Lune

On Monday 12 April 2010 the generations in my family were shifted up by one: grandparents became great-grandparents; parents became grandparents; my brother became a dad and I became an uncle. Since my sister's wedding in Spain had only really finished less than 24 hours before the birth, our family was spread over at least four countries (five if you count the in-laws) so the couple had to cope on their own initially.

By the end of the week, though, cars had been driven through France, trains had been brought in from Germany and after yet another week, when the Icelandic volcano finally abated, planes were flown in from Lithuania. Being part of a geographically challenged family if oddly fun and somehow amusing: you know there will always be someone anywhere, but you can never tell who will be where when. During the second half of April, though, we were all down at the University hospital of Leuven at one point or another. (Save my sister who'll be getting there next week.)

Let this be a good time to update you on the marvellous trip from Bonn to Leuven, which is all but the most easily reached Belgian city from Germany. Normally I book these tickets well in advance, so I can get fast, direct trains without too much time going to waste waiting around for transfers. But because babies come regardless of our planning and because Europe became covered under a Nordic ash cloud only days after the birth, this time I bought tickets that were in high demand - and bought them last-minute. Surprisingly this didn't affect the price too much, but it did affect the time. If I had been a pessimist I would have been dismayed at having to travel twice as long. As it turned out, I was rather upbeat about the prospect of finally getting to see more than just a platform and a traintrack of some of the cities that lie along my route.

Commencing the trip in Bonn, I'll start with a nice - and appropriate from my point of view - building that I had omitted on my previous foto-shoot: the Sterntor or Star gate:


Depending on your source, the city in question may vary between Chicago, New York and Berlin, but the saying that Bonn is half the size of the central cemetery of city X and twice as dead, stays the same. I mostly disagree with that, of course, but there is no denying that John LeCarré's book A Small Town in Germany was appropriately titled for Bonn. Ergo: wherever you go from Bonn, you first go to Köln (Cologne) because in contrast to Bonn, Köln really is an important city with connections to the world. The most obvious landmark in Köln stands conveniently right next to the central train station: the Dom (or Cathedral).


Next stop is a lovely little city the likes of which you cannot find in North America or Oceania: Aachen lies right on the border of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The trouble with my stopover was that I only had about half an hour and the walk from the station to the city centre turned out to be at least 20 minutes, so this is the closest I could get:

The white building you see is the theater of Aachen - and behind it on the right, you can just see a spire of the Dom in the centre of the city - which must have been another 5 to 10 minutes away.

It's been a month now since I went there and took these pictures and I suddenly remember running on the way back to the station in order to make sure I'd catch my train. Ah. Running. How nice that would be... (I must be looking forward to late June almost as much as a high school student.)

Anyway. We'll get back to Aachen one day, but presently the train has departed for Liege, the first Belgian (Walloon) city on our trip. The station we stop at (Liege-Guillemins) is as new as can be and an architectural spectacle designed by Calatrava, who coincidentally designed about half the city where my sister now lives (Valencia, that would be). Sadly, it isn't anywhere near any interesting or beautiful part of the city so really the station is the only point of interest. Here's a view from the inside:

and Wikipedia has a really nice view from the outside.

Finally, I arrived in Leuven (which probably has the most beautiful city centre of all the cities I'd visited that day, but I forgot to take pictures and went straight to the hospital) and met my godchild, Lune:


Cute, isn't she?

"Good" news

I've just come back from the MRI scan and things look much better now: the main ligament is fine but two smaller ones on the side of my foot are in trouble. This means that I can walk and lean on my foot as long as I keep it straight (or at least, that's what I've understood). It also means that the massive cast-like boot I've been carrying around for the past few days will not be needed anymore and instead I got a most unremarkable little ankle-support cast.

I'll admit that makes me feel a bit like a fraud - going through all that trouble just to be told "keep your ankle straight for a month or two", but it doesn't take away the fact that I'm thoroughly relieved!

Out of action

To all those who haven't noticed on Buzz or Twitter: I've been incapacitated, though a pair of crutches has come to my partial aid and is helping me move around to some degree.

What happened was nothing other than a nice and friendly game of frisbee on a lovely (and only slightly rainy) Sunday afternoon in the park. I admit that I may have played a bit too seriously because really, you shouldn't try to catch a disk someone else is trying to catch at the same time (or should I?) Either way, the mid-air collision that ensued wasn't too bad in itself, but the fall back down (hello gravity! Yes, I love you too. At times.) was rather uncontrolled and so upon reaching Earth again, I must have twisted my right foot in ways unimaginable. And unrepeatable.

It is close to 30 hours now that I haven't been able to put any pressure on my right foot - which made me ponder (amongst other things) how often the reception desks at hospitals see people hopping past on one foot...

