Horse sausage and pig face on toast.

I have a lot to catch up on in this here blog. There has been a lot of travelling this week and there are so many stories to tell.

August 23rd to 25th - Amsterdam!
I did a three day trip to Amsterdam while Lut and her bf spent some quality time together. I got to navigate the Belgian train system all by myself and only messed up two times! That's not so bad, right? First I missed my stop going to Brussels; I stayed on the train an extra stop and went 40 minutes out of my way to another town where the conductor kindly told me to get the hell off the train I hadn't paid for. Oops. I backtracked to Brussels and caught a train to Holland. Honestly, Amsterdam is one of the few cities that has made me go "wow!" when I got there. It's beautiful, interesting and the people speak really good English which was great for me. The next amusing anectdote happened when i got to the station in Amsterdam and found out that the tourist information office was closed on Mondays and I hadn't brought a map or even the address of my hostel. I know, fantastic planning, but that's the stuff adventures are made of, right? I ended up wandering around the city going into random hotels asking for maps and directions and ended up by sheer luck in front of my hostel after a couple of hours of aimless guessing as to which direction I shoudl be heading in. The enxt day I visited a couple of museums and saw the rest of the city, pretty chill especially after visiting a coffeeshop where I made very good friends with a cat who was sleeping at my table while I read a Dutch book about films from the 80s. I didn't understand much but the pictures were nice. That night I decided to go to the movies and thank god I bought a ticket early because in the hour I had to kill until the movie I went to get dinner. I was eating at my table and a downpour started driving the people on the street into any shop along the road. An older man came into the schawarma shop where I was and sat down at my table since the rest were filled with other patrons. His name was Rudi and he worked for Delta. He had a layover in Amsterdam for 12 hours and he was determined to 1, "burn those calories", a phrase he must have thrown out at least 13 times in the 30 minutes we interacted, and 2, "have a good time with the new toys [he] bought" at a sex shop. He certainly wasn't shy when he pulled out o bottle of poppers and lube. Ew. He told me a story of how he tries to go running and workout no matter where he is, for example, he was in a beach town and went running on the beach (GENIUS!) and then he found a large rock which he started to lift a few times to immitate weights. I quickly showed him my ticket and said the movie was starting as I speed walked away from him. Arent' you guys just sick of hearing about all my successful interactions with guys? HAH. The movie was good. It was about a man with downs syndrome living in Sevilla and he falls in love and yadda yadda the woman doesnt want him but has sex with him and life goes on. It's called Yo, tambien if anyone is interested. The next day I wandered more seeing the last of the sighs I coudl fit in my schedule before my train left. The problem was that I got on the wrong train. Again, the conductor told me to get the hell off the train I hadn't paid for and I waited another hour for the next correct train to take me back to Dendermonde.

Thursday 26th - Dendermonde festival!

I went around with Lut and Stefanie and we visited the smallest village in Dendermonde. Then that night we went to Dendermonde's town celebration which in volved acrobats, a parade with giant puppets, peopel dressed as large wolves called, literally translated, "clap tooths" and a circus show having to do somethign with a butterfly and a bee who fight over flowers until a spider comes. The spider, a mutual enemy of the butterfly and bee, cause the two to join forces to fight him. They get trapped in his web and all seems lots until the sun comes out (a man dressed as the sun) and then everyone danced around happily. No one understood what it all meant even when they got on the loudspeaker and said the only dialogue of the whole show "this has been the circle of life". Mystery prevails. Also, I ate horse sausage and ground pig face on toast, typical foods of this region. Kind of delicious and kind of very different....

Friday 27th - Brugge!
Toured Brugge with Lut and Saskia. Beautiful city with a lot to see and lots of chocolate shops. That day i discovered that I can't make one of the vowel sounds in Dutch. There were signs everywhere that said "te huur" which means "for rent". However, when I pronounce it, despite my best efforts and multiple attempts to change what i'm saying, I always spit out "for whore". I have to work on that....

Saturday 28th - Brussels!

Lut and I went on a 10 euro per day day trip to Brussels and we saw the sight, eat some BOMB waffles and took silly pictures around the city. Good times, thrifty times. Pics on facebook.

