WARNING! I am going to talk about feminism

This blog post is a trick. You are expecting amusing anecdotes about my most recent disastrous attempts to navigate life in England. I’m actually going to talk about social constructions. Feel free to roll your eyes. (Okay, let’s put this in perspective. 1. I’ve been pretty good about keeping Feminist Jesse in the box for a while. 2. Study abroad is supposed to be about understanding a different culture from your own, and I haven’t talked about differences in English and American (or just UEA and Dickinson) ideology at all yet. 3. No one wants to talk about American Studies in real life. I’ve been forced here.)

Okay, so now that 99% of the people reading this have rolled their eyes and gone back to Facebook, everyone that continued reading gets ice cream.

I’ve been thinking about the function of a blog recently because I’m taking a class called American Autobiographies, which is sort of what my blog is. One of the issues we’ve talked about is that the autobiography assumes an audience (i.e. my parents, friends from Dickinson, church ladies, new friends from UEA, I really have no idea who I’m writing to anymore), which further assumes that the writer thinks they’re important enough to have an audience (i.e. the entireties of America and England in apostrophe). According to this class, autobiography is supposed to be quintessentially American, but if you think about it autobiography is also the ultimate self-absorbed book (It’s literally shouting “My life is interesting and important! I represent other people like me. You should be like me.”). Anyway one of the main American stereotypes I’ve heard and worried about since I got here is that Americans only know and care about themselves and that everyone else should know and care about them. It had me worried for a while, but I’ve reconciled it to the idea that American culture is self-absorbed (years of American history in schools with very little about the rest of the world, American news coverage with very little about the rest of the world), but American people don’t have to be. Then, blogs are different from regular autobiographies because they’re online so they have weird internet social conventions, namely people get to rant and muse self importantly… which is what I have decided to do today (mostly because I don’t feel like talking about my trip to Ireland a.k.a. my long overpriced holiday to the Gatwick airport. We’ll get to that later).

Things that have been driving me nuts:

1.      UEA has an American Studies department but no English Studies department. One of the main points of American Studies is to understand the ideologies and paradigms that your culture operates under. That way you know why you think about certain things the way you do, and it’s easier to recognize when your opinion is informed by a social construction (really simplified example: If no one ever talked about the way women are portrayed in magazines, readers would think they were supposed to look like that). Another major point of American Studies is to understand all the really horrible things that have happened as a result of our culture’s ideologies and paradigms (i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), and try to not do them again/fix them. I don’t understand why England would study America and not themselves. I’ve had to pull teeth to get anyone to talk to me about racism or classism in England and there is absolutely no way those things don’t exist. It’s interesting to look at my culture from another culture’s perspective, kind of voyeuristic actually, but I don’t see how it is helpful to the English.

2.      Every time I ask about the curriculum for English history in primary schools people just talk about World War II. When I ask about imperialism in India (the place I am studying next year), people just say that their school kind of glossed over it because it’s not a proud moment in English history. I know that America likes to downplay a lot of its less proud moments (i.e. Thanksgiving is a celebration of the Indians and pilgrims getting along, not a Trail of Tears remembrance), but we talk about slavery obsessively in primary school. I’m trying to figure out where British people get their sense of British identity and British history from. It’s not like everyone I talk to is unself-aware or ignorant, so people must be getting it from somewhere.

3. England does not have a written Constitution. I have no idea what the basis of their laws or their basic rights revolve around. America is obsessed with liberty and justice for all and individuality. What is England obsessed with? Tea?

4.      Chav. I talked about the word chav in one of my earlier posts. It stands for council house associated vermin, and as far as I understand it, it basically refers to what Americans call “white trash,” or “ghetto, lower class.” I’m not convinced that we can ethically use the word chav with the disdain and condescending amusement that seems acceptable here. It refers to a specific social class that has a negative connotation. It’s complicated for me to understand because working class in America has been treated as a less privileged identity and a negative identity. In England, so they claim, working class has less to do with how much money you have and more to do with social signifiers (the type of clothing and hairstyles you think are fashionable, the type of car you drive). Supposedly, since a rich person can be working class and an upper class person can be poor (although of course money helps), it should mean that there are no privileged classes. I don’t really believe this though. Otherwise people wouldn’t worry so much about looking chavvy in the first place. Earlier this year Dickinson had a huge controversy over a themed party, South of the Border, in which people apparently dressed up as Mexican stereotypes. No malicious or offensive intentions, but offensive results. The same week that this was happening at Dickinson, the LCR (that’s basically like the UEA hub) hosted a “Chavs and Emos” party. It’s a dangerous territory. Certain things are actually offensive and unethical, and certain things are just annoyingly politically correct. I’m not sure which side “chav” falls under yet. (Side note: I’m defining “political correctness” as different from prejudice. Political correctness is censorship of things that do not actually do damage to a group. It’s just under the guise of prejudice and it gives people an excuse to be prejudice by whining about how stupid political correctness is).

