TP and Bruges

I’d better get an update written today before my friends come; otherwise it’s probably going to be another week before you hear from me!

Cassy and Katie are coming in today (woo hoo!) at 4:40pm, and I’m really excited! It will be great to get to show them around to all the fun places I’ve already seen and see some new things myself.

But, anyway…This last weekend!

On Friday, as you know, was the infamous Swedish Trivial Pursuit game at K’s boss’s house. It turned out to be quite the get together since 9 people showed up, so including Paula (pronounced Pow-la, yes pow, like POW! in the batman shows—the hostess) and her husband Peter (pronounced Pee-et-er) there were 11 of us to play. This was great, because it meant we could play on teams, and I would just be a third wheel.

Dinner was fantastic. Very Swedish. It was a stew with beef and onions and really great spices, with sides of boiled potatoes, salad, 3 different cheeses, baguette, and Swedish “crisp-bread.”

Afterwards, I was given the honor to draw names, and I happened to draw them perfectly so that all the teams of two were people who were already sitting next to each other at the dinner table. Then we thought that, to make it fair, I wouldn’t be on K’s team automatically, but instead I would draw a name and that’s whose team would get me. Luckily, I drew Peter, who was K’s partner anyway. I had the magic hands that night!

So Swedish Trivial Pursuit IS in Swedish and many of the questions are very Swedish/Scandinavian based (hence the reason I got to be a third wheel). I did manage to answer a question about the Casini Space craft (which planet was it sent to collect data about? Saturn.) and who was the first black actress to win an Academy Award? Halli Bari. So I didn’t feel totally useless, but it is frustrating when for the most part you have NO chance of knowing the answer. Our team didn’t win, but it was a fun night anyway, and a great chance to get to know the people K work’s with at the Parliament better.

Saturday was a late start since we didn’t get back till 3am. We managed to crawl out of bed around 11am and took the train to Bruges.

Bruges is a small, medieval, VERY touristy little town towards the north shore of Belgium. They have huge old gothic buildings everywhere and are very famous for their handmade lace industry. We got there around 2:30, started wandering around the town, which is full of horse drawn carriages, canals with swans and ducks, and these really ancient, beautiful buildings. It’s all very “European,” and with the sunny day it was quite romantic. When the cars and mopeds weren’t driving by you almost felt like you were back in the 1800s.

We visited a small convent and the great cathedral in town, and had ourselves a funny surprise. In the Cathedral there was a choir singing, so we sat down to listen for a while and suddenly K leans over and whispers, “They’re Swedish!” And sure enough, they were a mixed choir from a town about 70 kilometers outside of Stockholm; this was their first trip to Belgium. They sang all sorts of Swedish folk and traditional religious songs. They were very good. I have some video of the performance I will try and post. K had a chat with the director afterward, who said they had just gotten done with a tour around Brussels. It was a fun coincidence to go all the way to Bruges and end up hearing a Swedish Choir! You just can’t get away from those Swedes!

The rest of the day we wandered some more, saw the two main town squares and headed out to see the old windmills before dinner. It was quite a walk, but worth it. They are on little hills that provide a great view of the city. Afterwards, we walked back to a restaurant that my guide book suggested for a traditional Belgian dinner of Waterzooi (a fish stew, this one was made with 5 kinds of fish!). We finished off the night with a quiet walk back to the train station, now that all the other tourists were gone or eating dinner.

Sunday was spent grocery shopping, studying, and doing laundry, which turned out to be a fiasco. We use a laundry facility that is around the block from our place and it’s usually not to busy and pretty clean. We threw our clothes into the washing machines, put in our wash tokens, and NOTHING HAPPENED. The machines didn’t start, the light didn’t come on, the doors didn’t lock, and we could not get our coins back. Considering that each wash token costs 2.90 Euros (about $4.50) and we had just lost 2 of them, we were upset. Some other girls were there who said that they had a similar problem and had called the service man. Long story short, it took them 30 minutes to come fix the machines (seemed like a breaker had flipped) and another 20 to get our coins refunded (because of course he didn’t speak English). So the whole process took twice as long as it usually does. What a pain. But at least we didn’t loose our money.

Other than the laundry thing, it was a very nice weekend. My studying is coming along pretty well, though it could always go faster.

A slide show from Bruges will be up soon, as well as those videos of the choir.

Bye bye for now!