Christmas in the West Bank ...

Merry Christmas from Jerusalem and "the territories" ... a quick update as to how I spent my Christmas in the Middle East. All of the big christian midnight masses were "sold out", so I attended a English Epsicopalian service outside the walls of old jerusalem ... for the day, we travelled to Bethlehem in the West Bank to the Church of the Nativity (seemed the most appropriate thing to do) to light a candle for my grandmother ... staying in the Muslim quarter of the old city, it is strange to see picutres of Arafat alongside pictures of Santa Claus ... 'tiss the season ...

A strange seasonal message brought to you at the West Bank border crossing


The much less seasonal insides of the West Bank ...

Oh, how Bethlehem has changed in 2000 years ...

La Fiesta De Mi Despedida ...

As a celebration of my final days in Leuven, my beloved Spanish threw me a surprise going-away party ... a most unexpected yet appropriate end to my three months here ... I will always remember Leuven as being more Spanish than Belgian ...

And of course no Leuven celebration would be complete without the Turks !! God bless you all ...

And of course no Leuven/Spanish celebration would be complete if it didn't spill over into the clubs at the wee hours of morning ...

Ah, the end of an era ... thank you all for a wonderful chapter !!

The Stockholm Syndrome

Subtitled: Still looking for something Sweder ...

I made use of the cheapest round trip ticket imaginable (.02 Euro + taxes and fees) to visit one of the most expensive cities on the planet (mixed drinks for about 10 Euro, coffee for about 4 or 5 Euro -- the Italians in the group were almost in revolt) ...


Stockholm ... where the sun rises at 10AM and has set again by 2PM, and everything is covered by a perpetual layer of frost ....




Christmas markets were everywhere ... where one could enjoy a warm seasonal Glogg

One of my favorite parts was this open air ice rink where I found that I could skate as well as some of the Swedes ... which seemed somewhat unnatural (particularly for someone originally from Texas)

Numerous museums (mostly free) ... my favorite was the Alfred Nobel Museum (ironically, the man who endowed the Peace Price is most well known for his invention of dynamite) which featured an exhibition of the paitings of Winston Churchill

By far the highlight of the trip was a day trip I took to Sodertalje to see a Swedish Master's League Ice Hockey Match (SSK vs. Bjorkloven) ... Swedish hockey is beautiful thing ... much more fluid with more finese and less sluggish boards play ... the crowd was equally appreciative and amazingly attentive to the game as well ... In the picture below, if you zoom in on #33 (upper left), you will see one of the purest smiles -- which, afterall, is what hockey is all about

Signs of the Season ...

Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/Wright Bros. Day are fast approaching ... A few local signs of the season:

I had my first two oral philosophy final exams this week ...

The area nearby my house has been turned into some sort of seasonal village (Leuvenuse Kerstmasfest) ... filled with venders selling crafts, waffles, fudge and hot wine ...

A stage with choirs and a PA system blaring Bing Crosby ad nauseum ...

Some of my Spanish friends are very cold despite being dressed warmly ...

All signs that the year and my time in Leuven is drawing to a close ...

A Trip to the Belgian Promised Land ...

Subtitled: Neil and the Stella Factory ...

As I close in on my final few weeks in Leuven, I got the opportunity to make the obligatory pilgrimage to the Stella Artois brewery (by appointment only) ... the juggernaut that fuels the economy and spirits of this university town, and is, in a word, omnipresent.

The technological heart of Leuven ! -- Monitored like a nuclear power plant, and not one person to be found playing Solitaire or MineSweeper ...

Some of the vast (*echo* vast, vast) sea of brewing drums ...

The beginnings of a labyrinth of beer kegs ... incredulous, I kept looking out for umpaloompas

The Stella experience is not complete without training and evaluation in beer pouring technique ...

Now I can officially consider myself having lived in Leuven !

ICTY ...

