One of the 'benefits' of being an 'expat' in a foreign land (eventhough I'm not exactly sure that status really applies to me :s) is to always have the benefit of doubt, coming from other people of course ;)....not sure with what I'm saying? I'll go on to explain it then.
Let's say for example that you're on your usual routine of waking up in the morning, having a more than quick breakfast (if you have the luck to have it), and drive on the way to your work. Just when entering the office building you notice a strange fellow passing dressed with an implecable outfit, but with a Viking hat (yeah, you know..the one with the goat horns and all that). Undoubtly your first have a stare in your eyes that would look something like this ****, followed by the ironic gossiping of the somewhat perturbed fellow with the funny hat with that other colleague of yours you just meet at the front office. Now, imagine that your colleague replies 'Well yeah, this guy was just released from the mental institution a couple of days ago'. Having said that, your grey stuff goes back to its normal state of mind and you don't mind too much about the recent event...because in the end, the guy was just crazy, so he had to right to behave as he wants and not be really judged for what he did. Great excuse right?
Without going to the extremes, I can say that being foreing in this land has given me this kind of 'special' status, where sometimes I am allowed to behave/say/do/etc etc below or beyond the normal 'social rules' of Belgian society :). Of course no theory can be explained withour practice, so here go some anecdotes where I exercised as much as possible my foreign mojo:
1) "Do you guys always dance that that close?"
"Yes of course, that's how we do it in Southamerica, you're actually a bit too far, come closer.."
Me with unkown girls while dancing, leaving a separation of less that 1cm between eachother, and with both hands on the lower back side of the lady (in my bachelor times of course)
2) "Bla bla bla" (Person coming to me in the street asking for money, directions, donations, etc)
"Ik spreek geen nederlands / Je parle pas français"
Me answering that I don't understand them, and if they ask
"Do you speak english?"
" Me speak only spanish" - Is my usual reply
3) "Are you a spanish speaker "
"Yes I am"
"Nice! I've been to Spain a couple of times"
"Poor you! don't worry, we all make mistakes in life"
A stare like this **** draws in the other person's face normally, to which I have to always clear out that I'm peruvian and not spanish.
"Oh, so is there a big different in language and culture?"
"Of course, we're the improved version :"
People buy it the whole time ;)
More examples to come soon...
Friday, August 03, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
"Gringo's in Peru: crazy belgians as usual :s"
I was yesterday watching the final episode of a Belgian TV program called "Pekin express". What's the concept of the show? Well, they grab something like 10 couples, and make them race from one point of the planet to another distant point with 1 euro in their pocket...the winner of the race gets of course a specific amount of money based on how many challenges were completed ok during the race.
So far there have been 3 editions of this program, most of them in Asia. However, the last edition was held in Southamerica..where the race started in Brasil, and has as finishing point the city of Lima! (capital of Peru...my home country for those who ain't following).
It was absoulutely hillaaaaaaaaaaaarious watching these crazy Belgian gringos (for the record: for us south americans a gringo is anybody that looks caucasic) going nuts in Lima asking for lifts and for directions on how to get to a specific place. One of the tasks they had to fulfill was to sell as much as possible portions of "Anticuchos" at a market in the city center. "Anticucho" is a typical peruvian dish, wish is basically cow hart sliced in small pieces, joined together by a bambu stick and cooked in a bbq grill. It is normally served with boiled potato and choclo (corn)...and for those who haven't tried is deliiiiiiicious!. Anyways, the two last couples (during the race there are certain challenges, in which some teams are dropped out of the competition till only the two best couples get to race the final stage) had to go with a "Triciclo" -which is kind of a modified bike, with a huge wood basket on the front to be able to take different things) from the city center to the central market in Lima. Once at the central market, they had to build their BBQ sets, buy cow heart, prepare the anticuchos, and sell as much as possible of it.
If I would be just a normal guy walking in the city center at the moment that happened, I'm sure I would have asked myself "what the fuck are this gringos doing cooking anticucho????????"...it was have been quite of a show, which it was in fact. Lots of people were surrounding the couple from curiosity...which was in the favour of the couples because they could easily sell their improvised food to the audience gathered by. I really enjoyed watching that, because my home city was being shown from an european perspective, and I could can of picture how people look at us when coming from abroad.
The last stage of the race was going from the central market to a light tower in the district of miraflores, which is something like 8 km away from the city center. In the end, only one couple one the race of course...and took home something like 60,000 euros, and a whole experience of having lived such adventure....not bad eh?
