On tour with the band... in Devon

I've spent this weekend playing groupie to two of Oxford's most enduring names in Music: the (modestly titled) Legendary Pete Fryer Band and The Mighty Redox, fronted by brothers Pete and Phil Fryer, and Phil's partner Sue.

Twice a year, 'clan Fryer' score themselves a gig on the south coast of England, and take 60 or so of their friends and family along for the weekend to fill up the venue. It's a pretty time-hungry way to gather a crowd, but it guarantees a packed house, and for those of us without wheels, 60 quid for transport and B&B accommodation is a pretty good deal. So I turned out on a grim Saturday morning to board the coach for Devon... and discovered just how interlinked the Oxford music scene can be.

I met Phil and Sue through my pals the Original Guy Pearce and the Fabulous Sal Moore, at their regular Wednesday open mike down the Folly Bridge Inn. But it turns out Phil and Sue are also the parents of a bloke named Sparky (I'm sure that's not what they named him, but no-one calls him anything else!) who runs Sparky's Flying Circus, an open mike night at the Half Moon on Thursdays... so suddenly I discovered I was weekending with a whole lotta old friends, as well as a small number of new ones.

And what a cracking time was had by all. Coach trip down was populated with outbursts of random singing, the video of last summer's trip to the Isle of Wight, random conversations and piss-take music documentaries such as The Rutles. Arrived in Paignton, near Torquay, in Devon, just in time to check into our B&Bs and find a pub that was showing the last two games of the 6 nations. As it happened, the pub we chose was putting on free snacks between matches, and was full of loads of other clan Fryer regulars, all of whom seemed mad keen on buying yours truly a drink. Over the next 4 pints, England salvaged some remnant of dignity by beating Ireland (having lost to Wales and Scotland! hah!) and Wales won the tournament with a clean sweep of everyone and a thorough thumping of dirty France (they may be the prettiest team, but they don't play nice, les bleus!).

There was just enough time to order a quick countery (a bargain at less than 6 quid!) and then head to the gig. I'll let the photos speak for themselves...

Guy Pearce - the original and the best
Welsh James - a happy boy this weekend!
Jeremy the amazing dancing hippyThe Legendary Pete Fryer (of the Legendary Pete Fryer Band) and Phil Fryer, of The Mighty Redox

Devon - the adventure continues...

Next morning saw us all up bright and early....(yeah, right - me and my room mate Joan got up for a fryup brekkie and then went back to bed 'til kick-out time at 10am).

Eventually, though, many of us managed to congregate on the beach. Some crazy people decided to go for a paddle, the rest of us took photos and went for hot chocolate. The pub from the night before reopened at midday, and we all piled in for a carvery (fiver a head - bargain!) and an open mike, hosted of course by the unsinkable Sparky. I got a bad case of nerves, but managed some aussie tunes, then settled down with a pint to watch everyone else strut their stuff.

Suddenly, it was 3pm and time to board the bus back to Oxford. Had a cracking time though, and we're already making plans to head down to Devon again.

Crazy people
Sane people (they may beg to differ - this is Phil and Sue) Pretty beach views

Introducing James, the random american

I've had to take a week's leave to use up holidays before the end of financial year (which, for some reason that still confounds me, is on March 31).

Was desperate to get away somewhere, but even more desperately want to buy a laptop, so I'm holidaying at home. And I'm having a lovely time!

I've recorded music for the first time. Well, I call it music. My friend Guy, who sound engineered for me, says it's brilliant, but then he recorded it. Anyway, I had fun and will post a link to a myspacemusic site as soon as I get organised.

I've also had long lazy lunches with my chums Sophie (who makes the most heavenly green pea soup!) and Helen, who works at Oxford Uni Press, which has a dead posh building that looks like a cross between a college - complete with quad - and a fortress.

I'm digressing already. So, am enroute home after liquid lunch with Helen and passing the Eagle and Child pub, which is famous for two things:
1. it's where tolkein, cs lewis et al used to drink
2. it's almost impossible to get a seat in one of the two tiny 'snugs' at the front of the pub.

Being mid afternoon and quiet, I thought I'd try my luck and, shazaam! there's a seat in the snug. Hooray for me! I was shortly joined by James the Random American, who had been in the UK for all of 2 hours, but having flown all the way from North Carolina to spend 6 days in Oxford studying CS Lewis, his first port of call after finding his hostel was the Eagle and Child.