5.      I hear people use “gay” as an insult at UEA all the time. That’s not politically incorrect; it’s actually harmful. (To be fair, I think I might just be shocked by this because at home I’m around more American Studies majors who have studied and written papers on why it’s offensive. I'm sure its equally prevalent in America and England).

6.      I have not figured out the role of alcohol in this country yet. I’ve asked around and people say that binge drinking is a major subject in England specifically. (Obviously binge drinking prevalent in American colleges, but there is even more at English university). I also get a weird sample because I go to university. Binge drinking is going to occur at a higher rate in an English university than England as a whole. That being said, Tuesday and Thursday are the big party nights here, even though most people have classes in the morning. But it’s totally normal to stay in and watch a movie on a Saturday night. I don’t get it.
I do like the casual drinking culture a lot better. Pubs act as meeting places, so it’s more normal for college kids to have a drink for reasons other than getting drunk. It’s a lot more social and a lot healthier than the system that underground drinking in the United States promotes. It’s also safer for people who do binge drink. People who need medical attention for alcohol don’t always get it because friends don’t want to get them in legal trouble.

7.      Being in an English university makes me realize how much American institutions coddle their students. Dickinson is an artificial extension of childhood. Food (from a cafeteria that cooks it for you), housing, access to a gym, access to clubs, access to health care, access to academic speeches, and access school wide social events are all included and mandatory to pay for in Dickinson tuition, even if you don’t use them. (I’m not complaining. I love and miss all these things. I’ve never appreciated them so much. I am going to every single academic lecture, joining every club and political movement, and going to the gym every day, and going to the health center every time I sneeze my senior year). Because all these things come as a package, it’s so expensive to pay that it is assumed that your parents help foot the bill. Tuition at UEA is really cheap and then you pay for everything else separately. So a lot of people can afford to pay for it themselves. They also come out of college knowing how to cook and balance a checkbook. I really like this. It’s a pain (especially because England loves making me wait in 32 unnecessary queues and file paper work for everything), but it prepares you for Grownupland so much better.

Okay, I’m done now. I don’t mean to seem negative toward England. I still love it, and some of these things are just observations, not criticism. It’s just that I study ideology and inequality and am trained to look for these things. (Also, I’ve pretty much only talked about awesome things up until now). Also, I don’t really have an arena to talk about them because the American Studies department here only wants to talk about American ideology.

Anyway, I promise to resume with more ridiculous tales in the next post.

P.S. You’re not really getting any ice cream.

HP8: Harry Potter and the Bagpiping Angel

Let me preface my tales of Scotland, with rolling hills of plaid, kilted Sean Connery lookalikes, and its mystical seafaring critters, with a little nerd pop culture as a backdrop for our story. Several of my dear Dickinson friends and I have a bond closer than Lord Voldemort to Professor Quirrell over A Very Potter Musical, a glorious full length musical parody of Harry Potter. Just before we left for Scotland, the guy that plays Harry appeared on Glee, a show bested only by Jersey Shore in its ridiculousness (I religiously follow every single episode of both these shows with my door locked and my lights off so no one will ever discover my terrible taste), as a gay character that sings Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. The universe put all things wonderful in a hat -- glorious musical parody, guilty pleasure TV, bad pop music, positive representation of gays in the media (Feminist Jesse makes another appearance), and wizardry (America, I know you think I’m joking, but seriously England has real Harry Potter magic) – and spit out lax bro Harry Potter singing Katy Perry for gay rights. I tend to add soundtracks and special effects to my life as it is occurring (i.e. the Rocky theme song plays in my head every single time I run upstairs, every time toast comes out of the toaster in our kitchen I imagine it shouts “SURPRISE!,” etc. ). Now imagine the effects of the constant mental image of Harry Potter singing Katy Perry for the entirety of my journey. But this is a tangent. Back to Scotland (birthplace of Harry Potter, who is real. Seriously.)

