Einstein Easter Eggsperts

Wednesday

As you may or may not be aware, Einstein's on Wednesday nights is for international students and if I'm not triapsing around Europe, I will usually end up here after korfbal training, attending an organisation meeting for the Leiden international Short Film Festival (LIsFE), or a get-together with the student mentors. The bar/daytime restaurant is named after Leiden's most famous resident academic. In fact, Einstein himself worked in the law building which I now attend.

This Wednesday, on the occasion of Easter, there was a special Easter egg hunt, whereby if one finds one of the 40 hidden Easter eggs placed around Einstein, one is entitled to a free drink.

While my friends were vainly looking for eggs and found perhaps only a few, on this particular day I was particularly lucky in finding 5 eggs, and as karma for giving 3 away, kicked one with my foot in a packed bar. I even spotted the egg hanging from the lamppost on the street, but by the time we made our way outside, the egg had mysteriously disappeared.

However, the award for Eggspert goes to Andrea and her German ingenuity. As you probably may not be aware, Einstein, towards the back, has a very high ceiling, lavishly decorated to harmonise with the Einstein motif of the place (with portraits of Einstein hanging everywhere and physics books lining the walls). Hanging there high out of reach was a single egg - a seemingly unobtainable goal.

After we had all exhausted our ideas, Andrea found, leaning behind a fireman's hose, a long pole with a hook at the end. With it, she weaved through the crowd and onto a table. After seeing the ridiculous sight of a long pole waving back and forth from within the crowd, we applauded as Andrea later emerged victorious with the egg. Kudos.

More German Influence

To continue the light-hearted tongue-in-cheek German-bashing theme that has pervaded this blog, here are some German songs, actions and jokes so flat that could fit under a doorway:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9UkygF8a90

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM2177pHMT0 (The Baseballs' cover of a Rihanna song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6IyGAvbOs4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XzLbGssArQ (The Papaya song - something I will never understand.)

German joke: in hell, the British cook while the Germans tell jokes.

German anecdote: my friend Thorsten was playing sport when he had a cramp, so he grabbed his muscle and yelled "Mein krampf!"

German Freudian slip: Thorsten was cooking 'spiNAZI' (spinach).

Common Dutch request of the Germans: give me back my bicycle! (In reference to the amount of Dutch bicycle metal melted into German panzer tanks)

German translations:

• No one can reach me on the water.
• You are on the woodway.

Anything said in Denglisch by Westerwelle, the German "Outside" Minister. For those interested, there is a Facebook group dedicated to Denglisch: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dont-bring-me-on-the-palm-With-me-is-not-good-cherry-eating/390569974457. It is not the yellow from the egg, but it goes.

I will never forget the countless times that Thorsten and Unger have mimicked this line.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: Brussels, 27 March 2010

Saturday

Seeing Phoenix play to a packed hall of French-speakers in Brussels' medium-sized AB Hall was quite an experience.

After a support act by Two Door Cinema Club, Phoenix took to the stage in the form of silhouettes and opened strongly with Lisztomania, starting the song behind a curtain that dramatically fell as the song reached a crescendo.

The pace and style was constantly changed from one song to the next, keeping the audience constantly engaged. An unplugged acoustic song was followed by the band's harder, more rocky sounds.

The lead singer Thomas Mars was not averse to his indulgence of getting into the audience, many times getting amongst the front row fans and once even performing deep into the audience, with microphone cord trailing like electrical wires back to the stage. He also spoke to the audience in English, but later reverted to some French and even specially performed a song in French for the predominantly French-speaking audience.

All of the favourite Phoenix songs were played and the concert was thoroughly enjoyable. I was glad I went to see Phoenix rather than the MGMT gig to which I could have had free guestlist entry.

Article written in the style of my good friend http://shakespearesister.wordpress.com/

A weekend in Brussels

To continue my list, OIE (only in Europe) would I, upon finishing a 'Law of the EU' exam, immediately hop on a train to visit Brussels ('the capital of the EU') with my French friend and stay at the home of her friends (one of whom works for the EU Commission - the 'watchdog' of the EU). I went just for the weekend with a single set of clothes, backpack and no real plans. Travel tip: if you are like me and find yourself without a towel, just use the host's hairdryer to blow-dry your body after a shower.

The spontaneous decision to go to Brussels was later vindicated by a news article (International Herald Tribune) in which I read that Copenhagen's (the alternative destination) iconic Little Mermaid statue had been temporarily taken to China for the World Expo.

Brussels startled me with its extreme decadence sitting side by side with derelict, decrepit, graffiti'd buildings. As the home of the comic-strip, there were cartoon characters decorating walls around the city. In those rich areas that were not defaced by graffiti or left empty, there was a real Disneyland feel with cute-sized hedges, cathedrals, medieval houses, fountains, lawns and cobble-stones.

AALL (As a Leiden local), I was not used to the amount of cars on the road, the lack of bicycles, and even Brussels' relatively tame level of car-smoke; and realised that the Dutch do have it good. And the mosquitos! Mais pourqoui, ce n'est pas les tropiques! But AALL I was able to recognise the Flemish language, which is essentially Dutch, used alongside French.

