; Get home, make dinner, write blog. I've done this sequence almost every night I've been here, for better or worse. I'm basing this routine concept on the writing of Leo Babauta from ZenHabits. This is a blog I've read for a little while and is generally pretty motivation to get off your butt and do something new. A lot of his writing comes off as repeated fluff, but some of the more simple posts click with me. He came up with a challenge this new year to "begin a new habit." The idea being that you make 5 minute concrete goals on a daily basis always after a similar "trigger" event. This is how I am doing my blog... though its not really a 5 minute habit. I had a little more practice with this idea from summer of 2007 until I left.

In the months leading up to New York I started practicing a bunch of different daily rituals and other things to test me physically and mentally. Two I really enjoyed were basic Arithmetic and Push-ups. Arithmetic... sounds dumb for a 24 year old to practice, but even before I left I learned the idea that Americans have an awful upbringing in mathematics, specifically arithmetic. Eastern cultures teach the basic algorithms like adding and subtracting in a completely different way. I began practicing these methods for a little while every day and it was very satisfying how much growth I saw in a very short period of time. After about a week of practice I could add a stack of five or six digit numbers in a fraction of the time it used to take me.

Secondly: push ups, lots and lots of push ups. I will be the first, and maybe second person to admit that I am not a physically in shape person. I'm pretty sure I paid fat tax (wherein you belong to a gym and don't go for a month) more than once in the year I belonged to my gym. I found some challenge on a website to do 100 push ups in a row. I have absolutely no idea what attracted me to this concept except that it had an incredibly structured spreadsheet for me to follow. It had a plan for three days a week for three different levels of competence and lasted for six weeks. This was something I was dumb enough to follow. Let me tell you, the first week was rough and I have no idea why I followed up. The second week the numbers jump up enough to scare you... but you can do it. It wasn't the adrenaline of push ups that drove me to continue, it was the results of small daily growth that pushed me further. I made it through four weeks and was doing five sets of over twenty-five push ups in a single session. I recognize the fact that that is more than 100 push ups but they had timed rest sessions in there. In a relatively short period of time there was not only a noticeable difference in how MANY push ups I could do, but in my physical appearance. Then I took off a day for a dumb reason and stopped doing them all together. AWESOME!

(Now for the meat and potatoes of today) In a previous post's comments someone suggested they would start doing the 100 again if I did. SO, I will. I'm starting from scratch because it helps build the routine more than the muscle. In addition I will be adding two more small exercises to my morning routine. I found a similar challenge for sit ups... 200! sit ups in a row. Look it up. The last exercise is the most fun for me, the Indian Push up. LOOK IT UP. Now, to keep me honest I will do one of two things. I'll make a once weekly post of my daily commitment: What percentage of the exercises I completed, was I happy with my routine, my morning timing? what are my triggers? Did I do it no matter what? If I find I'm not keeping up with it, I'll move to keeping up a side bar post to show my day to day progress. You can track me loosing my mildly overweight American butt daily or weekly, its up to how lazy I am. I'll post tomorrow about other things I'd like to add to my growing list of things to do. But for now its late and I have work tomorrow (yes, Saturday... maybe no extra tourism reports for a little while).

The Cell Phone

2009-02-05T20:03:00.004+01:00

I'm gonna level with you guys. My original goal was to write one post per day. I told you my strategy (the routine) of getting home, making dinner and then writing before anything else. This week I came across a snag in my strategy. The All-Nighter. I originally assumed everyone reading my blog would know me, but that is naive now a days so I'll explain what I do. I am an architect. I work long hours for low pay. I like my job and sometimes I like my job more than sleep. Because of this, I am likely to stay awake over night. By Thursday morning of this week, I had finished more hours than most would work in a full week. My new goal is to post 7 post per week. If I get smart, I will write one or two extras and hold them back as I would like to keep a once per day thing if possible.

