The Dentist

I went to the dentist today for the first time since moving here.

I know, I know... it's very poor dental hygiene on my part.

In my defense, it wasn't just pure laziness that kept me from making the appointment. I was also a little nervous. The Belgian medical system is different from the Canadian one -- things seem to be much less sterile and scientific. Doctors often have their clinics in their own homes, so you'll sometimes walk through a living room to get to their office.

My dermatologist, for instance, conducts his exams in his apartment. While on one hand it's very natural and welcoming and lovely to be part of his home, on the other it's kind of creepy to have the smell of the roast dinner that his wife is whipping up in the kitchen intermingle with the scent of your burning skin as he cauterizes the incision he made after removing a funny-looking mole.

The eye doctor was also a strange experience. Once again, I went to her house. She had created a sort of waiting room/sitting room on the landing of the stairs and I sat there until she was ready for me. When it was time to go into her office, I was relieved to see the modern, fancy ophthamologist chair -- maybe her methods wouldn't seem as "home made" as the dermatologist.

Ha.

In Canada you sit in the sleek dentist-like chair and the doctor pulls a super fancy set of goggly-things in front of your eyes and she clicks through until you find your perfect perscription. That's not how it worked for me. Instead, once I was sitting down the doctor pulled out a wooden box. Seriously, it was like my heel-wearing, funky-hairct-having forty-year old doctor had suddenly been transported back to Dust Bowl Era Oklohoma and she wanted to sell me snake oil for my lumbago.

Inside the case, rather than bottles of Marvelous Marvin's Cure For Ails You were rows of funny looking wooden glasses. The doctor put a pair on my face and told me to read the letter chart. She increased or decreased the lens strength in each eye by taking out a lens and putting a new one. Everything was wooden. It was like something out of Little House on The Prairie, only I'm pretty sure Doc Baker never charged Pa 60 euros for an examination.

Anyway, after those experiences, I feel that my hesitation about the dentist was well-founded. What if hefound a cavity, but didn't believe in pain killers?What if he just wrapped my head in a big white cloth and stuck an icepack to my cheek? What if he tied a string around my tooth and attached it to a door knob and then slammed the door? I've seen cartoons, I know how these things work...

It turns out I was right to be nervous, but not for the reasons I had feared. My problem was that my dentist was young. He was a child, no scratch that, he was a fetus, no, he was a zygote.

Have I now become one of those people who complains about how young everyone is?

Apparently.

I could have babysat the kid -- in fact maybe I should have because he needed help. Firstly, he had a nervous laugh. Everytime he giggled I flinched and had to stifle the urge to run screaming from the room. Seriously, dentists and pilots should be screened out if they have nervous laughs -- you want confidence from these people, not weird tittering after every declarative statement.

Secondly, when I told him that it had been two years since my last cleaning he said, "Oh, then this is going to be bad." I asked him to repeat what he said, because I assumed I had misunderstood. I hadn't. He said, "Well, it's been so long that this is really going to hurt you." Ah, perfectly clear, just not exactly COMFORTING.

Anyway, twenty white-knuckled minutes later, I was pronounced tartar and cavity free. I left Baby Dentist's office with smooth, clean teeth and the happy thought in my heart that I never had to see him again.

Now I just have to make Andy an appointment...

Summer of Elsewhere

We were at a party last week and everyone was complaining about what lousy summer weather we had, and I was contradicting people, saying it wasn't that bad. Everyone thought I was delusional, and I was defending myself like crazy when it occrred to me that I thought the weather was decent because we were only rarely in Brussels.

The Hor-Tecs had a busy summer, no doot aboot it. In May we went to Bermuda and Canada. In June we came back from Canada and went to Ireland. Then we hit London and Iceland in July and went to Wales in August. We capped the whole glorious time off with a few days in Croatia in September. I have to say, my life is pretty darn sweet!

Here are some pretty random pics from the summer of elsewhere.

Here's a pic of Andyroo in Regent's Park in London, which we had to walk through every day from our hotel to get to the British Library. It was very pretty. We saw Spamalot in the West End one night. I was quite sneery at all of the Monty Python nerds eagerly singining along to the songs and reciting the "unladen swallow" bit word for word, right along with the actors. That is - cough - until the next day when Andy and I went and saw the Mamma Mia movie, and I nearly leapt out of my seat with joy when Meryl Streep led those large Greek ladies in a rousing chorus of Dancing Queen. Obviously Abba (not to mention Sound of Music, Anne of Green Gables, Dirty Dancing, North of Sixty, early Degrassi and Judging Amy -- last three are not musicals, I know, but trust me, they are embarrassing) lovers should not throw stones -- or "la vache" in this case.