I was so impressed I offered to show him around. Over the course of the afternoon we found Magdalene College, Christ Church Meadow, the cheap internet cafe and some landmark pubs, including the Bear, and the Head of the River.

Friday we hooked up for more drinksy goodness, taking in the Kings Arms, the Turf Tavern and one of the Mitres. I didn't mean it to turn into an 8 pint jag, but it did, and I was really grateful for the £3 burgers they were dishing up at the Turf.

So I'm sticking to my resolution about going to the gym every day, but at the end of the week, I'm heavier, not lighter. Damn cider...

"Yummy food, done dirt cheap..."

This article from The Age, plugging their annual Cheap Eats Guide, has reminded me what I miss most about living in Melbourne (okay, apart from friends, family and the memories).

In the UK you would struggle to find half these food cultures anywhere, let alone at prices that mean ordinary Melburnians can afford to eat out several nights a week.

My UK friends almost faint when I tell them that I can get two courses in many Vietnamese, Chinese and Italian restaurants for about £6 (that's £15), or my pick of Thai, Ethiopian, Spanish and even French for not much more than £8 ($20).

And don't even start me on quality.

Sigh...

Birthday bliss in Winchester

So the new job is hectic, but not so hectic that I couldn't take a couple of days off to get away for my birthday on Friday. Bright and early, Ants and I hopped on a train down to Winchester, which has won the honour of 'Georgi's new favourite town in England'.

Its sooooo pretty!

Winchester was once upon a time a Roman town, called Venta Bulgarum, and after the Romans left the Saxons took over, and King Alfred the Great made it the capital of England (well, of Wessex. The rest of England was run by the Vikings, and known as the Danelaw). King Canute and Queen Emma ruled from here and are buried in the Cathedral: a 15thC house still stands on land given to the city by Emma in 1016.

Above: Roman wall. Below: Statue honouring King Alfred the Great. Very below: the God Begot house, built on land bequeathed by Cnut's queen, Emma.

It was an important city for the Normans too, with the Domesday book commissioned and compiled from here. Various medieval kings enlarged and expanded the military castle at the top of the hill, but the cathedral and bishop's palace, Wolvesey Castle was where it was really all at. There'd been a church on the site since about the 600s, but by the time Mary Tudor (later aka Queen Mary I, or 'Bloody' Mary the rampant Catholic) was married in the cathedral, it was a pretty spectacular place. Still is. If you want to know more, check out Wikipedia.

Happily, the royal hobnobs settled on London for their capital and Winchester never became more than a local market town. So it's still laden with old buildings, bits of Roman Wall, three of the 5 original town gates and Alfred's 8th century street layout. It's the sort of place where you sneer at the 15thC reproduction of 'king arthur's round table', probably last painted for Henry VIII and found hanging (see below) in what's left of the castle fort. Ha!

Oh, and all the museums, gatehouses and other olde worlde stuff is free entry. Bargain.

But Winchester is more than just picture postcard pretty. It's also the first place I've been to in England that can claim a proper foodie culture (except that one restaurant in Warwick, and one place does not a foodie destination make!) So we gorged ourselves on gastropub grub at the Wykeham Arms, where the food was better, and still cheaper, than many other pubs in southern England. Then there was the Asian cafe we found for dinner when Loch Fyne couldn't get us in, and the truly groovy little cafe just over from the city museum (which also rocked) and cathedral close.

A lovely getaway? Oh yes!

Sadly, Wolvesey is closed in February, and the Winchester Bible wasn't on display at the Cathedral, as they're renovating the library. Damn. Guess I'll just have to go back there sometime...

Sorry. But very, very proud to be Australian

Somebody wrote on Facebook today "A brave man walked into Parliament this morning. A great man walked out this afternoon".

Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations of indigenous Australians is one of the great speeches of our time. His predecessor John Howard, imho, didn't make great speeches - he was more a 'soundbite and spin' kinda bloke. And a miserly sod sadly lacking in human decency.

The Stolen Generations are not just a product of actions by people a long time ago. I know a woman just two years older than me who was removed from her aboriginal family in about the same year I was born (early 1970s). Aboriginal people didn't have the vote until 1966. And the communities that were fractured by those past policies are still often full of broken families today.