OK, On to the real post. Cell phones, they're different here. That much should be pretty obvious. During my first few trips to Europe I tried out 3 different things, with the 3rd being the most successful. My first trip, I rented a phone from a US company. Not an awful choice, but a little more pricey than necessary. Second trip, NO phone. I like this method because it meant I wasn't really tethered to anything at all: not time, not people. On the other hand, the off chance that I needed a phone? Out of luck... obviously. The third trip, Dublin, I did a little research before I left. Economically, the best method is to purchase the cheapest cell phone in the country you're going to and just keep it for later trips. In Europe you have a SIM card (like a memory chip) which links you to a specific country, contains your contacts and generates your phone number. If you go to another country in Europe you can swap the chip and use it there. The first day I was in Dublin I went into a phone store at random, found the cheapest phone there and bought it for around 30 Euros including a 10Euro credit.

There are two concepts to understand with a European phone, UN/Locking and "Topping Up." It is a common practice for mobile service providers to "lock" a phone and make it usable only within their network. This means if you get a phone through Vodaphone and go to a country without Vodaphone service, its very likely your phone will not work. There is also a huge market for UNLOCKED phones in Europe. A lot of times you can buy them from the store unlocked, there are also shady looking places where you can get unlocking done. Finally, about 10 minutes of GOOGLE searching should provide you with a legal, free, easy way to unlock your phone. "Topping Up," occurs when you refill the minutes in your phone. Almost everyone runs their phones on pay-per-minute service and refills when necessary. You buy a card from almost any corner store and go through a few menus on your phone. Simple. Except those menus are only in French or Dutch, and I don't' know French or Dutch.

My phone... I bought my phone locked through Vodaphone. I moved to Belgium, which doesn't have a Vodaphone representation. So I did the obligatory 10 minute Google search. This yielded some interesting information. Of all the phone manufacturers on the market, Motorola are some of the more difficult phones to unlock. In addition, my ONE specific phone model is not unlockable by any of the standard means. Usually you just put in a number on the back of the phone into a software, and the software generates a code to unlock your phone. People produce software that works for a huge number of phones, and not a single one is compatible with my phone, awesome. I thought, I'll go roam around and find one of those shady places that will unlock my phone for me. I go to a phone store, the one I purchased my SIM card in to ask about unlocking phones. He tells me, "It is illegal to Lock phones in Belgium, so there isn't a large number of options, just this guy down there street." It is my luck to bring the only unlockable phone to the country that doesn't allow locking to begin with. I found the guy, realized he didn't speak English and just showed him the phone. He says, "20 Euro," I know this is still 10 -15 Euro cheaper than buying a new phone so just hand it over. He takes the phone in the back, is gone for 5 minutes and then my phone works.

That is basically the end of the Phone Story. Though an interesting event occurred a few days later, while I was in my office. I was walking around and all of a sudden heard an awful and very loud ringing noise. Everyone, including myself, looks around for this loud noise. Until I realize that awful noise is centered on my pocket. One of my co-workers says, "That is your ring? That's horrible." "I guess that is my phone, no one has ever called me before."

My Office pt. 1

2009-02-04T00:24:00.012+01:00

I didn't post yesterday. My original goal was to create a habit of blogging every day, after I finish dinner and walk upstairs. I arrived at my apartment at 4am, and didn't feel like cooking dinner. This means my whole routine was broken. Because of this missed day, I want to make it up to you guys by putting up some real information about my job, office, and working life in general.

Right now there are about 13 employees with a pretty wide range of nationalities: 3 Americans, 2 Irish, 1 French, 2 Belgian, 1 Portuguese , 2 Italian, and 1 German. I think I'm the only one that can not speak French, but the office functions in English. Most of the people from will slip and communicate in their native language, with French its not so easy, Dutch on the other hand is great. I can usually guess my way through Dutch via hand motions and similar Germanic syllables. I'm not confident enough to answer phones yet... what if the person who's calling only speaks French? What if it's the principle of the firm and he has an important task that I'd rather not do? Too many unknown variables for me to feel safe.

I've told you guys about the laptops. First arrivals usually grab the better computers, but there is inevitably some swapping later in the afternoon or night when people realize they don't have all the software they need and someone else is using the best computer in the office to listen to itunes while sketching on trace. We have an office network that is very well structured and contains a "bible." A quick read provides all the information you need when starting in the office in Copenhagen... which is as useful as it sounds for the new BXL (Brussels) employees. Everyone communicates in the office via email and Outlook. I don't have to know any ones email address because I can just allow the network to pick the correct one based on their first name alone. Passive aggressive tendencies flourish in a system where you can send an email to the entire office about the trash by using "BXL" as your recipient.

