I guess I didn't hate January.

The never-ending saga of my moving house has finally come to an end. This also means I've achieved probably my only really serious New Year's resolution: to stop putting up with things that annoy me. Which unfortunately meant my landlady had to go. Or rather I had to go. Because she owns where I was.

I'm failing spectacularly with the other ones by the way, although I am now mentally berating myself for forgetting my glasses every time I leave the house, so that's something.

This victory didn't seem so sweet on Tuesday however; because cleaning nine flights of stairs rarely screams 'I've won!'. Being told to clean the last flight again even less so. And no, I'm not the sort of person who cleans stairs just because someone tells them to, but this woman has my money, and without a common fluent language between us, argument is just too tiring.

That doesn't mean I wasn't angry, and it certainly doesn't mean that I didn't vent to everyone I know. I mean the stairs, why do the stairs have to be so clean? Also why is it such a surprise that they don't look that great even after I've cleaned them? They're covered in years old linoleum and 5 people walk up and down them every day, how nice are they ever going to look. They're not even covered in the same linoleum all the way up. And the bottom flight are just badly painted. I'm not an interior decorator, and unless you're planning on using the stairs to eat from then I'm pretty sure they're fine.

But my new place is so nice I don't really care. It still doesn't have an oven though. Why do I never live anywhere with an oven? It's near an Aldi too, so maybe I'll be able to afford to eat all 5 food groups now.

Claire, I wouldn't eat meat from Aldi, you'll get ill.

Yeah well I've already had food poisoning since I've been here and I haven't cooked red meat in about 4 months. So quite frankly, Aldi can come at me.

I also have a double bed for the first time in my life, so I can now sleep alone in more space than someone of my size could ever need. Hurray.

This is all sounding a little bit too good isn't it? Probably a good time to mention that the walls have that 'distressed' look about them which makes it look ever so slightly like the house from The Blair Witch Project.

But I've got my own sink so, you know, whatever.

January didn't just mark the end of everyone listening to me complain about my landlady though, it involved planning things to look forward to, some really good films, some really great nights out, a lot of The Sopranos and it shouldn't be forgotten that I spent the first week of it at home with a lot of the people I love.

Oh and Justin Timberlake released a new single. So you know, it was a pretty good month actually.

Happy February everyone.

xx

I was ill, but then I got better. So it was fine.

Private Jones: Mitch, I fucking got one!

Corporal Mitchell: What you want a fucking sweetie? Keep shooting you cunt!

This is why all horror films should be British; none of the ridiculous puns of American films, just lots of swearing. That's basically all I've done whilst I've been ill, I watched The Exorcist on Friday for about the 100th time, and no matter how many times I see it I can't help but feel a little annoyed that it kind of has a happy ending. Not that I'm against happiness, it's just not how horror films should be. Definitely not as annoyed as I am at The Texas Chainsaw Massacre though, in which every character is so irritating, I'm actually rooting for the silent serial killer. Seriously if you start walking when the killer is within grabbing distance of you, you deserve to be chainsawed(?) to death.

It's also come to my attention lately, that I have really weird taste in fictional men. Just stay with me on this, this isn't going to be about how hot the cast of 90210 are, I promise.

I've already proclaimed my love for Ryan Howard from The Office, and I know, I know he's emotionally void and he kind of goes crazy when he gets promoted and starts doing shit loads of drugs and embezzling money...but in the 'Grief Counselling' episode instead of telling a story about the death of someone close to him, he tells the story of how Mufasa dies in The Lion King -  and if your approach to grief counselling is to tell part of a Disney story, then we need to get married.

Nathan from Misfits is another one, because apparently if your one goal is to annoy other people and make ridiculously inappropriate jokes, then I will think you're the best thing that's ever happened to the world. He has completely irrational reactions to everything, and is therefore the love of my life.

Nathan: Are you asking me out on a date?
Simon: No... I meant all of us.
Nathan: Did you? ... I am not your whore!

Guy Secretan from Green Wing is probably the most prominent and unreasonable adorations:

Dr.  Dear: It is for a good cause.

Dr.  Secretan: I don't do good causes, OK? A charity shag maybe, but certainly not to raise fucking money for medical equipment.

It's not like I don't know what terrible 'real life' partners these people would make, they basically live to be infuriating and find it impossible to take anything seriously and/or be emotionally capable, and to be honest that's really not what I should be looking for. BUT, they are about 20 million times more interesting than Edward Cullen/any male lead in those films where the someone dies/I don't even want to talk about (500) Days of Summer.