My fantastic travel buddy, Buddy Holly, and I took a coach to London, mouth trumpeting Katy Perry/Harry Potter the entire way (an option that seemed less annoying to the people around us in my head than actually singing), to meet our other fantastic travel buddy, Aussie Buddy Laura, who greeted us with a squirrel shaped Nutella spoon (the best gift I have ever received) and a pocket full of dreams. After serendipitously coming across the world premiere for Harry Potter 7 (this was an honest accident, otherwise I would have come in a witch costume and tried to embarrass all the people around me) we headed to our overnight bus (I am pretty sure that it was the same exact bus that Harry Potter took after he accidentally inflated his Aunt at age 14) for a restful night of upright slumber, interrupted only occasionally by the excruciating stiffness in our necks, the lack of heating on the bus, amusingly high pitched intercom announcements from our bus driver, and scent of human urine (we thought the back of the bus would be cool because that’s where the cool kids sat in elementary school. Unfortunately, it is also where the porta-potty is located). Despite our excitement, we had no idea of the magical adventure that lay ahead of us.

How can I express my joy? Arriving early the next morning, we stepped out of the bus station to the most beautiful skyline I have ever seen in my entire life and immediately to the left, the creepiest window display I have ever seen in my entire life. I have no words.

This is both too alien filled and too risque for Christmas.

This is the point in the journey when Buddy Holly informed us that not only is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Scotland, but J.K. Rowling wrote the first two books of her biographical series (Harry Potter is real) in a café around the corner. So we walked along the streets of what appeared to be a Gothic architectural revival on Mars if Martians wore kilts (again. I am serious. People actually wear kilts. And it is awesome), to the Elephant House, that historic café where the magic began (yes, that was both an awful pun and yet another obscure Wayne’s World reference). Except a small sign at the front and elaborately festooned Harry Potter toilet, the Elephant Head has stuck to its roots and remains covered in Elephants insignia. (The British are clever with their bragging tactics. They place their claim to fame in the bathroom because putting it next to a toilet makes it seem like they don’t care, they're being humble… but everyone goes through the bathroom. Everyone has to see the toilet.)

After breakfast we opted to be obnoxious tourists and take a guided tour of Edinburgh, which proved to be the greatest decision I have made since I decided to purchase my dinosaur sandwich cutter. A snapshot of the great stories of Edinburgh as presented by our tour guide (you can skip this part if you dislike history or if you dislike fun):

1.      Serial killers Burke and Hare who sold dead bodies to medical schools

2.      Home to Jekyll and Hyde, one of my favorite stories! Apparently it only takes place in London by name and the streets really refer to the ones in Edinburgh. There was a whole museum devoted to Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns, and Sir Walter Scott!

3.      John Knox, one of history’s greats, who is buried under parking spot 23 because he insisted on being with so many feet of St. Giles church, but Scotland wanted to build a parking lot there.

4.      Public punishment for criminals in which thieves would be nailed by their ear to a door so people could throw rotten vegetables at them

5.      Proto-burglar alarms – people purposely built stairs with one odd step so strangers trip and fall on their faces

6.      The origin of the slang term sh*tfaced  comes from the fact that pubs in Edinburgh used to close at 10PM and this was also the traditional time that women would empty the family bedpans out their top floor windows.

7.      Before witches were accepted into society (Harry Potter is real), they were thrown into what our tour guide fondly called the Lake of Poo (no proper sewage system)

8.      My favorite: The Stone of Destiny is this giant stone that represents Scottish independence. Big patriotic deal. Anyway, England was holding it for years and when the Scots finally got it back, rather than choosing to play a patriotic song, Scotland played the Mission Impossible theme song as they carried it majestically up the hill to its rightful place in the castle (by the way, Edinburgh has several castles… because it’s magical. No big deal.)