That brings me to my position in the office. I am a member of the GRO team, and the irony may not reach many of you, for some it exists as a wonderful inside joke. We are working on a large scale housing competition for the town of Gronigen in Holland. The photo at the top is of a model built in the past week, and it represents 100,000 square feet of housing. I am on a team with the design architect of the firm, and the two Belgian guys. Every single day we set up images of what we've completed and make a daily report to send to the Principal of the firm. He (usually) sends a one line reply that gives us another days worth of tasks to figure out.

I have also been placed on team "Office Look." This team is headed by the Portuguese guy and also has another American. We are in charge of documenting the office and deciding if we need more storage, a different layout... any office infrastructure related things. Last week I changed light bulbs for an hour. Finally, I am on a two person rotating "Slick Office" team. There are 7 of these in the office and when it is your turn to be in charge of "Slick Office," you make sure the kitchen stays clean, the garbage and recycling are taken out. You are also in charge of dusting the models. There is a lot of work involved in the office.

I've realized the depth of difference between this office and my last, and probably many other offices of both architecture and otherwise, that I should probably take a little more time and separate these posts a little. I may continue tomorrow... I may talk about chocolate. There's also a 90% change I'll be starting work in Belgian time and ending work after east coast time folks. Not only is there a big milestone presentation on Thursday for GRO, but "Office Look" is in charge of building new tables for the office on Thursday. Wonderful.

Spending Report: Week 2

2009-02-01T23:55:00.000+01:00

You guys should be proud, I brought my spending WAY down. Its actually nice because this week was almost twice as long as the last. Next week won't be good though... its got a month and a half of rent on it... I may just do that separately.

Overall: 110.73

Breakdown (I did do that math wrong a little last week... this week is hopefully right):

Transportation: 52.90

Groceries: 16.83

Miscellaneous food: 16.00

Tourism: 9.00

Toiletries: 8.00

Restaurant: 8.00

Transportation... This is a big number this week. I got Two 10-passes. Basically my first time using the metro efficiently was Sunday, so I had 4 work days worth of passes (1 each way). I had to get another one on Friday and I learned about the monthly pass on Saturday. This means I purchased another 10 pass and only used 4 trips before I got an unlimited trip. You shouldn't see transportation again for a while. Well... maybe that isn't true, if you do see transportation it means I got outta Brussels and went for an excursion.

Groceries is a list of last weeks buys... some successful some not. My loaf of bread went bad about 2/3rds of the way through so this week I purchased a smaller loaf (400 grams instead of 600 grams). I also got things like plastic bags, salt and olive oil that I won't have to purchase again.

Miscellaneous Food is a measure of things that aren't meals... you can consider it my waffle expense. Yes, I spend a lot of Euros a week on waffles. This expense is entirely worth it.

The Atomium cost me 9 euro. I don't know how I felt about that cost... it was basically an expensive elevator ride.

Toiletries are expensive, I had to get lotion and conditioner... that's about it.

Restaurant. I didn't actually go out to any restaurants this week. That 8 Euro represents the days that I was too tired or lazy to make myself dinner. I fount out the oven pizzas are wonderful and I may submit to them often. I am more comfortable making myself dinner now that I'm accustomed to my hours.

That's it guys, I finished my first real week. I still want the overall number to go down, but for now its not SO bad. I will always have tourism stuff but one major expense from the States was eliminated: There is a coffee machine in the office that makes delicious coffee.

I want more comments. I need more comments. Ask me more questions, I need some stock questions to answer.

Groceries and other Errands

2009-02-01T00:35:00.000+01:00

My first Saturday after a week of work. I felt no need to go out for tourism... Maybe I'll do some stuff Sunday. All I wanted to do was mundane errands and some good old fashioned lazy sitting. I had a few things to get done: Groceries, Laundry and purchasing my Monthly Transit Pass. Monthly transit was pretty easy, just a trip down town and a wait on line, no big deal. Laundry was a little more fun, mainly because I have no idea how to read french or dutch. I kinda just guessed which settings and hoped. All my clothing has remained the correct size, so I'll assume I did it right.