Touristy things I saw: the EU Parliament complex (with limited access due to the EU summit on how to deal with the bankrupt Hellenic state), the Magritte Museum (located in Brussels' central museum complex and dedicated to its homegrown Surrealist artist), le Grand Place, and later, Mannekin Pis (Brussel's overrated iconic statue of a little pissing boy) and his sister Jeanneke Pis (also overrated and also peeing). Le Grand Place (or Grote Markt) is a large cobble-stoned market square surrounded on all four sides by impressive building facades. Reputedly one of the best market plazas in Europe. On one side however, the relief decorations are recognisably asymmetrical. This mistake lead to the designer's subsequent suicide, so the story goes, by throwing him/herself out of the bell-tower of the same building.

At the end of one day of sightseeing, we caught the train out to the outskirts of town where, ten years ago, I had visited the Atomium (a giant atom structure) on a family trip. The Atomium was still as shiny today. On the way back, I was drawn to an adjacent art deco/Gotham city/Berlin style building. We went inside to find that we had stumbled upon a Fine Arts expo. Inside were stalls promoting luxuries such as fine Belgian chocolate, exotically-scented candles, chandeliers and collectable original manuscripts and letters from famous thinkers and composers. In the next exhibition hall was a Geek 'Magic' card game convention that did not garner as much interest.

Food and drink
Belgian beers in dark bars decorated with puppets (most of which were evil and grotesque) and old metallic advertisement signs. Local insider tip: take a Kwak beer at the hidden Toone theater with some Gouda cheese with mustard and celery salt. This I did on Saturday night with French-speaking companions Severin, Guillaume and Nahry who were kind enough to translate every sentence that I missed.

Coconut beer, served in coconut shells.

Kip-kap: a side dish of ham that is similar to Vietnamese nem chua, served with mustard and pickles and gherkins.

Tinned escargots, bought at the supermarket.

Belgian chocolate in the form of sauce on a pork dish.

Study bender

My laptop caught a virus three days before an exam! Consequently, blog-photo-uploading-consistency will suffer henceforth.

I had three cups of free coffee today from the trolley outside the Law Library. I am high on learning and "Assuming that in Sweden there is no rule on minimum fruit % in jam sold with the word 'jam' on it. There is in NL (40%). Swedish jam has 30%..."

Interesting note on the German's attitude to drinking (of course, not representative of the whole country):

The Germans had to justify in the case of Cassis de Dijon (European Court of Justice), why their import restriction on low alcoholic producets was necessary in the EU's single market. So they argue, to one's countertuition, that having a mimimum alcohol content is in the public interest. In other words, they said that having a higher alcohol content in drinks was healthier!

How did they justify this? By saying that people would develop a tolerance on lower alcohol drinks and develop drinking problems in the future!

Alpine adventures, alpine academics, alpine anarchy

On Saturday, it was a matter of getting back on the skis and starting to open my law books.
On Sunday, it was skiing, skiing, then studying.
By midweek I was ripping the natural half pipes formed by valleys, watching beautiful white fluff coming off the mountains and even reading my law books on the excrutiatingly and infamously slow Risoul chairlifts. Nothing like a bit of EU law 10 metres up in the fresh mountain air then a quick zip down a blank white mountain to clear the mind.

The colourful and warm candy shop in Risoul 1850.

Just like reading "Fear and Loathing" on my road trip across America, or "On the road" while first experiencing the freedom of solo travelling in a foreign country, or "Memoirs of a Geisha" while exploring the Gion district of Kyoto, studying EU law on a ski trip in the French Alps while on exchange in Holland (enjoying one of its brainchilds: the free movement of persons across internal EU borders) was interesting and relevant.

On anarchy, there was a gross violation in the middle of the night. While all four of us boys were sleeping in our room, two intruders had slipped deep into our room and only awoke us when they left the room. It is the worst feeling to have unknown people leave one's room in the middle of the night without knowing why and how they were there. The next morning we realised 50 euros was missing from Filipe's wallet.

On the bright side, here are 3 things that made my day on 3 days of the trip:
1. While waiting outside a pharmacy for my friend to get her medicinal sock in Risoul 1850 town (after falling and being helicoptered down off the mountain for 700 euros thus prompting my decision to buy snow sports insurance), a young girl of about 4 years of age walked past a few strides behind her father. She looked over in my direction and gave me a sweet smile for absolutely no reason at all. What a blessing.

2. Whooshing through what seemed like miles and miles of white off-piste blankness with music blasting in my ears, on skis, after tackling a black piste with moguls.

3. The girl that all of a sudden appeared on her balcony, confidently sang Dragostea Din Tea at the top of her lungs, did a little jig, then retreated back into her apartment, to the bemusement of all of us queuing outside the ski shop on the ground floor to return our ski gear on the final day. This was at the relatively early hour of 9am on the Saturday morning after the big toga party.

On this trip I realised that nowhere else but in Europe would I have been, and was indeed, served port and introduced to Brazilian Drum&Bass by a Portuguese, had a traditional French apres ski dinner of raclette and fondue with a French, offered the opportunity to do an on-the-spot bar mitzvah by a Jew, and been served a special Irish dinner of sausages, mash, veggies and soup then had my face painted with a four-leaf clover by an Irish before going to a St Pat's party. I also learnt how to have a 'Portugese shower' (just spray oneself with deodorant), enjoyed the simple pleasure of jambon cru with bread heaped with butter, and that French emmental cheese goes very well with carrots.

How the Ancient Romans must have kept their keys back in the day + Nahry's crazy moonboots!

After a week of perfect ski conditions, with mostly fine sunny days, the weather turned rainy and the snow slushy just on the last day as we all chaotically cleaned our rooms and packed our bags. What perfect timing.