E'pean musings

Now's as good a time as any to ramble on about the recent trip, primarily for the sake of my own memory (i.e. or else i may forget what i did), since that would be a likely thing to happen once nie starts again. And don't those credit card commercials always say that such and such costs so much, but memories are priceless? Anyways, i dunno how much time i may have to do that from tom onwards, and before i know it it's already been more than a month since i left... So maybe let me correct the first statement, it's not as good a time as any, rather, it's as good a time as any time before tomorrow.

Amsterdam was where i landed, and was probably the place i went to this time that i was most familiar with, since i've been there two times before. The first time was seventeen-and-a-half years ago though, so that doesn't really count, while the second was for a choir trip in 2001 where we had a day tour of the city that can best be described as the exact opposite of free-and-easy (given the reputation that the city carries, and that the way the choir tours tends to lean towards the ultimate control freak variety, i guess it's no surprise that the red light areas were not part of the tour). I think we only did the token day tour cos we happened to land in Schiphol in the first place. And come to think of it, that my flight happened to be to Amsterdam was probably the only reason why i spent two days there as well. Well as it turned out it was quite an interesting and intriguing starter to the trip, and i'm glad i decided to go there again since i managed to see things that i had not seen before (including some stuff through some windows that i probably in retrospect should not have seen).

Amsterdam was the only place i actually experienced snow falling during the trip - it was at night in the hostel and i was prepared to go to sleep. It had been drizzling outside, but then i guess it got colder and soon some others remarked that the raindrops had turned to snow. Just for the sake of it i went outside to the fire escape and do all those things you'd expect a suaku S'porean to do like take pictures and stick out my tongue to catch snowflakes. Just as well in any case, since there was to be no more actual snowfall (apart from when i was in the train) during the trip.

I've always been rather obsessed with visiting as many countries as possible, and while i'd been to Belgium before, it was only a non-stop drive-through that just happened to pass through Belgian soil since that was what lay between the Netherlands and France. So saying i've been to Belgium before would have to come with an asterisk. This time i finally set foot on the soil for a change. Again, coming from S'pore, it was a refreshing change to go to Bruges and find that seemingly almost every building of note was older than S'pore itself. Talk about an embarassment of riches. If i'd any regret about Bruges, it would be that i knew of the existence of the movie "In Bruges" before the trip, but had conveniently forgotten about it while planning and during the trip itself, and then only remembered it again during my next stop.

I ended up traveling alone cos i figured i would not be able to find anyone who would want to do Europe, or at least at that time and in the way i would have wanted to do it. Over the whole course of the trip, the occasional thought like "oh you idiot why are you walking along this poorly-lit street at this time of night, you wanna get mugged?" came to mind but thankfully none of these came to fruition. It was actually pretty safe, come to think of it. Just had to make sure that i didn't do stupid things like count my $ in public and such and such. In fact, i thought that at the end of the day the only two drawbacks to being alone were 1) the usual how to take pix of oneself problem, and 2) feeling paiseh to step into a proper sit-down place for a meal on my own. So it was in Bruges that #2 came into effect, as even though there's all sorts of interesting Belgian food to try, i never got around to eating any of it, cos i'd have to go to one of the fancier sit-down places for that. So even though i was even prepared to eat stuff like rabbit, i didn't get the opportunity to do so (and just as well the other day i was watching this documentary which showed that some wild E'pean rabbits are infested with ticks).

I had randomly found out about couchsurfing through some newspaper article last year, and when it came down to planning for the trip i realized that it would be a real cool way to go about with things, for at least part of the way. So i managed to do that in both Maastricht (which i sorta randomly decided to go to, not knowing much more about it than that there was the treaty) and Luxembourg (see my obsession with going to as many countries as possible above). Turns out that it's a great idea, it really helps to know and understand a place better if you've people who stay there to bring you up to speed (and of course, the S'porean in me can't fault the fact that you technically don't have to pay for lodging). And it also so happened that these are places that are not quite as touristy as most of the other places i went to, so getting good reliable info from my hosts was quite neat. Basically (provided you get good hosts, which i did) it brings out the best in people :) Look forward to the next opp to do that (when?)...

The whole of the second half of the trip was spent in France. Initially i'd looked forward to the trip mainly as an opportunity to finally go there after having (allegedly) learnt French for five whole years (the only other time i went there being the same seventeen-and-a-half years ago trip). Then, once i got to French-speaking parts in Belgium and Luxembourg, after the luxury of being able to get by with English before that, i realized that i was somewhat out of my depth, and that my so-called French was really really that bad... You can therefore imagine my euphoria after i carried out my first successful French coversation , even if it only consisted of two guys asking me if the train at the platform was headed to Luxembourg and me replying "je ne sais pas" (i dunno). I also chickened out of reserving my train tickets in France at the local ticket counter, as i had spent at least two days trying to figure out all the vocabulary and grammar that i might have needed in my head, but still came up short (so instead i went up to a ticket counter while i was still in Luxembourg, straight up asked "Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?", and heaved a huge sigh of relief when she replied "yes").

Well, over the course of the week i was there, things did get better and by the end of the trip, i thought i could get by pretty well, such that on the Air France flight home, i made sure i still spoke to the cabin crew in French (even if all i had to say was oui, non, jus d'orange, and le poulet, s'il vous plaît). Along the way there were petty little triumphs, like when i went for lunch with a Brazilian friend i met at my hostel in Paris and i was able to get by ordering for the both of us and explaining to him what was on the menu. One thing i realized though, my ability to speak French drops drastically in cold weather. Since speaking French involves making a lot of mouth-contorting sounds that are not present in English, i realized that when i had to speak French outdoors (say when grabbing a meal at a Christmas market), i'd be hard-pressed to pronounce a lot of the words properly cos my face would be numb from the cold. Still managed to get by thankfully...

I was also amazed by how the Lord was working in my life while i was there. Since i was going by myself, i'd initially envisioned this trip as some kind of personal retreat, something that i knew i would need after last sem at nie (and will need for this one :p). However, when i got there i may have gotten carried away with (and again i blame the S'porean in me) the desire to see as much as possible within the limited time that i had. So basically that meant 1) i must have walked an average of 5km a day, if not more, which works out to more than a marathon's distance covered while i was there (not to mention aching feet and knees every night), and 2) i was perhaps a bit too distracted for my liking. It turned out though that through a guy i met at my first hostel in Amsterdam (the Christian one in the heart of the red-light district), i received a contact of someone in Strasbourg, who when i was there brought me to a charismatic evangelical home cell group. It was such a blessing to even just be there and be encouraged by the believers there, even if everything was conducted in French and hence i only understood about half of the conversations that were going on. Incidentally, one of the ladies there even remarked that the French that i could speak was spoken without an accent (something that i attribute to regularly watching TV5 Monde), which was somewhat affirming to hear heh... At the end of the day, i think i've been inspired by this trip to improve my French further, with the aim of having it eventually surpass Chinese as my second-best language (and that shouldn't be too hard eh?)

So all in all, i'm really glad for the opportunity to go for this trip, and i definitely learnt a lot. Look forward to the next trip, which hopefully will come within the year. I'll definitely need it, from the looks of things...