August 1998
The vacation was amazing.
For those of you who are familiar with my travel karma, the most important note is that since of course karma is well, you know, doesn’t exist, all the trips were fine. In fact, as of this trip, it officially takes me less time to get home from Amsterdam (16 hours) than it does from Chicago (two days last time I tried).
Anyway, back to the beginning.
About 15 of us flew together. Russell had more luggage than I’ve ever seen. Mostly props, but also clothes, and who knows what all?
First, we spent a week in Edinburgh for the European Juggling Convention. We stayed in a bed and breakfast with this crazy old host who fed us huge Scottish breakfasts (including vegetarian haggis) and kept hugging me. Well, when we made it up in time for breakfast that is. The hosts and the other guests were completed enchanted by the fact that a) we were jugglers and b) we kept such odd hours. They bought a sort of cheesy print of a juggler and put it up on the wall outside the room we stayed in to remind them of us after we left.
Anyway, the convention was huge, disorganized, way too smoky (even in the gyms) and totally fun. It turns out juggling is a serious hippy subculture in Europe–lots of unwashed white people with dreadlocks, drums, and Drum tobacco. I got a few qualifying runs with five balls, which is coming ever so slowly, and learned a few cool new club swinging tricks. Jon qualified passing ten clubs (the world record is 11).
Honestly though, we didn’t do much juggling for a convention. Mostly we sat on our butts, drank beer, and made fun of other people while they juggled. It was just too hot and smoky. We did drink good Scottish beer, eat fish and chips, neeps (turnips), and tatties (potatoes). I ate the Scottish national dish haggis (if you don’t know, don’t ask), which was curiously delicious. I also tried black pudding, but I won’t again. [Note: this turns out to have been a lie–I’ve eaten both black and white puddings since then, with much better luck.] The funny thing was I ordered this huge breakfast that included black pudding because I just wanted to try a bit of it. When it came, there was no black pudding on the plate, and when I pointed this out to the waitress, she said, “Oh, you mean you want the black pudding?” So she says she’ll bring it to me, but the cook has to make more, and it takes a while. She keeps stopping by to reassure us that he’s making it special for me so it might take a while, but she hasn’t forgotten. In the meantime, we finish our entire breakfasts, and they clear the plates. Then they bring the black pudding. I take one bite, and it’s so vile, I almost want to spit it out. But now there’s no place to hide it. Not a single potato left to push it behind–they’ve cleared all the plates. It’s a very rare food that I can’t eat, but this is it. I feel horrible after they made such a fuss about it. Jon is laughing at me as usual. The black pudding and I just sit there and stare at each other. Finally the waitress takes pity on me. “Not quite as good for a dessert, is it?” she asks. I say I guess my eyes were bigger than my stomach and leave her a decent American tip.
Besides the convention we toured the royal mile, a medieval castle (best line for us Americans: “those buildings over there have no historical significance; they were added in the 18th century”), a cathedral, and a “haunted” underground street with great stories of murdering 500 plague victims and then having to dismember the decomposing bodies to get them out.
After the convention we took a bunch of trains to Brussels, where my college roommate (one of the many), Deb was living. We stayed in her beautiful duplex, and she tormented us New Yorkers with how low the rent was. Sadly for us visitors, that’s the only thing in Belgium that’s cheap. We didn’t even buy anything, and we spent a fortune on beer, trains, chocolates, tours, mussels & fries, waffles with chocolate sauce, and did I mention beer? Belgium is home to around 300 breweries, and they were all so very yummy. The weird thing was no matter where you were, even in little dive bars, whatever beer you ordered would come in a special glass for that beer. Every glass was a distinct shape and size and had the name of the beer on it. It was hard to resist “collecting” the glasses from the bars. We couldn’t find any Brussels sprouts or Belgian endive, although we looked. I also ate eel, a national favorite. I’ve liked it in Chinese restaurants at home, and of course in sushi, but this was fairly unpleasant. We also learned that menu items that say “Americain” or “cannibale” mean they have with raw meat, more like hamburger than steak tartar. Of course I tried that too. It brought back memories of eating raw hamburger as a child. It was okay, but I don’t know that I need to do it again.
