Have a drink!

A few weekends ago, on a Sunday around noon, I decided it would be nice to make pancakes for lunch. And what better way to enjoy waiting for the whiteish-yellow dough to turn yellowish-brown than by enjoying a beer on the side. So I grabbed a random one from the fridge and started lunch.

An hour later, as I was glad-wrapping the final few pancakes for dinner on Monday, I became aware of a slight tipsiness which didn't so much worry me as it confounded me. Maybe the milk had gone bad and was having an effect on my digestion / maybe this was the effect of a few nights of bad sleep? Maybe - no, surely it couldn't be the beer.

From a Belgian perspective, the initial interesting (and disturbing!) fact about beer in WV is that beer with more than 6% alcohol may not be sold. While this law is of course totally preposterous, meaningless and useless, it didn't bother me too much because a) I did not believe that any country other than Belgium can produce a good-tasting beer with high alcohol content and b) We happen to live 6 miles from Pennsylvania and a 45 minute drive from Maryland. (The law was most recently changed so that now it should be allowed, though the shops haven't caught up yet.)

The problem with Pennsylvania is (as I am told by the natives) that you can only buy beer by the case (or slab for you Australians - for everyone else: a 24-unit container), except for the really basic stuff like Budweiser (in which case you can buy 6-packs at bars, I'm told). So in order to get a taste of variety, Pennsylvania wouldn't be the right place to go. Hence, we teamed up with a couple of students and went on a "beer run" to Maryland. Hop across the border, buy an interesting-looking collection and hop back. As a consequence, my fridge has been filled with a quite intruiging (though currently dwindling) variety waiting to be tried ever since.

The random pick I drank while eating pancakes, happened to be a "Stoudts Triple". Now I know what you're thinking: Triple - that spells trouble. But really, the beer didn't taste like alchohol. In fact, it pretends to be a "Belgian Abbey-style Ale" and to my great surprise it smells, looks and tastes damn close to exactly that. Again, I feel a footnote is in place. Once you start paying attention, you'll find beers all over the world pretending to be "Belgian style" this or that. It's an easy trick to get sold: paste a label irrespective of whether you have anything to do with it or not. (On that topic: how many of you knew that the corporate headquarters of IKEA are in the Netherlands?) Anyway. Disappointment after disappointment has taught me to never expect a Belgian style beer to be Belgian style at all. I guess Stoudts finally proved me wrong. After checking the internet (for some reason that defies my logic, alcohol content is often not printed on the bottles or 6-packs), this specific brew was supposed to have 9% alcohol. On a Sunday at lunch with nothing but some pancakes. I guess that would explain some of the tipsiness. Joris - American Beer: 0 - 1.

But that's not where this ended. Oh no. If you thought getting drunk at noon was bad, hang on to your hat, worse is yet to come.

A week and a bit later - a quiet Tuesday evening I think it was - I sit down for my favourite passtime: reading a book with a nice beer as companion. Now since I was the only Belgian on the beer run, I felt morally obliged to buy just about all the Belgian beer that wasn't Leffe (since Leffe you can find anywhere). Consequentially, I happened to have a sampler pack of the (pretty much unheard of for all I know, but then I haven't lived in Belgium for nearly a decade) Petrus brewery - which is indeed, very Belgian.

My random pick that Tuesday evening left me with the "Aged Pale" of Petrus and to say the only positive comment I can devise, it was unlike any beer I've ever tried before. It was not, however, too different from the Slovenian apple vinegar my dad once bought in the vain hope of getting apple juice - the difference being that the Aged Pale tasted less of apple and more of vinegar. I never thought I'd see the day, but here it was: blunt and undeniably in front of me: the ultimate undrinkable (Belgian!) "beer". The struggle that went on in my head was terrifying in that it defied the only things I still believed in: the Belgian supremacy on the front of beer-making. If we cannot even have that, then what good can we do? (Well, I guess there's still chocolate?)

The dark side won. I chucked the vinegar down the sink after only the tiniest sip. And I took a Leinenkugel's 1888 Bock to replace it. Joris - American Beers: 0 - 2.