We didn't spend all of our time travelling, though, and we were in Brussels for a lot of summer weekends. One day we went downtownish to celebrate the reopening of Place Flagey, which is a key traffic square in central Brussels, which has been under construction, I am not making this up, for over five years. How do Bruxellois celebrate finally having unimpeded access to a square that has made traffic a giant snarly mess for half a decade? Why they close the square to vehicles of course and have a party!

This is the square in question. Not a car to be seen. I love that modernist (Art Deco?) building behind Andy... It's designed to look like a ship and it does.

One of the bands celebrating the square's reopening. I took this picture because I was very impressed with how cool the accordionist was. Not an easy thing to look funky and interesting while wailing away on one of those puppies, but she manages. Also, the tuba dude has a definite Lenny Kravitz vibe.

We also entertained occasionally... Although, really, I'm such a poor housewife that the dinner party this night was catered exclusively by the chicken truck (chicken, ribs, potatos, green beans) and grocery store booze. I did make a salad -- a bag of lettuce, some halved cherry tomatos, a cucumber (which I PEELED, thank you very much) and some oil and vinegar.

We also went to Wales to see our friends Bruce and Sue. They were having renovations done to their house, so we went to Bruce's parents place. They live in a teeny little village, down adorable hedgerow lanes on a little farm filled with sheep. It's all too perfect and wonderful for words.

see?

Sheep!


The best part was that Bruce's parents INSISTED on doing all of the cooking, so we were presented with delicious feast after delicious feast. That fruit is from their garden , yo.

We also went and saw historical things, like this house.

...Where for once I made Andrew pose in the stupid fashion:

Bruce and Sue have two highly adorable kids, but I have manfully (womanfully) refrained from posting any pics of them up here, because I figured you'd much prefer seeing middle-agedish people instead... Ha ha.

Almost Famous

A couple of nights ago Andrew and I spent the evening being filmed for Flemish Belgian national TV! It was quite exciting, let me tell you. I'm an ex-member of the Canadian Club (social group, not whiskey) and I'm still on their mailing list. A couple of weeks ago a notice went around that the popular Flemish national TV show Maan Bijt Hond (Man Bites Dog) was looking for a Canadian couple to include in their survey of different nationalities living in Belgium. We thought it would be fun so we put our names forward and were picked!

We didn't get paid or anything, but it was quite an experience. A three person crew came to our house on Monday night and spent an hour or so setting up lights and things. They actually made us move an Inuit painting we have in the office out into the living room, so there would be something "Canadian" in the background.

See? It's the green one to the right:

After they had set up our apartment we had to go outside so that they could film the opening scene, which features us with our building in the background. Andrew and I were a little late getting down there because the producer (Ann) asked us to change into long sleeve shirts so it would look more "wintry" -- see all the deception that goes into TV-making? Shocking!

Anyway, by the time we got down there the local kids who congregate in our square had swarmed the camera and sound guy and were begging to be filmed. It was kind of awesome because the kids treated us like rock stars when we came out. I have to say, I ate up the attention from those kids (or my "fans" as I like to call them). Filming an English-language 15 minute "bit" for a Flemish TV show aired only in Belgium is as close as I'm ever going to get to international celebrity... Kind of sad.

Another awesome thing happened after we had filmed the outdoor scene. There was one particular kid who was super obnoxious and kept begging to get filmed. The camera dude was nice about it, but the kid was quite persistent. As we were headed back inside, the kid kept circling us on his bike, screaming, "Filmer moi! Filmer moi!" and doing wheelies. Then, as he was in mid scream, he biked too close to the curb and completely wiped out. It was quite hilarious and the swarm of kids laughed hysterically, as did all of the adults. The kid was fine (I'm sure).

Anyhoots, we headed back inside for the actual show.
Here's the light and the big camera (sorry for the blurriness):

Then we sat down and answered one hundred questions about ourselves. The format of the whole show, Maan Bijt Hond, is a bunch of little segments about different aspects of life in Flanders and Belgium. One of the segments for the new season are these intereviews with expats living in Belgium. So over each hour long show, they'll air a segment with interviews from various different couples featuring snippets of their answers.

That's the camera dude.
He kept a half-smoked cigarette tucked behind his ear.
Cool, or kind of gross?