My battery is about to die and I am far away from the cord so I'm gonna wrap this up and click publish entry before my computer dies. I <3 you all!

Pukkelpop and recovery

I survived. I survived the 3-4 day craze that is Pukkelpop. This music festival in Kiewit, Belgium is one of the craziest things I have been to even though my new friends here assure me it is not that uncommon. I can only think of maybe 3 or 4 music festivals of this size in the US that happen every year, but Belgium and its fame for parying put on aroudn 20 festivals annually. Oh where to begin describing this...

I guess I´ll start on Wednesday... Stefanie and Lut and I went to do some provision purchasing for 3 days of camping and we stocked up on the essentials: chips, waffles, sausages, sangria, red wine, vodka, campari, etc. I dont exaggerate when I say that I doubt I have eaten a vegetable in the last 5 days. That night we stopped by Lut´s aunt´s surprise birthday party and left for Kiewit. We were the ones that would arrive early to set up everyone´s tent. And by set up I mean more "fight to get a space for eveyone´s tent". Here´s the stats to give you an idea...

"No less than 198 musical acts played at the festival, 41 of which were Belgian. Pukkelpop continues to promote Belgium’s musical pride. Each day Pukkelpop received more than 65,000 visitors of 51 different nationalities. Mainly Dutch, British, Irish and Swiss music lovers found their way to the Kiewit fields. Even Australia was amply represented.

We counted more than 54,000 campers. During the past three days, De Lijn transported 78,000 music lovers. About 30,000 people came to the festival by train, a rise by 20%, which caused NMBS to have two trains on stand-by in addition to the 15 extra trains on Sunday.
Between 8 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. on Sunday, trains with destination Hasselt will leave Kiewit station every fifteen minutes.

For the first time the festival was completely sold out with 62,500 paying visitors a day. The maximum waiting time for the identity control at the waiting desk was 11 minutes."

So, yeah it was crowded. My tent was stepped on numerous times over the 3 days, each time someone´s foot coming dangerously close to my skull. But I am unharmed! Anyways, that night Lut and I went to the preparty and then the next day the insanity began. I´m stoked I got to see so many bands -

Snow Patrol, The XX, Boys Noize, The Kooks, Groove Armada, Kele, Goldfrapp, Benny Benasi, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Yeasayer, Kate Nash, Foals, Broken Bells, The Drums, Caribou, OK Go, Four Tet, Aeroplane Dj Set, Matt and Kim, Cymbals eat Guitar, DOMINIQUE YOUNG UNIQUE (one of my faves even thought she had to play at 11am saturday morning and no one was awake to go to her show), Broken Glass Heroes, and more... Sad story!! Ou est le Swimming Pool played at the festival and then that night after they performed the lead singer killed himself in the parking lot. Just sayin. Kind of crazy.

Also, my friends tought me a lot of Dutch and that´s pretty fun. I´ll write more later but for now I need to nap. the four days of sleeping on the ground in the middle of a refugee camp with alcohol have taken a toll on me. More to come!

Belgïe

Hi all!

I am in Europe once again. Currently I am residing in Dendermonde, Belgium and having many adventures with Lut Verhas. I arrived yesterday at 945am after losing 6 hours from US East Coast time (the same 6 hours in which I usually sleep). So, yes, I was extremely tired and had an entire day ahead of me. Fun part of this trip is that I speak pretty much no Dutch at all so today while Lut is at work my excursions into the city are pretty entertaining. I get accosted by people making foreign noises at me and I have to smile, shrug, and pretty much walk away. Most of the time the people turn to others around them and comment on what I imagine to be a commentary of my weirdness. BUT today I ordered a sandwich and I dont think they had much of idea that I was foriegn and frightened. Yay! Matt-1 Belgium-17,698. And tonight I am goign to eat dinner at Lut´s grandma´s house. She is making us Belgian fries.

Im about to go grab my camera and walk around a bit playing the tourist role. At least people might think twice about saying something to me, wondering if I really speak their language or not. One last thing, right now I am watching the Disney Channel in Dutch and wow. It´s still not funny. More updates to come.