Once I had - with the help of some particularly friendly fellow "hurt people" - figured out how to work my way to the front of the emergency queue (with sincere apologies to my North American friends, but there is no way I was going to describe this mass as a line), it didn't take terribly long to get a doctor, an X-ray and a couple of crutches (allowing me to roam the hospital with a bit more dignity than before) and, eventually, a super-twenty-first-century-removable cast. Thank God for German efficiency, German health-care (no offense) and Swiss (?!) engineering. (Admit it: there's no way you had predicted that last one ;-)


The X-ray luckily demonstrated that my bones were intact, so notwithstanding the pain, I'm happy about that. Whether my tendons, ligaments and similar connective tissues are also in order, is an entirely different matter still, so I'm impatiently awaiting the results of an MRI scan on Thursday morning - stay tuned.

Bonn and surroundings

It's been a while, I know. The problem with blogs (as everyone who's ever tried to write a blog or, more conventionally, a diary) is that whenever things start happening, there is hardly any time left to write about it - and vice versa.

But let's try and get you up to speed again.

First, I have of course settled in Bonn by now. A bed should be imported from Belgium next weekend but I have the essentials (internet connection, sleeping bag and radio). Also, I've found a few random moments to meander through the city and absorb some nice areas. Someone asked for photos, so (thanks to my iPhone since I still cannot stomach holding a camera) here we go:

First, Bonn's most famous inhabitant (so far):

That's right: Ludwig van Beethoven. (Interestingly, the "van" as opposed to "von" attests to his Flemish roots. Just thought I'd mention that in case someone had missed it.)

Then, the house Beethoven was born in:

It's the dark pinkish house in front of which you can spot some oriental tourists. In itself I doubt the house is terrifyingly interesting, but it also shows a few other fairly typical things about Bonn and Europe: the fairly narrow, car-free streets (this is Europe - most of which was built way before cars were invented) and surprising yet relaxing emptiness on Sundays: since all shops are closed on Sunday, there are literally no people in the centre of the city - they're all in the park or on the river bank: walking, running, biking,... relaxing and enjoying the good weather. I remember a beautiful spring weekend in Australia where to my great dismay the parks and riverbanks were virtually void of people while the shopping centre was as crowded as... the trains yesterday (but more on that later). Anyway - I like Europe, you might have noticed.

Continuing on our tourist trip, we reach the Münster (my impression is that this word means as much as "cathedral" - but Wikipedia seems to only reluctantly admit to that, so you'll have to take my word on it):


And of course, one of the most enjoyable things about Europe - the train station:


Then, the main building of the University and - right behind it - the field where I found a new and exciting frisbee group (bringing back great memories from Down Under :-)


An important thing to realise (and a major difference with both Morgantown and Australia) is that everything I've shown you so far is within at most ten minutes walk of each other - and at my pace probably more about five minutes. This is part of the reason I still haven't bought a bike, even after seven weeks: everything is quickly and conveniently reachable by foot. So too the track along the river (which, of course, unavoidably reminds me of WV):

(Note, though, that for all its width, well-maintained surface and length - I think it goes all the way to Köln and beyond - this track is not accessible to cars - just roller bladers, cyclists, runners and pedestrians. I'm pretty sure even motorcycles aren't allowed.)

Along the track is a scale model of the Solar System - Saturn is close to the centre of town and the Sun is several kilometres further South, where the track merges into a great park (which is so big that I really need a bike to discover it all) with ponds, some bushes and even baseball fields! (Browsing back through previous posts I notice I didn't post a picture of the Bois de Boulogne. In fact, in my post on Paris I didn't even mention it, which is a gross omission I feel sorry for.) Anyway, it isn't the same, but somewhat reminiscent to me (having seen as little of the Rheinaue park as of the Bois de Boulogne). Also, it's a great indicator of spring:


The weekend after these pictures were taken, I went to Spain to attend my sister's wedding and before that was well and truly finished my brother and his lovely wife announced the birth of my first niece, making me a proud uncle :-)

But more on all that in a later post - I wouldn't want to overload my faithful readers. (Besides: the weather is way too nice to write blog posts. I'm sorry!)

Flash update

Just to quickly state that

• Yes, I have left West Virginia.


• And I have arrived in Bonn, Germany.

However, as you can probably imagine, I am terribly busy now getting things sorted - and the internet connection in my temporary accommodation doesn't work (yet) so ... this blog will remain fairly passive for some time.

I hope to return to some semblance of normalcy in a week or two. (Fingers crossed!)

