Times are a changing-good bye Brussels

Hello Friends. Sorry its been so long, but a lot has changed since I've last written:

First, Steve and I are no longer headed to Shanghai as planned. With changes in business needs and restructuring, Cargill no longer needs to send Steve to China. We're disappointed not to be going, as we were both looking forward to the adventure but I'm sure we'll end up there someday. For those who know us we love to travel and even if its just for vacation we will be back to Asia.

Second, instead of Asia we are going to be living the next 6 months in Des Moines, Iowa. In fact we've already moved. Yes, it has been a whirlwind these last couple of weeks. We moved from Brussels to Des Moines in two weeks. We got confirmation on Des Moines the last week of March and were on a plane headed for the US on April 3rd.  The next week was filled with lots of driving, apartment hunting, packing unpacking repacking, and a lot of where do you think x is? ( we've got all of stuff spread over 3 locations).

So as I write this from Des Moines we are starting to settle in, learning where things are and unpacking. Its mind boggling to think that just a few weeks ago we were living in Europe. I of course am sad that the European portion of our adventure is over, but I'm so very grateful for the new opportunities, new friends and fun experiences I've had during the last 6 months. On the flip side, I am looking forward to being Iowa. I certainly know it's not going to be as crazy as Shanghai but Iowa there are things to look forward to here as well. Des Moines has a fabulous farmers market every Saturday just downstairs from our apartment and we are already have plans for an  outdoor concert, the fair and a road trip to Kansas city( mmmm BBQ). Did I mention Iowa is known for their fabulous corn on the cob? I also can't help but think about how easy it is to be back in an English speaking country.

Although Iowa will bring it's own adventures, I suspect it won't be much to write home about. So this will be my last blog post. Thank you so much for following along, I hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures as much as I enjoyed sharing my stories. I'm happy to be closer to home, feel free to connect with me via email or Facebook. Thanks everybody!

Norway-Tromso

After being in the Oslo area we flew another 2 hours north to Tromso. Tromso is in the far north of Norway and since it is in the Arctic Circle region I have decided that it is close enough to the North Pole to say I've been in the North Pole.  The first day we arrived we went to see the Arctic Cathedral, a famous landmark in Norway. We also took a cable car up the mountain side. Normally from the top of the cable car you can see magnificent views of Tromso, however on this particular day it was snowing and the wind was whipping around so hard you felt like you were in a blizzard.  Instead of walking around we ended up taking  a few photos and then had some hot chocolate instead.

Inside the Arctic Cathedral

Steve driving the sled

The highlight of our time in this region was dog sledding. From tromso we were bussed another hour and a half into the mountains. We arrived and were given "survival suits" which were essentially adult versions of snowsiuts, boots, gloves and a hat if you needed it. We took another smaller van out to where the dogs were. The minute we got out of the van I could hear all of the dogs barking excitedly. There we six teams of dogs set up for us, and each sled had six dogs. They were all harnessed up and pulling on their sleds just waiting to start running. After a short tutorial on how to run the sleds we were on our way. We went for almost 2 hours which covered about 10 miles. It was a perfect winter day, there were a few flurries but little wind. There was fresh snow from the day before and the combination of the snow and mountains made you feel like you were in the middle of no where.

Steve and I took turns driving the sled and sitting on the sled. When you are the passenger you get to enjoy the scenery more, and you get watch the dogs. I thought the dogs were as fun to watch as the scenery. Each dog looked pretty different from each other and they run differently too. One of our dogs ran with it's butt to the right hand side  the whole time almost like his back legs were faster than his front legs. They say the smartest dogs lead the pack and the back dogs are the strongest. I'm not sure what traits the middle dogs have. The one downfall of sitting in the sled is that the dogs do all their bathroom business as they run, and when you are sitting directly behind them, it's not always very pretty to see or smell.

Now when you are driving the sled you don't get to take in the scenery around you as much because you've got to pay attention to the dogs your speed and balance so the sled doesn't tip over. However, you feel the speed of the sled much more than sitting. It's like sticking your head out of the window of the car. It's exhilarating to feel the dogs pull you so quickly. Dog sledding is much more physically demanding than I thought it would be. Besides balancing, the driver needs to jump off the sled when you go up  hills to help the dogs by pushing the sled up the hill. Luckily for me Steve drove most of the hilly part.

