The Supposed Golden Path

It's time to unveil a plan I've been sitting on for almost a month now. I've kept it under my hat because I've wanted to try it on first. Sleep on it, so to speak. But now I think I may be ready to go public.

I went to Film School at Boston University. A great school, but very expensive. Then I worked in the film biz for about 4 years. After a lot of hard work and starving, I decided that the film biz was not for me. Sure, if I kept struggling for 5 more years, I might be at a point where I could have joined a union. But that would not have been a guarantee for anything. The struggle would continue. And when you cease to have faith in the dream that you're struggling for, it seems pointless to keep struggling. Anyway, that's why I bowed out and one of the reasons we've ended up in Europe... to pursue something else. Does that make my expensive schooling a big waste of money? In some senses, maybe. In others, definitely not. I wouldn't be the person I am today if I didn't have the experience I had in Boston.

About a month ago, I was visited by a great idea. A comfortable, reasonable, intelligent idea. A huge idea. An idea I didn't think I would have considered. What's the big idea? To go back to school. Back to Film School. Go back to get a Masters and a PhD in Film Studies. To become a professor of Film Studies.

I would be paid to do something I love (watching and talking about films/art/music/politics/etc.) and I think I would be a good teacher. And being an "absent-minded professor" seems to fit quite nicely with my personality. Since the time I started thinking about this new path, I've had lots of ideas of how I would run my classes and what I would like to teach. And it feels good. When you have an idea and thinking about it exhilarates you, isn't that your "gut" telling you it's the right thing?

What about my dream of owning a brewery? It's still there. In fact, becoming a professor can actually enable me to have a brewery one day because I won't be relying on brewing to pay my bills. Here's how it fits in... I start brewing on a really small scale, in the summertime at least. Start distributing locally (wherever that ends up being). Slow but steady growth. Having a semi-flexible "day-job" would make it much easier to make high-quality, creative beers for a niche-market. After 10-20 years of teaching, I can transition into full-time brewing. If the brewing is not succeeding, then I just keep teaching. Bases are covered and either way I have a job that I can enjoy!

Doesn't sound to bad, right? Now I just need to implement the plan. It just so happens there is a really good film studies program at the University of Exeter in the UK, the school that Kristen has stumbled upon recently. And since I am an EU citizen, it would be quite cheap to go there. With a BS degree from a good US university and 4 years of experience in the film industry, I'm pretty confident that I can be accepted in the program.

How 'bout dem apples?

-RP-

The Time Is Nearly Nigh

As of 6pm today, the Bo-ny training regimen is officially over. I sat through the final class today. We are now expected to be pretty much ready to start taking calls. We've been assigned to our teams and given our desks. I am in the "Palm" team and I have an "aisle" desk (as opposed to a window). Obviously, a window seat is much nicer both for peace of mind and also for a little privacy. If you look at the pictures of the call-center in the post from last month, you'll see what I mean.

Each team is named after a beer: Duvel, Kwak, Leffe, and Palm. There is a Scandinavian in each team. My team leader is a very German fellow named Dirk. From what I've heard, he's a bit of a taskmaster (although that's not the word his detractors used). So, that's obviously a bit disconcerting. On the plus side, the CSAs who are on his team tend to be the most efficient and field the most calls. That's German efficiency for you!

Tomorrow and Friday they will slowly ease us into phone duties. First listening to someone else's call. Then logging the call while the other person does the talking and troubleshooting. Then doing the talking and troubleshooting while the other person does the logging. Then doing both yourself while someone of authority listens in. And finally, flying solo. Yikes! Swedish support "goes live" on Dec. 1st. Yikes again!

I've been practicing my Swedish as much as possible and translating a lot of the call-handling scripts with the help of my mother and the other Swedes. It has actually been quite helpful typing up all of that wordage. Not only am I learning how to spell in Swedish, but my vocabulary is growing.

I'm a bit stressed about taking calls in Swedish because my language skills could be A LOT better. So, it's not good to have those worries tacked on top of the basic worries about taking calls and logging them properly. This is definitely adding to my stress-level. To be honest, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to hack it!

But I just have to...

-RP-

Random Pictures

More Trenches
A couple more muddy trenches from the WWI field trip. I don't think the red aluminum siding is authentic though.

Hungry Belgian Cow
Apparently, the grass is greener on the other side of the barbed-wire fence.

Holy Holstein!
This one seems content with the grass she was given.