Summary for those who skipped the long list: serial killers, brutal public punishment, witches, poop, more witches, Mission Impossible. Anyway, after our tour we enjoyed a delicious meal of haggis (honestly, it’s pretty good. It tastes like spicy meatloaf, and I spaced out for the explanation of what’s in it, so I’m assuming it’s made sunshine and rainbows rather than sheep heart and liver). Then we checked into the hostel where I happily claimed the top bunk because it is awesome and fort-like and I am a small child, only to discover that there was no ladder for said bunk bed, which will explain the severe bruising currently on my shins.

Half an hour later, I received a text from one of my Dickinson at UEA friends asking where I was to which I responded “Edinburgh, Scotland.” Five minutes later we discovered that he and 7 other Americans from the Dickinson science program had coincidentally booked a room upstairs in our hostel. This coincidence can only be explained by the fact that I am so brimming with American family values and patriotism that America literally follows me wherever I go. So our band of countrymen and Aussie Buddy Laura (the other former colonist of England with warmer climate, slightly more delightful accent, and convict ancestors) went on a ghost tour together after which Buddy Holly, Aussie Buddy Laura, and I went on a quest for live music and discovered a Scottish blues/folk band squeezed into a pub about the size of my shoilet room. I can’t say that I’m not a little disappointed that there were no ghost attacks or at least an appearance from Nearly Headless Nick (Harry Potter is real), but it was a fun, relaxing evening after our previous night of Night Bus sleeplessness.

The following morning our 12 other roommates and I awakened to the dulcet sound of Buddy Holly’s phone wedged within the walls of a metal locker violently shaking the entire thing with its vibrate alarm, and the subsequent sound of Holly ripping off the top of the locker like the incredible Hulk and diving head first into the locker from the top bunk to turn off the phone. After a quick but reverent recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance (except Laura, boomerang-throwing convict spawn), we went to Mount Holyrood where hiked to the top of King Arthur’s seat. Despite her inexplicable lack of sycophantic obsession with America, the greatest country in the entire universe, Buddy Laura was still a champion, managing to hike up the entire mount in a pair of ballet flats. The view was beautiful, but more importantly the wind was so strong that I could spit like five times as far as usual. Sadly, our elaborate plan that Holly twist her ankle on the mountain and three Scottish men inevitably ride up on horses and come to the rescue as they do in every single chick flick including Scottish people ever created did not work (The closest we came to this were the three slightly homophobic Irish men drinking out of sand castle buckets we met at a pub later, one of whom claimed to be Colin Farrell’s first cousin, and another of whom was so convinced that I was Barrack Obama’s daughter that he called his friend and insisted that I talk to him. They probably would not have liked lax bro Harry Potter’s rendition of Teenage Dream).

So we climbed a mountain before lunch. Then we came back down and saw the new Scottish Parliament building, which looked like Salvador Dali’s childhood tree house.



Scottish Parliament. Notice the weird bamboo overhang and crazy window covers



I saw a gentleman in a powdered wig walk into the old Parliament building earlier and am now wondering if they still wear powdered wigs in the new one. Also, here’s a picture of the palace that happened to be next door to the new Parliament building, like 50 feet away.



Palace next door.



After an afternoon of museums, we ate dinner in the hostel common room where passive-aggressive-movie-guy got really upset that we and everyone else in the room were talking over the Patriot, which was playing on TV (only American TV played the entire weekend. I can understand passive-aggressive-movie-guy’s frustration of course. If I lived anywhere other than America, the beautiful, I would want to absorb every ounce of glorious American television I possibly could, too.) Then we decided to sample Edinburgh’s nightlife. Highly successful on several accounts. 1. We successfully escape from the sandcastle bucket Irishmen. 2. About one quarter of the men we saw out that night were wearing kilts. I’m not joking. 3. The streets of Edinburgh are built on various bridges because of its various hills. As such, we found a club the bottom of a cliff. Just as I was preparing to scale said cliff in the name of adventure, Buddy Laura found a ramp. 3. We successfully escaped Lord Voldemort as he pursued us down the street (this may have actually been a small cat in retrospect) 4. The club at the bottom of the cliff had five differently themed stories to explore.