We see the proof of that in indigenous communities, where the life expectancy is 20 years less than for all other Australians, where access to health and education is poor, where substance abuse and domestic violence have replaced traditional beliefs and rituals. We can't strip away the fabric of someone's culture and then complain when they 'dont behave like us'.

A Women's Circus performance in Melbourne about 15 years ago was called "The Soles of our Feet". It closed with the words of Wurundjeri elder Joy Murphy:

"Your job is to remember, our job is to forgive".

My people (white Anglo people) have lived in Australia for up to 8 generations, the first arrivals farmed in country Victoria, and almost certainly had aboriginal staff. I won't ever know how they treated those staff, but I know that many people in those days held attitudes that we know today were wrong.

And I am sorry

Spring has sprung early, yahaa!

The lovely Heather came up to Oxford this weekend, and in between watching loads of rugby in various pubs (it's 6 Nations season again!), we had our first day of sitting outside in the sunshine for lunch alfresco!! The scene of this little miracle (because winter has, allegedly, still a month to run) was the glorious Victoria Arms pub in Old Marston. Old Marson is just up the road from us in 'newer and decidedly more dodgy Marston, and the 'Vicky Arms' is at the end of a country lane, overlooking the Cherwell river, and was also host to our May Day frolics last year.

If this weather keeps up the trees'll be sprouting leaves before ya know it, there'll be blossoms out, and we'll be able to start planning this year's May Day in earnest...

Bring it on.

Roo burgers and lamingtons

By 7pm Saturday I was embroiled in my third cultural hit in 24 hours - my own. Catherine-from-Sydney (on the right, in the photo above) has in previous years stumbled on a pub near ours whose Aussie staff do a wee tribute to our national day: roo burgers, lamingtons, Tim Tams and an Australian music playlist that is planned weeks in advance. For the record, the hats are from the Sydney Daily Mail (melbourne would never do something that daggy, not even for free!).

I've realised how much I miss music from home - the Living End, Midnight Oil, Killing Heidi, Missy Higgins, even Icehouse and Silverchair, and the ubiquitous Crowded House (kiwis, I know, but nearly from home), Men at Work and Cold Chisel's Khe Sanh, which was played four times.

P'raps the best bit though was our chum Sophie (left, in photo above, and below), who is the only English lass I know who can do a passable Aussie accent. She can even distinguish it from an equally plausible Auckland twang. (Smartypants!)

Before we knew it, she had an Aussie bloke and a Kiwi lad convinced that she was from "Coonabarabran, on the NSW south coast, just up from Eden". We picked Coonabarabran cos it's one of those great Aussie place names (I also like Yackandandah) although I made up the location. Nobody called our bluff.

I was relieved to learn online today that it IS actually in NSW. However, it's in the northwest of the state, not the south east. And nowhere NEAR the coast.

Here's where it gets fun. The website http://www.coonabarabran.com/ says that "Coona" (as it's known to the locals) is a friendly country town of around 3,000 people. It's the nearest gateway to the majestic Warrumbungle National Park, and known as the Astronomy Capital of Australia for its stunning night skies.

Checking Wikipedia, I learned that it's also not far from the buzzing nightlife of the towns of Gunnedah, Narrabri, Walgett and Boggabilla.

I PROMISE I AM NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS UP!!!!!

(Except the bit about Walgett having a buzzing nightlife - the only buzzes you'll hear are the night time insects, although they are HUGE!!)

Good for a laugh? Mate, I nearly cried!
Happy Australia Day!

Georgi's first English football match

It's taken nigh on two years, but Alex-from-the-London-Office at work happens to be a die-hard Oxford United supporter and, back before Christmas, made a mildly intoxicated promise to take me to my first game in the UK.

It has to be said that only the die-hard fans go to see the 'U's - aka the 'Yellows' and the 'Bullocks' - play these days. Fifteen years ago, it was a different story. Oxford was in the First Division league (the top one, where Man U and Liverpool and all the famous ones play) and they'd just opened a brand new stadium, The Kassam, on the outskirts an Oxford.

Melbournites, fyi, the Kassam bears a remarkable resemblance to the old VFL Park at Waverley - loads of concrete, dumped in a paddock in the slightly boganised outer suburbs (they say 'chavvy' in the UK - and it's a field, not a paddock). But I digress.

