Escape to the beach

On Saturday, a few of us decided to put down our books for the day and take advantage of the sunshine and head to the beach. I cycled to Ostend with Helena, Elena, Ramesh, Eddie and Peter. It was a fair distance (about 23km) but the route was beautiful - along a canal completely away from roads. A lot of other people came by train and we had a relaxing afternoon, including quite a good swim and (as Selwyn readers will be pleased to hear) The Game of the Sea. These photos mostly serve to show to incredibly white my back is...

More Alex photos

Here are some photos of my nephew Alex which I took while I was back in England last week. He's 4 months old now and has just learned to smile.

Escape to England

From last Wednesday until this Monday, I escaped from Bruges for a few days and had a very hectic, but great few days in England. It was always going to be exhausting to visit Liverpool and London in such a short space of time - especially when I didn't fly at all (train all the way), but it meant I got to see family up north and friends down south. I had some really good food, great conversations, pubs, restaurants, church, a conference, a party, many coffees and some exciting planning for the US holiday, which is less than 5 weeks away.

Back in Bruges, I'm struggling to motivate myself for the home stretch of my year here: my next exam is on Monday - 5 to go...

Eurovision ridiculousness

So, another year goes by and another embarrassingly low position for the UK in Eurovision on the back of a mediocre song. As I watched the votes coming in, I was struck by the fact that it's even more political than ever: voting for your neighbours is rife. This was made all the more poignant by watching it with people from all over Europe - who tended to agree that people vote on the basis of neighbours rather than songs. Add that to the fact that so many western European countries were not even in this year's final (Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Italy, Austria...), and the remaining western countries are not going to benefit from much regional voting. The only points the UK song got were from Ireland and Malta. I could have predicted that myself. Of the 24 participating countries, the entire top 16 were Eastern European and the bottom 8 were all Western but one.

It's not sour grapes so much as sadness that such a great (if kitsch) institution - one which, let's remember, in its early days brought former enemies together and helped to strengthen peace in Europe - has become such a farce. In my opinion, telephone voting is the problem. A basic course in geography and economic migration explains nearly all of the voting. For example, Romania, with quite a poor song (sorry Lavinia, if you're reading), did quite well - getting Balkans votes and then high votes from Spain and Portugal, where millions of Romanian migrants live. Germany gave Turkey its usual 12 points. There was such a former Yugoslavian love-in, you'd be forgiven if you forgot they were blowing each other up 15 years ago.

The premise of telephone voting is that the public decide their favourite song and they can't vote for themselves. I was in a room where nearly everyone voted for his/her home country for the Belgian vote. People are patriotic: it's normal and ok that they should wish to vote for their own countries when abroad. But we're fooling ourselves if we believe that this system finds the best song.

Why not go back to the old jury system? I know it wasn't perfect and was prone to political voting too, but at least it wouldn't be so extensive as we saw tonight. I know I get bitter every year after Eurovision and then the intervening year is long enough for me to be excited about it again, but I honestly believe that the UK could not have won tonight, no matter how good the song had been. Surely that's not a song contest.

Sure, it's all a bit of fun. But the BBC pumps money into Eurovision. The licence fee payer must surely start to ask if a contest that has become so phoney is really worth the expenditure.

There were some good songs out there tonight. It's just a shame the voting didn't reflect that.

Sunday at Ostend

On Sunday, I escaped from Bruges for the day and went to Ostend with Frances and Annie (careful readers will recognise Annie from this post). It was so nice to get away from thesis/exam stress for a day and enjoy the great weather we've been having. We swam in the sea (freezing cold in April, but fantastic nonetheless), lay on the beach, had mussels and chips (Belgian staple) with white wine for lunch and then Leffe on the end of the pier in late afternoon. We even went shopping and I bought some really nice stuff. A fantastic day and great company.

North Sea trip (part 2)

Day 5 - Gothenburg - Oslo

We continued north towards Oslo. Soon after we left Gothenburg, there started to be snow around by the side of the road, not much at first, but it was still impressive given the summery weather we had been enjoying in Belgium for a week or so (which, incidentally has not let up: it did not rain in Bruges once in the whole of April, which is a minor miracle given the usual wind/rain combo we get here. In fact, today's temperature of 23C is distinctly mediocre compared to the recent average). We took a little detour away from the main road and found a really quaint fishing village. I was really glad we did that, because until then, all I had really seen of Sweden was Gothenburg and the E6 motorway. We stopped at a little harbour and took some photos, and then continued northwards. As we approached Oslo, we followed the coast of the Oslofjord in, and the sunlight was reflecting off the water and the city looked beautiful ahead. Knowing I'd been there before made me happy to come back. But the strange thing was that I didn't really recognise anything for a good while. Ok, it was 4 years ago I was there, for two nights, with a group of friends, in January, and one's perspective of a city is always to some extent based on where you're staying and what you see first, but even so, it wasn't until I saw the royal palace that I recognised anything. I often wish when I do things like that that I could see my former self doing what I did when I went there - a bit like Quantum Leap, I suppose. Where was the kebab place where Kat demonstrated how a tampon works? Where was the café where Paul had wax all over his face? Where did we have to get the bus to the youth hostel from? All these things evaded me, and Oslo was very different to my eyes now from then. It's not that the city itself has changed: I'm sure it hasn't. But it really shows how much of an effect your state of mind and your company at the time has on your memory formation. I wonder if to some extent I'm also European citied out? Since my first trip to Oslo, I've visited Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Rome, Palermo, Prague, Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, Brussels, Strasbourg, Amsterdam to name but a few. To some extent, they all merge into one.


Day 6 - Oslo to Bergen

This was undoubtedly the best day of the trip. Even though it involved driving over 500km on non-motorway roads, every kilometre was spectacular. We left Oslo and gradually climbed into the hills, and it got snowier and snowier. Hills became mountains, lakes frozen and waterfalls icicles. It was a winter wonderland the likes of which I have seen in films and on TV but never witnessed before. It was such a pleasant surprise to find that at the start of April. I had expected the snow to have disappeared to all but the peaks of the mountains, but the snow was piled against the roadside in many places.


On the way, we went through loads of tunnels cut through the mountainside, including the longest road tunnel in the world at 24.5km. It was a fantastic feat of engineering and certainly made the journey easier - welcome on such a long day - but it would be cool to have the time to drive the old roads across the mountain passes. We finally arrived late afternoon to a drizzly Bergen, found our hostel and checked in for 2 nights. We had a kitchen in our room and so decided to buy food from the supermarket and cook to avoid paying extortionate Norwegian restaurant prices.

Ok, back to work now... days 7-8 coming soon