After dog sledding we had a nice lunch of bread and reindeer soup. The soup was delicious, reindeer tastes like beef. Overall a fantastic experience I absolutely want to do this again. I hear they have dog sledding in the northern part of Minnesota. Now the only thing I've got to deal with is that Steve (who most of you know is a avid cross country skier) wants to get a dog when we get back so he can go skijoring. You know where people harness themselves to a dog and the dog pulls them as they ski behind...we'll see how that works out.

Norway Part 1

Hello all,  it's the guest contributor to the blog Steve.  Mary asked me to write our post on Oslo and the Hallingdahl valley given the personal ancestry connection.   Our trip kicked off in Oslo.  The city is a great mix of new clean lines Scandinavian design and old school buildings.  We both really liked Oslo as it really had a different feel from where we are living.  Norwegians really take pride in the cleanliness of their cities (i.e.  no dog poop on the sidewalks) and also about weaving the culture of the country right into the urban landscape.  By this I mean Nordic skiing is everywhere.  We caught the metro out to Homenkolen to see the city setting up for the 2012 world cup ski jumping and cross country ski races the next few days.  The evening before I took the same line a few stops further and found myself cross country skiing in the woods overlooking the city.  This experience really helped to solidify that in my travels Norway still ranks at the top end of my list.

forget deer, watch out for skiers

The new opera house in Oslo

 

After seeing the Opera House, Kings Palace, the ski jump, the houses that still remind me of the old houses in MN and some great cafes on the main street Karl Johan's Gate we caught the train out of Oslo to a small town in the Hallingdal valley called Nesbyn.  It is around this area where my great grandfather comes from.  We were picked up at the station by probably one of the nicest people in the world.  Terje is something like a second grand uncle to my father.  His father and my great grandfather were uncle and nephew.  No matter how close or distant, we were family.  Terje took us to their Hytte (cabin) for the evening and there we met his wife Torun who was also wonderful. We spent the evening in the mountains and the next morning doing some hiking and taking in the valley scenery.   We looked at old photos and talked about his travels to the US and all of the genealogy work my dad and uncle had done.  The next day we traveled to the old Engebakken farm and also the site where my great grandfather grew up.  This was a really amazing experience to see the exact spot where my roots in the US all started.  I learned that my grandfather changed his name to Bakken  and dropped the (Enge) when he came to the U.S. in 1905.  Crazy to think he came with $10 in his pocket!  After a tour of the valley, a lunch of waffles and coffee, and reading a letter that was written from Terje's father to my great grandfather about how he was settling in to the U.S.  we got ready to head back to Oslo to catch our next day flight to Tromso.  Overall a quick but great experience seeing Norway by winter and learning a bit about my roots. Mary will be writing soon about what we did after Oslo and Nesbyn, stay tuned...

Steve and Terje

The view from the cabin

Great grandfather (Enge) Bakken's farm

A ladybug and a ninja go to Carnival

The title of the post sounds a little like the beginning of a punch line, and before we arrived at carnival we thought it might be one big joke on us. When living in a foreign country you tend to put a lot of trust in others. We've often asked new local friends about recommendations on where to eat or get certain things. Generally the recommendations are great (we finally found a good Chinese food restaurant) but sometimes the recommendations aren't quite our style (somebody once recommended a restaurant because it has really good horse, and while I respect that horse is common here I'm not ready). So when one of our Belgian friends invited us to carnival we put our trust in him.

Based on what our friend told us carnival is aligned to Lent (similar to Mardi Gras), it last three days and in the town of Aalst where we went to carnival men mostly dress up as women. The story as I know it is that back in the day the town was actually pretty poor, so they had no money for costumes and instead wore their women's clothes as costumes. This tradition has carried through the generations.