So far there have been 3 editions of this program, most of them in Asia. However, the last edition was held in Southamerica..where the race started in Brasil, and has as finishing point the city of Lima! (capital of Peru...my home country for those who ain't following).
It was absoulutely hillaaaaaaaaaaaarious watching these crazy Belgian gringos (for the record: for us south americans a gringo is anybody that looks caucasic) going nuts in Lima asking for lifts and for directions on how to get to a specific place. One of the tasks they had to fulfill was to sell as much as possible portions of "Anticuchos" at a market in the city center. "Anticucho" is a typical peruvian dish, wish is basically cow hart sliced in small pieces, joined together by a bambu stick and cooked in a bbq grill. It is normally served with boiled potato and choclo (corn)...and for those who haven't tried is deliiiiiiicious!. Anyways, the two last couples (during the race there are certain challenges, in which some teams are dropped out of the competition till only the two best couples get to race the final stage) had to go with a "Triciclo" -which is kind of a modified bike, with a huge wood basket on the front to be able to take different things) from the city center to the central market in Lima. Once at the central market, they had to build their BBQ sets, buy cow heart, prepare the anticuchos, and sell as much as possible of it.
If I would be just a normal guy walking in the city center at the moment that happened, I'm sure I would have asked myself "what the fuck are this gringos doing cooking anticucho????????"...it was have been quite of a show, which it was in fact. Lots of people were surrounding the couple from curiosity...which was in the favour of the couples because they could easily sell their improvised food to the audience gathered by. I really enjoyed watching that, because my home city was being shown from an european perspective, and I could can of picture how people look at us when coming from abroad.
The last stage of the race was going from the central market to a light tower in the district of miraflores, which is something like 8 km away from the city center. In the end, only one couple one the race of course...and took home something like 60,000 euros, and a whole experience of having lived such adventure....not bad eh?
Friday, May 04, 2007
Comida peruana a la belga
Llegue a Bélgica alla por agosto del 2002. Para ser mas precisos llegue a la ciudad de gante un dia caluroso de verano (europeo) en los ultimos dias de Agosto de ese año. Los primeros dias fueron un concierto de viacrucises existenciales sobre el motivo que realmente me habia llevado a dejar la comodidad de la famila, amigos, enamorada (la merfi y la no tan merfi), casa, comida, pichangas, combis, año nuevo en el sur y demas, para estudiar en un pais donde no conocia a nadie, donde el solo solo se asoma un par de meses al año, donde la cultura es muy diferente a la nuestra y donde el idioma era algo nisiquiera cercano a nuestro oriundo español…en fin, esa es otra larga historia.
Vamos al relato en si : resulta que la escuela de negocios donde estudiaba, organizaba cada cierto tiempo actividades para los estudiantes. Una de estas actividades era llamada el « international day » (el dia internacional), en el cual los estudiantes de los diferentes paises tenian que preparar un plato tipico de su pais. Dado que mis cualidades culinarias eran las del tipico hijito de mama que tuvo a una empleada cocinandole toda su vida, opte por la solucion que segun yo se acomoda a cualquier peruano que haya asistido alguna vez en su vida a un tono casero : preparar pisco sour .
Fue asi que decidi dejar degustar a mis compañeros de aulas el popular trago peruano. El problema fue que cuando fui al mercado solo pude encontrar pisco…chileno !!! A falta de otras opciones no tuve mas alternativa que preparar 5 litros de pisco sour con el ‘pisco’ oriundo de nuestro pais vecino. Para que no me puedo quejar, el pisco no salio tan malo, y si mal no recuerdo los cinco litros se fueron en algo menos de 15 minutos (ya se imaginaran el resultado que eso trajo entre mis amigos europeos unos minutos despues jeje).
Tiempo despues me ocurrio una anecdota parecida. Un año despues de haber acabado la primera maestria, decidi cursar una segunda con especialidad en economia en la historica Universidad Catolica de Lovaina. Mientras cursaba el segundo master se me dio por organizar otra noche internacional con mis compañeros de clase, solo que esta vez decidi variar un poco la oferta y me decidi preparar una muy rica mazamorra (el que viene en bolsa nomas, pero al menos sirvio !). Lo que hice fue dejar la olla llena del postre en la mesa donde se ponia toda la comida, y me limite a observar la reaccion de los otros al momento de probar el postre nacional. Lo que paso a continuacion casi me da infarto, y estoy seguro que si algunos de mis antepasados incas llegaba a presenciar tal acto facil sacaba un cuchillo de algun lado y se bajaba la cabeza a medio mundo (sera que he visto apocalypto muchas veces ??). Los belgas cogian primero un panqueque, y en vez de rellenarlo con mermelada, platano o mantequilla, lo comenzaron a rellenar con la mazamorra !!! (yes I know, oh dios !!) mismo Mexican brother comiendose un burrito relleno! Y no es por nada les encanto.
