Europe, we have to talk.

Dear Europe,

I am an American, as you know. We have been living together for three months today. Isn't that such a long time! When I first arrived I didn't know what to think. My French was poor, my shame from my origins high, and I expected you to be less than accepting of such a person as myself. However, you seemed to appreciate my efforts, and the first few people I met were very kind. More so even, than their jobs merited. However, the longer I have stayed the more I realize the truth. Europe, you have produced some delicious fruit, but your tree is rotting. You hold up your achievements, but they do not define your culture. Your achievements have actually held a reverse effect, that now people can hold up things they had nothing to do with, and whose implementation they complained about to exonerate their own debauchery, bigotry, or combinations thereof. Europe, you have to stop talking about Americans, because you are exactly the same. There was no culture in the US save for the yogurt and the Meningitis. I am afraid that you are headed down the same path. There are remnants of your culture, to be certain. But you can't hold on to these for long, especially when you are working as hard as you can to tear them down, and replace them with large gaudy offices, that will only be torn down to make room for more large gaudy offices. Giraudoux must be rolling in his grave so quickly it's a wonder that the Passy Cemetary hasn't robbed the Earth of all its angular momentum. And yet, you hold him up saying "Look at our greatness! Look at our culture!" When you yourself have done nothing to accept or encourage the growth thereof. 

My point Europe, is that I wish you did complain about me. I wish I was ostracized and marginalized here. Disenfranchised with my lack of culture and my wont to be a little brash and completely stubborn more often than I'd care to admit. I wish you saw yourself as different from me. But you don't. You as we, have fallen into the abyss of consumerism. What's worse you do not even recognize it is glaring back. You have come to live lying in your most base desires and instincts. You do not care anymore Europe, and you are okay with that. When I first arrived I was so enamored. I guess I just talked to the right people. If I hear an iphone play hip hop on the metro at 7 am once more I am going to lose my mind. Headphones may be masturbatory, and the may slice through solidarity like a razor through the side of my cheek when I inevitably cut myself shaving, but they at least lack entitlement. We have screwed ourselves Europe, and we are starting to realize that our entitlement was unfounded. Please, you are looking up to what America is and behaving in the way that has made its last few years so very disastrous. I am only here for a little while longer Europe, and I'd rather say this as I left, but here we are. You have lost all the responsibility that you must have had after you screwed yourself the last time. You're on the verge of it again. But this time, you will rot from the inside, until your fruit gets uglier and uglier and soon disappears altogether. Norway stayed out of your organizations as did Switzerland. I don't blame them. I want the rest of our time together to be time well spent. But this will require change I know you're unable to make. It will require you finding something to eat other than McDonnald's and durum. It will require me finding cavernous art galleries packed and bars with bad music and overpriced drinks empty. It will require you to ask me about more than clubs when I tell you I went to a country you've never been to. I told you I didn't go clubbing already, why ask again? So Europe, I do value the time we've spent together, but I feel like what I have loved about you was an ersatz to what you want. The long dinners with friends were scoffed by your populace in favor of cheap and fast. The museums and cathedrals seen as only a place upon the exteriors to express your bland statement of ego, or pithy pseudo-anarchist slogans. How long are you going to ride the outliers of your society before you admit that something is wrong? more importantly though, how long will Poland last now that they look up to you?

I am going to be with Africa for awhile Europe. You treated Africa terribly, and well, I hope that in that regard they are different than you. But you've taught me not to expect much.

Kimball

Brussels

So here's the thing about Belgium, it is officially bilingual. This means that to get a job one must speak French and Dutch. However, until a while ago the Francophones had all of the industry and all of the power. So the Dutch were used to learning French. Now it is imperative that the Francophones also learn Dutch, but none of the Wallonian teachers know Dutch. As a result, the French have 20% unemployment and businesses have a severe need for employees. As such, there are problems, since unemployment is so high. Moroccan  men have an unemployment rate of 70%. That is catastrophic. But if one wants a job here they must speak French, Dutch, and preferably English. Unless you are like the awesome sandwich lady and only speak French, but make such a sandwich that no one cares. So all in all, the poverty is pretty bad, and the poorer someone is the more they will flaunt what little money they can appear to have. As such, there is a huge market for stupid flashy crap here. It is pretty annoying. People have been complementing me on my shoes, which is something that never has happened before in my life. It turns out the first pair of shoes I have bought in nearly 4 years, for a pithy $20 is an 85 euro commodity here. So obviously, they are just complimenting my ability to buy them. Which makes me feel really uneasy. 

