brushing your teeth

as rightly noted by mr stephen hunyor - stella is so cheap in leuven that you could practically brush your teeth with it...
brief cameo from mitch here in verbier (after a couple of potent gin and tonics): "i've had a few potent ones actually!"

so it is obvious that i am not in leuven as i write this, so i do confess that this is a retrospective post but when you're on the run these things happen. unexpected and very sad circumstances back home have accelerated my departure date - a date that is flying toward me at breakneck speed and thus, in compensation, i have flown around the last few destinations at a similar pace.

leuven was fantastic, a real pleasure to hang out with stephen most of all and the town itself is quite beautiful. some fantastic gothic architecture in a small student city who's shopfronts are 90% bars and 10% late night kebab shops. i train'd in on a cracker of a night last sunday just in time for the weekly free jazz night around the corner from stephens little place. after a small homecooked pasta feast we made our way accross the way to the jazz night - the venue is part of the arts school and was packed full of students both local and international. stephen is fitting in quite nicely on the european scene and i see him sticking around for much longer than the official 6month semester.

our second night became a bit of a slumber party and zoltans one-bedroom appartment squeezed 4 in quite nicely. a fair bit of bad red wine was required to achieve the required relaxation level to sleep in sardine fashion but was by no means a bad night. my plans to go to the canal town of brugge were thrown out the window when i decided to go straight to luke cheng's in reims due to my decision to bring my flight home earlier. so said goodbye to caroline and anna and their crazy amsterdam stories and took several trains to the champagne region of france.

champagne tours are, despite all cheesiness, definitely worth it and quite interesting. at least the moet & chandon tour is most definitely as informative as included tasting is satisfying. luke tells me that some of the other tours are big advertising campaigns but i guess the moet label has that much credibility that it can take real tours of the underground cellars (hand-dug that housed war-refugees and hold about 100thousand bottles of moet... after two nights in reims; one of which that turned into a day, i am here in verbiere the lovely but snowless ski resort in the swiss alps visiting mel and mitch who are here for there 2nd season. the champagne tour, iceskating and all-nighter in reims has put me a little behind the 8-ball but this is a minor problem considering that my time in europe is drawing to a close.

verbiere itself is a pretty plush ski resort; and considering that it hasn't as yet snowed then there is much promise for this place and no wonder that mel and mitch have come back here for a second year running. at present i have a flight booked for the coming monday so a jam packed weekend lies ahead and then a long slog homeward via new york

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