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.