Poor Old Building...
They have been slowly dismantling this old building since before we got to Belgium. These three pictures are about a month old. Pretty much the only thing left now is the front facade.

Studying
Ahh, look... she's studying...

Higher Learning
Everyone has thier own method of organization.

Fall... In Our Park
Breathtaking... ain't it just?!

Decisions, Decisions!
Most toilets in Europe give you the option of a normal-strength flush and a mini-flush, a great water-saving feature. You can taylor the amount of water to the "size" of the problem.

-RP-

Canterbury Capitalism

We had a good time in Canterbury last weekend. It was mildly shocking to travel for such a short time and end up in another country. Europeans are used to the close proximity of other countries and other cultures, but those of us from the U.S. just don't experience that very often.

We left our Brussels train station Saturday at 8:56am and arrived in England a little over an hour later. The scenery just whizzed by - I barely had time to read more than a few pages in my book and then we were there. I thought the Chunnel might be a little unnerving, but aside from my ears popping, it was just like a regular tunnel. There's no time to think about the millions of gallons of water above the train or the lack of escape possibilities should something happen. It only took about 20 minutes, which makes me wonder how fast the train is traveling (isn't that a classic math question: if a train traveling from Belgium to England takes 20 minutes to get through the Chunnel, what is its speed?). But the English Channel is not very wide, so I don't know why I expected crossing it to be a dramatic event!

Traveling by Eurostar train is so pleasant. The trains are light, clean, comfortable and more spacious than an airplane (R still has to scrunch up though), with a really smooth quiet ride. If you're in first class, which we were not, you get an actual meal served to you. For the common folks, there's a bar and cafe car instead. From Ashford, which is the first stop in England, we switched to a local train for the 20-minute ride to Canterbury. Our B&B was about a mile from the train station, which wasn't too bad of a walk, especially since we're used to carrying groceries and books about that far. After we checked in we walked around town a little to check out the lunch possibilities. R spied a promising looking pub, so we decided to try it out. It turned out to be an excellent choice. We had a very English lunch - Yorkshire pudding, sausages, mashed potatoes and ale for R, and I had chicken curry. After stuffing ourselves, we set out to see the sights.

The streets of the Old Town area are all cobblestone and most are closed to automobile traffic. There are quite a few old buildings, with white stone walls and brown beams, but many more are new structures built to 'fit in' with the surroundings. Unfortunately the quaintness is almost ruined by sheer number of tourists shopping and walking around. It was Saturday, though, so I'm sure it was more crowded than it might normally be. On the edge of town near our B&B we came across an old Norman castle ruin from 1050. Now that is old! For some reason, the burial mound on the castle grounds is called 'Dane John.' Rich thought 'Dane Richard' might be a better name.

That night we went on the Canterbury Ghost Tour. It was a walking tour led by this funny local ghost hunter guy, who wore a long black cape and a top hat. He told us stories about the various buildings and gave some of the history of the area. It was really cold and damp, but it was fun to hear about the haunted areas of town. Most of the 'haunted' buildings are from the 1500's, so I imagine there are a lot of ghosts running around!

Sunday we had a leisurely breakfast in our B&B. R went for the full 'cooked' English breakfast, which consisted of sausages, tomatoes, bacon, eggs, mushrooms, toast and tea. After eating that, he had enough energy to go out and plow a few fields! We spent the rest of the morning having tea at Starbucks, people-watching, and walking around town. Our train back to Belgium wasn't until 9:00pm, but we decided to leave Canterbury early and check out the town of Ashford. Big mistake. We walked to the station, bought tickets to Ashford, waited 30 minutes for the train, and arrived in Ashford to find that there wasn't anything to see, except a nearby outlet mall. Matters were complicated by the absence of lockers in the train station, so we had nowhere to stow our bags. There was nothing within walking distance of the station and we decided that spending money on a taxi to try and find something to see was not the best idea, especially since we would have to carry our bags around with us. Sooooooo, we bought tickets to go back to Canterbury, where we knew there were storage lockers and things to look at, and went outside to wait for the train (that we just got off of). While we were waiting, two adorable 10-year old boys started chatting us up. They were at the station waiting to see if two girls they met the day before might be coming back to visit them. They asked us lots of questions: where we were from, what we were doing in Ashford, where we were staying, where did we live, etc. They decided that R looked like a Belgian. It was a very entertaining conversation and I was sorry when the train came and we had to leave them.