Adding to what I now realize could be seen as a travelogue of atrocity/genocide tourism (Dachau, Tibet, Rwanda, Ypres ... ), I joined a law-faculty sponsored trip to Haag (mispronounce as "The Hague") and the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY for short) where we got introductions from various Leuven alums working on a range of ICC business and got to sit in on the Milutinovic et al. (Sainovic, Ojdanic, Lazarevic, etc.) trial ... rather erie seeing them in person in the courtroom ... I was lost in my thoughts all afternoon, and didn't pay much attention to the boring testimony or the funny outfits of the lawyers ...

Understandably, security was very tight, so I was only able to abscond with this picture of the exterior of the old insurance-company-turned-temprorary-court ... fairly unassuming

When a Discourse Becomes Stereotyped ...

I had the opportunity to go to the European Commission last night as a friend invited me to a forum on the status of Roma/"Gypsies" in the EU ... with the recent additions of Bulgaria and Romania, there are now an estimated 10 million Roma in the EU (more than the entire popuation of Belgium) facing important issues such as discrimination and challenges integrating into the global economy ... once again I got to (this time honestly) play the part of the ignorant American (even to all of the stereotypes that they were trying to dispel) ... it was very informative ... I met a Lithuanian girl interning in the EC who had never met an American before in Europe ... so I evidently dispelled some stereotypes of my own ...

I ended up going out for drinks with some of the participants (at an Irish pub ... so much for stereotypes), and missing the last train back to Leuven ... leaving me to explore Brussels (once again ...) until the first train at 5AM ...

The train back was beset by a group of loud and obnoxious Loyola College students (appropriately enough) ... and I understood much clearer some of the stereotypes against Americans ... the worst ones are those rare ones that you can't escape because they end up to be occasionally true ... I apologized to all on the train for them once they had left (but that didn't make me feel any better about it all)

In Flander's Fields ...

In a field trip of sorts, my programme organized a day around the Belgian town of Ypre (Ieper), the site of 250,000 casualities during WWI and some of the nastiest trench warfare ... There is a very high-tech, interactive museum (more tastefully reminiscent of the Rwandan Genocide Memorial in Kigali than of the unnecessary technology of Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam) in which you follow a narrative around the museum (in the form of a coded card that triggers story updates as you passed terminals throughout the museum ...)

Interestingly enough, I was already familiar with my surrogate character ... Harvey Cushing -- famous Hopkins neurosurgeon and Yale alum whose grave I have run past many times in a cemetary that is less than a mile from my residences over the past two years in Cleveland ... the world keeps getting smaller ...

Ypre was the first place that modern biological warfare was used ... in the form of Chlorine and Mustard gases.

There are numerous trenches/underground bunkers, unexploded ammunition and bodies that are still being discovered (almost on a weekly basis).

They also exhibit the largest WWI Commonwealth cemetary with almost 12,000 graves ...

I looked up Ypre in my "Satchel Guide to Europe (published 1894)" to which I've been adding my own accounts along the way ...

The only mention of the town was with regards to a festival that they would have the first Sunday in August (incidently, immediately following that discription the authors went on to describe "Swiss wrestling matches") ... I guess a war can put a place on the map just as it wipes it from the face of the Earth ...

History Repeating ...

Some reflections from a day in the city of Ghent ... a city that needlessly ceased to have much meaning to Americans after the Treaty of Ghent (in which the US promised to halt hostilities against the Native Americans ... a false renewal the Thanksgiving spirit) which ended the War of 1812 with the British (a failed war which the US started ostensibly to challenge a blockade, but covertly to conquer Canada) yet was merely a prelude to the unnecessary death and suffering in Louisianna (the infamous Battle of New Orleans which occurred two weeks after the treaty had been signed). Perhaps history does repeat itself in more subtle ways ...

Otherwise it's just another a large town with losts of canals and churches with art that you're not supposed to take pictures of ...

A turkey of a different color ...

My first Thanksgiving away (amazing that this is only the first, having long since abandoned the sacredness of the Christmas and Easter rituals) ... consisted of me giving a presentation on acute pain management for recovering addicts, abstaining from watching American football, and enjoying Lebannese/Palestinian delicacies and Syrian melodies with some Basque friends ... can you find a theme?

The Best in American Cinema was Originally from France ...