The following morning we watch some of the Remembrance Day bagpipe demonstration which went on despite the freezing rain. Then we went into St. Giles church which is if not the most beautiful church I’ve seen so far, at least rivals St. Paul. Also it has a carving of an angel playing bagpipes in one of the chapels. Extra points. Buddy Holly and I may also have gone back to the Elephant House/Harry Potter café while Buddy Laura did actual educational things. Holly and I may also have gone back to Greyfriar cemetery and looked for the grave of Tom Riddle for twenty minutes (to be fair, we wanted to see Greyfriar again anyway. Sidenote: cages stick out of the ground in Greyfriar cemetery because they buried people in cages to deter body snatchers. Also the body of William McGonagall, famously know as Scotland’s worst poet, is buried there).

We end our visit with a trip to Starbuck, a place so imbued with evil that, if I had a lightning scar, it would have stung. The epicenter of the American plot to annihilate all other cultures by slowly incorporating its own cultural phenomena into other countries their by erasing their own (a tactic also used by the Greeks to conquer empires), Starbuck’s was teaming with probably every American in the city. But not red-blooded, Big Mac eating, SUV driving real Americans. No, Starbuck’s markets to pseudo-yuppies who drink 20 prefix lattes (mocha-frappe-nonsensaccino) and correct your Americanized Italian when you order a panini instead of a panino. However, this place was more evil than your everyday evil Starbucks; I could sense it by the cozy mood lighting and shelf of pretentious books presumably there for customers who never read them. That’s when I had a Harry Potter Occlumency psychic vision. This Starbuck’s was Voldemort’s favorite hangout spot as a teenager. But before I could search for Horcruxes, we had to catch our train for the long journey home. I plan to return and search again so I can do my part to save the wizarding world (also because Edinburgh was absolutely amazing. My favorite city so far).

The Definitive Travelers’ Guide to Belgium

Dear and most beloved English speaking countries America and England,

Since you have been so kind as to consistently provide signage and basic directions in a language that I can understand, I have decided to give back. In my American Autobiography class in England, we have been discussing why autobiography is so quintessentially American, and my English colleagues have been kind enough to point out that most American heroes’ like to give back by writing their autobiography and offering it to the public as a model life that other people should try to emulate. This made perfect sense to me and answered all the questions I’ve had recently about why English people would want to be American studies majors. It’s so obvious. They read American autobiographies because everyone wants to be exactly like America, the greatest country in the entire world. Anyway, as I was reverently reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography for the 73rd time this weekend (I like to read the autobiographies of all of our great American forefathers every week to keep my patriotism sharp), the idea struck me like the American flag struck the moon in 1969 (before the Russian flag): I, too, could provide both England and America with the great public service of talking about myself a lot and expecting everyone to want to be just like me! Now that I have spent 5 entire days traveling in Belgium, I like to consider myself a foremost expert on the entire country and on backpacking in general. So here is an account of my trip so that your Belgium experience can be just like mine:

First, some things to remember:

1.      Pajama pants (that’s pajama trousers for all you ridiculous English folk) so that you do not face the option of sleeping in the same dirty jeans every night vs. the alternative of just boxers in a hostel room full of awkward strangers and potential serial killers (just kidding, Dad).

2.      Speaking of pants (trousers), pack a second pair in case of the unlikely event that you discover a humongous hole in the right inner thigh of the jeans that you wore on the train, the only jeans that you will have for five days.

3.      A towel so you do not have to dry yourself with a small washcloth that you borrowed from the front desk of your hostel.

4.      If you plan to bring your very heavy computer so you can check on the progress of your extremely time sensitive visa to India and field e-mails about flights, bring a European converter so that its battery does not run out within 8 minutes of your turning it on.

5.      A phone that has been topped up with more than £5 so that when you try to meet up with the rest of your group, which you split off from in Ghent because they wanted to eat boring overpriced tourist food and you wanted to look at weird Belgian home movies and vacuum cleaners from the 1950s in an old cathedral with vaulted ceilings that has been converted into a folk museum with linoleum floors to emulate a creepy Stepford wife kitchen, you need not frantically attempt to understand the 12 step process written entirely in Dutch that is required to make a simple phone from a payphone in the market square this is a run on sentence.

6.      Do not get assigned to a room your first night in the hostel that also has a middle aged, burly gentleman with a balding Sideshow Bob haircut named Boerst that sleeps with his eyes open, a scowl, and a bed that faces the door so that you have to wait until two more  hostel roommates show up so you can go to bed with the knowledge that you will not be serial killed in the middle of the night (just kidding, Dad).