At this point I bluntly and openly admit defeat: Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic are not the only nations in the world to make good and varied beers (though the Czech republic doesn't necessarily do that, either). The U.S.A. knows quite a bit, too. I've had some really good wheat beers (which, again, say to be "Belgian style" and in fact they may well rival Hoegaarden, especially since this latter has now been absorbed into the Death Star called "InBev" - that's right: Hoegaarden and Budweiser are owned by the same company. Disgusting, isn't it?) I've tasted "Belgian Abbey-style beer" which actually emulates exactly what it set out to emulate. I'm really, honestly surprised by the variety - the many different brands, the different types available and the quite regularly recurring fact that these things actually taste right! And on top of that, I don't even think I've yet tried any of the beers Josh and Nick told me to look out for.

Out into the wild

Last week I had two days off and finally made it into the beautiful wilderness of Appalachia:


(Yeah, I only really have two pictures to show for two days of hanging out. But then there really is no way to capture these things in boring old pictures anyway. You'll have to come and check it out yourself :-P)

On Wednesday, Anneke (Praagman - should be known to most of you) came on a flash visit and brought a car, allowing us to make it to the Coopers Rock state forest: a pearl of tranquillity (which I take it is a slightly odd wording in that pearls don't necessarily have much to do with tranquility, but let's leave it at that anyway) not too far from town. After a long and tiring walk through the temperate forest on a warm spring day, we drove back to town to visit ... the arboretum - and have another tiring walk. So yeah, there you have it - visiting me does generally involve a reasonable amount of footwork...


The next day was no less entertaining and also resulted in a healthy tiredness at the end of it: together with most of the astro-students and a couple senior staff, I participated in the inaugural astro white water rafting trip! (The fact that two of the party of nine were actually plasma physicists is a detail we'll be happy to omit.) Since cameras are of course nothing you would want to bring on such a trip, you'll have to believe me when I say I courageously took the hot spot and valiantly guided my raft through the thunderous, perilous rapids of South-Western Pennsylvania. (That's right, we actually went right across the border since that turned out to be the nearest good spot to go.)

And what do you know? We didn't capsize, I didn't fall out (even though the front seat didn't really have any hooks for my feet - or any support at all, for that matter), didn't bash my head against the rocks we glided past and I still do not regret choosing the cheapest health-care plan. All in all it was a nice experience, floating down the river through the forests, seeing the imaginary natives of centuries past sneak through the bushes in hunt for turkeys and black bears. Noticing the settlers arrive at the river - yet another obstacle to overcome. Finding a derailed railway carriage and deducing from the large trees that stand all around it, that it must have lain there for quite some time - perhaps ever since the robbers of the West - the American Ned Kellys - put up a scheme and grabbed whatever was there. Or ever since a tree came down as the train thundered past, though such realistic explanations of course don't rouse my fascination and imagination quite as much.

I must admit, the landscape here never fails to get me dreaming. It must be incredibly easy to write a historical novel about life in the Americas in times past, because the imagery is all right there: the trees, streams, mountains - granted, there's the occasional power line, but apart from that - there's so much room down here! There are so few people on such a massive continent... And so much has happened so recently!

If you think I'm losing it again, consider this: in the BeNeLux, there are on average 371 people per square kilometer. While Australia is a whole lot less dense, Melbourne sure isn't. In West-Virginia, that number is 29 - more than ten times less! On top of that, Flanders fought the French in 1302 - and we still talk about it. My little country back home has of course been the field for many other armies to fight, from Waterloo to WWII. But that's all messy warfare - one ruler comes, throws out the previous one, raids our churches, steals our art and takes whatever taxes he can before the next invader comes knocking. To my mind, Belgian history is the boring constancy that primary school history lessons are composed of.

Not so with North-America. This is the land where Winnetou once roamed the plains. The land where famished Irish built a new life on their up-and-at-them attitude. The place where strong men delivered ad-hoc justice, mounted on their fierce stallions and sporting the guns that defended the weak and harmless. This is the land where a Don Quixote could be brave and valued without needing to be mad. Forgive me for being entirely unrealistic, but it's true that America is the continent of which we read fascinating stories and see exciting movies.

Of course I know that country (which must have been much harsher and probably didn't have any of the romanticised titbits Karl May and Clint Eastwood would have us believe in) has long since disappeared: nobody lives randomly in the wild - except for campers, like everywhere else - and there are no settlers trekking through the wilderness: settlers these days have a 4WD and airplanes. But there's so much unspoiled, free, empty and (in sharp contrast to most of Australia:) livable land around here that I keep on being reminded of those stories of old - the great promised land out West. So as mad as I may be, please don't blame me for continuing to expect finding John Wayne besides a camping fire every time I see a creek or a rotting tree trunk.