Trenches

You may have heard it on the news: the entire US East coast lies idle due to a snow storm described with any list of superlatives you could think of. The reason it is the East coast and not the entire north-eastern part of the US (up to as far inland as Iowa - and since a few days back also as far south as Texas), is simply because anything that happens in the US happens in Washington, New York or California: the world could care less about West Virginia. But that doesn't mean we didn't have a whole heap of snow:

That was home after the first night of snow. This is what the arboretum looked like:

The trail you see pulled through the snow was - at that point - mainly drawn by the intelligent people who had invested in cross-country skis (a must-have down here, so I discovered). As you go further along the trail, though, you'll find many trees of all shapes and sizes fallen onto the track - aiding the foot of snow in making the generally hospitable trail an inaccessible way to get anywhere, regardless of your means of transportation.

Alternative ways of getting places are not easily found, though. Car drivers first have to dig their car out of the snow and even if that works, they then have to hope their road has been plowed - because the West Virginian way of dealing with snow seems to be to close all the schools, tell people to stock up on food and hope everyone stays indoors until it all melts away.

On those roads that do get plowed, pedestrains find themselves in awkward situations. Regardless of whether there was a sidewalk before the snow or not, after a snow plow comes through, the road is separated in two parts: one recently plowed, relatively clean (if still slippery!), car-wide section on which the cars drive, and a second part on which all the snow is heaped. The last time I stood in snow up to my knees, was when I was 12. Needless to say my knees were a bit closer to the ground back then.


So pedestrians (I'm as surprised as you to find out they do exist, but in the freshly deposited snow, I finally found evidence of kindred spirits who in defiance of modern society use a mode of transportation older than humans themselves) have no choice to resort to organically building their own transportation network. On empty lots, along trails that are long snowed under, on the sides of busy roads on top of the yard of deposited snow and ice, they build their trenches in the ongoing war on winter, braving the scorn of a car-mad society that all too happily wishes to forget that parts of the stone age did make it this far.

Country roads take me home...

Sooner or later I had to use that title, if for no other reason than that it is the first thing most people think of when one mentions West Virginia.

The second thing many people think of - notwithstanding it being filmed in Tennessee and set in Georgia (neither of which borders WV, by the way) - is the movie "Deliverance". I have - a few weeks ago, as it happened around Christmas time - finally watched that movie and while I guess it may be more applicable to swathes of southern West Virginia, it really doesn't strike me as anything representative of Morgantown and the one time I did go wild water rafting (admittedly just across the border in Pennsylvania) I didn't feel the least bit worried about anything Deliverance-like happening to me.

Of course, when debunking Southern stereotypes, one should really bear in mind the closeness of Pennsylvania and - consequently - the Mason-Dixon line (which is supposed to be the official border between North and South). It is exactly 6 miles from my doorstep and so I'm far, very far away from the "deep South".

I've been here for 12 months now (a year and a day to be precise) and I've come to appreciate the frontier-like quality of West Virginia in general and Morgantown in particular. The edge of the midwest (aka Ohio) is less than 2 hours from here, the south has officially just started, the north can be reached on foot and the North-East isn't really that far either. This means you get to meet people from quite a few different regions and as such get a fairly varied view of a substantial part of the country.

I've also grown a liking for the small-town sides of Morgantown. While my first few months were mainly spent overcoming the culture shock that the move from a big city to a small town (which is officially a "city" regardless of my opinion) inflicted, throughout the year I've discovered some nice corners and interesting sides to small-town life. And I've grown some sort of connection to this poorest of states (depending on the metric you use, though I haven't found a metric where Mississippi doesn't come below WV so probably it's more correct to state "second-poorest"), which is partly because it has a beautiful landscape that is being destroyed for the sake of development and economic progress. Partly also because I feel bad for the state - I feel like it must have heaps of potential because of it's beautiful nature and its central location - the only problem seems to be that those in power either don't want to or are uncapable of changing things - in his State of the State address late last month, the governor didn't copy any of Obama's rethoric about investments in high-end communication and transport infrastructure, but went rather the opposite way: he hailed coal as "the future".

There is an adage that goes "People elect the leaders they deserve." I'm starting to suspect this may not apply to the poor and weak. (And while we're on the subject of politics gone wrong: the supreme court has recently ruled that corporations may spend basically as much as they like on political campaigns. Between that and the two useless and counterproductive political parties that hold the strings in this country, a pessimist might claim all hope is lost.)


The reason for this somewhat retrospective post is, of course, my impending departure from this state. While there are of course reasons to look forward to my move to Bonn and Europe, leaving is always a sad thing and so for this last month I'm planning on giving a sort of hit list of the things I like most about Morgantown and West Virginia. I imagine it will be quite different from any of my previous posts, but maybe you'll like this little look at life in a town somewhere in between the Midwest, the South, the North and the Northeast.