7.      A basic understanding of simple Dutch words and phrases such as bathroom, train, appletini, bus, and do you speak English?



Not an appletini.



The journey began at around 8am as my travel buddy, Kaitlin and I caught our first bus so that we could eventually catch our train, and the tube, and our other train, and get lost in Brussels Midi station for about an hour because all directions were written only in Dutch, and our other bus, and walk the wrong direction for about half an hour in Leuven. Sadly, the only new relationship I made on the journey was my new arch rivalry with the gentleman sitting next to me on the first train (we didn’t say anything to each other, but he knows that we’re arch rivals. We had that connection), who I can only guess was extremely proud of his brand new saggy gangster pants and wanted to show them off by taking up as much room as possible. I can think of no other explanation as to why Saggypants McGee felt the need to very obviously encroach over the line that separates seat space since he wasn’t any bigger than me, but don’t worry, America, I claimed the shared armrest in the name of our beloved Barrack Obama every time he moved even slightly. Our hostel, delightful though it was on the inside, happened to fulfill the natural law that every building I ever sleep in loud construction outside. We sat in the hostel common room for a while, waiting for our travel buddies from Bologna to arrive, so my first sampling of hostel life is a happy montage of pink-velvet-pants-girl who was watching a show on her computer with her earphones in and laughing very loudly at jokes that no one else could hear, Sebastian the cheerful tai chi and android phone enthusiast, and Boerst the clown haired serial killer (I’m not sure if his name was really Boerst, it was a grunt-like name). Anyway, my APO sweet frat bro Kristin and her two friends finally arrived and off we went to explore the castle and magic laden streets of Leuven. Kristin and I, being Scrubs enthusiasts, decided to go on a quest for appletinis, favorite drink of one J.D. the doctor. Unfortunately, I had not yet become completely fluent in the Dutch language or Belgian customs (so foolish I was those 5 days ago), so I accidentally ordered an Appel Jenever which translates roughly in English to “expired cough syrup and antifreeze on the rocks, shaken not stirred” or apple gin.



Day 2 began promisingly as Boerst did not serial kill me, the hostel provided free breakfast, and I had the good sense to bring my dinosaur shaped sandwich cutter in place of a second pair of pants, a charged phone or a converter. (I highly recommend that all travelers bring a dinosaur sandwich cutter on every trip. It turns even the scariest foreign language meal that you order via the point-and-pray-that-it-is-not-insect-brains method into a delightful dino adventure). So after consuming Nutella covered dino-toast and 38 cups of hot chocolate (free and from one of those really fun machines) off we went to explore Leuven by the light of day. Crazy castles, cathedrals, a flea market with a Belgian version of the Shamwow demonstration (don’t worry, I took a video), etc. I knew that Leuven was the city for me when we reached the market square and found it decorated with a 14 meter high statue of a giant impaled beetle.

So after spending the morning basking in the glory of Belgian culture, sampling the exotic flavors of Belgian Capri Sun (they have a different orange flavor!), and surreptitiously trying to pet people’s dogs as they walked past, we decided to head into Brussels. Having become far more wise from our 1 day of Belgian assimilation, I negotiated the train tickets by shouting “You speak the American?!” as Belgian custom dictates that the most polite thing a tourist can do if they do not speak your language is repeat the same thing loudly with Tarzan grammar. It worked wonders. In Brussels, in addition to more most-beautiful-church/building/mural/chocolateshop/statue-in-the-entire-universes we found a shop that sells doll heads (just the heads), random keys, and old already written on post cards for weird people like myself that have a voyeuristic obsession with strangers’ pasts, so now I am the proud owner of several postcards written in French and Dutch in the 1960s and a key to a filing cabinet somewhere in Russia. We also had the first of about 300 waffles and went to a chocolate museum with some of the most interesting racist propaganda I’ve ever seen (I’m actually being serious this time. The old racist posters that they had were really interesting. But again, Feminist Jesse will go away now). Side note, Brussels mascot is a statue of a peeing child.