Living the good life

When I first arrived in Australia in 2004, it didn't take 12 hours before I was told of the drought and reminded to keep shower time down. In subsequent years, the concept of a filled bath tub became - slowly but surely - relegated to the realm of science fiction. And it doesn't look like this was just because of the few strange people I fell in with: after nearly four years in the country, I'm just about convinced that the nation - and especially the big cities - are obsessed with saving water.

Yet, water isn't where it ends. As the elections loomed and environmental concern reached the political agenda, televisions were struck with government-funded adds that seemed to have the single purpose of making us feel guilty of using any electricity at all: switch on lights, TVs, microwaves or alarm clocks and black balloons of doom would fill your house: the CO₂ is everywhere and it will kill you. (This purpose was of course secondary to trying to convince the electorate that Howard was good for them. As good as CO₂, if you ask me.)

Such guilt-ridden consumerism (aka the idea that anything beyond sitting in a cave is bad for the Earth and will destroy your kids and grandkids if not yourself), is of course nothing new to me: one doesn't have to live in an extremist-Calvinist community to be made aware of the dreadful things we do to our planet and how this will curse us in the end. As a point of illustration, one of the few things I remember from primary school is how we were told of the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest for the dual benefit of quick gain from tropical wood sales and opening up of cheap pastures to breed McDonalds-cows. I've been ingrained by obsessive-compulsive turning off of lights, closing of dripping taps and taking trains not cars. However, environmental concerns aren't the end of this, either: the government and lobby-groups go through quite some effort to push us into the correct straightjacket: extensive advertising campaigns have left me incapable of considering driving and drinking (however little) on the same night. It's an interesting life, which is guided by reflexes of guilt.


Down here, I haven't detected much of that. In contrast to the Australian balloons of doom, here I've seen car stickers praising the merits of coal ("coal forever!") and the secretary of the interior explains on prime-time television that limiting the consumption of coal is simply not something worth thinking about. Here, people have figured out that it's so much easier to go by car than by any other means, so why wouldn't we? And if you've had a few to drink - hey, as long as you know what you're doing and you've got a big enough 'truck' to feel safe, what could go wrong?

Don't worry about long showers or filling bath tubs - in fact, the shower knob doesn't even allow me to adjust the volume of water, so maybe a full-blown bath may be more economical after all! Also, you shouldn't feel obliged to fill your kitchen with fifteen different trash bags: just put it all in a single one, it isn't really your problem what happens to it, after all - that's why you pay bills for trash collection, right?

Another one: why would you go through the effort of buying groceries, cooking and doing dishes (or, rather, filling the dish washer) every day? Eating out is cheap, yummy and fast. Surely in a time and place where time is money, you'll just pop by Subway or KFC after work? There's no need to panick about refilling your drink during dinner, either - while in Belgium the biggest cost of eating out is often that second Coke you've ordered, in the US (or at least in Morgantown), refills are free.

In fact, to come down to the most nitty-gritty details: my age-old obsession with not choking the kitchen sink is rendered worthless by the mechanical cutter-device installed underneath. Drop anything you like down the sink, if it gets stuck you simply flick the switch and along with the whirring noise, the water level will drop again.


Of course the above is a bit of a caricature: I've seen water wasted in NSW and know plenty of Belgians who wouldn't give a light switch a second thought. On top of that, I've only lived here for 3 months so the few Americans I know and an out-of-context quote from the secretary of the interior may not really paint a convincing picture. But even so, I cannot escape the feeling that the USA isn't only pervaded with a feeling of opportunity and optimism, but also of an attitude to live the good life. And take it or leave it, there's a lot to be said in favour that.

There will be delays...

A few weeks ago, I put aside my prejudices and worries and decided to spend a glorious day on a bus trip to the "unreachable" mall. I left at 2:00pm and in order to optimise the potential number of busses to catch and minimise the potential waiting time, I first biked to the bus depot in central Morgantown. According to the schedule, I should have a bus every half our there and since I arrived at 2:20pm, there should be one within 10 minutes. As it turned out, I missed one while figuring out the schedules - the 2pm bus had left 25 minutes late.


In itself that wasn't too bad. While the bus stop itself turns out to be the local dope and smoke market (never before have I witnessed two total strangers talk about cocaine addiction within 5 minutes of introducing themselves), the weather was pleasant enough, as was the nearby trail (which I keep coming back to) and the scenery on the other side of the bus station. (The picture above should bring out the early April cherry blossoms, at least that's what I think they are. That lovely spring weather has by now been replaced by heat not unworthy of Melbourne Cup day.)

