Jefke.com

geez, has it been that long already? well, there is much to tell. We headed over to the motherland for Basil and Hilde’s wedding. Very nice, the ceremony took place in a tiny little chapel out at the engineering campus in Heverlee. Basil had me read what had to be the hardest poem ever, but it worked out alright. There was a brief pause for a couple of hours and then we (us and the superneighbors) headed to the dinner/reception in St. Truiden. Now, before this trip I had never been to the mythical St. Truiden, where the whorehouses never close, the army base is hopping, you can pick your own fruit, and the natives sing when they talk. It turned out to live up to all expectations. We boozed and danced till 4 am or so, and then were off to Erics mega pad to crash. Somehow, i managed to miss seeing his infamous collection of porn, but there’ll be time for that later. 2 seconds after my head hit the pillow on his bachelor waterbed, i was being awakened for the post wedding brunch ….the feeling i had then was pretty much the feeling of the whole trip: sleep deprived, hung over/drunk, and suddenly drinking again. Acutally that was pretty much the whole of my master’s too.

We hit good ole’ Leuven for about 8 hours a few days later, not much has changed really, the new station looks good, they’re sandblasting the central library (are US high schooler’s paying for that too?). After a few rounds at the Commerce (it was good to see Martin, the world’s best bartender) we had a nice dinner and then settled down at Caf? Amad? for some Westmalle dubble Vat ‘n Vat, and probaly the most ridiculous game of Jenga every attempted. It was at this point that I realized that i missed being a student, and almost simultaneously i realized that if i were still a student, i’d be as fat as the jumpsuit era elvis and probaly as coherent (or should i say incoherent?). Things happen for a reason, i suppose.

A particular source of amusement for me was watching a country transact in Euros, but compute in belgian francs. The ad hoc conversions were quite amazing. For me, it was the first time that everything went smoothly money wise….

Then, boom quick as it came, it was time to hit the TGV back to Charles Daulle II, and wait 4 hrs to be searched 3 times, then to sit on a hot plane surronded by farting french people for 8 hrs. Ah, and who can forget the ride home on the limo? 2 hrs of traffic and construction on Rt. 95N whilst our driver tried to box out all the drug runners from FLA trying to snake him on the right shoulder…ahhh paradise.

so all told: about 2 crates of stella’s, 1 crate of Hoegaarden GC, about a crate of duvel, a few westmalle’s, one westvlateren or something (man those monks and they’re beer), countless bottles of wine, about a kg of Kip curry, 1 kip kebap (met half-picante saus), 1 wortsebroodje, 2.2 million frisks, and 88 liters of SPA blue, 2hrs in Colyrut, 1 hr in Deleuize, 1 conversation-in English with a very drunk belgian about the nature of US/belgian relations and how cool it is that they know so many languages Americans only know english (mostly)…If that’s not reliving Belguim in 7.3 days, i don’t know what is.

Many thanks to all the folks that made it happen, especially P&P for letting us use up all their hot water and stink up the east wing of Superhuis Haacht with hungover american.

now we just need jobs….