Reading: The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek.

Watching: TV: Californication, Heroes / Films: The Seventh Seal, Hellboy 2, Changeling.

Ieper

Thanks to the discovery of the Belgian railways weekend ticket – 50% discount! – and the Armstice day long weekend, I was able to visit Caroline and her family for several days after I returned from Toussaint vacation. We went out to Ieper (Ypres), a major site of WWI, where many thousands of soldiers died, including several thousand Australians. I’m planning to return to go over the town more thoroughly when the cold eases up – I wish to visit the Commonwealth cemeteries, which requires some walking outside.

Graves in one of the petit cemeteries in Ieper.

Caroline and Christian were kind enough to buy some marzipan for me to try – made from sugar and almond meal, it is traditionally shaped into fruit at this time of year:

Marzipan fruit.

It’s very rich, and tastes like almonds (funnily enough) – it really is difficult to work through even one of these small pieces.

Other delights from the confectionare:

Small desserts.

Halloween candies.

Pumpkin marzipans for Halloween.

Menin gate, Ieper.

The Menin gate is a monument which lists the names of all soldiers who died in the battle for Ieper without a grave in the surrounding cemeteries.

There were panels and panels of soldiers – so many Australians also:

One of the panels listing Australians.

Ieper at night.

Back in Zottegem

… I went with Christian to the local market. Now it’s getting cold, the hot food sellers are abound in the local markets – like this incredible beheamoth of a rotisserie chicken seller:

Jaspaert - the mother of market stall rotisserie chicken sellers.

Forget Brazilian chicken in Kamimaezu, or Coles Supermarkets end of the day leftover hot bbq chicken – their fare was beautiful, fresh, and delicious. Not to mention: can you imagine just how many chickens they sell in one day? Look closely: there are bays and bays of chickens cooking, behind those you can see. Caroline will probably think this amazement funny: I’m comparing it to the couple of rows which Coles in Aldinga does a day, let alone ten bays. All for this one community.

They also sold individual cuts.

I so wish there was one in Adelaide.

Homemade nougat.

Confectionary stalls have popped up all over Northern France and Belgium in the past few weeks. Lille is crawling with them. I did notice, though, that I have an extraordinary amount of photos of confectionary – it’s taken over flowers as my favourite thing to photograph. Must be something to do with my current chocolate addiction. Being it’s a very French thing to eat, I allowed myself to buy something I would never buy at home: N U T E L L A. It may as well be a block of hazelnut Cadbury for all the specialness of the taste, but damn even writing about it makes me want to scoop out a large spoonful of smooth hazelnutty chocolateness. When I read the packaging though and saw it is 56% fat I was reminded of why I don’t buy it at home, and won’t buy it again … but while I’ve got it …

Antwerpen and Sinterklaas

Bugger Coca-Cola’s Santa, the Belgians and Dutch adore Saint Nicholas, the real Saint who gave gifts to poor children, with their own quirky traditions. Although St. Nick lived in what is now Turkey, the modern Sinterklaas arrives from Spain in a steamboat around mid-November every year and gives treats to children every night till the 5th or 6th of December (as well as making appearances at department stores). He is accompanied by the totally politically incorrect Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) and his cronies – usually played by acrobats in black face (!) -

Before continuing do have a quick look at the Sinterklaas page on Wikipedia so you have a better idea of what I’m talking about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas

I was able to go to Antwerp to see the Sinterklaas arrival on November 15th. I took more footage than photos, and was harrassed by somewhat over eager mothers who were using their children as excuses to see the events themselves (I could’ve slapped some of them).

The parade was short, but spectacular – the costumes are really amazing and creative. I imagine there is a story behind each character, but I’m not very familiar with the legends.

A Zwart Piet handing out brochures at a local store.

Zwarte Piets dance around, gathering letters from the children.

The large container for all of the childrens letters to Sinterklaas.

Zwarte Piets with The Book of who is naughty and nice.

Performers.

I loved these costumes. These guys were very funny – I stood near the prep area for a while and they played up to the kids hanging out there.

Bird performers.

I do remember that the two ’spaniards’ represent historical figures – Caroline, I’m sure you told me something about them.

