WorkChoices is Dead!!

Australian voters sh@t on it from a great height at the last election, but Brendan Nelson, the new Liberal leader after Howard got bounced out of office, officially killed it today. The Age says so.

For the uninitiated, WorkChoices cut the minimum rights of Australian workers to five pathetic protections: a 38 hour week plus "reasonable" extra hours (reasonable defined often by the boss); 2 weeks annual holidays, 8 days sick/carers' leave (later changed to 12 days), a minimum wage of $12.50 an hour (later upped to $13.46), and 12 months unpaid parental leave, (shared between both parents).

Everything else - from the right to join a union, to payment for working public holidays, nights or overtime, protection from random (or 'unfair') dismissal - was up to individual staff to negotiate with their employer. Now there are lots of good employers out there, but there are loads of stories of people who were sacked and then offered their old jobs back with lower wages and conditions.

Now it's all going, going, gone, along with the old government. Whoot!

Ilmasto on hot!

The climate is hotting up - and given that global warming is twice as severe at the polar caps as on the equatorwho would know this better than the Finns?

"Ilmasto on hot" means "climate is hot", and it's a World Wildlife Fund campaign website covered with piccies of cute polar bears, and a bit about Husky rescue and some cute Christmas e-cards you can sent to your mates. And a whole lotta other stuff that I don't understand, because my finnish isn't actually very good.

But if you're feeling brave, you can check it out at: www.Ilmastoonhot.fi

Kippis!

I finally found my christmas spirit

The fortnight we've been back in Oxford has been hard yakka. Lots of work, lots of travel, no social life, no going to the gym. I'm just knackered.


So I was very pleased to have a great big sleep-in on Saturday before taking myself into town mid-afternoon, where I finally discovered that I didn't leave my Christmas spirit behind in Belgium.


It's been clear and even sunny the past few days, but winter light here is cool and pale. As the bus made its way into town, brown trees thrust spindly bare branches into a sky of palest pink, mauve and blue. College towers, domes and church spires rise out of the haze and the view is really quite gorgeous. As the shops were still open, the streets were a blaze of light and colour, with buskers and schoolkids chanting carols on every corner.


I dived into the market, which was next to empty (the English REALLY don't know how to cook, they buy Christmas dinner as readymeals from Sainsbury's and Marks & Sparks), and went all aquiver at the sights all around. Stalls laden with prawns, cheeses, choccies, puddings in cloths hung from all the rafters. The butchers stalls are all hung with row upon row of turkeys, pheasant, bunnies and deer, all beheaded but still furry, hung above little piles of sand to catch any undrained blood. It might sound gory, but it's so very wholesome. And yummy.


In 10 minutes flat I'd sourced all my christmas dinner entrees and veg and paid for a brace of pheasant, to collect on Christmas Eve. Another half hour saw Christmas and birthday pressies sorted for friends (with one exception - might have to take a day off on Wednesday, cos I can!).


I headed into an evening full of carols and fairy lights, with a piper playing christmas carols that echoed off the college stonework. I was headed for the gym and felt very virtuous. It was a good day.

Brussels!

Victor Hugo called the Grand Place (or Groot Markt) of Brussels "the most beautiful square in the world". I certainly can't name one better. The Belgies play this up, with gorgeous light shows playing all over the buildings at dusk, year round (I'll never forget darkness falling to the rising hum of Vangelis' theme to 1492 my first summer here). The main building in the top pic is actually the museum of Brussels, which we wandered through one afternoon that was pissing with rain. I realised that day that the first time I came here was before my re-enactment days, and that I'd never bothered to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of Belgian history. Soon fixed that though.