So, it was a fun weekend - the two train station boys were a definite highlight. We were a little disappointed at how touristy Canterbury was though. Most of the old buildings have been converted into chain stores like the Gap, McDonald's, Burger King or W.H. Smiths. Starbucks is in a building that was originally constructed in 1550 (there's something really wrong with that) and sits in an 800-year old market square! I didn't realize how insulated we are in Belgium, with no chain stores or fast food, so it was a bit shocking to see so much of it again. Next time we go to England, we'll be more prepared for it. But it was really nice to speak English and be able to understand everything that was said. And I was VERY happy to have a Starbucks frappucino!

~K

World War I and the Belgian Countryside

When Dr. Palo, my History of Conflict professor, announced a field trip to see some WWI sites, I knew immediately that I wanted to go. It is something that could easily have been missed during our time here in Belgium, one of those things that we talk about doing but never actually do. And with an expert WWI guide, how could we not go? So I signed Rich and myself up for the trip. We left campus at 8:15 in the morning and drove off in a chartered bus, through the fog towards the Western front and the town of Diksmuide. We made our first stop at the German cemetary in Vladslo, one of the few German cemeteries in Belgium. There’s a famous Kathe Kollwitz sculpture there called The Mourning Parents (she lost her only son during the war).

The headstones are dark granite and lay flat on the ground, each has twenty names, twenty ranks and twenty death dates. There are no age indications, consoling words or angels to be seen. After this sobering, but peaceful sight, we climbed back on the bus and drove to the Yzer Tower Peace Museum just outside of Diksmuide. The monument to Peace is ugly and stark. From the 22nd floor of the museum you can see for miles, or you could if it wasn’t foggy. We had another guide at this museum, a history teacher from the area. He was very knowledgable, though his English was a bit limited.

Around lunchtime we drove into Diksmuide to find some lunch and then continued on our way. Our next stop was Zillebeke to see trenches, shell craters and Hill 62. The fog was beginning to lift and we could see the beautiful farmland rolling away in green hills and stands of leafless trees. It is so hard to imagine the devastation that was left after WW1, seeing it now covered with green grass and dotted with old farmhouses. There are, however, cemeteries sprinkled all over the area.

We left Hill 62 and stopped in Ypres. The entire town, full of medieval-looking buildings, was leveled during the war and has been completely rebuilt. It is still very picturesque – you would never know that the buildings are only 85 years old. The battlegrounds around this Belgian town are among the most notorious in the world. The German and the Allied forces fought for four long years without a decisive victory ever emerging. New weapons such as toxic gas, land mines and flame-throwers made it even more horrific. The toll: 1,200,000 wounded and 500,000 dead. The remains of 100,000 soldiers have never been identified - their bodies were scattered in the mud of Flanders.

After touring the Cloth Hall Museum, we scattered into small groups to find some dinner. At 7:45 we met back at the Menin Gate to hear the Last Post. The Menin Gate is a gift and tribute to Britain from Belgium. Its a huge granite and marble gate over the main road, a monumental thank you note carved with 55,000 names of the British expeditionary forces that died in Belgium and whose bodies were never found. The inscription at the top of the gate reads: To the armies of The British Empire who stood here from 1914-1918 and to those of their dead who have no known grave.

The Last Post ceremony is usually played by buglers of the local volunteer fire brigade, but because of Armistice Day there were Scottish bagpipe players as well as some military dignitaries. To read more about the history of this ceremony, click on The Great War. The ceremony has been performed every night since July 1, 1928.

By 8:45 we were all back on the bus and heading back to Brussels. The day made WWI feel real and close by, not something that happened 90 years ago in another country.

~K

The War Machine Keeps Turning

After returning from the brewery and having a quick lunch, Kristen suggested that we go to the Royal Museum of Army and Military History. She had originally planned to go to the Museum des Beaux Arts near the center of Brussels with her classmate, Masha, but the Metro was closed for maintenance between our stop and the rest of the city, so that plan got cancelled. I'm glad it worked out that way because the military museum was amazingly fascinating.

The museum is one of three located in the park near our house. Not only is entry absolutely free, but it is an enormous museum covering warfare from around the 14th century to modern day. On display is everything from swords and armor to tanks and airplanes. It was truly overwhelming!

Another great facet of this place is the long spiral-staircase that goes to the very top of the giant building (which you may remember from some of the pictures of the park). After ascending these stairs you can get out onto the roof of the museum for some amazing views of Brussels:

Beautious!

