Back to the USSR

I found this post draft from August 2013.... it was empty. It means that we shared nothing with you from our last travels and while it means we've been too busy too busy to create digital mumble, it is still a pity that you couldn't enjoy our artistic bursts. Poor you.

We will later on post here some photos of what we did on August 2013, just to get rid of that non-blogging guilt are suffering from....

And about being busy, as you'll see -- this blog has grown and now it is DJ&NB. As such, please welcome our new 'DJ NB rocking the globe'

Some international insights

In a dull day in Leuven we started trying to humoristically phrase what we learned about different nations. I just ran into this text again and decided you may actually enjoy it.
You are welcome to comment and  share your own educated (and humoristic, no real stuff please) insights.

Upon arriving to a lonely island what will they do.....?

• Israeli
• Runs into his buddy from high school
• Looks for a Leubawitz house to do kabalat Shabbat (saturday's ceremony) for the second time in his life (the first time was when he backpacked in India)
• Opens an illegal stand for selling "Israeli Art" made in China
• Haggles on the price of the staying on the island

• Argentinian
• Bribes someone to get on the next ship, complaints that the government is corrupt and stages a demonstration
• Looks for warm water for mate
• Checks if the locals can play soccer

• Italian
• Calls his mama
• Drinks coffee
• Calls mama again and promises that he has enough food and will not marry a non Italian girl

• Belgian
• Goes to sleep since it is after 18:00
• Looks for an office to fill some forms
• Finds a queue to stand and finds there another Belgian standing alone

• Austrian
• Arrives on time to the Island
• Sits in a coffee shop and eats a semi boiled egg
• Names the local coconut "Kaiser Cocus", ya!

• Spaniard
• Pushes his way to the head of the queue to get on the island
• Tells all the locals that the Spanish jamon is better than the local
• Looks for a TV to watch the match between Real Madrid and Barcelona

• Russian
• Buys a bottle of the strongest and cheapest alcohol he can find to celebrate
• Sleeps drunk under the table
• Gets nostalgic thinking about mother Russia
• Is happy that he can be in the nature, have dried fish and bath in the cold ocean

• Dutch
• Laughs at the Belgian
• Gets on time with the Austrian (but that's just because he is Guido)
• Organizes a party (ha...that's Luc)

Getting serious on snow

It's been days with temperature below -3, and most of the time below -5

Some pics for you

D

Closing a circle or the Patron's Day

In my first days in Leuven, I watched the beginning of the year's professors procession, which was followed by a mass in the city's cathedral.
Now, these are my last  days in Leuven and I've just watched (Feb-02, Thursday) the professors' procession in the event of the university's protector patron saint (the Virgin itself).
At 9:45, time of the procession the temperature was minus 8.
Following the procession, mass was held in the city's cathedral - it was cold even with the heaters they used. So, I positioned myself nearby a heater and took a nap till end of the mass. Later, I joined the PhD ad honorarium that is held in once a year at the saint day. At the end I enjoyed free beers and great sandwiches with ham, brie cheese, other cheeses, tuna, etc.

The PhDs of honor were given this year to researchers in the field of aging. It was thrilling to hear the personal story of each. It's comforting knowing that there are people who dedicate themselves to knowledge and to doing good.

The reception and PhD room are beautiful rooms inside the building of the ancient library burnt at 1914. One is in medieval-style and the other is neo-classic.

I got from the windows a special view on the oude-markt (old market, the pubs center) and the cathedral.

It felt like closing a circle. I'm about to leave Leuven.

Post exams' vacuum

The last exam is over. A sudden vacuum. I smell the change.

The temperatures here are between -3 and -7. Tomorrow -11 is expected. The landlord lady offered me clothing if I'm cold. She's sweet.

After today's exam I had beer with a study buddy who wrote a paper with me and later had an end of semester bbq in the house of a friend. Now finally home after a frozen walk from down town.

It is the first exam in which I made a gross mistake that will cost me a lot of points, but I will pass the exam. I need not this course grades, but it again shows me how little do I enjoy scoring low, even when it's not important. The most funny thing is that I'm really proud about the answer I wrote. Great answer, but not for the asked question....

