Artie Aardvark’s Belgian Beer Adventure- Part 1

Posted on June 14, 2013 | 5 Comments

Whenever I go on any astronomical adventures, or adventures with astronomers, our group’s mascot Artie Aardvark seems to tag along.  And it’s time for Artie to tell you all about a recent weekend we had in Belgium- take it away, Artie!

I really enjoyed my short trip to Belgium for the NAC, so a week later when I heard a bunch of astronomers were planning a weekend trip to Belgium to visit trappist breweries I begged them to go along.  After all, what if they needed an extra driver?  What if they needed the services of an attack aardvark?  And most important, I was very curious to see what the fuss was about when it came to trappist beers!

Luckily they let me come so we set off on Friday after work for an adventure!  Though our first stop was before the Belgian border, in the Netherlands, at the La Trappe near Tilburg in the southern Netherlands-
IMG_0744IMG_0745When visiting here I learned that a “trappist brewery” means a brewery where the beer is brewed by monks who still live in the monastery (though in some like La Trappe they now get helped by non-monks in brewing the beer).  A lot of people think Trappist beers are the best in the world, so I had a good time trying my first ones!  La Trappe makes lots of different beers, like the dark dubbel and strong tripel that are usual Belgian beers, but they also made special ones like a white beer and a quadrupel that was very strong so I only tried a little of it.

I also learned while I was at La Trappe that there are only eight Trappist breweries in the world, six in Belgium and one in Austria and one in the Netherlands!  So they really are rare and special!

IMG_0756We spent the Friday night in Namur, Belgium, and I was surprised at how pretty and hilly it was!  They claim this castle here is the oldest fortification in Europe but I’m not sure how they can really tell…

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We followed the really nice river and hills all the way to Dinant, home of Masion de Leffe.  Leffe is not a Trappist beer but they do brew a lot of tasty beers in an old monastery building, and I even got to sign the guestbook!

Also, it’s called Masion de Leffe because we were in the French part of Belgium- apparently the northern part is Dutch speaking, called Flanders, and the southern part where they speak French is Wallonia.  It was a good thing we had a French astronomer with us, else things would’ve been a bit more complicated since no one really spoke English or Dutch.  It seems strange that in one country there are two groups of people who can’t even talk to each other!

Next though we did visit a famous Trappist brewery, Chimay-

IMG_1081How neat- they have an aardvark-sized beer spiral!

I must confess though, Chimay was maybe my least favorite of all the breweries we visited.  The beers weren’t so good and the service was bad- even the French astronomer said so!- because of things like how they forgot Yvette’s order and it came almost an hour late and wasn’t even very good when it did show up.  Plus La Trappe and Leffe had been a lot of fun so I was a little disappointed.

Oh well, if they were all good there wouldn’t be a favorite!  And the next brewery was my favorite!  But I am a little tired typing this all out with my paws, and will continue the adventure later…

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Posted in Artie Aardvark's Adventures, Belgium

Artie Aardvark Looks into Lommel

Posted on May 24, 2013 | 3 Comments

For those who don’t remember him, Artie Aardvark is my research group’s mascot.  He’s a curious fellow who likes to tag along to astronomical conferences and the like, so it was only natural that he tagged along with me last week.  I’ll let him tell you all about it!
IMG_0709Last week was super-duper exciting, as Yvette finally took me on a new adventure!  We were off to Lommel, Belgium for the annual Dutch astronomers’ conference which is known as the NAC.  I was a little confused on the train ride over why were going to Belgium for a Dutch astronomers’ conference, but the astronomers told me that northern Belgium is an area called Flanders where they speak Dutch with a funny accent. (I guess some of them claim Flemish is a separate language but don’t ask me for details- I’m an aardvark, not a language expert!) This year they were organizing the conference, so we took a train and bus to Lommel just across the border. Continue reading →

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Posted in Artie Aardvark's Adventures, Belgium

Photo: Tokaj Vineyards, Hungary

Posted on May 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

IMG_0679I went to Hungary last week on yet another random Dutch holiday- seriously, all our holidays are in springtime except for Christmas- and one of the things we had to do was a pilgrimage out to Tarcal, the small village both sides of my family are originally from (Tarcal is on the south side of Tokaj mountain, and where all the best Tokay wine comes from as a result).  And after things like visiting our great-grandparents’ graves we had to do an equally important task of going up to the family grapes which my uncle still runs every year and sample his latest wine.

I’ve been here before, obviously, but not in a few years and it is always such a nice, pleasant thing to sit with a glass straight from the barrel and contemplate the scenery.  It just looks so lovely and right, and I always idly wonder if that’s because generations of my ancestors looked onto the view here and thought the same thing…

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Posted in Hungary

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark

Posted on May 17, 2013 | 2 Comments

IMG_0641Despite the implications on its location that the name otherwise suggests, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is actually in a small fishing town a 40 minute train ride from Copenhagen.  I’m usually not a huge modern art fan but enough people raved to me about this museum that I decided to check it out.