In other news, the key that has the comma on it fell off my keyboard, so I keep accidentally typing full stops instead, I've tried to correct all these grammatical errors, but sorry just in case. Oh and I broke a mug, fused the lights in my room, and spilt tea on my floor. The last two I did within the space of like an hour. I expect a serious injury within the week.

And I'm more than a little frustrated with living here right now; all I've wanted is blueberries and cookies from a supermarket bakery, but to afford the former I'd have to sell my organs and the latter just don't exist apparently. Way to go Belgium, way to go.

But good stuff has happened too! I received confirmation that I'm getting my Erasmus grant at some point in time so I'll be able to afford food (but still not blueberries) and stuff which will be a nice change. I successfully changed the light bulb in my room and overall everyone's been really nice whilst I've recovered from being poisoned by some food. So that's nice :)

I went to a lovely event hosted by my friends at CBI, and today I went to a seminar where the John Harris, editor of Politico, spoke. Politico is basically the nearest Washington gets to un-partisan journalism, so that was pretty cool. And I was persuaded to go out on Saturday night, so we danced on tables for a bit and the learned played chess in a bar until it closed.

I haven't really chatted about work so far, and just as a warning that's probably not going to change because I'm absolutely convinced I'm going to accidentally let something really important slip and initiate a crisis/lose my job.

Au revoir!

xx

I've stopped getting those 'WELCOME TO...' texts from my network when Icross a border.

Which is probably the biggest 'stop doing these ridiculous coach journeys' sign you can get, if my own phone company can't be bothered to acknowledge how much I'm moving around, then I should probably stop doing it. At least for a little while.

But yet this coach is always full, who is doing this journey from London to Brussels in the middle of November on a Sunday night? Apparently the answer to that is shit loads of people. And the guy sat next to me on the journey to London apparently found it acceptable to do a mini work out next to me. So many hours in the day and you couldn't just not do weird breathing exercises for those 2 hours? Really? But on a happier note London looks beautiful now all the lights are on, and I'm lucky enough to drive down the street with both the Harrods and Harvey Nichols Christmas windows on them, they're amazing.

I also met someone on the coach who said my accent made me sound intelligent, something I'm still trying to process to be honest.

And I need to find somewhere else to travel from, so I can stop being harassed in the train station. Just a heads up,  if I've told you I don't understand a word of French (lie) and from the little English you understand I've also managed to tell you I have a husband and a child (also lies). Then you need to step back, and stop hitting on me. Cheers. 10/10 for persistence though, I'm not saying you didn't try. Just that you didn't really realise when you'd failed.

So a quick update on my day, it would appear that I am ill, so today has so far been spent watching Alex Day read Twilight on Youtube. Now no one can attack me for saying I hate it and not having read it, because now I sort of have, at least in the sense of watching someone criticise it chapter by chapter. What got me in particular was that there seems to be a real interest into why Edward saves Bella from being hit by a car,; does that really need an explanation? Isn't that actually a pretty normal thing to do, would you really sit there and wonder what potential sinister motives they could have? Also apparently in Twilight it's totally okay to start talking about marrying someone when you've only known them for 2 weeks, and in the same conversation discuss how easily they could crush your skull. Don't even get me started on the 'forgot to breathe' thing when she faints.

Anyway, my weekend was awesome, it started off with a Post-Election Party, during which I watched a man who looked like an older Hugh Grant dance very well.

Dear whoever you are, I'm modelling my future husband on you.

It continued with a trip to Lydney to see Alex, who for some reason left her summer in Sydney to do winter in the South West of Britain, but I'm very glad she did. For some reason I've only taken about 4 photos from the past 2 weekends so I can't even show you what we did, something we did do is make sweet potato at like 10pm on Friday night. The lesson there is that watching too many cooking programmes set in the English countryside will give you irrational cravings. And then I went to Bath for half a day, and Bristol for about an hour and experienced my Uni life again and as a result was pretty sad to leave and come back to reality. But on the upside we've started house-hunting for final year. I'm still in that stage where I'm looking out houses I clearly can't afford, in other words, I'm looking for a house in Bath.

Here I am with Chepstow Castle.

I'm not one to absorb joy - Jon Richardson.

I know how you feel babe, I know how you feel.

xx

No spoilers here - just good food.

 

Look how beautiful Brussels is in the autumn! It's still like 20°C here at the moment, which is even better. I really feel that if it was always this temperature and looked this good then I'd stay here forever, but realistically I'm just waiting for winter to return with a vengeance.

Okay so I saw Taken 2 over the weekend, it was really good, that's all I'm saying.

There is a post coming but that probably won't be for another month or so, to prevent the punches in the face that I would totally deserve if I completely ruined the film for anyone who reads my blog.