In the evening, not wishing to return to the scary, loud bar with strobe lights more seizure inducing than an anime convention, Kristin and I split from the group and re-embarked on our quest for appletinis. After sagely pointing to things on the drink menu that had the word “appel” and shouting “You speak the American?!” several more times, we managed to get the barman to take pity on us and he laughed (in a perfect American accent) and told us we had just ordered apple juice. Alas, no closer to the Scrubs holy grail of silly drinks. To add wounds upon wounds, we later went to Beethoven Kareoke club. Imagine my disappointment when I excitedly scrambled up the stairs like a child on Christmas morn and there were no inebriated Belgian college kids at the top rowdily singing the cello part to that timeless classic the 5^th symphony in C minor (England, this is not what actually happened on the Christmases of my youth. That was a metaphor about presents. I know your people are still learning hard rhetorical devices like we Americans use, but try to bear with me). I still managed to enjoy myself as I listen to renditions of popular American songs be sung by several people who had no clear grasp of English. My personal favorites were Carlos, who sang a heart stirring rendition of Listen to Your Heart in broken English, and Sven. Sven chose an old timey country tune with a music video of a horse walking down a dirt path playing on the teleprompter, and he had rehearsed this song so well and practiced his timing so perfectly that he successfully executed a dramatic mic drop and walked off stage at the very end of the song just like that you-got-served moment where Eminem schools his nemesis in a rap battle at the end of 8 Mile. All my favorite American music stereotypes wrapped up into one glorious performance.

In Leuven





Day 3 Ghent

In Brussels

America with your sea to shining sea and liberty and justice for all, England with your… glorious rainclouds of oppressive imperialism and your bizarre queuing conventions, if you want to see a beautiful city, go to Ghent. I could have wandered around this place just looking at the outsides of buildings all day. Home of an entire street of amazing graffiti, the awesome cathedral converted into a museum of 1950s consumerism and the 12 step Belgian payphones that I spoke of earlier, I can only say that even the McDonalds in Ghent are classier than anywhere else I’ve seen (and I like to consider myself an expert on McDonalds. I’ve been taking pictures and studying them in every city I visit. This one had three stories and a blackboard with the special of the day – the Big Mac – handwritten in chalk to create the illusion of an elegant café. Good job, Ghent). Also, I made a train friend who taught me important Dutch words. It turns out appelsaen means orange. (Another obstacle in the appletini quest thwarted.) Sadly, our Bologna friends had to leave us on this night because of an infortuitous combination of Murphy’s Law and Ryan Air.

Grafitti street

Days 4 and 5 Bruges

The only place in Belgium that might be prettier than Ghent. Plus, it gets extra points because of the sheer number of silly tourist traps (boat rides, horse drawn carriages, unbelievably gorgeous pedestrian bridges, who are you trying to fool Bruges?), and lace window displays with scary dolls and lifelike grandma mannequins on display. I actually ended up staying an extra day instead of returning to Brussels because I liked it so much. In addition to a feminist nunnery, and a giant map of Bruges made entirely out of lace (I didn’t manage to see it but I imagine it looks like grandma doilies with street names embroidered on), Bruges is also famous for the Church of the Holy Blood. Some Catholics believe a vile there contains the blood of Jesus Christ brought back from the Crusades and at certain hours of the day, you can venerate it. I was lucky enough to arrive during those hours, and I attempted to politely and unobtrusively take a picture, to characteristics that Americans excel in, except I forgot to turn the flash on my camera off so I instead received a dirty look from the priest. He was probably upset because I got his bad side. Anyway, the hostel we stayed at was the best ever. Called Snuffel Backpackers, so already fantastic because it reminds me of my childhood favorite, Sesame Street, it had the most hilariously inconvenient one lane spiral staircase which I can only assume someone with a sense of humor slightly more twisted than mine designed so that he could watch as travelers in their early twenties attempted to negotiate its dizzying heights with giant 45 lb. bags strapped to their bags. Further, it was attached to a bar so I had the rare honor of eating cornflakes at a bar at 9am the following morning to the judgment of all the strangers outside walking by the window, and best of all, the showers were located down the spiral staircase, through the bar, outside, back in and up the stairs. This place housed by far the coolest roommates including an 8^th grade history teacher, a recent American college graduate (countryman!), a dynamic brother/sister duo, and 6’10” Hungarian student who I refused to speak to unless I was standing on top of my bunk bed so as to make eye contact.