I've gone to the grocery store twice now, each time was a great experience. I've been planning to write about the grocery store for a little while so I did some reconnaissance. My first trip was the tragic, "I don't know where anything is, or how to read any of the words on things," trip. Grocery shopping isn't usually a tourist event, so I imagine people were relatively confused to be documented in their natural grocery based habitat. I had two incidents my first time around, the first was avoidable. Delhaize is closed every Sunday, so Saturdays are PACKED. A nice woman tried to walk by me while I waited on line only to knock my basket. The only thing that popped outta the basket was my carton of Eggs... Luckily this is an event that can happen at any grocery store, so it is not a Belgian special mistake. The second tragedy was my misunderstanding of the produce section. Anything that you have to bag yourself... you also have to weigh and tag yourself. I did not know this, the employee scanning me did not know how to EXPLAIN THIS to me in English. A nice man behind me was forced to walk me to the nearest weighing machine and show me the error of my ways. Kind of embarrassing, I've been told it happens to everyone.

My second trip (today) was much more successful. I put up a picture of my receipt for today's trip to give an example of why I am so happy with this grocery store experience. My entire bill for today's trip was 15.08 Euros. That's roughly 18 dollars. I got a single portion of Pork and Steak to make 4 dinners this week. I got Bananas, Apples, Broccoli and Carrots (of these, I only had to weight the carrots). Most of the produce comes in pre-packaged weighed containers. I also got some lunch meat, some sliced Gouda and a loaf of bread. Lastly I got eggs and some shaving cream.

This to me, was a lot of stuff for a good price. But I also have become extremely interested in the quality and value of the products. The Broccoli never has a dried stalk and when you actually slice up the stalk and steam it, there is an almost buttery flavor to it. It is wonderful to be able to cook the whole stalk because it extends the amount of use I get out of each purchase. The Eggs... are wonderful. I've only had eggs this fresh once or twice before. The color of the scrambled eggs is more yellow than I have ever seen, and you can taste the difference. I also like the fact that I can purchase a true single serving of steak or pork. At this point I usually still cut it in half, but it is a much smaller portion than anything in the States.

A final thing I really like is the speciality aisles. I included two examples... the Foie Gras section, which is completely absurd, and the Waffle section. These Waffles are incredibly disappointing after street waffles. But then again, there is a waffle SECTION. I also like the bread and meat areas. The bread aisle has two sides, one with packaged bread... the other with fresh bread. They also have a bread slicer, so that you can purchase a fresh loaf of bread and slice it however thick you'd like for sandwiches for the week. The meat area has more variety than I am used to, mainly because I've never seen quail in a grocery before. I will save the pastry portion of this thought line for another post. I may also study those pastries again before posting, so I know exactly what to write.

As for those of you that think I may be going overboard with pastries and waffles. I'm pretty sure they have 0 calories. That's what I've been told, and Belgians don't lie. Also I walk up and down 5 flights of stairs every day (sometimes more than twice when I've convinced myself that I forgot to lock my door... even though I did). I also have a half hour walk to and from work and about 4 flights of stairs to the subway. Maybe I'll update with my new daily exercises stuff soon, once it is a full routine. For now, trust that I'll be OK.

WEEK 1 DONE!

2009-01-31T00:49:00.000+01:00

So I have completed my first of 12 weeks at JDS. I will try to bring you guys an update about what the office is like with some photos eventually, but I don't feel like being a tourist in the place I'm supposed to work... yet. I will say this, Friday is WINE DAY! Tonight I'll share with you two things: one subway based, one room mate based.

Exhibit 1: On your left you see an image. That image is a representation of me being dumb. I decided to re-enact the events that lead to me being done in this photo. This is my subway stop on the work side of my commute. Maybe I'll include more photos later of my trip to and from the office, but for now this is all you get to see. This is St. Catherine and there are two entrances. This one, and another one really far away. One night I heard the train coming so I thought... Oh, the escalator isn't working I'll run down the stairs and try to catch the train. WRONG! Clever Belgians have escalators that start moving when you step on a plate near them. I almost tripped and fell tumbling into eternity on an upwards moving stair. I am now beginning to understand the subtlety of the bright red circle with a line through it.