The point of all this is I stepped on a snail the other day. They are everywhere, and usually I watch out for them, but I was reading. They make the saddest pop sound. I have eaten them, once, it was not so great. But I didn't feel bad about it then. However, stepping on one and lifting up my foot to all of the shell fragments was terrible. Stepping on a snail I think was worse then seeing that guy die on the steps of the Bourse. But guys on the Bourse will try and steal your beer. Snails do no harm to anyone. RIP random snail driven to the parking lot because of the rain. You were a better man than I am.

Scandamazia

So, two months since my last post, that seems like a good time to add one more. My original plan was to update this for every single day that I was abroad. Obviously that has fallen through. I suppose that the complacency that goes along with moving away from being a tourist has made me more uneasy about writing a lot. Days spent trying to get various identity cards do not make interesting work. It is not that I haven't done anything interesting. I have been to three countries since my last post. I have also seen more interesting things in my time in Belgium than any person really deserves. But still, I feel like I can't write about being a student. My setting may be more interesting, but I'm still doing the same things you're doing. I'm studying, I'm writing papers, and I really dislike a few professors. Just because I'm in Europe doesn't magically make any of that mundane stuff interesting. And when I take time to go to another country it is still just a break. Anyhow, here is what I've considered important for those two months I've yet to describe.

4/Nov/2009 

I have returned to Brussels from Norway. I originally bought a ticket, and then changed the date so I could man a coat check on Halloween. The coat check job fell through though, and so instead I decided to introduce several friends to Blue Velvet. In the morning I pack very quickly and head to the train station to catch the bus to the airport in southern Belgium where my plane departs. The bus makes me feel like I am going to throw up. I am dreading the plane. However, I get to the airport and everything goes pretty smoothly. They take my toothpaste and soap, but I wasn't surprised by that. They let me keep my deodorant though, which pleased me very much. 

I get to the airport and run into two people from my college that had told me earlier they were also going to Oslo. It turns out we are in the same hostel. They talk about how great America is. I am slightly worried. They talk about how effeminate European men are. I've heard that one before, I don't care much other than it sounds pretty stupid when people say it. They talk about how much they hate Asian people. They are either not funny or openly and unapologetically racist. The latter turns out to be the case. They are as it turns out, also looking forward to Christmas. I point out that it is November. They do not see the point of my bringing this up. At least there are no awkward silences. 

We plan out a little more of what we are going to try to do while there. We make some plans and then something that makes me feel terrible is said, and we go back to planing. We finally get on the plane and I try to read, but do not succeed. More terrible things are said, during which times I remain quiet. More talk about Christmas is had, during which times I remain confused. We land and go to the hostel. We check in, and got to our respective rooms. It is a nice place, and completely spotless. I have a very favorable impression of the place. It is late so my sputniks and I go to find a restaurant. We stumble upon an Indian place with very good food called I think, New Kandahar. However, Kandahar is in Afghanistan so that is probably not right. The food is great, and with a little stumbling over my Norwegian phrase book everyone is more than happy to converse in English, modestly stating "I only speak a bit" before they go on with a perfect accent and an at least 1500 SAT vocabulary. More horrible things are said over dinner, and I feel ashamed for the better part of the trip. We are exhausted and go to bed afterwards. 