This celebration isn't carried all through Belgium and if we had stayed in Brussels we wouldn't have seen any indication it was really going on. This is maybe why I got a little nervous while riding the train. Our friend said there would be others on the train dressed up but as we boarded it was just the four of us, one ladybug, one ninja, and two men in dresses. However, I shouldn't have doubted our friend, I should have known a person who makes the very best Belgian stew we've ever had (just in case your reading friend) would never lead us astray. Two train stops later and we had arrived at carnival.

I've never been to a New Orleans Mardi Gras, but I image this is similar to what carnival was like. The whole town is transformed to celebrate carnival, there are food vendors everywhere and a huge parade that goes on from about 1pm and was still going on when we left around 10pm. The floats are incredibly impressive and well coordinated. They also tend to be politically charged, mocking the government, the European union or other countries in the union.

For carnival, the costumes are as varied as they are for an American Halloween, it's not just the medieval type costumes. You see cats, pirates etc. You also see a lot of men dressed as women. These men take the tradition seriously. The environment is a lot of fun and the people at carnival are very friendly, we even made some new friends that night. The friendliness might also be why I didn't see any police officers around. From my understanding they don't have issues with fights or violence. They also don't seem to have many issues with alcohol poisoning.

I think carnival is one of those events that you really have to be at to understand. I also suspect that it gets crazier as the night goes on, as Steve and I were on the 11pm train back to our car we could see people just arriving for the celebrations.

Steve's Birthday London Style

This past weekend we had the good fortune to celebrate Steve's 30th birthday in London. I of course reminded him how lucky he was because for my 30th birthday, I wrote a paper for school (no I'm not bitter, I just like to give my husband a hard time). We've done a good amount of traveling in the past few months but this trip has been one of my favorites. London has a such a great vibe about it. For me it seemed to have all the action of a huge city but the charm and general politeness of a small city. Some people say its like New York without the snarky edge. I think part of this love for London was just because it was so easy to get around. There was no language barrier for us, although I had a hard time remembering that although I was in a foreign country the language wasn't foreign to me.  A few times I would speak to somebody in one word English sentences ( train there? When I wanted to say is the train down this street or  "I sit here, you here" with over exaggerated hand gesters when I wanted to say I'll sit here so you can sit by your friend here) because I didn't expect the other person to understand me. When the other person responded in perfect English I always felt bad for forgetting where we were and speaking to them like a two year old. Getting around was easy as well. The tube (their metro system) is easy to figure out and everything is well marked. In Belgium they don't always have maps and the boards can be a bit tricky. While in London we saw two musicals. We had bought tickets for The Lion King prior to the trip. It was fantastic, I would highly recommend it. It was so much fun to see all of the costumes and the music and everything was great. The other show we watched was Back Beat which is based on the story of the Beatles before they were big. To get these tickets we headed down to one of the theatre districts the day we arrived and purchased half priced tickets from one of the half priced dealers. These dealers are completely legitimate and a great way to get tickets if you are open to the show that you see. We also saw the typical sites on London, the London eye, Big Ben and  Buckingham palace. We got to see the changing of the guard. Well we sort of saw it, there were so many people there I couldn't really see too much. I will say I don't get all the fuss, I mean do you really need a little band to change up the guards? We also took one of those double decker buses, a little cheesy but we got to see places that we wouldn't have made the effort to see and we got little tid bits of information like were MI5 is headquartered, were the royals do some of their  shopping, and that the Prince buys $3,000 pound shoes. We closed off the weekend having dinner with friends that are now living in London. Some were friends from Minnesota and others were friends from when Steve studied with in Sweden. I'm amazed at what a small world we live in, around the table we had friends from different parts of the world and different parts of our life. It was such a nice way to celebrate Steve's birthday.

A cold weekend in Amsterdam

The last week here has felt like a typical Minnesota winter. On Friday we got about an inch of snow that has actually stuck around for the last couple of days and its so cold that sometimes a have a hard time catching my breath walking to the grocery store. I have certainly been through colder and snowier winters, but I think I feel it a lot more now that I walk everywhere. In these really cold days I wish I could just drive everywhere.