Exhibit 2: A few people wanted to see some of my room mates, and tonight seemed to be the best possible night to introduce Kellim. Kellim, Niall and Lynn are like my Belgian Clippy. If you have to ask, Clippy is the wonderful animated paperclip from Microsoft products that offers useful information when you're doing things. These three individuals have given me so much extremely necessary advice and help in my first week; I'm not sure I would have made it without them being so kind. So, Kellim... He is an American, which is nice. He is rather blurry, but promises it isn't contagious. I also just finished having an hour long conversation about African Tribal War chief Staves... Oh, that's Central African Tribal Warchief Staves. Kellim is an African art dealer, and just showed me his prized collection. He is also an architecture fanatic and has explained how necessary it is to go to Rotterdam. Finally... Kellim is the person quoted my first day saying "Dude... Brussels Sucks."

Metro

2009-01-30T00:54:00.001+01:00

I haven't fully explored the outer reaches of the Metro lines, but I can explain some of the nuances of the Belgian metro that I've learned. The first is the ticketing system, since almost every city I've been in has some variation. Brussels uses the "trust" and stamp method. You can buy a ticket and put it in a machine where it stamps it with the time. You then have a period of time (between an hour and 90 minutes... depending on who you talk to) that you can travel on any public transportation. There are either three or four main lines, but the majority of the time you'll only use three (or two).

Brussels is a radial city (think a bicycle wheel with everything aiming towards the center), so one subway line rings around center city. The two other main lines actually converge through the majority of the center city going east-west. Once they pass the edge of center city they separate and head out in different directions. My favorite part about the subway so far is the timing map. In each station there is a map that shows the location (and time estimate) of all the trains on the lines. You can run down the stairs and see that 2 trains are coming... the A train will be here in 4 minutes the B train will be here in 9 minutes.

My exploration out to the Atomium took me the furthest out to the grounds for the '52 Worlds Fair. I didn't spend any time going to the huge spanning warehouse sized museums of the exhibits or "Europe land." Europe land is a miniature sized map of Europe for children that has small replicas of popular landmarks (from the 50's) in the major cities. I thought I'd include a little more on the Atomium since the waffle may have obscured its true beauty. The second photograph is taken on the escalator going through one of the connective tubes. That was probably the most interesting part. Unfortunately the restaurant at the top was like 20 Euro per dish... with a meal consisting of 2-3 dishes. Its kinda like being offered Steak au Poivre as the ferris wheel comes around to the top of the circle.

Anyway... I'm getting a little more used to 12 hour days. #4 is done with #5 most likely on its way. I'm not sure what I'll write about tomorrow, maybe suggestions? Questions? Email me... Scott DOT Corey AT Gmail DOT com. (I've heard if you include your real email address in these things your spam will increase even MORE than usual)

I'm a TOURIST! pt. 1

2009-01-28T23:14:00.001+01:00

While I'm in Brussels I will attempt to be a tourist on as many occasions as possible (which I am now learning could be very few and far between). In addition to being a tourist in Brussels I would like to see Antwerp, Bruges, Rotterdam and Paris. The first two cities are local... half an hour to 45 minutes on the train. Rotterdam and Paris require a little more than a day, with probably one over night. Both of those train rides are still under 2 hours on the High Speeds.

OK... So my first few days I did light tourism because I was trying to get acquainted with the city and know what was around. I avoided public transportation for a day or two and just walked everywhere, only learning that my apartment isn't very close to the center of the city. I needed a Duvet cover and had to go to the Centre Deux, a department store. I knew approximately where it was, looked in the direction and just walked. I found this cool orange wood sculpture down a street entirely by accident, the thing was massive, extremely dense and towered over the street like a cloud.

Another day I got the chance to meet up with someone who lives in my building and works at the EU. He got me into the EU Parliament which is a massive network of structures that is for all intents and purposes a miniature city. I saw the main meeting rooms with all the different language translation boxes. It was a fun experience, I imagine similar to getting to see the inner workings of the UN in NYC or Geneva. The image is of the unnecessarily foreboding entrance.