Spaniard welcomes Sinterklaas

The Spanish woman, welcomed by the crowds of children.

Kids waiting for Sinterklaas.

Antwerpen station.

Antwerp’s a pretty cool city – it’s like the Munich, Amsterdam or San Francisco of Belgium – that is, a party city. But I’m not much of a partier, and being pretty poor, there wasn’t much for me to do other than see the parade (I came here with Caroline in 2005, so I’ve already visited the “must see” museums in Antwerp). I did end up cutting short my trip and going home early as I simply was tired of walking around in the cold. I did catch a movie, though, Changeling with Angelina Jolie, enjoying the lack of dubbed films in Flemish Belgium (oh the sorrow to return to France and see the lack of ‘VO’ voice originale films in cinemas here.) I walked through the Stradpark, quite nice at night – there’s bunny rabbits (!):

Stadpark

The white dots next to the water were little bunnies. Beats having ducks, I guess.

Stadpark

Such is my camera and the cloud cover, both these photos were taken at night – the long exposure setting drew in such light that they almost look as if they were taken during the day (except for lights).

Antwerp is, of course, a very beautiful Flemish city, just like Ieper, Lille … well, pretty much every Flemish city they’re all so dramatic. Next time you’re touring Europe, add it to your list. Just don’t stay in the Boomerang hostel: I endured a snoring homeless man, rank smells and vomit clogged washbasins (although, most guests at the hostel were still out partying till after I left in the morning, ensuring a near empty hostel dorm for me. Besides the fat, farting drunk homeless guy.)

Central Antwerp.

Comic book mural in Antwerp.

There are some seriously decent arty little shops around – and the markets I visited were good. There was a lot of cheap shops and the such. Theres dozens of comic book murals around Belgium, and I saw several there.

Still, too cold, too poor, so went home. I didn’t feel like walking from Menen (Belgium) to Halluin (France) to get back to Lille (which cuts 16euro off the cost of any trip to Belgium), so I stayed on the train from Kortrijk to Lille, thinking a conductor was going to kick me off. However, it appears there are no conductors from the Kortrijk to France link; perhaps it’s worth the risk more often (Belgium trains are obsessively well patrolled by ticket-checking conductors, so I always make sure I have tickets for their trains – it’s the French ones you don’t have to worry so much about).

Meanwhile, back in Lille …

Once again the view from my window demonstrates the change of seasons for me – the tree outside my window before I left for Limoges was entirely green; I returned to see mountains of yellowed leaves and bare branches. Then, much to my delight, this week I woke up to snow:

Snow’s actually more pleasant than rain: it’s soft, sticks to your eyelashes when you go out, that sort of thing. I did rug up on this day, made use of my snow jacket and went to the local markets.

It had snowed the day before as I’d done the grocery shopping in Lille, but was far less pleasant as it was more like sleet.

First snow of the year.

I did get home before it got absolutely miserable: heavy wind and flurries. Believe it or not, it’s only a day later and all the snow has gone. It was warmer last night (4degrees) than it was during the day (-.02degrees) yesterday.

I’ve been appropriately hiding at home this weekend: but next weekend there’s another festival in Comines, and the weekend after Sinterklaas arrives in Arras and Dunkerque. And Lille’s Christmas market’s in full swing; so I’ll be busy between here and Christmas.

Also: the best news of the year: I   G O T   P A I D. You were probably sick of my whining about my poverty: well, now I can afford to actually send the postcards I labouriously wrote out weeks ago; buy some new (warmer) clothes, though still second hand for an euro each at the markets; buy some laundry detergent to replace that which I’d borrowed from my long suffering landlord; hell, I can afford meat now instead of pre-packaged deli-ham. Probably won’t do much for my waistline – poverty becomes me – but I’m sick of dodgy fried rice and cheap cheese on bread. Time for some real food! Appropriately my mum tells me my bill for overpaid Centrelink just arrived at home … … which equals about half of what I earnt for all of October. Well, that can be paid off slowly.

So, catch you soon. And hey, how fucking good is Californication? Seriously those Showtime guys know what they’re doing. Bye.