Picturesque!

Metropolitan!

And of course, the cannons!

--RP--

Old-World Brewing

This morning I got up way too early to go to the Cantillon Public Brewing Session. I came prepared to learn about making lambic and to do some brewing. As the web-site didn't give much clue as to how this event was structured, it didn't seem illogical to me and I thought there would only be a handful of people there. Especially at 7 in the morning!

When I walked in to the brewery, I was surprised to hear the sound of MANY voices and to see the tasting lounge packed full of people having coffee and croissants. A much different event than I had imagined, but still enjoyable and quite informative. I (and about 15 others) took a tour with the brewer's apprentice. It was great to hear someone speak passionately about the beer they make at this old brewery. They are one of the last breweries who make lambic with the traditional method: all natural ingredients, no chemicals, and no added yeast. The beers are very "wild" tasting; quite sour and full of "country aromas". The beer is fermented by wild yeasts and bacteria from the "micro-climate" inside the brewery. After the beer is inoculated by these micro-organisms, it is pumped into oak barrels where it will ferment and age for 3 years. Most of their beers are a blend of the three-year-old lambic and a one-year-old lambic, sometimes with the addition of fruit. They are "living beers" which are great for cellaring for up to 25 years, as the flavor changes quite a lot over time.

Anyway, I won't bore you to death, but there are a couple of funny little aspects about this place. Because they don't use any chemicals during the entire process (including cleaning the place or getting rid of pests), they have a couple of clever solutions. To get rid of flies, they let all the spiders spin webs wherever they may. To get rid of rodents that come for the grain, they have a cunning and hungry cat that lives in the brewery (they don't feed it cat food). To polish the copper kettles, they use elbow grease only!

Even if you are not at all interested in beer, this is a great place to visit because it is also a "museum". They only brew about once or twice per month between October and April, but it is open almost every day to sell their beer and for self-guided tours of the premises.

--RP--

Employed By Bo-ny Europe

Now that I've logged two full weeks and received my first pay-check, it is as good a time as any to present the long-overdue run-down of my new place of employment at the European headquarters of Bo-ny Corporation.

As of one month ago, Bo-ny moved from a building in Brussels to a much larger and nicer facility in Zaventem, near the airport. It is the second largest building in a new "corporate village" which consists of six similarly shaped, yet increasing in size, futuristic looking buildings.

This past Friday they had a fancy inaugural party in a huge tent right in front of the building. Free fancy-food, wine, beer, and drinks. The "suits" got up on stage to give self-congratulatory speeches and then they used ice-picks to hack three bottles of champagne out of a huge ice-sculpture shaped like the Bo-ny building. Glasses of this champagne were circulated through crowd as the band launched into their long set. I stayed until about 10pm, catching a ride with one of my colleagues (Andres The Spaniard). Nice party... I'm sure there will be some stories told tomorrow!

The aforementioned colleague was nice enough to offer himself as the "Spanish Taxi" to me and two others (Kristofer The Swede and Juuso The Finn). So, rather than deal with the sometimes irritating hassle of public transportation, we catch a ride with him to and from work. A great windfall since Zaventem is not easy to reach by bus or train. Even still, there will be days when those of us without a car will have to go back to public transport because we won't always have the same shift as Andres.

Anyway, we are still in training. Bo-ny trains its employees in staggered groups and subject matter. We are currently being trained to support their line of Vaio computers. There are about 10 people in the class. The majority of them have been at Bo-ny for a little over one month. They have already been trained to support the Bo-ny Plie line and the DVD-burners. When the Craio training is done, they will go back to taking calls while The Finn, The Swede, and I will be trained on the software we use to log calls. Then the three of us will be placed into circulation in the call center. The three of us are in for another three weeks of training before that happens, I think. I assume that after a while we will also be trained on the Plie PDAs, the DVD-burners, and the robot dogs.

So, that's basically it for now. Sitting through training every day gets a little dull, but a lot of the people who work on the CSA floor are a little bit off kilter (i.e.- a bit zany), so we joke around a lot. Keeps it from getting too dull. I've started preaching the "good word" to my colleagues about good quality beer. They are very receptive and have started asking me about different beer-related subjects on their own. It is fertile ground, so I may soon have some budding connoisseurs working next to me. That's reason enough to stay with this job!