That's the sound guy.
He was bald on top with a long mullet of hair in the back.
Cool or kind of gross?

Ann asked all kinds of questions ranging from "What was your first car." To "When was was the last time you cried?" It was kind of fun answering them, especially hearing Andrew's responses. I learned a few things about my husband that I didn't know. Like the first girl he kissed was when he was 8 years old and they were in a box in her basement. How did that tidbit of information escape me?!

It did get kind of tiring by the end, which is the only way I can explain why I went along with Ann's suggestion that I sing a few lines from Canadian Shania Twain's classic, "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under." I pray to God that bit doesn't get aired!

All in all it was a pretty fun time, though. Even when she asked us how much we weighed (I declined to respond to that one -- If I lie to my doctor, why in the world would I tell all of Flanders? -- Apparently there are limits that even I won't stoop to).

Deadbeat blogging

I haven't blogged in forever.

In my defense things got very busy there for a while -- we went to Wales, I'm in a panic about my thesis, we had our house taken over by a throng of 3,5, 13, 32 and 35 year olds... blah blah blah. I am now repentant and ready to rise from the ashes and blog anew.

So. Iceland.

Common Icelandic traffic problem

At the fishing museum ... What is it about me that can't resist the stupid photo op? It gives me an insane amount of pleasure to put my head in a mouth of shark's teeth, throw on a pair of viking horns, pretend to be a lion, cross my eyes, flex non-existent biceps...
I suspect it's because I'm the fourth of five children and have spent my life in a quest to get as much attention as humanly possible at all times.
Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!



What the vikings ride when they are not pillaging villages or worshipping Thor.

This is a dish of rancid shark meat. Icelanders used to catch the sharks in tiny little boats on rough Arctic seas, then, because the meat was so inedible, they would bury it for months, allowing it to ferment and rot. Then they would dig it out and chow down. We tried some. The guidebooks describe it as a cross between horseradish and roadkill, and that's about right.
Those Vikings are tough mo fos.

They no longer bury the meat but hang it in sheds -- take that Jaws.



This is some sort of important, point I think... I'm going to make something up and say it's the most easterly point in Iceland... I don't remember anymore. The perils of waiting a month and a half to blog after visiting somewhere, I guess.




Whale Skull




This is the sign for a common ye olde Icelandic pastime -- lifting heavy stuff.
In this case it was rocks:

My big strong man.



Cait's big strong man.



Notice how the rest of us are wearing tuques and multiple layers? Harry is in shorts and has taken his shoes OFF. Far be it from me to judge someone, but Harry is super cukoo.





Trying to hide from the wind. We look like marmots. Is that an animal?




So, the coolest part of our trip was our stay on the Snaefellsness Peninsula. At the tip of this peninsula is an extinct volcano, and just to liven things up, there is a glacier in the volcano. Madness. The landscape is all harsh North Atlantic sea views and vast rubbly lava fields. Is very amazing and kind of otherworldly.

The woman at the hotel told us that we could find the glacier by driving up a track. It was rainy, and she told us we could walk on the glacier, but we shouldn't stray from the caterpillar tracks on the glacier itself, or we might fall into a crevasse. She was very casual about it.

Well, the further we drove up, the more insanely windy and wet and foggy it became. We thought we had come to the end of the road, but that was mostly because we couldn't see the it anymore. We got out and took a couple of photos:

We are standing like that because we are actually braced against the wind, which was that strong. Even Harry is wearing pants, so you know it's cold. I kept reminding myself that we were there in July, which is the warmest month of the year. Andrew talked of returning to Iceland in a few years and camping, but given what the weather is like, there is no way I'm trusting myself to a sleeping bag and some scaps of canvas.


Anyway, we never did actually see the glacier, because we couldn't drive the car anymore, and we couldn't see more than a few feet in front of us. We figured it wasn't a good idea to go wandering around the volcano top in zero visibility.

I have to say, I mocked Andrew for bringing rain pants, but when my legs were ice cold to the touch and bright pink, I was no longer so mean. Even if they were kind of MC Hammer pants. This might be my all time favourite photo -- Andy's hat is blown right up and our glasses are completely filled with fog and rain. Not really intrepid explorers
-- more like bumbling nerd moles.


This was the hike we did the next day.
The weather was about a hundred times better than the day before

As you can see though, still not very good.


My Icelandic au revoir. Fake kissing a cheesy Viking decal.

We will definitely be going back.


Just not to camp.