For example, the cathedral below, dedicated to the two patron saints of Brussels, St Michel and St Gudule, was built about a thousand years ago. I also learned a lot about the powerful flemish weavers guilds, who oversaw everything from the hours weavers and their families could work to fair minimum wages and protection of individual weavers' trademark patterns or designs. The modern union movement probably has no idea how much it owes to the Flemish guilds of the 1400s.In between gorging ourselves in cafes, we squeezed in two other very important museum stops in Brussels. The first was the museum of chocolate, which tells the story of European trade and conquest in South America, where choca was a bitter, savoury drink brought back to Europe as a novelty. I still think they could do more to explain why the Belgians are seen as the world's masters of this (the top chocolatiers in Australia mostly import belgian couverture for their choccies - in blocks of up to 20 tonnes each!). But the free samples are just yummy, and I even managed to follow most of the French commentary from the chocolate maker who showed us how pralines are made.

Being me, I had to ask a question - got through that bit too, albeit in French. Having spoken tourist Flemish to waiters and shop staff all through Bruges and Gent - even Ants was coming up with 'alstubliefts' and 'dank u wel's by the time left - I had lofty pro-flemish ideals of sticking to the language when we arrived in Brussels (which is nominally bi-lingual, but mostly french in practice, which pisses the Flemish off mightily). It didn't last - I'm not fluent enough in either language to maintain 'understand french' and 'respond in flemish', so I lapsed into French a lot. And English.By the way, don't ever forget that in Brussels, every street has two names - a french one and a flemish one. In some cases, that's okay - even a complete Anglophile could figure out that Avenue Louise is probably the same as Ave Louiza, or that the Grand Place and the Grote Markt are one and the same. Gets tricker the further out you go, as we discovered when we went out to the Basilica (the 5th largest church in europe, apparently) to see an exhibition of artworks and folio notes from Leonardo da Vinci. We hopped off the underground a couple of times before working out that yes, we were on the right line, headed the right way. Oh well.

Leonardo was worth the journey - and the 10 euro entry fee. Diagrams of hundreds of his inventions were there, from the helicopter to the water screw, as well as paintings, drawings and models that showed he really was a man before his time, of unique talent. Nobody, for example, has ever worked out how to replicate his model for the Sforza horse - a bronzed beastie of massive body and spindly legs that somehow would have stood up unaided. And, did you know, that the Mona Lisa was once almost certainly bigger than it is now - paintings of the painting by Raphael and others show that it used to have much more background, which has since been cropped away. It was a fine way to spend a last day, and lovely to see some sunshine.
Finally, Brussels wouldn't be Brussels without the Mannekin Pis (a name in flemish that the walloons don't dare mess with! ha!). This 500 year old statue stands about a foot high, its origins lost in legends(the museum of bBrussels tells the top 10 or so). He's totally unremarkable, but must not be missed.

I'm so proud of Ants for lapping up our 5 days away in such style. It was just the right time, and just the right amount of time - although there's so much more to see, and we both agreed that one day, we'll be back.

Christmas markets

Europe without Christmas Markets would be like Christmas in Melbourne without sweet chilli prawns and sipping in the spa at my mums.

Okay, actually, so they're much cheesier than that, but folk from all over flock to certain key cities (Brussels, Munich, Amsterdam, Koln and others) to check out hundreds of wooden 'chalet' style stalls, selling everything from crafty jewellry to silly hats and cheap dodgy stuff that looks like it was nicked from the Victoria Markets.

There are stalls selling gluhwein and christmas beers and genever (Belgian gin, which comes in more flavours than the beers), snails in broth, frites with mayo, and all kinds of wintery snacky goodness. There are ice rinks and merry go rounds and ferris wheels, and the lights are really pretty.

And I promise, nobody's pressie this year came from a Christmas market.