A wet and rainy evening spent in Brussels (goes without saying) at a museum exhibition on Charlie Chaplin followed by three of his silent films with live piano accompaniment ...

I most enjoyed a picture of him with Einstein (which I lifted from the web and posted below for your enjoyment) ... I wonder what a contemporary equivalent pair would be, or if there could even be a current match of two geniuses both of their calibre and as well-appreciated as they were in their day...

Flying Blind ...

I had a very interesting 72hr trip back to the US for meetings in Washington DC ...

My 23 hour transit from Brussels to Baltimore was colored by two flight cancelations, a few hours sitting on a runway in Newark, a bus delay and a train derailment (fortunately not my own) ... lest I forget - a Channel 7 news interview as I sat in Union Station plotting my next move ... thank goodness for friends and family ...

I enjoyed the pause of a morning walk around the neighborhood in Baltimore and feeding ducks before spending a lovely afternoon with my grandparents (my reward) before scrambling back to DC for meetings Saturday and until my departure on Sunday ...

I felt a little like a zombie ("ssombie" as my Castillian friends would say) and somehow I neglected to take any pictures (for those of you keeping score)

Testimony ...

Enjoyed a quick visit from the folks this week ... immersed them in the wonders of Leuven and Paris (a first time for both) ... showed them the good company / colleagues that I keep ... and managed to have a good time without international incident ...

Tool concert in my backyard

Last night I enjoyed an unexpected concert by the innovative American band TOOL -- arguably one of the only widely successful rock bands emerging for my generational cohort to exhibit true musicianship (with their polyharmonies, complex rhythm layering and abrupt, yet interwoven, changes).

Evidently, after selling out their show in Brussels (7,000 seats in 10 minutes) they decided to add a relatively unpublicized show at a convention center in Leuven (a small college-town venue in comparison with the big city stadiums they usually play on tour throughout Europe and the States). It was definitely one of the very best shows I have ever seen (a true audio-visual spectacle) and am very glad that I finally got to see one of the bands that helped guide me through some of my adolescent angst. It was also very interesting seeing them with Polish, Greek and Spanish friends ... many of whom had very different identifications with the music, but a very similar appreciation ... it made it seem less like a concert and more like a true musical event.

Belgium is evidently still full of surprises ...

Cantus

Last night I was priviliged to participate in a most enjoyable Belgian ritual ... the Cantus ... a three hour multi-lingual sing-along centered around an elaborate system of drinking rules and tremendous amounts of Belgian beer ... somewhere in between Oktoberfest (as I have been led to believe) and Cups at Mory's ... regardless, it will probably be weeks until me and my liver are on good terms again

This is Halloween, This is Halloween ...

First off, kudos to anybody who recognized the "Nightmare Before Christmas" allusion in the subject heading ...

The town came to life for Halloween ... From the hundreds of riot police that filled the city (evidently last year the occasion was marred by somewhat unruly protests by the right-wing political party ... because, naturally *sarcasm*, when one thinks of Halloween one thinks of immigrants -- their main policital raison d'etre) to the numerous celebrations and decorations that had a slightly unfamiliar flavor to an American raised on trick-or-treating and ghools & goblins ... less gore, more frivolty ...

At one point, I ended up a party at "the Ring House" ... a residence so named not because it is on the "ring road' that encircles Leuven-proper, but because they have a boarded-up well in the basement (a la "The Ring" movies) ... that made me slightly uncomfortable ...

My costume for the evening was a suit I made out of some of Leuven's highly-discernable garbage backs (they have a hightly structured and regulated trash collection system here) with a sign saying "More American Trash" ... those who didn't know me were confused, the others who did were highly appreciative of my lighthearted, multi-layered critical commentary ... (although not nearly as developed as last years --> authentic arab clothing -- keffiyeh and all -- with a "Hello my name is : Peaceful Arab Majority" nametag and a stuffed-animal monkey with "Curious George W" nametag draped around my neck and over my back ...) I ask you, what good is a Halloween costume if you can't be sardonic and glib at least for one night ?!?

Anyway, a good time was had by all until about 7am ... in typical Spanish/Italian style