After 35 minutes at the bus stop, a 25-minute delayed bus did arrive and (after having stopped for an extra 5 minutes) brought us to the mall. While I had been gone from home for an entire hour now, the busride itself only took 15 minutes. Talking about efficiency.

There are three malls in Morgantown (though "around" would be a more accurate preposition). The first mall is immediately south of the city and has died ever since Wall Mart moved out. Now the only reason to go there is because the social security administration has its office there, so you're effectively obliged to go at least once, at the very start of your stay. The second one is right across the river from where I live and the final one is where I was headed now. None of these three malls have sidewalks. None of these three are reachable by bike unless you have no sense of selfpreservation whatsoever. A bus ride to mall 2 (as we just found out) takes 15 minutes, waiting not included. A ride to mall 3 takes at least half an hour - according to the schedules, that is.

Because there are rather few stores inside town, I presume my hopes were artificially inflated for what I would find at the mall. Upon arrival, though, I was quickly put in my place. The fear of losing my way in the seven full, three half and twenty quarter floors of which any Australian shopping mall seems to be built up (in quite a few Australian shopping centres I've seen, the word "floor" doesn't make much sense: you really need a continuous scale in z-direction or an altimeter to keep track of where you are), quickly evaporated when I realised this mall wasn't much larger than the little misfit we have in Kapellen (my town in Belgium). In fact, this mall didn't even have a supermarket and therefore became even less interesting than that one.

I feel like I have to qualify my disappointment, though. The fact is that the third mall (the one across the water from me) does actually contain some interesting stores, though it only has a single bus going there, which translates into an hourly instead of half-hourly service. I got a ride there twice now and it does provide you with good shops for at least some things. The problem is, of course, getting there.

Also, as much as I may seem to complain, I really should bear in mind that Morgantown isn't the metropolis I've lived in for the past ~4 years. According to Wikipedia it has less than 30,000 inhabitants so Melbourne is literally more than a hundred times bigger. The reason why a big city like Melbourne has all its shops in the centre while tiny Morgantown has them all a 15-minute drive outside town, remains a mystery to me, though.

So, after a five-minute stroll through what I expected to be a plethora of assaults on my common sense and - more so - wallet, I'd seen it all and strolled back to the parking lot with an empty feeling and without spending a single cent. It was 3:20pm by now - I had been gone for 80 minutes and had spent a total of 5 minutes in the mall. I figured I could walk back in, maybe eat something, but the 3pm bus (which should normally arrive here by 3:15pm but was delayed by an undetermined amount of time) could arrive any minute and missing that bus would imply an extra wait of at least 30 minutes. I figured the risk of missing the bus was too large and opted to play safe and inspect the parking lot instead.


Here you have a snapshot of the parking lot. It doesn't seem to be so huge, but that is because it encircles the bean-shaped mall and therefore doesn't need a huge radius to have a surface at least twice as large as the shopping area. Smart design in that sense: it allows the fast-food eating, never-walking homo sapiens (who think of a motor cycle rather than a bicycle upon hearing the word "bike") to limit its physical activity to an absolute minimum. (And then they wonder why the dysfunctional health care absorbs a third of US taxes.) Let's move on to somehing more positive and focus on the horizon in the picture above: the softly undulating foothills of the Appalachian mountains, specked with nice white houses that undoubtedly have lovely views over the natural beauty of which this Mountain State has so much. When/if I get to the even more sparsely populated region of Green Bank, you can expect some clearer evidence, because I'm aware this picture may not cut it in itself.


The bus did arrive, eventually. If I remember correctly, it arrived at 4pm and must therefore have been close to 40 to 45 minutes late. I would ask how it's possible to get such a delay on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but given that this post comes almost a month after the event, I don't feel justified in pressing that point. Getting back to the bus stop at 4:20pm, I made it home around 4:40pm, bringing the trip total close to three hours for a 5-minute walk through the mall. Luckily these durations don't scale linearly...


In Australia, the one thing that bothered me most, was the heat. Yet, when you sign up for a couple of years down under, you really should realise it's going to be hot so complaining about it isn't really justified. In America, the single most annoying thing (in my opinion) is the absence of sidewalks and the consequential necessity of a car. This, too, is an implicit part of the deal and it would therefore be unfair if I kept focussing on that point: I knew this was going to be an issue and I've had three months to get used to it, so it really is time for me to get over it and stop whinging - unless I want to end up a pom in America (which, given my accent, I'm not too far off.) I therefore decided this will be the very last post where I'll complain about sidewalks, public transport and necessity of cars. I rest my case, the rant is over.