That afternoon I wanted to measure how far a walk it is from my apartment to my office. I would like to walk it every day, but the time involved was a little much. That night I found the huge pedestrian district with the "restaurant alley" that I wrote about in a previous post.

The overall district is pretty lame; most of the restaurants, chocolate shops and retail spaces were boring chains. It was mostly tourists, as I wasn't the only one taking photos but it was fun to people watch. I also found "Chinatown" which is comprised of one street with about 3 Asian grocery stores and a few Chinese restaurants. Its the only place I'll find Jasmine rice, soy sauce or sesame oil so that's where I'll have to go.

My final tourist day was Sunday. I took the metro out to my office for a real estimate on my daily commute and found a cool little chocolate shop with some good prices. I'll talk more about it, but the short of it: Basil Truffle... delicious. My second and major stop for the day was THE ATOMIUM! The Eiffel Tower of Brussels... and vastly underwhelming.

Basically it is a big ugly set of spheres that you can occupy, and they're tall or something. Oh, I thought the only real way to represent this place was with a Waffle. You guys read the post about waffles right? Anyway, I'm gonna go and get some sleep... Three 12 hour days in a row are taking their toll.

Work... Day 1

2009-01-27T00:27:00.000+01:00

So I made it through my first day. No worries, just the first of many 12 hour days I imagine. They believe in teaching through doing... which is a cliche that works pretty much everywhere. I was tossed onto a project and had to take charge of the entire digital site model. It wasn't a bad days work, and everyone on the project team had some say in different portions of the project. I liked how included everyone was in the process. I also had some fun new intern jobs, like building boxes for transporting mail.

A few nice things about this place. No one has a computer. This is because there is a locker full of laptops. Every morning you come into the office, grab a laptop from the locker, find a seat at a team table and start your days work. No personal physical space, no personal digital space... I actually liked it. There was also some computer trading through out the day, at one point someone didn't have rhino and another didn't have illustrator. There the trade comes in.

I meet my boss for the first time Wednesday morning... 8:15 AM. Oh yea, he's not around too much and my project team was scheduled for the first slot out of his two hours. We also have to go through a process of documenting all the physical and digital work done at the end of each and every day to send to him so he has an idea of whats going on.

There is a well used coffee machine... but no waffle vendor near by.

Spending Report: Week 1

2009-01-25T20:00:00.000+01:00

To keep me honest (to myself and to you guys) I'm maintaining a spending Diary. I will try my best to record every euro cent I spend while I'm out here just to get an idea of cost of living. This first week isn't great because I've got some bigger necessities and some tourism food (i.e. overpriced) under my belt. I'd like to get the number way down to make some future out of town trips.

Overall: 201.23

Breakdown (let me know if the math is wrong, then I know I've done the spreadsheet wrong):

Necessity: 90.99

Restaurant: 45.25

Phone: 34.00

Groceries: 24.04

Misc. Food: 5.25

Transportation: 1.70

Necessity is things like my taxi ride, which was entirely necessary because no sane human could navigate the luggage I had on subway or bus and somehow make it to the area I live in. Also included is a Duvet cover, not a cheap thing... but at least I didn't have to get the duvet as well. Finally is an umbrella, who doesn't bring an umbrella to Brussels?

Restaurant is a range of things from smart to dumb. My first night in

town I had a wonderful dinner with a beer and coffee for 12 euro in my area of town. Last night I went on a tourist night and paid 18 (should have been 12) for an OK meal. I found a street packed with restaurants, and it seemed like the Red Light District of restaurants. Men stood outside trying to sell you into their restaurant "come in, its only 12.50, 3 courses and a beer ON ME!" I roamed around for a while and decided to go into one without talking to the door man only to realize at the end of the meal it was 18 euro unless you let them convince you to come in. Dumb tourists...

My phone. I have a whole post on my phone, but the overall price breaks down to a SIM card, an unlocking fee and a replacement charger.

Groceries... I have a whole post for this too. I'd like to go to another store or two before I divulge the experiences. I will say I've cooked a few meals for myself, and they have been wonderful. More later.

Misc. Food is my general snack budget. This is mostly waffles for the time being, but in next weeks I will include things like chocolate and frites. Soon I will no longer be a tourist required to purchase waffles and chocolate, just frites so maybe that number will come down.