Antsy's 21 beer salute to Belgie

There were several that he came back for seconds (and even thirds) of, but across our 5 days, in spanning every flemish district except 2, in no particular order, and each with their own special shaped/branded glass, was this tally:

1. Westmalle Dubbel

2. Corsendonk (Christmas beer)

3. Kriek (cherry beer)

4. Perziken (peach - followed by the comment 'but I'm not trying banana beer. that would be wrong')

5. Chimay

6. Brugse Zot (van de Halve Maan)

7. Kwak (definitely the funniest glass - here's heather drinking hers, below)

8. Stille Nacht vintage 2007

9. Delirium Nocturne

10. Wassenwolfe

11. Aardbei Trock (dry strawberry beer)

12. Lambic Douze

13. Orval

14. Gordons Scotch Ale (there were at least 3 of these, in a scotch-thistle shaped glass, above!)

15. Karmelite Tripel

16. Peche (Another peach one)

17. Forbidden Fruit

18. Primus

19. Scotch Campbells Ale

20. Jacobins Framboos (Raspberry beer)

21. Morte Subite Faro

Gent:home of the Counts of Flanders

Guidebooks will tell you that Gent, a major centre of commerce, weaving and dyeing in the middle ages before falling into decay, got halfway around to reinventing itself as a medieval city centre a la Bruges, but never finished the job. The result is someplace a little grungier, a little edgier and way more vibrant and hip.

And it has something neither Bruges nor Brussels can boast - a centuries old castle (albeit one rebuilt over the past 200 years, and not always faithful to the original).

For 500 years, from the 10th-14th centuries, Gent was the home of the Counts of Flanders. Like so many duchies in this part of the world, this noble house was eventually subsumed into one of the great houses of Europe (the Hapsburgs, in this case) and the Gravensteen (Count's castle) fell into ruin. Repaired by volunteers full of romantic ideals, it's impressive nonetheless, the weaponry is chilling (check the 2 metre long sword, and the war hammers, below) and the views from the roof are cracking...

Bruges has a Half Moon of its own!

Oxonians (and avid readers of this blog) will know that my local pub in Oxford is the Half Moon.

In Bruges, the Half Moon is the name of the only brewery still open in the city centre. Their spiel tells you that 30 years ago there were 37 brewing houses in Bruges and implies they are all closed. It seems they're actually just moved outside the city limits (certainly Belgium doesn't seem to produce fewer beers as a result - there are more than 500!). And even De Halve Maan doesn't brew onsite any more.

So it was all a bit touristy, but the stories were good, and 5 euros bought us an hour long tour, loads of insight into the things that make belgian beers unique (the addition of citrus peel, fruits, coriander, anise, or camomile to the brew: apparently 'blond' beers are even made from cornflakes!), a lovely view from the roof and a free house specialty: Brugse Zot (the crazy man from Bruges) before we traipsed back into the cold.

Yum.

Bruges - Venice of the North

I've read guide books that say any other city this laden with tourists would never get away with it. I neither know nor care about that - Bruges is gorgeous. By night or by day. Point final. (That's belgian for 'end of story'.)

Random Belgium moments

Marcel Proust once wrote, "the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" (thanks Special K, for putting it on yr email tag).

So why is it that sometimes we have to go away to remember that the little things that make a day special actually happen every day? With that in mind, here are some of my favourite random moments from Belgium, caught on camera...



We thought this sign for a 'Winkel gallery' was really funny... until I remembered that 'winkel' is Flemish for 'shop'.... hahaha. Not far from here, we found some of the coolest winkels you ever saw, selling proper old fashioned wooden train sets, and puzzles and tin spinning tops and... Ants was like a, well, like a boy let loose in a toyshop!



The guys that run 'Zucchero' (italian for 'Sugar') sell very cool handmade sweets. You can watch them at work through the windows. Sound familiar, Aussies? Yup, they learned their trade from the boys of 'Suga' in Melbourne... small world, huh?




Belgians really aren't PC, which makes a rather gorgeous change from England, where Noddy and Big Ears aren't allowed to sleep in the same bed any more, because Big Ears is clearly a dirty old man... Here's St Nic and his two 'Black Peters'...

Belgies have a wacky sense of humour too - we saw Santas just like this one climbing up and down buildings all over Brussels and Bruges.

Perhaps inspired by the locals, we hatched a theory about this cheerful, geranium bedecked building (okay, so they're not so obvious in this pic, but the flowerboxes in real life are riotous red against the grey streets). It's actually the Department of Defence building in Bruges. We reckon that if ever the building came under attack, their first line of defence would be a button under someone's desk that sends terracotta pots crashing into the street below. "Unleash the geraniums!"