Bruges



Scary lace window display

            Kaitlin went ahead to the Brussels train station to finish some work before we went back, and I had such a good time that I missed my bus by about 2 minutes. Two fateful minutes that that had I known its implications, had I known that chain reaction of Jesse disaster and hilarity that would be its inevitable conclusion, I would have stopped to take stock of my life. By missing this bus and having to wait an extra 10 minutes, I allowed the universe to place me in the ticket line (because remember, I still have no idea how to negotiate Dutch directions at the train station and have to ask for directions) behind a gentleman (most likely Saggypants McGee’s cousin), who felt the need to talk on his cell phone (that’s mobile, England, try to keep up) for 10 minutes before ordering his ticket. This gave me exactly one minute to sprint through the station, find my platform, and fall to my knees crying NOOOO melodramatically as rain began to fall and the irreversible automatic doors closed 3 seconds before I reached them. Obviously, Jesus was angry that I had taken a picture of his blood with my flash on. Anyway, after waiting another half hour, bonding with all the other people that couldn’t figure out how to open the complicated door to the rain shelter on the platform, the intercom said something important sounding in Dutch and everyone left the rain shelter and started walking toward nothing in particular in the rain, so I followed them. The train arrived in front of the rain shelter, so I still have no idea what the intercom said, probably something along the lines of “make the foreigner wet at all costs.” Anyway, I boarded my train and off it went. Fifteen minutes into the journey, the screen at the front flashed that the train would be going through Brussels Zuid and Brussels Centrale, neither of which are Brussels Midi, (the place I needed to be in half an hour so as not to miss my train, and subsequently my other train, my other other train, and my bus, leaving me stuck in a strange Belgian station overnight to be serial killed by Boerst the eyelidless wonder). Luckily, I had the good American common sense to deduce that Belgium, being an inferior country, probably had different names for the same station in French and Dutch since everyone there spends too much time studying languages and being generally educated and not enough time studying Miley Cyrus lyrics and eating Big Macs like every great nation should. And I was right. With that cleared up, I was free to panic about other inane things like the fact that the screen was now flashing the message: “Opgepast! Geef zakenrollers geen kans. Drag zoorg vor ur betziggen!!” with far too many exclamation points to be anything positive. The message flashed again in French and then in German – the only recognizable word being ACTUNG!!, which I do not know the direct translation of but do recognize from every movie about Nazis ever made. Anyhow, this combination of events – Boerst, the general lateness panicking, the exclamation points, the portrayal of Nazis in the media -- primed my mind for what I think was a very sensible translation: “Danger! Terrorists have high-jacked your train and you are going to miss your connection!” So I was pretty pissed. As it turns out though, it actually just meant “Caution! Pickpocketers tend to steal things!” Thank God, they warned me. I had planned to sleep under a blanket I knitted from all my unused euro bills.

So I made it to the Brussels Midi/Zuid with about 10 minutes before my train (which I should have checked in for 20 minutes ago) left and I sprinted through the station stripping off my belt and jacket for the metal detector as I went. Somehow this was the one time in British history that England decided not to construct an insane 4 hour bureaucratic system for me to perform a simple task (I thought this strange at the time, too convenient, but made no comment. But don’t worry, America, you’ll see what happens) so I made it through customs with two minutes to spare and entered my terminal triumphantly singing a mash up of God Bless America and God Save the Queen to commemorate that historic occasion that England was finally nice to me… and my train was delayed by an hour. But that’s okay because I brought my ukulele, another travel item far more useful than a towel or working phone, so I was able to entertain myself. I thought the adventure was over, but when I finally did board the train, sadly separated from Kaitlin, the gentleman across from me whipped out his computer and started airbrushing a photograph of a model. My sheer nosiness allowed me to befriend Mr. Amersterdam/South Africa photographer and the guy next to him, a philosophy student named Thor, who spoke only in idealistic Disney clichés. About six hours later, when I finally caught the bus in Norwich back to UEA, who should step on the bus at 2AM but one of my beloved Frisbee colleagues wearing footy pajamas.

In conclusion, Belgium was absolutely fantastic, even the parts that would be really stressful and unpleasant to a normal human being. It also made me realize as I was arriving and sigh at the familiar sight of London and the sound of English without bizarre Dutch overtones, that I’m starting to consider mother England as a second home – like with a leaky roof and bad lighting and a really inconveniently placed staircase – but still.