Now that's over, and I have no clue how do they check exams and grade them over here - so I cannot even guess my grade.

In general it drives me nuts that I've presented papers, done presentations and exams over the past 3 months and I will not know any grades till past mid-February. I just don't get this system.

In these months I learned a lot about my writing capabilities and how to approach a paper.
I also had to confront face to face my non-sleeping issues and my time management issues. There were no excuses now - no work, no family, nothing. I improved in some aspect, but there is still way to go.

My last anthropology exam seemed to be rather good and during a chat with the professor after the exam over an idea I had, he offered me to write a thesis with him on the subject.  We shall see. Things aren't clear. I still don't have things clear in my mind how everything will evolve now. The only clear thing is that I need to finish my MBA.

Tomorrow, will be a day of cleaning, paper work, publishing stuff for sale and hopefully being able to change my flight date so that I return earlier home to meet my beloved yellow and furry hamula.

Studies....and more studies....

I'm 24 hours before my last exam.

Today it snowed for the first time, though light snow. Temperatures are below zero so the snow didn't melt.

J is growing tired, but is ok. We expect that I will have to return home a bit earlier than expected.

I'm like a prisoner sitting at home studying, since the Belgium trade unions are again on transportation strike. Here is what I see from my window.



Cheers,
D

Just a typical day

I few weeks ago I got a letter from the municipality saying that my electronic resident card is ready. I didn't went to take it, after all I'll be leaving in a few weeks.
Last week the bank emailed me that they are freezing my account till I show them the resident card.

So, I went to the municipality just to find that I need to bring my previous resident permit in order to get the card. Regardless, the clerk was very nice, recognized me when I stepped in and greeted me with a full smile 'Shalom!'

Yesterday I arrived again, just to find again that I need not only my previous permit, but also the security codes they sent me by mail and the receipt that I have paid for the new card. Yes, they confirmed, they can see in the system that I paid already, but they still need to see the receipt.

Don't get me wrong. Everyone in the municipality are extremely nice. I also found that in the receipt I got 3 month ago when paying for the electronic card there was a list of all the documents I should bring. But, it was in Dutch and I wouldn't guess that the receipt includes the details for the next step. I will definitely learn for the next time I'm in Belgium.

Today I finally came with all the papers and got my residence card. At least all seems ok with the card. A Pakistani friend got his card with a new and interesting nationality assigned to him: Israeli - we made quite a lot of laugh of it.

Later I went to the local health clinic to pay debts I knew we had there. They sent me to the accounting department. Initially, it seemed I cannot pay because it was only 2 months ago and the invoice wasn't produced yet.... Eventually I managed to pay, but I will get the receipts only by mail....

The receipts are needed to get the refunds from health insurance, another procedure awaiting ahead....I think I'll see the money only after being back to Israel...

I then went to the optometrist to ask them to amend a receipt they made for me which didn't got the price correctly printed. It's good the lady was behind a glass window. Otherwise she would have eaten my head.

Now I only have another day or two of filling forms for reimbursements....

And just to keep things in proportion - J has spent 8 hours in the last 3 days trying to get two mobile phone companies in Israel to move my phone number from one to another and as of this morning they kept blaming each other without providing a solution.....

Love,
D

Pushing forward

21-Jan-2012, 13:30

Well, that was a white night. I had today an exam, and I forgot that at the time of the exam I had to present and defend two papers. I remembered only one of them.
Eventually, I made it on time and it seems that the papers are good eventually.
It has been a long time since I had a really white night with no sleeping at all.

J is getting used to our furry creatures and to the respective alergy. Our creature-boy is growing every day and keep making substantial efforts to impede his mother from sleeping.

The important thing is that the exam is behind me now and only 2 are left to go.

So, to celebrate it, here go some morbid :-) pictures of Leuven. Hope you'll feel the winter blowing from the pictures.