Frankly I’m glad I did as it was a museum filled with good modern art that has pieces which take advantage of the modern age to make interesting things.  Yay!  My two favorites there-

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An artist who used simple everyday materials (plastic straws, toothpicks, etc) to make giant, fascinating structures.  The poufs in the above were made from folding sheets of shiny mylar…IMG_0653Oh my God, it’s full of stars!!!

IMG_0652Another view of the crazy room of lights and mirrors- the lights would change color every few seconds, and was truly lovely…

All in all, I realized another reason I quite enjoyed this museum was because Europe does a lot of things well, but modern art and architecture is not typically what I think of when I think of what the continent does well (one only needs to walk around the concrete box cities built after the war to see what I mean).  I on the other hand come from a country where we have modern architecture as the standard, and while I love living in a neighborhood older than my home country and all that it’s still really nice to surround yourself with something a little different every once in awhile.

Like, you know, giant mylar poufs or blinking lights as far of the eye can see.  Trust me, it was a great change of pace!

 

 

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Posted in Denmark

Copenhagen Wanderings

Posted on May 15, 2013 | Leave a comment

We had a five day weekend recently at my university for various reasons (consisting of Holland getting a new king, my university’s communist roots so we get off Labor Day even though it’s not typically an official holiday, and no one interested in work Monday if we get off Tuesday and Wednesday), and the lure of a nice stretch like that was too much to ignore.  So I dusted off my “places I want to visit in Europe while I’m living here” list- you bet there’s a list!- and noticed one that fit such a length of time perfectly- Copenhagen, Denmark.

I’d never been to Copenhagen before but everyone likes to tell you just how very similar it is to Amsterdam.  And I must agree, there is some truth to this.  Both cities have canals and are defined by the water…

copenhagen-canalLots of bicycles everywhere… though Amsterdam has several times more, and the locks people consider sufficient here wouldn’t last more than a few nights in the Netherlands…

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A skyline defined by various spires and towers…

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This particular spiral-y tower by the way is the Church of Our Savior, which you can climb up a narrow set of steps which were never planned for tourists and I don’t advise if you are claustrophobic.  And then the best part is when you go up to the top and it’s windy the tower shudders a bit in the wind, which makes you wonder about the old thing’s building code.

But anyway, to continue the similarities, right by the Church of Our Savior is another Amsterdam parallel, which is a place famous in Europe for tolerance and soft drugs!  Which in Copenhagen is the hippie village of Freetown Christiana…

IMG_0617I walked through Christiana and it turns out it’s small enough that if you’re not actually interested in drugs it takes all of ten minutes to wander through.  I would make an awful hippie; I don’t understand people who sit around all day doing nothing with their lives and dedicated pot-smokers usually fall in this category.

Plus hey, the Danish have very good beer, so why not enjoy that?

But anyway, comparisons to Amsterdam only go so far of course.  The most lovely difference between the two is Copenhagen has Tivoli Gardens smack in the center of town, which is the second oldest amusement park in the world (the oldest is 10km north of town)-

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An amusement park that is as old as Tivoli is incredibly small compared to a modern one, meaning the few rides are either for small kids or spin around crazily (frequented by tourists and Danish teenagers), and most of Tivoli is more a focus on gardens with nice restaurants and what not.  Seeing as this was a typical Danish weekday there was even a free classical music concert going on, complete with an audience consisting of me and Danish geriatrics, which is a rather enjoyable way to spend a springtime afternoon, really…

All in all, a very nice city!

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Posted in Denmark

Photo: (Lego) Locals in Copenhagen

Posted on May 3, 2013 | 4 Comments

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Dutch holiday season is here, and the lure of a five day weekend this past week was too big for me to ignore so I went to Copenhagen, Denmark.  Where I hung out with perhaps the most famous Danish locals on the planet!

True story: when I was in 3rd grade we had to do “career reports” on what profession we wanted to be when we grew up, and the teacher made us go around the class and say what we wanted to do so she could shoot down our childhood dreams make sure we were doing a report on something realistic.  So when it came to be my turn I told her that when I grew up I wanted to be the person who built the Lego sets for Lego commercials, because that’s what my favorite thing was to do in the world and I reckoned someone had that job.  The teacher gave me a funny look, told me to do my report on “architect,” and so my dream of being a professional Lego builder was shot down.  So it seemed kind of a shame that I didn’t stick with that dream because look, someone’s built a giant Lego city filled with Lego people!  It really is a job!

I will mention more about Copenhagen in a bit but my time is running short, so I will finish this post by mentioning I did not actually get the funniest look on that memorable 3rd grade table round.  You see, my twin brother Patrick was in the same class so when it was his turn he said he wanted to be a gas station attendent- he’d noticed that whenever my mom stopped at the gas station she kept giving the attendent like $20 each time, so that guy must be rich!

