'twerp.

daar sta je dan.

So, quick update: energy, increasing, made it to the gym today for the first time in many weeks. Coordination and general body function: still uncoordinated and weirdly dried-out (welll, not so weirdly, mirtazapine is like a colossal antihistamine) . Mood: decent, bumped up to remarkably good if I compare it to April 1 when I took the above picture. Sleep: decreasing a bit, waking up a little earlier every day, approaching 5am at the moment, that's with taking meds at 10:30 and going to sleep at 11:30 or so.

Priorities: skewed. Hypothetically the biggest thing that's wrong right now is that there are no more Galler white chocolate + pistachio praline bars in the house anymore. Actually that's probably for the best, they're unignorably fantastic.

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sometimes i holiday in saint-gilles.

I arrived on Passover and left on Easter Sunday, have to say Passover was more fun, but I think that's because I missed all the food and drink on Easter and almost everything outside was closed. Some nice veggie appetizers being made below pre-Passover: soft-boiled white onions stuffed with spiced lentils or fava, not sure; and yes, softened red onions stuffed with sweet potatoes and a nut of some sort, I ate eight of those.

Easter Sunday, walking to the train station yes everything closed, there's a picture of a "no frites" sign outside a clothing store.

back.

Tonight, inside: sweet potato rösti with sriracha-apple chutney, quinoa and Anat. Outside: Bruxelles, way more French than I expected. Everything: nice.

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summary judgement.

It's good to remember that vacations are not real life. Or, maybe they're real life, but they're not daily life. It's easy to visit somewhere and have it seem comparatively wonderful and trouble-free because you don't read the local papers there or see the local news there or hear about any of the bullshit social dramas that may or may not be occurring in your whorl back home. And when you actually do encounter local people on vacation, you understand even less than usual of their conversations, so you don't overhear random asocial retardedness or general xenophobia.

I say all of this to explain to myself why returning to Amsterdam seems like re-entering a pressurized space, and to remind myself to rise above it.

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Final capsule review of Ooooostende: I/we had a very good time, and just about the perfect amount of good time. It's hard to imagine having stayed any longer: we'd exhausted the promises of our research, and random flailing around was proving fruitless. Though I didn't sleep awesomely, our hotel itself was pretty awesome. The beach at night was excellent. We found a lovely local, met a nice girl there. My favorite edible thing may have been the baked goods: in my limited experience, your average Belgian bakery is a solid step above your average Dutch bakery. Also had some good mussels and frites. Though I think I prefer Dutch mayonnaise. And the mussels themselves were Dutch.

Summary judgement: there are few better palate cleansers than a quick vacation in a foreign country, even if it's just the country next door.

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As always, the downside of travel would be forced proximity to people whose language I actually do speak, because I'm a fucking elitist. Though I think just now my IQ dropped something like 25 or 30 points so I'm probably feeling slightly less elite.

In front of us on the train from Antwerp to Amsterdam were a gaggle of English teens (based on appearance I would've guessed they were 20 or so, but they referred to themselves as "teenagers" at some point). The things coming out of their mouths were so unbelievably vapid and unavoidably audible that over the course of our 2 hour trip I found myself slowly being overcome by despair for the future of humanity.

They talked CONSTANTLY. For two hours. At a certain point they couldn't multiply 6 by 8. No one had any idea how much a gram was (a cup?). Actual Serious Question: "What's a marsupial?" And they were saying not just dumb things, but morally and socially clueless and completely un-self-aware things as well. "I really like well-written books, I mean, like those are pretty much the only kind I read, ones that have got a bit of effort put into them, know what I mean? Yeah...I feel a bit bad lately for downloading them, I don't really know why." (friend asks unintelligible question) "Oh, yeah, illegally. Yeah, I don't have any money at all. (she says whilst juggling her three portable electronic devices, iPhone, iPad, iMafuckingidiot, etc.)

I swear I'm not usually this much of a curmudgeon, but their voices were simply unignorable, and apparently having my undivided attention for two hours is not always a good thing.

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halfspeed.

I'd felt a bit strange Tuesday night in Bruges, a bit more confused than usual and my legs were just keeeeelling me. I woke up Wednesday feeling the same but worse. I tried to shake it off and hit the beach, but ended up spending a few hours in bed instead.

But you can't keep a good duck down: VDuck put on his man suit and made it to a mussels and frites and green peppercorn steak dinner at Kombuis. My powers were so diminished that we ended up giving half of our frites to the Belgian couple next to us (which they accepted happily and without hesitation) nor could we quite finish our massive bowl of pretty excellent bivalves.

The manliness continued a tiny bit: one game of Scrabble at De Zeegeuzen. Then VDuck wussily limped home and fell into bed for a night of sweaty tossing and turning. And silent whining.

in bruges.

We had to go to Bruges while we were here. It was probably the first European city I ever wanted to visit, back a long time ago before we lived in Siena or Amsterdam. I kind of wish that yesterday I could have seen it as my 14-years-ago naive self would have seen it.


Today's me encountered a combination of features I'm pretty familiar with by now (cobblestones and canals, beautiful, but yis) slathered with a thick veneer of tourist-friendly cleanliness and accessibility.

In other words, as Ray would've said, Bruges was kind of a shithole. Well not really: it seemed to be a beautiful, calculated, useless capitalist museum of a city. And at first it seemed that there was NO ONE there outside of the horrendously tourist-dense center. We headed north and east in an attempt to see "the real city", and from the pics you can see that we're the only people having this idea. Fortunately this quest eventually led us to 't Poatersgat and L'Estaminet, which I'll write about more soon.



In sum: we eventually had fun! But it took some quick readjusting of plans and expectations.

scorcher.

On my way to the bakery (Aelter Patisserie) this morning at 11am or so, I passed terraces full of people drinking potent Belgian ales. Average age? 65. 11am. If I do this, I'm asleep by 2pm.

nuthammer.

Above: Nothammer indeed. Below: The Room. Our first beer, at 't Botteltje (don't think we'll be back: flat beer, flat vibe). Our second through eighth beers, at De Zeegeuzen, (a perfect bar with excellent music, lighting, and an unreasonably cute and gracious Belgian girl named Veerle behind the bar). Steak and sole meunière at Stad Kortrijk, simple and just what we needed. Back to Zeegeuze for a nightcap, then a walk home down the bustling Monday night promenade plus fireworks for no apparent reason. We did well.