The second day I wake up before the sun is up, which I imagine is probably not saying much in winter. get ready and knock on the door of the private room. My classmates are dressed and they are more or less ready to go. I use their toothpaste while I am there. One of them has brought four different shampoos. I think this is too much shampoo, and express that thought. They seem to think it is necessary. Oh well. We go to a museum, but it is closed. We go to another and their is a man at a desk but he informs us that as it is Monday all of the museums are closed. We walk to the old costal fortress, but that is closed too. We walk around the harbor for a little while until we get to city hall. Inside there is an open hall with some paintings, and while the paintings are good it is nothing terribly impressing. However, we go up to the main hall and there are several grandiose mosaics and huge murals depicting Norway during WWII. The whole room looks over the gray ocean, and the scene is as cold as it is beautiful. We go to the sculpture park and they squeal at the nudes. I bring up the fact that one of them has said she wants 9 kids, and as such she will have to deal with a penis at least nine times. She has no response for this. It is exactly like traveling with a relative's children. Children that you have to smile and act polite to, and try to talk esthetics with, while they completely reject it. They complain a lot, but they let me take awhile to appreciate what is a very impressive place. They also let me dictate what we are doing and when, which puts me in the position of ensuring they have a good time, but I never let that inherent responsibility lord over my doing what I want. I occasionally ask if they want to do something I have planned and then we do it. The only downside is that I have no sense of direction, so if there are four possible ways to go, we wind up going four ways before we find the right way. I agree to go back to the Hostel after the sculpture park. They decide to watch The Santa Clause, apparently they are serious about this Christmas in early November thing. I toy with the idea of pretending to be Jewish, after some anti-Semitic remarks are made. I don't but I have started taking to saying "You are terrible people" when something like that is said. Again, it could be a very unfunny act, but to do it for that long would also make one a terrible person. I use the movie time to take a nap. We go to dinner after that. We go for Norwegian food this time. We get fermented cod and lutefisk to start. They are both terrible. I know it's an acquired taste. I think people were just a lot hungrier back when the first person dropped their cod in the fire, put it out, and then dug it out of the ashes and ate it. The main course comes. I ordered the Reindeer. It is served with root vegetables and is very good. We pay (too much even though it is a mid priced restaurant) and leave. I spend the rest of the evening planning out my last day, trying to figure out how to see everything I'd like to.

Day 3 I wake up and dress quickly. I meet up with the one-third of our group and go meet the other for breakfast. Breakfast goes a little long and we get a late start. We take the tram way into the suburbs to go to the science museum. Only a few stops outside of the city center we start to see large houses, but it doesn't look like urban sprawl. Maybe if I had any experience in the subject I could describe it better, but I've been to L.A. a few times, and it was 100,000 times nicer than that. We go to the science museum, which is nice enough. On the way we meet the wife of the director of Visit Oslo. She seem perplexed by our presence in the city. She is very nice though, as are most of the people. There is a perpetual motion machine that relies on weights to constantly put it off balance and keep it going. It is a cool idea, and if not for friction it would produce more energy than it took to start it, but of course, it didn't work. We next headed to the Munch Museum. We saw the Death of Marat II, The Madonna, and of course the Scream. My favorite painting was the Wave. But the most interesting thing there was when they had a drawing next to a woodcut of the same scene. That was impressive. From there we went to the folk museum by bus, which is good because as I learned later the ferry was closed for the winter. The Museum was outside of the city and it had several old buildings, including the world's oldest wooden church. It was a continuous series of roofs on the outside, and meticulously decorated. From there we headed to the Viking Museum, and then to the Maritime Museum and the Kon Tiki Museum. We headed back to the city and ate at a decent Mexican place. I figured that one time eating Norwegian was enough for my wallet. We then headed to the Nobel Center where the terrorism board game was. I may have bought it, except for the space and having nothing to do with it after December. We then went to the Royal Palace, and ate at a really good unbelievably cheap Eritrean place before going back. 

I said good bye to the people I had been borrowing toothpaste from and went into my room to try to get some of the reading done for my class on Thursday. A lot of people were in the room, and we talked for a long time. Two of the guys left. Two Belgian girls slipped a note under their door once they had. We were all in bed but not asleep when a girl from New York slipped in. We told her to turn off the light, and kept talking. I was thinking about leaving, and it made me feel terrible. For whatever reason I loved Oslo. Three days and I would have lived there if I had any hope of learning the language (which I recognize that I don't.) I woke up the next morning from the only good sleep I got the entire trip and left with the two Belgian girls in our room. I went from sleeping on the train to the airport to sleeping on the plane, which arrived 1 hour before scheduled, due to leaving 45 minutes ahead of time. I also found out my living permit was only good for one week after I received it due to a misprint. In that sense I am glad that I got to come back to Brussels, as I only have one entry on my now expired Visa.

Although not being able to leave Norway wouldn't be bad at all.

Olso, je t'aime.