I should write a whole post about the Metro as well, so I'll save it for later. That 1.70 is for a single trip, I am saving money next week through the purchase of a 10 trip pass.

Expect posts like this every Sunday recapping the previous weeks spending... we'll all watch my savings go down the tubes!

Very important news!

2009-01-24T21:49:00.000+01:00

WAFFLES! I'm convinced Brussels has designed its street food to make people fat... which apparently doesn't work on Europeans but Americans beware. The three big street foods:

1. Waffles, I wish I could do justice to true Belgian waffles. They are unlike any waffle I have had. They are very airy but crisp. I imagine the batter has quite a bit of sugar because when you chew these waffles it has a caramel stickiness to it. They also dip them in chocolate... ridiculous.

2. Pomme Frites, "french" fries I've been told are actually of Belgian origin. To be safe, continue calling them Freedom Fries. I don't have much to say about these just yet as my original studies have been purely in waffledom. I will note that there is usually a large variety of sauces and fun little forks involved.

3. Chocolate. I guess its not really street food, but in the pedestrian areas its not uncommon to be 3 chocolate shops in a row, all filled. I'm not entirely sure if I may have been in some special "chocolate shop area," it was absurd never the less. I avoided these for now but when I attempt to enter a chocolate shop, I will tell the tale.

The Weather

2009-01-24T21:36:00.000+01:00

It isn't great. I took that on a day where the 10 day forecast looked the BEST. I'm getting pretty excited about even the Mostly Cloudy Days, and the Partially Cloudy... I may just go to the beach. Oh, and 4-6 C is actually pretty nice. Leaving 5-25 F in NYC is never a bad thing.

It seems like it rains every day, and I've been told that's usual. I've come to accept that. The bad days are the ones that have wind in addition to the rain. I bought an umbrella my first day, only for it to be destroyed by wind my second day. Back to the drawing board. Today I saw the sun for the first time, which was amazing and it made me feel great. Seeing so little of the sun means when it comes out the day is that much better!

Oh, and the sun... We get one hour less sun every day. Unfortunately this extra hour is in the morning which makes for a very difficult time waking up. I'm pretty sure the sun doesn't come up until 8:15... which means I want to sleep in every day. Work comes Monday, so lets hope I can start waking up early.

French, or why I will begin to embarass myself

2009-01-23T18:08:00.000+01:00

My quest was to leave the "easy" and stretch my boundaries to enable new learning paths. I probably could have gone further from easy, like any Asian country, but after two days living in Brussels I've learned that there are a lot less English speakers than I had assumed. All of my previous trips were relatively easy. I've spent time in northern Europe (Scandinavia) and Ireland where it is hard to find someone who doesn't speak English. In haphazardly roaming the city, it seems as though a full 25% speak absolutely no English at all. I can barely begin to communicate with these people.

Belgium is a bilingual country comprised of Wallonia (south & French) and Flanders (north & Dutch). Brussels resides within the northern half and while it seems almost fully french, the city is required to do everything bilingually. This is confusing for a whole slew of reasons, but the most inconvenient is street names. Every single street in the entire city is named twice. As an example my new office is on Rue Des Fabriques (french)... and ALSO on Fabrieksstraat (dutch). That doesn't look too bad on paper, but I can barely hear French yet. The words are said quickly and smoothly so I can barely piece syllables out to look for them on my maps. I think its time to get serious about really learning French. Until I fully understand my office schedule I won't be paying for lessons, I will stick with Rosetta Stone.

My sister had a blog from her experiences abroad in Argentina titled: Shanna Speaks Spanish... Hilarity Ensues. She could probably be considered fluent BEFORE she went down there. Maybe I should name this blog: Scott Doesn't Really Speak French... Insults Abound.

Wish me luck...

Arrival

2009-01-22T12:03:00.000+01:00

My new living arrangements are quite different from JC. The main difference is instead of renting an apartment, I've rented a room and bathroom. My comfort with the metric system clearly did not prepare me for the size of an 11 square meter room. Had I known it was this small I would have brought one less piece of luggage (2 instead of 3). Oh, I also didn't realize that B3D (my room number) was going to be on the 5th floor of a walk up. This also made me wish I'd brought less luggage. On to the good: one thing I really like about the room is the window /skylight, it brings a ton of light into such a tiny room. It also has a pretty open view to my area of the city. I also have about 8 roommates that I share the building with.