Before I do so, though, let me humour myself by posting one more picture from my way to the supermarket. It shows one of the few crossings across a fairly busy two-lane road (I've waited quite a while to be able to take this pictures without any cars obstructing the view). You can see the crossing on the left hand side. It leads to ~5 metres of sidewalk which... vanish into nothingness. The sidewalk isn't continued along the major road and on the sidestreet there's not even an even stretch of grass to take refuge on (the left-hand side of the side street - though not necessarily obvious from this picture - is pretty much identical to the right-hand side, which you can just make out.)


With that and apologies for the long delay in getting this post out, I'll leave you all.

Chicken Sandwich

I just had a chicken sandwich for dinner. That's right: chicken, a sandwich. Nothing more, nothing less.

This somewhat meagre dinner resulted from a combination of factors. First, my knowledge of English isn't quite perfect. It took me at least a year to figure out that "jalapeños" are the small, hot, green peppers. (Please don't get me started on the meaning of the word "peppers"!) Second, I know nearly as much about cooking as I do about pension funds - no need to ask me what the difference is between cooking, baking, frying, steaming, roasting or grilling. (Though I have a hunch about "steaming".) Third, either cooks are really bad in the US, or every single American is an outstanding cook.

The fact is that there is almost no (generally take-away) joint where they won't have you (the customer that is, not the cook) decide on everything about your meal - down to the finest details. Most of you might have experienced this at Subway: what type of bread would you like - what kind of meat would you like - cheese - toasted? - vegetables - sauce - salt? pepper? Drink? Cookie? In Sweden, the only give-away that I didn't know Swedish as well as I should, used to be my blank stare when they asked me if I wanted to take it home or eat it at the joint. At Subway (and now just about anywhere), this single blank stare inflated into a concatenation of blank stares, requests to repeat what they just asked and a total and utter indecision when faced with the choice between Swiss and Ceddar cheese. (I honestly have no clue what the difference is. All I know is that the Swiss cheese most definitely does not come from Switzerland.)

So I learned to say "A bit of everything, thanks" and subsequently, as my vocabulary and culinary knowledge grew: "A bit of everything, except jalapeños and olives, please". Last week, when ordering a hot-dog for lunch, this technique aparently didn't do. The chef (this was actually a real chef-looking guy, believe it or not) looked at me in disbelief. I started wondering how difficult this could be: just how many things could one possibly combine with a hot-dog? After a few moments of consternation, the guy luckily made his mind up and helped me out by doing what any cook in Europe would have done in the first place: following his own recipe.

Back to this evening. Originally I planned to give in to the easy and unhealthy option Burger King provides around the world: Double whopper please. No drink. Pay. Thanks. Get away. No choices, no dilemmas, no lack of information on what combinations arouse suspicion and what combinations are normal. However, Burger King being what it is, I changed plans at the very last moment and picked the unknown, more healthy-looking joint next to it. That in itself wasn't the big mistake. Replying "no" when the lady asked what more I wanted - that was the mistake. I saw her eyes widen and look at me as if I was a straightout weirdo. It may have been my general astronomer/nerd look that did it, or maybe my dishevelled hair, dripping recycled raindrops onto her counter, either way I must have made an impression that correlated with the peculiar order because she didn't ask again.

And so I ended up with a handful of lettuce and a piece of chicken in a bun. I wouldn't say it was a feast to my tastebuds, but at least it must have been more healthy than Burger King.

A walk through Star City

Giving in to popular demand once again (I'm starting to wonder where this might lead me eventually), I am, as of this week, the (proud?) owner of a digital camera. Now I am really badly trained (and minimally gifted) at taking pictures but you've asked for it (well, some of you have, anyway). I have no illusions as to capturing the West Virginian or Appalachian spirit in a series of 2D representations, but let's see what we can do. As a warm-up, I'll guide you on a walk to the "local" shop. ("Local" being defined as the closest one reachable on foot. This doesn't mean it's nearby.)

This first picture shows our living room and kitchen. You're currently standing with your back to my room and on the far side you can just see the front door. Notice the collection of empty bottles - notwithstanding my housemates being either just 21 or still younger, they've already made their parents proud...