Love

Initial pics from Edinburgh, Scotland

Hi All,

We have kept you long without any news, though most of you must be up to date at this point.
In any case, D is deep into exams and J is at back at home.
Since our last post, we have stayed a few last days in Leuven, went to Edinburgh and later went directly to Winchester to visit dear friends and rest.
Resting was crucial for obvious reasons and we gave up on plans we had to visit another 2 friends on our way south.

This isn't the full set, but at least it's something of Edinburgh to keep you busy.

Love,
J+D

Madrid, Sun and Christmas

We left towards Spain expecting a cold weather in Madrid. As expected, Madrid was colder than Belgium - the dry weather of the city and the wind make it pretty chilly.
Though, the most strong impression was the sun. Suddenly, after months in Belgium we had a high sky sun (relatively to winter) and the light was much warmer. It was a real treat and we enjoyed every moment.

Iberia's flight took of late as expected and the pilot was in a rush to get to Christmas dinner, so the flight took about 25 minutes less than planned. The noise in the plane left no doubt that we are going to cross a cultural boundary. The PA system clearly said in Spanish, English, French and Dutch that people sitting in rows 27-30 are requested to board first. It was useless, everyone pushed in and no one of the boarding crew even cared to check the people's sitting place.

Madrid's airport was gloomy in Christmas night, empty and non festive. Everything changed as soon as we met Juan who came to pick us. Meeting a brother after years feels you with joy. There is no way around.
Before leaving airport we faced a HUGE Belen full with baby Jesus, biblical landscape and a castle with crusaders.

Arriving to Juan's parents place was great. The children were thrilled to see us, the warm receptions of our Spanish mother and father was as always, Pilu looked the same and sweet as always and above all (after all one should have clear priorities in life) only one bottle of Leffe Noel was broken. All the rest 8 litters of beer we carried in the suitcases arrived intact and with them the 4 Kilos of fresh Dutch Zeeland mussels.

The Christmas dinner served was amazingly tasty and big (lobsters, various kinds of shrimps and traditional morteruelo de Cuenca among others, pulp a la Gallega). A great cava was a perfect for us, while the boys enjoyed the beers we brought. The night ended way after midnight when we were all dead tired.

The day later (Dec 25) we had a welcoming and tasty lunch with the huge family of Pilu's parents and enjoyed a great conversation.

It would probably come to you as a shock, but the Christmas market in Madrid was open even after Christmas eve. How crazy this people are, right? Why the hack don't they close their markets a week before Christmas like in Leuven? And later people would say that Spaniards are lazy.

Another observation is that the square which was taken by the "indignados" (the social protesters in of Spain) was again taken, though this time by a huge crowd of consumers spending money in the occasion of Christmas. Social Protest 0 : Capitalism 1 :-(

In the next days we visited downtown Madrid (w/Cuban lunch) and Avila with its very well preserved early middle-ages' wall and a cold respectful appearance of a Castillian administrative center (w/ local meal of beans, known in Spain as Jewesses white and green and beef stuffed little red peppers).
A quite day in the middle allowed us to rest, visit the botanic garden, have  a macrobiotic lunch and visit Juan's parents again and doing a short bar round with J+P's friends.

Our last day trip was to Manzanares el Real. A very well preserved and reconstructed medieval castle with a great nearby natural reserve. Both adults and children enjoyed the castle with the 3 Magi posing for children.

In the morning of Dec 30 we woke up with a clear will not to leave our family in Madrid, the great sun and return to Leuven for what will be our last visit together in our Belgian home. We enjoyed the trip to Madrid a lot, but it filled us with sadness leaving and knowing this is the beginning of the end of our time in Europe.

It's probably needless to mention that Iberia's flight was again taking off with a significant delay.

This is the time to say once again how much we dislike the EU bureaucracy which makes us have to separate in a week.

Just to end this post with a bit more encouraging spirit, we'd like to extend our eternal gratefulness to Iberia which delivered our baggage in the same flight.