I also made a very dangerous discovery:

And it's only €0.15. They shouldn't make something that's so tempting that cheap, especially not when 6 apples are like €3 or something ridiculous. But luckily after you've eaten one you can't  imagine eating anything sweet ever again, so as food, it more than does its job, and you definitely couldn't have too many of them. And I'm actually doing exercise now, so I don't feel that bad - actually, what am I saying, I never feel bad when it comes to food. My bad eating habits are definitely the worst symptom of my limbo financial situation where I have no idea how much I'm going to have to live off for the next 8 months - to say I go to what is now the third best University in the country, they sure take their sweet time to respond to their students. Clearly time taken to (helpfully) reply to emails was not one of the criteria.

They've started selling Christmas themed biscuits in the Delhaize now, so if you hadn't already noticed, Christmas is coming. Usually I'm not excited this early but I'm travelling home on the night of Halloween and they don't celebrate Bonfire Night here for obvious reasons so it's the only winter holiday I really have this year. And it's going to be the first time in about 5 years (seriously, what have I been doing with my life) that I won't spend Christmas tidying gift displays and getting up at 5am on Boxing Day (okay really, I didn't realise how awful that was until I saw it written down). I'm not even going to mention the fact I won't have to do any revision, because that's just mean.

Apparently this post is almost entirely about food because I'm now going to talk a bit about the amazing Romanian food I had for lunch (and dinner) at the event I went to on Saturday. Salată de vinete is mashed aubergine and chopped onions, it's amazing on bread, pancakes with ham and cheese, eggs stuffed with pâté and a side dish made with tomatoes and root vegetables. Dessert was pastry filled with cream (best description I can think of) and what were basically Hobnobs but they were home made so obviously ten times more amazing. Overall, I had two very good meals from that food. Thanks Romania.

Continuing the theme, the crisp flavours here are just baffling, so they use blue for paprika and green for pickles, which is...fine I guess, I mean blue for paprika is a weird choice but whatever. But the issue is really that those are the only flavours you can get, which means someone at Walkers/Lays decided that Belgium didn't need a variety of crisp flavours, they needed Paprika, Pickle, Naturel and nothing else. And now they've got this special edition hamburger flavour which is not only the worst thing I can imagine but its also taking up space which could be used for other normal flavours. I don't even like crisps that much, but it bothered me that should I ever crave them, I'd have incredibly limited options.

I think that's pretty much it.

Oh and I'm going home in like 8 days.  So excited.

Lots of love!

xx

Good news

It feels like I've done a lot complaining in these posts since I moved here, although that's hardly because I'm not enjoying myself, and mostly because posts saying 'everything is great!' would be short and not very interesting. So this post is going to be some good things,one tiny tiny bad thing that was so disappointing  it can't go without comment, and some photos.

Good things:

• Well first of all Brussels is lovely, I'm settled and very much enjoying myself, also we get 2 new housemates this weekend and meeting new people is never a bad thing.


• Turns out the 'third time lucky' myth really works, third time walking to my meeting building and I got there absolutely fine (and without wandering round streets I had no reason to be on), have since made the journey twice more with great success. And never without an umbrella.


• My coat arrived, it's actually way too warm to wear at the moment but I'm now fully prepared for the infamous 'Brussels weather'.


• The self-service machines in Delhaize don't have a bagging area, which is probably the best idea I've ever heard. They also don't yell at you like the ones in British supermarkets do, it's definitely all-round a more relaxing experience if you dislike human contact/are in a rush.


• It's only 5 days until my family get here! I've never been so excited to see them, in 2 years of university I was barely homesick, but I feel so far away over here, and this isn't helped by their inability to use Skype because the home computer is so slow it's actually more time-effective for them to wait for me to come home at Christmas.


• I found a shop that sells these things:
  I think you can still get them in the UK but I haven't been able to find them for years and I'm so picky about sweets that I end up giving away the majority of a normal packet of fruit Mentos, so this is pretty exciting.


• It's only 50 cents for a hotdog in IKEA, and you can get 2 and a drink for €1.50, a packet of 4 donuts is only €1.60. I don't (and probably don't want to know) why it's so cheap, but I'm definitely not swimming in money at the moment, so it was good to see.

One tiny tiny bad thing:

• This barely deserves its own section but it was a pretty big disappointment; basically, when I first visited Delhaize I spotted some pre-cooked waffles with jam in the middle, obviously having just moved to Belgium this was pretty exciting. So, finally, when they came on offer this week I bought some, excitedly went home, only to be completely disappointed. Far too much jam, they tasted nothing like waffles, I only ate half and was so devastated I had to throw the other away.

That bit wasn't very interesting, I apologise.

Some photos:

Au revoir!

xx