Apparently there's a hex on the stadium, which is sure doing its work. Oxford have been through a succession of crap seasons and relegations so that they now play in the 'Conference' level - that's the 5th one, and about as low as you can go and yet still get paid for your match.

I don't care. They're my local team and I have to say that for sheer skill they dance all over the standard of football played at home. And footballers really do have best legs. Much more elegant than mine.

Anyway, the boys played solidly for a nil-all draw, Alex and I devoured pints, cups of tea and hot chocolate and even pies at half time - although mine was chicken rather than Four'n'Twenty.

If it weren't for the fact that tickets are £20 (that's $50 aussie), I'd probably go more often.

Scots wha' hae!

Ants was working til 10pm, but that didn't stop us hosting our first Burns night on Friday. We'd done a bunch of reading up and in the end, decided to dispense with many of the formalities, but the essential bits were there: haggis, whiskey, a poem by the bard himself, a little bit said about his life (mostly involving the remarkable legacy he left the nation, in syntax that no foreigner could ever understand!), lashings of Scottish music and damn good company.

None of us possessing a passable Scots accent, we dispensed with the dozens of verses of Burns' ode "To a haggis", although we did sneak in the Selkirk Grace. And none of us plays the bagpipes, so we had to settle for putting 'Scots wha hae...' on the CD player to carve up the pair of sheeps' stomachs filled with offal and oats that I'd picked up at the market the week before. But there were proper neeps and tatties, some token green beans, and if I may say so myself, the whisky and cream sauce I made up worked a proper treat!

Sophie and Catherine, you're dreadful pikers for refusing to eat sheep's guts, but thanks for coming anyway. Darren, Alex, Phil and Ants, you are proper honorary Scotties and if I had any capacity left after all the wine and whiskey, I'd raise one more glass to ye... oh my head will hurt in the morning!

Making sense of life when the good die young

Back home in Aus, two families on opposite sides of the country have lost sons who were also considered heroes by a huge base of adoring fans.

On January 5, I had a text from my mum to say that Clinton Grybas, a lad from my home town who coached my brother at basketball and studied Journalism with me at RMIT, had been found dead in his flat in Melbourne. Clinton had been full throttle on a meteoric career in sports journalism - voted Australian Sports journalist of the year at barely 30, calling Aussie Rules matche on national radio, and many of the sports at the last Olympics with flair and informed comment. And he was a totally lovely bloke - always took time to have a word to my dad off-air when Dad called Clinton's sports show on 3AW, asking after the family.

He'd built up a huge fan base in a short space of time, and it's felt weird to see so much written about him, in the papers and online, since he died. Here are footballers and cricketers who I've worshipped as players playing tribute to the the bloke I remember as a tall skinny fella, smart but a bit geeky, who we used to give a lift home to after training, cos he was too young to drive.

At the same time, I've devoured every article, every tribute, every posting on a website, hungry for stories to share. Here's his mum talking about replaying tapes of him at 7, calling the cricket just like Richie Benaud. There's a 3AW fan, saying they'll miss him giving stick to fellow-commentator Rex Hunt. Clinton is even on Wikipedia. And there's an email from Cliff Green, who still edits the local paper we both worked at, inviting tributes for the next edition. Finally, in came the emails from my mum, brother and dad, who went to his funeral, burial and wake. Only then did it begin to sink in that this incredible bloke is no longer in the world.

The other of course is movie star Heath Ledger, who may or may not have taken too many sleeping pills after a recent role gave him nightmares. Having been, in a small way, part of a public/private grieving over Clinton, all I can feel right now is enormous grief for his family. We expect our young, strong blokes to wake up in the morning, - dealing with it when they don't is hard enough without all the media attention.

But if there's an upside to all the public interest, it's this. I hope their families, the women who love them, and their closest friends, are able to share all the stories too. When someone goes too soon, we can't bring them back - but we do them a disservice if we let our grief at losing them take over our lives. It's okay to let the world stop for a bit. But little by little, I hope everyone who knew them can start doing the little things that perpetuate the best of these people - their essence - in the world a little longer. It's what helps us keep going when the 'goneness' threatens to overwhelm us.

And it makes the world a better place.

First anniversary festivities in Portsmouth

Somehow, it's already a year since that special-but-very-low-key day last January when Anthony and I were married.

