I arrived in Antwerp somewhat later than originally planned...
Here's my advice about flying to Antwerp airport: Don't.0
It is a dinky little thing; From Dublin, there are no direct flights, I had to travel via Manchester. Unfortunately, the arriving and departing flights were in different terminals, and I arrived minutes too late to check in. On the upside, the airline and airport helpdesks were really helpful. Respectively, they had me on the first flight the following morning, and gave me directions to a reasonably priced hotel.
My temporary residence is palatial- from office through the hall into the living room there is a a 50 foot stretch good enough for lunges and leg work, but the hallway is rather narrow, so I can't do any jumping or hopping drills. :'(
It is just off the Belgian equivalent of Grafton st., de Meir. It's got all the mod cons, except for an Irish standard... I had been cautioned during my cross-culture program that there is a large coffee culture in Belgium; an unforeseen consequence of this is that coffee makers are standard, not electric kettles. Fear not faithful readers, I bought one.1
[At the risk of causing narrative whiplash, I am going to switch focus somewhat]
Coming out of my third weekend in Belgium, I have cobbled together some observations.
- On the buses, which have 2-person seats that don't fit 2 averaged sized males and face-to-face seats that are knee-caressingly close, the locals aren't going to make room unless you ask/gesture for some, but they do so without grumbling. Additionally, I've seen numerous strangers sharing an open chuckle about something or chatting idly.
- The public transport around Antwerp is super; imagine that they have timetables at all the stops that are accurate for the stop. The bus drivers themselves are generally pleasant.
- They are open, and welcome discussion about things; they want to be sure that all the options have been addressed and there is a consensus.
- Everybody speaks English, as well as Dutch and French. Comfortably. They are so blase about being polyglots2 that I feel a bit silly having a sense of accomplishment in being able to speak Irish and English.
- The Flemish have a similar sense of humour to the Irish, I think. They like to poke fun at themselves and everyone else; pan-depreciating, if you will.
- The shops are closed on a Sunday - that took some adjusting.
- Walking around, I have either to focus on the sounds being said, to start training my ear for learning Dutch, or tune them out. When I choose the latter, there is a bit of a lag before I realise I am hearing English.
- Dutch reminds me of Japanese and Chinese; it emphasizes vowel sounds more so than the consonants - which is more common in other European languages [In my opinion, at least... it is certainly the case for English - where text speak contracts words to strings of consonants]. Every now and again, my ear catches syllables that I can parse into words I recognise from German or English, but for the most part I hear mysterious ululations. My Dutch lessons are due to start mid-February, which I am really looking forward to; I asked for directions is Dutch yesterday and the guy responded in English as if it is what I had spoken.
So far, the only practical advice I can give a body leaving Ireland for Belgium is: bring your own kettle.
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Postword: I had sat down to write a bit more, but I got sidetracked doing the kettle experiment. :/
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0Most people bound for Antwerp go to Brussels, since it is 30-45 minutes by rail or highway.
1There is a kettle you can put on the hob. But the heat transfer is abysmal:
- I put the same amount of water in each kettle
- I let the hob heat for 5 minutes before hand
- To make it more exciting, like a race, see, I started them at the same time.
- The electric kettle goes off automatically, so I assumed it was calibrated for 100°C.
- For the hob kettle, I opened the top and stared down until there was persistant bubbling ["nucleate boiling" to give its technical description; film boiling is when the surface is too hot and a film of vapour forms at the surface and further evaporation; and a reason that you can dip your hand in liquid nitrogen, if you're into that kind of thing - in technical gobble-dy gook it is known as the Leidenfrost Effect]
- The heat transfer area for the hob kettle was the bottom of it, so I measured the diameter with my handy measuring tape.
- For the electrical kettle, I cut strips of paper and stood them around the coil, holding them close to one of the coil's sides and added together the strip lengths. I got the coil circumference by wrapping a strip of paper around the coil an measuring its length. Working in the confines of kettle with my clown hands was a tad annoying though - if only I had some kid at hand to stick its hands in the kettle...
- I figure the results are good to within 10% of the actual values. The main sources of uncertainty being the coil area, the starting temperature and my judgement call on when boiling was in the hob kettle. Even based on time-to-boil alone the hob kettle sucks, it might be able to compete if it was a gas hob, but that is not an option.
Here are my calculations:
2Related to this is that one of the people helping me find a place to live told me about her experience learning some Japanese to get by on a trip there. She complained that they were just these meaningless sounds that she had to memorise. Between French, English, German and Dutch she's grown up seeing a set of languages that are related to each other in some way or another; a situation where the fallacy of noises having a fundamental meaning can easily arise. To me, learning Dutch language is like her experience with Japanese.