"Dude, Brussels sucks." I meet one of my new room mates. Everyone shares a living room and kitchen, and the common space is nice: high ceilings, well lit, efficient. My first afternoon/night in the building I have a short discussion with one or two of my building-mates. "Brussels sucks," sounds like a general consensus in the building, with the amendment that Brussels is also great. We are within a hour or two train ride from 3 major cities in 3 different countries, so it is a very convenient city for travel. Brussels is also the home of the EU congress. This makes it a sort of commuter community: busy during the week... empty on the weekend. Even non-EU employees seem to travel quite a bit, apparently even the native Belgians in my building are gone one week a month.

I will spend my first few days finding things I need for my room and randomly roaming the city. I start my new job on Monday but I'd like to get a few tourist things out of the way first, like cheep wonderful Beer (for the sake of comparison, a beer with dinner was 1.50 Euro).

5 things to do before you leave, pt. 1

2009-01-21T20:54:00.000+01:00

Around October the move started to cast a shadow over me and I had to start making real preparations to leave. I made one big master list of things to get done, and I'll share with you all the things that I accomplished before I left. This is a list of things that, once completed, made me feel a lot more comfortable before I left.

1. VISA: Make sure you know what the rules are for getting a visa where you're going. Many of the EU countries work under the Shengen Laws which allow you to stay in a single country for up to 90 Days and you can't return to the same country until you have been out for another 90 days. This also means you don't need a visa for stays of less than 90 days, as you can travel through out Europe on 90 day periods.

2. Passport/ID: You should have paper copies and/or a scan of your passport so that you can reproduce the information if you happen to lose it. In addition, its always useful to bring a bunch of extra passport sized photos for any other form of ID you want to get in the EU.

3. Driving: I'm not big on driving, but in the off chance I want to take a road trip I don't want anything to stop me. I got an International License from AAA. There are plenty of websites that will get you an International License but AAA is the cheapest and easiest. Go to their website and fill out a form, bring some passport photos and pay $15. It took 15 minutes.

4. Money: I've been following the Dollar to the Euro for months, I can't rationalize it at all so I just hope and pray that while I'm using my Dollars they're worth something. One thing I wanted and had to set up was a bank account in Belgium. The primary method of paying rent is through the bank, so not having a bank account makes life a little more difficult. On the same note, its not always easy to wire transfer money over seas. My existing bank accounts (a local and ING) both had different issues with wire transferring. You would think that because ING is a Belgian bank it would be easy to transfer and set up accounts but it is not, and the American ING does not transfer ANY money over seas. Thus I found a bank (Citibank...) that allows me to make wire transfers ONLINE.

5. Cancel/Sign up: Talk to all your insurance companies BEFORE you leave so you make sure you aren't paying for insurance for no reason. Also, BUPA is an insurance company from the UK that does pretty inexpensive insurance for expats. Moving overseas is one of the only ways you can get out of your cell phone contract without paying a cancellation fee. I put myself on Vacation Mode ($15 to suspend the account for 90 days) so that I keep my account for now and can turn my phone back on when I arrive back in the US. Try to put yourself on paperless bills for all your credit card or other bills so that you get them in your email and make sure you can pay your bills online.

Leaving the US has a lot of fun issues to deal with, and I will cover more eventually. This was the first batch that I thought was most important to cover. Leave questions in the comments and I will try to answer them in another post.

Making the Move

2009-01-21T20:43:00.000+01:00

A few years back I was fortunate enough to take a short (4 days) trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. This was my first trip to Europe, and I was amazed at how comfortable I was in such a foreign place. Fast forward to 2008 and I am given the opportunity to work for a Danish Architecture firm whose work was inspirational to me during my first trip to Denmark. I jumped at the chance and decide to make the move, the catch is that I need to do an internship period in Brussels, Belgium before I can move up to Copenhagen.

This blog is meant as a recording of my experiences in moving and working as an architect abroad. I will be documenting travel, personal development, food, work experiences and what it takes to move overseas.