Next we have the outside view of the complex. My room is on the far corner of the second building, top floor. In the background you can just see some hilltops which are quite representative for this region. On the right edge of the image you can see one of the greatest things about Morgantown: the trail. It's this trail which brings me straight to uni - without any encounters with cars or anything like that. In fact, things I did encounter so far include loads of runners (yes, I'll start training soon), even more birds and a single raccoon (if that's what it was, but I'm pretty sure.) No really, it's a pretty trail and I hope to get you some stunnig pictures once spring colours everything nicely green.

Next one... yeah, see what I mean about me taking pictures? I never even noticed that yellow bar running right across everything, I honestly only notice that now. Anyway, I guess you'll have to live with it.

So this picture shows you a couple of things again. Firstly, on the right, a bank. Pretty fancy, though I wonder about their credit rating. On the left is another typical American thing which I - being born and raised in densely crowded Flanders - cannot get my head around. It's a drive-in ATM. Now there are a couple of reasons I cannot figure this one out. Partly it's probably because I haven't got a car myself, but beyond that, there's the simple fact that cash doesn't seem to be of too much relevance in American society since pretty much everything can be payed for electronically. And even if you do use cash occasionally, any supermarket gives you the option to get cash out as you pay your groceries. Besides, there are walk-up ATMs at pretty much every shop anyway. Finally, I don't see why one would put all the money into building this drive-in thing and sacrifice the land - surely you're not gaining quite as much as it costs, or are you?

After half an hour's walk, we have arrived! (As with any of the pictures, click the image to get a larger view.) "Kroger" is the supermarket I'm headed for - the only complete supermarket that I can reach by bike and/or foot. (There's a smaller one in town, but they don't even sell fruit.) Right above Kroger, a green-roofed building pokes out - this is the university's sports centre. Sadly, membership costs way too much to be useful (unless you're student in which case it's free), so I won't go there. Don't get carried away by the "book exchange" - it only deals in second hand books that are on the curriculum lists. Anything else (even if it's on the same subject) doesn't seem to be present. Do notice the advertisement on the left end of the picture, though: "Get Free Incoming Calls". Apparently that's something worth advertising. Initially I though this was about some quite obscure top-level sort of service - like some blackberry carriable internet or whatever. Turns out I was wrong. In the land of the free, you pay for receiving calls. You apparently even pay for receiving sms's. Call me crazy, but I would never have thought of that.

This picture, I'll admit, doesn't really show much of interest. However, it has a huge pole with loudspeakers. This is the town's warning system. Whenever there is a storm, a fire, a cat caught up a tree, it sounds. To be perfectly honest, I don't know why it sounds, I only know that it does so, often. At least once a week and sometimes several times a day, raising the average to probably close to daily. And it's loud. I can easily hear it through the television (windows closed) even though it must be about a kilometer -if not more- away. I personally don't see the point, unless this invention dates back to pre-telephone days, when the fire brigade needed to be called to duty without current technological gadgets. However, this is the 21^st century. I would imagine they would have done away with it by now.

The second thing the picture shows (if you know what you're looking at), is the cleared hiltop across the river, on top of which the actual closest shops lie. They're probably about half as far as Kroger, as the bird flies. However, since I cannot fly, I cannot reach them. Well, not within an hour and without using a bus or a taxi, that is.

We're nearly back home, so let me close off with a quite typical view. Again, the hills in the background - do you notice the swath of treas that are cleared for a power line? Coal - and, consequently, electricity - are the main business of WV. It should therefore not be too surprising that the WV senators and representatives in DC are amongst the foremost people to oppose any anti-coal plans any administration might have. The first time I saw a number plate saying something like "we love coal", I thought I had misread. Sadly, it's a reality...

A final thing to notice, before I leave you and get dinner, is the front yards we're looking at: there are no divides. Of course, in some streets there are divides - keeping dogs and little children inside - but surprisingly few of these divides are at shoulder height or higher: they tend to be at a height that you can see your neighbour and could even have a chat. Totally unlike Belgium, that is. (Dare I say "Europe"? It probably holds for large parts if not all of Australia as well, I think.) To me, that is an interesting and slightly puzzling idea to come from the land that has pioneered individualism and capitalism for more than 60 years now. Clearly there are still plenty of sides to the American psychology that I haven't figured out - yet?

Some random news-picks

I cannot help myself but provide you with a few links of interest:

First, something about the fascinating American habit of tipping, which I'm still trying to come to terms with.

And next an odd news story from the state of Illinois (that's right: Obama-land) - reinstating Pluto as a planet. (Take that, IAU.)