Of course Patrick didn’t realize that the gas station attendant didn’t get to keep all the money he got from my mom, and now realizes his dream job was probably “oil executive.”  But then he is getting an M.B.A. degree, so I suppose that one could still come true someday…

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Posted in Denmark

The Trials and Tribulations of Bluey the Bicycle

Posted on April 26, 2013 | Leave a comment

dutch-bicycleThis is Bluey the Bicycle.  Bluey and I first became acquainted the week when I first moved to Amsterdam and ended up purchasing her at the giant Albert Cuyp Market (which I have promptly never returned to since).  Bluey is a good old classic Dutch oma fiets- literally “grandma’s bicycle”- which is the name given to these sorts of cruiser bicycles in the Netherlands.

Now Bluey has been a great bicycle, and it is really not her fault that she got me as an owner as I tend to not be the best caretaker… and I don’t just mean the memorable first few days when I tried to remember how to use a pedal break for the first time since I was ten, or the many rust spots on the frame from hitting her with the heavy bicycle lock during parking (the picture above is a rather old one).  No, so far the following things have happened to me since I’ve been a Dutch bicycle owner, in roughly chronological order:

- The first trial was a few weeks after I’d arrived in the country and after returning to Amsterdam Centraal from a train journey I noticed my bicycle was missing and no longer parked where I had left it.  On the one hand a stolen bicycle is mildly exciting because it’s one of those things everyone must allegedly have happen to them in order to be a real Amsterdammer, on the other hand Bluey and I had only known each other few weeks and it was upsetting to think of our relationship getting cut short.

Luckily it turned out Bluey was not stolen by a crack addict who promptly threw her into the canal but rather the city, who routinely clears out all the bicycles parked illegally in front of the station (the problem is legal parking is often chock-full with abandoned bicycles, so if you’re running late like I was cycling there isn’t a great idea if you want to find a spot).  When this happens they take your bike to the bicycle depot and you have to go retrieve it and pay a 10 Euro fine, but the real punishment is losing a half day of your life going out into the middle of nowhere on a bus that rarely runs to a place presumably many people would want to go.  And the depot itself might as well be renamed “Where Bikes Go To Die,” as they’re required to keep all abandoned and illegally parked bicycles in Amsterdam for six months in case someone comes to fetch theirs, but most are never claimed-amsterdam-bicycle-depotLuckily Bluey and I were quickly reunited, and got the hell out of there!

- Moving along, Bluey has also gotten a flat tire twice.  This is a fairly normal thing in this country of course, but the first flat tire was due to a thumb tack that was lying in the middle of a road, and it was mysteriously near a bicycle shop that agreed to quickly fix the flat, so I never quite shook off wondering if there was a sinister motive for there being a thumb tack in the middle of the road in the first place.

- Speaking of sinister motives… last month when I moved I spent the first two weeks parking Bluey in front of my new house along with all the other bikes that were there.  After two weeks Bluey’s back tire had once again gone flat, but not due to a puncture- somehow the air had just been released.  Which would’ve been a weird minor thing, except for the part where the very same thing happened just two days later.

Now the first time you take a bike to the shop with a tire like this they just look at you funny, the second time they ask you if you have a problem with your neighbor.  Turns out someone in my subdivided old canal house started a personal vendetta to have bicycles no longer parked in front of our place, and poor Bluey got caught in the crossfire.  Bluey now gets parked down the street, but my Dutch friends all found the entire affair hilarious because I live in one of the nicest, safest areas of the city (the last time something violent happened it was when some Germans marched through with uniforms and guns), and I still managed to get into a turf war which I promptly lost.

- The final transgression against Bluey happened just last week, when I did something very stupid and lost my spare bicycle key which I kept meaning to make a copy of ever since I lost the first one but never had.  In the walk from down the street to my apartment which is maybe 100 meters of road.  Let’s just say people are not always very attentive on the final stretch home when it’s late at night.

Now the real issue here is what on Earth do you do when facing a formidable Dutch bicycle lock and no way to unlock it, but very much in need of your mechanical stallion? (Fun fact: the Dutch word fiets for bicycle is thought by linguists to come from an abbreviation for a German phrase for “mechanical horse.”) Consultation with a mechanic on duty at a nearby bicycle shop and the fact that I hadn’t actually locked Bluey to a bike rack, just the front weel to the frame, meant I was advised to steal my own bicycle and bring it over (and because he thought I was cute he agreed to cut the lock off for free if I bought a new one there).  I just had to awkwardly bring the thing a few blocks over from the current position to the shop.

By the way, it turns out I now know why bike theft is so common in the Netherlands- even when it’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon and you are stealing your own bicycle by carrying it several blocks, not one person will bother to stop and ask what on Earth it is you’re doing!

So goes the life and times of my experience as a Dutch bicycle owner- I’m not sure if I’m a particularly good one, but Bluey has yet to complain personally about her situation.  I will say though that at each of these stages someone has told me “don’t worry, you’re not a real Amsterdammer until that happens anyway!”, and based on the other bicycle related mishaps two things still need to happen to me.

The first is at some point I need to get my wheel stuck in the tram tracks and fall over.  If this is the price to pay I refuse to ever become a real citizen of this city, as that just sounds far too painful.

The second is Bluey needs to be stolen for real, and I never see her again.  I hope this never happens either- we’ve just had too many memorable experiences together!

 

 

 

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Posted in Amsterdam, daily life, Dutch traditions