This past weekend we drove to Amsterdam. I still can't get over the fact that we can drive just two hours and be in a different country. Since it was cold and snowy it wasn't the best weekend for walking around Amsterdam, but we still enjoyed our time there. We didn't get to see the beautiful tulips that the city is known for, but the snow and ice around the city and its canals certainly added its own type of charm.

One of the first things we did was visit the Anne Frank house. Walking around the annex where the eight people lived, I had a hard time imagining how eight people lived in such a small space. The saddest things about the house was knowing that they never were allowed to go outside or even open the windows.  I just can't imagine. We also saw how they tried to stay "normal" inside the annex, there were pencil marks on the wall showing how much the children grew while they were there.

Amsterdam is known for their big bicycle culture(well there big bike culture and the red light district but that's a different story). There are people riding bikes everywhere, and the city is certainly built for the biking culture. There are bike paths all along the the walkways and roads. They even have their own stoplights. I can't imagine how everybody does it there, especially in the winter. There was snow all over the roads and sidewalks, I watched several people almost wipe out while walking around the city (including Steve hee hee), but I never saw anybody fall off their bikes.

Before we headed out of town, we of course ate some delicious Dutch pancakes. I really enjoyed Amsterdam, but if we're around when it gets warmer I'd like to go back and see the tulips...and eat more pancakes.

A few weeks and pounds later

After a few weeks in the States Steve and I have returned to back to Brussels. We celebrated a late Christmas with Steve's family and then Chinese New Year with mine. We also got to see some friends (although not as many as we would have liked to) and did some shopping and lots of  eating. Lots of eating. Before even returning to the States we had already created lists of things to bring back and places/food we wanted to eat. Belgian food is just different and if I had to choose to spend a day eating in Brussels or Minnesota I would choose Minnesota easily. Brussels has some great things but overall it lacks the the variety of tastes and ethnic foods that I can find in Minnesota(which is a little shocking). So needless to say a few pounds were gained by eating Chinese food, Indian, sushi, pizza, pancakes and lots of meat (there is something about the beef here that is a little off putting to me and the bacon here is sad). I also visited Starbucks at every opportunity (the smalls there are huge compared to my small coffees here)

We got a lot of questions about if it was weird to be back in the U.S. In general there is a bit of indifference. Steve and I are beginning to feel like nomads and we use the word "home" to refer to different places depending on the conversation. Home can be the U.S, Minneapolis, Brussels, and Beaver Creek. We've gotten to a place where we have become comfortable in all of these locations. Of course that doesn't mean we don't notice differences between the different "homes" The common phrase between us has been "oh that's right, here people xyz. You don't see that a lot in the other country" For example:

Oh that's right in Minnesota people wear their pajamas in public (specifically Target, 2pm in the afternoon), you don't see that in Brussels. People are always well dressed, even their children always look like they just stepped out of gap ads.

Oh that's right in Minnesota people actually smile and say hello when you walk into a store or sit down at a table. In Brussels customer service is not as friendly. I always tell Steve it feels like all of Brussels behaves like the DMV. Working, but with no urgency and limited friendliness.

Oh that's right, people in Minnesota drive in the left lane here. Even though they are not passing, barely driving the speed limit and holding up at least a mile of traffic behind them.

Oh that's right, people in Brussels just let their dogs poop anywhere. Gross.

Then there are also things that we just see differently now that we've been in Brussels for awhile:

People seems to drive sooo slow in  Minnesota. Both Steve and I were told at least once while driving "ummm you know your not driving on the Autobahn right"? I think on average people drive at least 80mph on the freeway here, not 55mph(maybe on the side roads)

Minnesota is actually really sunny. Cold but sunny. Its so rainy and dreary in Brussels.

One morning I drove Steve to the office, it was snowy and traffic was crawling. I thought to myself, why was I missing the snow again?

In Minnesota people are so...white...American. Not a judgement in any way, its just that there is a lot more diversity in Brussels.  Here,  I hear people speaking French, Italian, English, Dutch everyday.

Its fun looking at a place with different perspectives. It was a great trip, I miss my friends and family back home, but its good to be back home too.