Love,
J+D

European web sites

We hope one day to find an answer to the following weird behavior of European web site

• Shops web sites rarely allow purchasing
• Sometimes ask for bank transfers, e.g. for shows tickets... and credit cards payment are not possible
• Catalogs in PDF files
• Often they don't work with 2 out of 3 browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome)
• It's very common that when you search for tickets/train trips/etc you have one search path. When  you find  (or not…) what you wanted, you need to start all over again just to get also the...price…

At least, yesterday we finally heard a reasonable explanations on why last moment tickets are more expensive than tickets bought months in advance and it goes like this. Tickets bought in advance have a statistical probability of meeting last moment impediments, thus assuring the selling companies an additional income in changes fees or cancellation fees. Not to mention that if you cancel they can obviously resell your ticket at a higher price. 

 (Thanks Farrukh)

This is even more surprising, since from our short experience in Europe it doesn't feel like people plan more ahead than people in other continents. At least, they seem as surprised as others when reality knocks on their door.

New Year at the Old Market

The Countdown

To sum it up:
The FESTBUS arrived on time and was full of screaming high school children
We have never seen so many Belgium people screaming!
Crackers were the preferred entertainment - they were thrown even in the middle of a square full of people (just 2 meters from us)
Disappointingly, there were no fireworks but everyone were very happy and drunk
The beer wasn't over priced (Belgium!)
Someone tried to incinerate one of the Christmas trees with a flying candle
There was a very festive queue (it's Belgium after all) and we enjoyed with a great friend!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!
J+D+0.5

Happy New Year 2012!

We landed yesterday back from Madrid. We had a great week with our family there.

Now we are heading to Leuven's Oude Markt (Old Market) for a beer, the traditional count down and meeting friends after a very rainy and cloudy day.

Love you all and we wish you a year full of new adventures and good things as the one expecting us!

This pic is from the inside of the main christmas/new year tree in Plaza del Sol in Madrid. It's a great idea, since it looks nice, innovative and saves the need to cut a tree for the event.

Cheers,
J+D

Happy Belgian Hanukkah! חנוכה בלגי שמח

Hanukkah is once of the nicest holidays we have. A festival of lights in the middle of the dark days of the winter, tasty food (fried stuff, special donughts, chocolate coins).
This year we decided to have a special Hanukkiya and to celebrate it with our new extended family in Leuven.

So, on the fourth candle of Hannukah we lighted the candles in the international students club of KU Leuven, named Panagea, we talked about the history and meaning of the holiday, had chocolate coins and discovered a new spinning top prodigy.
As always, we also learnt new things, like the special care of Kurdish people to fire which is never extinguished by man, but kept till it turns off on its own.

To our friends out of Leuven, we hope you'll enjoy the Hanukkiya as we did.

To our friends in Leuven, we love you and enjoy the greet of having you as our family.

Happy Hannukah,
J+D

PS
Yes, these are all beers we drunk

Happy Hannuka! חנוכה שמח

Our dearest friend Noga who's our cats (and other stuff) procurator while we are away, sent us this so cuuuute Hanukkah greeting.

Hanukkah is the traditional fest of light, we light candles, eat oily sweet stuff (commonly fried) and sing.

Just to cover the historical part. Hanukkah means 'inauguration'. A certain Hellenistic ruler desecrated the Jewish temple, he was defeated and during the inauguration of the temple there was no 'holy oil' to light the candles. A small oil can was eventually found and miraculously it lasted for 8 days. So, we fest for 8 days, light candles, sing and eat. At the first day we light 1+1 candles, at the second day 1+2, third day 1+3 and so on till the last day when 9 beautiful candles light the house. The candles are put on the window sill to announce to everyone the miracle.

The pic says -
"Each of us is a little light, and together we are a strong light" (from a traditional song)
"Happy first candle!"
"From Noga and the Belgians"

Ps, "The Belgians" is the nick name that our 3 cats got after being deserted in favor of Belgium.

We Love you Noga!

My bike was stolen :-(

RIP זצ"ל

I rushed out to get to an important class just to find out that the bike that served me so well for the past months was stolen. Shitty feeling. . I'd say FUCK the students of Leuven if I wasn't one.

That's the kind of moments I would have liked to believe in supreme powers that could make the son of a bitch to drive the bike into the front of a truck. 