Anyway, we walked around Brussels a ton. The highlight is the incredible grand place (say it plahs) featuring a 17th century state house and guild halls. One thing I liked about Belgium is how secular it is. Even historically. All its grandeur is commercial, middle class, and secular. Deb thinks that’s why they’re so boring and conformist, but it was just interesting to see all the architectural energy spent on glorifying trade instead of god. Yes capitalism is a lesser evil than Christianity to me; I know it’s a judgement call.
While in Belgium, we took a day trip that was probably my favorite day of the whole trip. First we went to Ghent and toured a medieval castle containing a torture museum. It was especially appealing because some of the torture devices had been used in that very castle. It was also strange how not long ago it all seemed. Just like in museums here, some of the displays have little cards thanking the objects’ donors, only the cards say things like “donated by so-and-so, the grandson of the local executioner.” We saw another medieval castle, a bunch of churches and cathedrals, more guild halls, canals, the statehouse, and a belfry/watchtower with a 54-bell carillon striking around us. Then we had dinner in Bruges, which is almost too lovely and doesn’t look at all real–canals, swans, and churches.
On our last day in Brussels, we went to visit the Atomium. The Atomium is a giant carbon molecule, hmm, I think they said carbon–even at the time I remember we couldn’t make it add up to the right number of electrons. Anyway, it’s one of those strange structures that were built for a world’s fair once upon a time and are still there. It’s really far away from the rest of the city. The bus there took forever, and I dozed offf (as I do in pretty much any moving vehicle). Well, anyway, so the very cool and strange thing about the Atomium is that while it is full of “educational” displays, they’re all weird cartoon strips. None of them are in English–or in any language we could decipher, so we had no idea what was going on. Besides the cartoon panels, there are giant cartoon objects inside the rooms–like full-size cardboard figures of the cartoon panel characters. Oh, never mind. I can’t even begin to convey its wonder.
(2012 note: When I first published this site, I got a letter from some Belgian lawyers threatening to sue me for “exposing a reproduction of the Atomium.”)
From the Atomium, you can look down on “mini-Europe,” which is one of the strangest tourist attractions I have ever seen. It’s a park filled with miniature replicas of various famous sites, only they’re not all in Europe, they’re not all on the same scale, and they’re not the real thing! Some of them move, so a rocket takes off over and over at mini-Cape Canaveral, for example. Sooo strange. We don’t pay to go in.
We spent the last few days in Amsterdam, a terrifying but electrifying city where somehow they don’t feel the need to differentiate between sidewalk, street, bike path, and tram line, so a billion people and vehicles are always coming at you from everywhere. Dutch people are very tall and all speak impeccable English. I didn’t smoke any hash while I was there, which seems to surprise a lot of people. I don’t know why I would though. I quit smoking pot for a reason and it sure didn’t have anything to do with it not being available in coffee shops. Besides, I was afraid I’d be stuck unable to cross a street for four hours because of the terrifying traffic. Anyway, we did the canal boat tour, walked around the center and the old Jewish quarter, went to the van Gogh museum, gawked at prostitutes and sex shops (I had to ask what some of the items were for–and got some answers in mime from possibly the only person in Amsterdam who doesn’t speak English), ate more mussels and fries, and drank more beer. We also ate raw herring, which I wanted to like, but it was way too slimy. Maybe it was just a bad version. We also went to a very cool Chinese circus.
I think that’s it. We got home without incident and went back to work the next day. Glad to be back to no-smoking sections, air-conditioning, and free glasses of water in restaurants, but looking forward to exploring some more.
The original version of viveca.net included links throughout the text to specific photos, which all had funny captions. I’ve gotten lazy. Here’s a giant, unsorted gallery instead.
Thanks for the awesome post. Clearly you spent some time on this.