This dashing musketeer lived on a wall just near our hotel in Brussels. He looks a little too 'Antoinio Banderas' for mine, but Ants liked him.

We never actually made it inside the 'Taverne L'amnesia'... our memories were hard pressed enough to cope with the 21 beer assault and copious gluhweins!

This is just a small part of the bicycle parking space around Gent- Sint Pieters train station. There are bike racks for several blocks in every direction, as far as they eye could see. My inner hippy chick did a little dance...

You know you're in a scenic place when even the view from the Ladies loo is this good... that's Ghent castle in the background. Jolly clean, spacious and well appointed loos, too.

Twelve years ago, I sat on a bridge in Bruges for a photo. Mum, I'm not sure if this is the same bridge, but this pic is for you...

Long may the memories - and the lessons - last, even when we're home.

It's official...

After years of bollocks and excuses from the Howard government, Australia ratified the Kyoto Protocol yesterday.

At last, I can start to live down years of international scorn and shame.

Australia’s new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has also pledged that Australia will cut emissions by 60% (below 2000 levels) by 2050.

Whoot!!

Belgium: five days of wining and dining

We've been planning and saving for this adventure for months, and Belgium didn't disappoint.

Brussels is less than 2 hours from London on Eurostar. We love the train to Europe. It's faster, it's greener, the queues are shorter, the station is easier to get to than the airport, and there's no chance of your bag accidentally being sent to Belfast instead of Belgium. (Don't laugh, it happened to our friend Heather, who joined us for the Brussels bit - she swears that next time, she'll go by train too!)

On arrival, we scooted up to Bruges, trudged through the rain to our wee hotel and went in search of lunch. We found it.

Mussels gratin, snails in garlic butter, beefsteak with frites (and mayo, of course!), rabbit stew, and the lushest vanilla icecream. Okay, it was tourist quality food, but at a tenner each for a 3 course lunch (that's 14 euros, or $A22), it's value in almost any country.

And that was just the beginning - we followed up in the days to come with olliebollen, flemish stew, witlof tart, cured sausage with mustard, flemish asparagus, steak tartare (called 'cannibale'), frites and more fritjes (always with mayonnaise), croque monseiur, croque madame (croque monsieur avec un oeuff), waffles with chocolate sauce and cream, grapes dipped in toffee, daily hot chocolates, lashings of gluhwein and 21 different kinds of beer. The highlight has to have been proper moules mariniere, served in a massive black cast iron pot, with a lid deep enough to act as a bowl for the cast off mussel shells.

And everywhere, in every cafe, for every meal, gorgeous old-world surroundings, strange-yet-familiar, making me realise that Melbourne is not an English city. It's a European city. High ceilings, centuries-old decor that's so much less gaudy than the Victorian pubs of London. Mirrors and lights everywhere, indoors and along the streets, give the illusion of space and make the night less dark. Outdoors, even streetlights sit lower, brightening the street rather than sitting high above rooftops like so many insipid little suns in foggy gloom.

Some places were genuinely familiar. It wouldn't have been Brussels without scouring the streets around the Bourse until we found the brass duck embedded in the flagstones marking the narrow alley to a la Becasse. Their specialty is Lambic Douze, the first beer I ever liked and the best I ever had, servied with sausiccon sec (dried sausage), roughly sliced at the bar and served with a massive glop of mustard. A day or so later we shared a final brew at A La Mort Subite (the Sudden Death) - ironically, or perhaps not, always a favourite of the Finn's. But the place we all kept going back to was Le Cirio, where the house specialty drink is a half-and-half: half white wine and half champagne (and a steal, at 3 euros, that's £2!). I've been wondering where this place is ever since Francis first took me there twelve and a half years ago... (oh my, I'm getting old).

Like the first time, and the last time, I was there, I knew I could live in this place.

It's gonna be so hard to go back to English food after this.

(If you want to know more about Belgian food and why it's so damn good, this article is brilliant)