It's fair to say that we have both - separately and together - faced some big challenges over the past year (you don't get to see half the hard stuff in these pages!) but the end of 2007 brought some welcome changes and our new year has started with an incredible sense of love and optimism, and determination to face down anything that comes along (touch wood we don't have to!).

So it was a happy pair of bunnies that hopped in a hire car (a brand new red Nissan Note, with just 9 miles on the clock) and headed down to Portsmouth for our annniversary on Monday.

We stayed in a truly gorgeous B&B just minutes' walk from the beach at Southsea. Spent our days gorging on champagne, chocolate and naval military history (the D-Day Invasion in WWII, all 5,000 boats, sailed from Portsmouth, Admiral Nelson's ship The HMS Victory is in dry dock here, and Henry VIII's famous flagship, the Mary Rose, sank less than a mile from the beach).

We even had sunshine, spending Tuesday walking the beachfront (see piccies below) in our shirtsleeves - no jumpers needed, let alone coats and hats! Has to be said, we found a new candidate for 'worst meal in England' (don't believe all the good spin you read about the Sally Port Inn) but it was a lovely, lovely time in every other respect.

First anniversary is of course paper, so I gave Anthony some replica WWII documents from the D-Day museum shop, and he gave me a book on the castles of britain. This is a cool tradition that we intend to continue.

He's promised me diamonds if we're still kicking around at ages 93 and 95!

The best bits deserve a spiel of their own, so here goes....

Southsea Castle

Said to be one of the last coastal defence castles built by Henry VIII. Squat and square and half hidden in the sand dunes, it looks lots more modern than its 500 years - but it represents perfectly the rapid change from 'building castles to withstand a seige', to 'building castles to withstand seige engines' to 'building castles that just maybe have a hope against heavy artillery'.

It was all locked up until April, but you can see a fair bit by climbing around on the sea-wall. Apparently Henry VIII was standing right here when his flagship, the 30 yr veteran Mary Rose heeled over and sank, right in front of the oncoming French. Not a good day for Brits.

Speaking of the Mary Rose...

We couldn't come all this way and NOT go back into the Historic Naval Dockyards. What's left of the Mary Rose (she was finally found and raised in 1982) is still kept in darkened seclusion, being sprayed with a liquid wax to preserve her timbers.

Her treasures, however, are on display in a nearby shed - and oh wow. The inventory reads like a re-enactor's paradise - leather bound books, purses and bags, shoes, surgeons instruments, bowls, plates and other crockery (both wood and some metals have been preserved in the salty mud!), a urethral syringe (for treating men with the willy pox - eugh!), shields for use in pistol fighting, and countless polearms, their bill hooks and axe heads long since rusted away.

And, of course, those famous, famous longbows - more than 170 all told (only one has been broken since, in a test-fire), about half as thick as my wrist, needing twice Anthony's strength to draw.

Oh, and here's Ants handling an ACTUAL arrow from the boat. There was a chap from the museum doing a show and tell session... made my boy's day it did. Cooool.

The Water Babies!

The Water Babies was the first film I ever saw at the cinema. I was five - or maybe even still 4. I remember being enthralled by the way Tom and Ellie changed from children to cartoon children and back to people again, and for years after, half-forgotten choruses echoed randomly in my mind.

I searched video libraries all over Melbourne, I asked friends, I trawled the internet in its early years, and I could find no trace of a movie called the Water Babies - anywhere.

Then my singing chum Sophie asked me to make her a medieval dress and in the course of a bunch of fittings confided that one of her favourite movies, as a kid, was... the Water Babies!

A few weeks later, in the gym, she handed me a 'thankyou' present - apparently, it wasn't easy to track down, but the internet is a wonderful thing.

I can't wait to watch it.

Happy New Year!

It doesn't get better than this. Ants resplendant in kilt, a supper of dim sum, fizz and stroganoff with the inconquerable Lizzy, pints and singing our hearts out at the Half Moon - (with the landlord, at closing time) - then adjourning to an upstairs flat for cheese and port.

Okay, so the walk home took an hour instead of the usual 25-30 minutes, and I was grumpy by the time we got there (not least because my lovely flatmate left the lights and heating on - at 25oC! - before taking off to London for the night - argh!).

But after a quick kip, I was ready to do it all again, and headed round to Guy and Sal's for their annual brunch of smoked salmon, cava and other gourmet delights. Mmmmm.

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