A classmate told that a friend just stole someone else's bike following a similar case. Yes, the idea ran through my mind for some time while walking to class in the rain and the answer was eventually 'No'. 

This is going to be a white night...

Today was a day of studying, cooking and enjoying a cozy day at home with each other.
At the evening we had 2 most enjoyable hours of an Italian-Iranian dinner

• spaghetti alla carbonara di melanzane
• an amazing Iranian plate of baked eggplants with and w/o meat (I will try to get the receipt from the chef)
• an endive plate with caramelized onion and red pepper 
• a great French Pinot Noir 
• A great chat with good people

Tomorrow we have to wake up early for a routine check up, but it seems I will have a white night preparing one of my this week's presentations. 

The skies are almost clear and the chimney of the house on the other side of the street keeps smoking and proving the wind outside isn't very strong as it gently carries the white smoke.  

A milestone! 8 Kilos of Brussels Sprouts!

It's the 8th Kilogram of fresh Brussels Sprouts that we eat!

When your neighbor is a celeberity

December 6 is the day of Sinterklass (Saint Nicholas) which is widely celebrated in Belgium. A lot of parties and activities for children are being thrown at this occasion.
The days before are the time when children get presents at night into their shoes. This is also a kind of unofficial opening of the Christmas season.

We went to the city for a long walk through the old neighborhood and forgot about a party we were invited to. Not so bad since it was anyway a children party. Anyway, we got "compensated" and saw St. Nicholas riding his horse back home. It turned out that the local official St. Nicholas is our neighbor whom we see from time to time riding his horses down the street.
He was led by a 'black' servant (a local with painted faces).



The same white horse and 'black' servant were stationed in the Big Market for a couple of weeks before December 6. The 'black' servant is dressed in colorful oriental-like clothing and St. Nicholas is dressed as a bishop and not...not as a fat red USA Santa.

Btw, if children misbehave, Saint Nicholas isn't forgiving. His black assistant puts the bad children in a bag and take them back to Spain from where they came.

Here is the long full version of the tradition.

In Austria, they have another tradition in which the Krampus demons or beasts make company to Saint Nicholas and they are the ones punishing misbehaving children.
Obviously, the local traditions are a bit deeper than that, and you can easily see the fact that in the dark days of December the demons are coming out, running after young girls catch and hit them and finally the great bishop is coming to vanish them away. Nowadays, the local authorities are trying to have central 'Krampus Run' events in order to make it more of a competition and less of a local and a bit violent event with too many drunk Krampuses running around.

See here some pics from the annual Krampus run in Graz, Austria.

Snow

It is snowing for the second night in a row, which makes a special end for a special week.
Yesterday when we were adding to the Pangaea (international students club) party, it started snowing (swow + water), but it wasn't cold enough to have the snow accumulate. Let's see what happens today.

Today was a beautiful-cold day, with a low winter sun caressing the blue clear skies. We went for a few hours walk in the nearby village Oud Heverlee and it's adjacent forest. We passed by some small lakes (more ponds than lakes) and enjoyed all the good things that a wet weather can offer - some mushrooms which still survived, trees showing splendid patterns of moss and lichen.
We ended by walking an extra 2 Km since we left the forest on its Wallon side and we had to walk over the Flemish "border" to catch the bus.

The day started even more splendidly with a perfect Shabbat wake up, when my amazing wife played David Broza's Estuve Aqui while we had a very sloooow coffee.



So, why was it a special week? It's the week when a new road appeared in my list of what can I do after my Erasmus exchange (D). This semester brought quite a lot of reading, but mainly listening to my professors and specifically to one who(Prof. De Vlieger)who reviewed with us the whole trajectory of anthropology. Together, we looked into the souls and very extrovert reflections of very different anthropologists and in each, really in each, I identified part of me. The same obsessions, the same fascinations, the same need to drill deep and talk high.
This week the Prof finished describing a certain anthropologists strengths and it was like a punch to my stomach...wow...that's about me.

Now the questions are simple - can I give up on my all other obsessions? how the hack do you maintain a family as an anthropologist? won't I feel like a small screw in a short time?