--RP--

Van Brussel tot Vichte

*Warning!! Potentially boring details about beer to follow.*

Today we went to a little town called Vichte for a beer festival, the Karakterbier Weekend. Vichte is a small town south of Gent. We took a direct train from Brussels to Kortrijk which cost 9.60 euros per person each way. By the way, Kortrijk is roughly pronounced "core-truck" and Vichte like "Veech-teh" with the "ch" like the Scottish pronunciation of Loch.

Getting to the festival proved to be an arduous task as the town of Vichte is not accessible by train. HOP (the festival organizers) had arranged for a "taxi service" that picked up two times per day (1:30 and 3:00) from the nearest train station in Kortrijk. However, reservations were needed. I tried to make one this morning, but there was no answer. So, I figured we would chance it or hop on a bus, worst case. The lack of a reservation was indeed a problem, as the two Mercedes station wagons only had room for the other six to seven people who were also waiting at the station. So, we had to take the bus which was not only a bit pricey for a bus (4.40 euros for two people, one way), but also slow and inconvenient. We had to walk a kilometer or two in the rain.

That aside, the transit was worth it. What with 67 beers from 16 different breweries, there was a lot to choose from. Beneficial to tasting a larger variety of beer, the festival was organized around 15 cl samples rather than entire bottles. Each sample cost a measly one token (valued at 1 euro), but you were forced to purchase a sample glass for 3 euros. We purchased only one since I would be doing the brunt of the tasting.

The festival was set up in Vichte's community center, in a fairly large warehouse-like room. Each brewery had a booth set up along the walls of the room. Many tables and chairs on the main floor. Also available were cheese and meat plates with mustard for 2 euros a piece. Most beers were served from the bottle, but almost every brewery had one or two beers on tap. There was a "tombola" running constantly and the odds of winning seemed pretty good, judging by how many people had prize bottles of beer sitting in front of them. A "tombola" is an instant-winner raffle game where you randomly pick an envelope out of a box. Some envelopes are winners, leading to beer prizes like 750 ml bottles, six-packs, and t-shirts.

Now, for the important stuff... the beer. My general rule when I go to a festival is to only try beers I've never before tasted. Today was no exception to this rule. While most of the beers we tried were quite good, there were a couple of disappointments: Vapeur Cochonne from Brasserie Vapeur and Leroy Stout from Leroy - Van Eecke. Both were cloying and too strongly flavored. The Leroy Stout tasted as though it had been sweetened with aspartame or something like it. The tastiest surprise was a gem of a beer from Brasserie Tongrinnoise called La Tongrinnoise. I'm not sure what style it is, but it was a highly flavorful and aromatic dark ale. Very complex aroma and flavor. Here's a list of everything I tried with a five-star rating system (unrelated to the BA scoring method):

Vapeur Cochonne - no stars
Liefmans Kriek - ***
Leroy Stout - no stars
Kriek De Ranke - ****
Alvinne Blonde - *
Moinette Bruin - ***
Het Kapittel Dubbel - **
La Tongrinnoise - ***
Bon Secours Myrtille - **
Urthel Samaranth - ***

There were many more I would have liked to try, but one can only do so much. My proudest accomplishment at the festival, however, was finding another beer that Kristen likes, Liefmans Kriek (a cherry infused lambic). She went from favoring the inexcusable Belle-Vue Kriek to Lindenmans Cassis and now Liefmans. It seems she is moving towards more "authentic" lambic! We're making progress!

The beer-tasting done with, we hopped in one of the festival "taxis" and were driven back to Kortrijk station for 1 euro each. A much faster and more comfortable trip. Since we had about 45 minutes before our train back to Brussels, we grabbed a couple of "grote pita mixte" at a place called Pitta House, across from the station. Similar to a gyro, these pitas are stuffed with meat from those revolving spits, lettuce, tomato, onions and a special sauce. Kristen chose mayonnaise as her sauce and I went for one called Samurai which was a tangy, spicy Asian sauce. Mayonnaise as a sauce?! Well, if you taste the mayo here, you won't cringe! I don't know what they do differently, but there's a reason it is the most popular dip for frites... because it tastes really good! These were the best gyro/pitas that we've ever tasted, maybe even worth the hour-long train ride alone! Not only did they hit the spot with amazing accuracy, they gave me some added padding to prevent the beer-samples from yanking my feet out from under me.

We had a peaceful train-ride back to Brussels, through a pitch-black countryside. A great day and definitely worth all the hassle!

--RP--