Belgian waffling

Finally, after months of saving and full minutes of planning and thinking things through, I have fled the country. Miss K, my architecture fancying counterpart, has taken up a semester of study in the Belgian town of Leuven. Having seen plenty of inspirational Hollywood movies, I realised that this was a chance for me to seize the day and live each day as if it was my last, or something like that. At least it was a chance to see Europe again, including some of the places I missed last time. So out of the baking, drought ridden heat of Australia I have come to this pretty little town which is all rain soaked cobblestones and students on fiets. I am now neck deep in waffles, chocolate, Tintin and Flemish, which is to say Dutch, but not quite Dutch. I won't go into a detailed account of what Leuven is like, other than to say that it's a university town where students from all over the world come to study, which from the amount of shops and bars in the immediate vicinity, means shopping and drinking. With so many international students around everyone seems very accepting, it's very much a case of Leuven let live. I know, it's a terrible pun but the worst part is, there's plenty more coming.
It's always interesting and exciting to fly out of your own country and experience a little more of the world and Europe has plenty to offer, from cold soup to blood sausage to chocolate, from Van Gogh to Dali to Turner, from Kafka to Hugo to J.K. Rowling. Having said that however, the plane trip itself can take you from the crushing depths of soul destroying boredom to the dizzying heights of things that are mildly amusing. With thirty-odd hours, four different flights, one lost bag, various dull movies and something that could have been food, I had plenty of chance to observe the vagaries of air travel. There are, I realised, certain laws that govern air travel, laws that go beyond laws of physics and laws of the land. Here are some of those laws;
Everyone, no matter what class they are flying, is going to try and carry on as much hand luggage as they can. Why risk having to pay excess baggage fees when that set of golf clubs can be easily crammed into an overhead bin on top of your fellow passenger's duty free ipod and Toblerone bars?
Everyone will complain about the food, but will still eat it and will eat it whenever it is served up. Pasta with 'chicken' at four in the morning, or three in the afternoon, depending on where you have been and where you are going? Absolutely. Why? Because I bloody well paid good money for this ticket and I am going to get everything I can out of this airline.
The captain will be warm, friendly and make everyone feel comfortable. He will also do his utmost to downplay the weather conditions in whatever city you are arriving in.
'It's a slightly chilly minus forty on the ground in Reykjavik, best put on a coat and say goodbye to your fingertips.'
'There's a little bit of a hurricane blowing in Kansas, but as soon as the control tower falls to the ground we'll be clear to land.'
Despite this, travel is exciting and planes are only a half of it. After all that, there's still that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you are coming in to land at your final destination and you realise that soon you will just be another bloody tourist.
I will leave you with this final piece of trivia. The Dutch word for glove, handschoen, translates literally as hand shoe, I don't know why but that amuses me.
Until next time,
Dag.