Es en oportunidades como esta donde una realmente saca pecho por la patria, y por los atributos que hacen de nuestro pais un lugar inigualable. Long live Peru !
Vamos al relato en si : resulta que la escuela de negocios donde estudiaba, organizaba cada cierto tiempo actividades para los estudiantes. Una de estas actividades era llamada el « international day » (el dia internacional), en el cual los estudiantes de los diferentes paises tenian que preparar un plato tipico de su pais. Dado que mis cualidades culinarias eran las del tipico hijito de mama que tuvo a una empleada cocinandole toda su vida, opte por la solucion que segun yo se acomoda a cualquier peruano que haya asistido alguna vez en su vida a un tono casero : preparar pisco sour .
Fue asi que decidi dejar degustar a mis compañeros de aulas el popular trago peruano. El problema fue que cuando fui al mercado solo pude encontrar pisco…chileno !!! A falta de otras opciones no tuve mas alternativa que preparar 5 litros de pisco sour con el ‘pisco’ oriundo de nuestro pais vecino. Para que no me puedo quejar, el pisco no salio tan malo, y si mal no recuerdo los cinco litros se fueron en algo menos de 15 minutos (ya se imaginaran el resultado que eso trajo entre mis amigos europeos unos minutos despues jeje).
Tiempo despues me ocurrio una anecdota parecida. Un año despues de haber acabado la primera maestria, decidi cursar una segunda con especialidad en economia en la historica Universidad Catolica de Lovaina. Mientras cursaba el segundo master se me dio por organizar otra noche internacional con mis compañeros de clase, solo que esta vez decidi variar un poco la oferta y me decidi preparar una muy rica mazamorra (el que viene en bolsa nomas, pero al menos sirvio !). Lo que hice fue dejar la olla llena del postre en la mesa donde se ponia toda la comida, y me limite a observar la reaccion de los otros al momento de probar el postre nacional. Lo que paso a continuacion casi me da infarto, y estoy seguro que si algunos de mis antepasados incas llegaba a presenciar tal acto facil sacaba un cuchillo de algun lado y se bajaba la cabeza a medio mundo (sera que he visto apocalypto muchas veces ??). Los belgas cogian primero un panqueque, y en vez de rellenarlo con mermelada, platano o mantequilla, lo comenzaron a rellenar con la mazamorra !!! (yes I know, oh dios !!) mismo Mexican brother comiendose un burrito relleno! Y no es por nada les encanto.
Es en oportunidades como esta donde una realmente saca pecho por la patria, y por los atributos que hacen de nuestro pais un lugar inigualable. Long live Peru !
Monday, April 16, 2007
Little Belgium
Having lived a bit more than 4 years in this side of the world, I couldn't help noticing some "funny" aspects of people here. Here goes a preliminary list, which everybody is welcome to complement of course!
1) In flanders: they use the diminutive form for almost every darn word. E.g: kindJE, frietJE, wagenJE...etc etc and so on and so on and so on.
2) Almost every Belgian knows the name of at least 10 sauces that can along with fries
3) Dutch speakers pronounce the word IDEA as ID (like 'I have and Idee " instead of "I have an idea")
4) French speakers think dutch speakers kind of suck...and viceversa
5) People in Wallonia drive in summer for around 3 hours in the middle of the traffic jam, just to make it to the coast which is already packed with thousands of people chillin' out.
6) As soon as there is an itsy bitsy ray of sun, everybody goes inmediately out to 'enjoy' it. I mean d***I've never seen people in terraces at 10°C only because there was a bit of sun outside!
7) Apparently people think is absolutely normal to go out to eat in a restaurant everyday of the week :s
8) Unless you're southamerican, african, scandinavian, russian or something alike...people will think you have an awful taste or just look ridiculous if you wear anything that is lighter than dark green.
9) Do you know the capital of the german speaking part of Belgium? Don't worry, nobody does ;)
10) In the same line with the previous remark: Ask a Belgian the first sentence of their national anthem. At least 50% will answer they didn't knew there existed one!!
11) People are ok with the fact of driving with the lights on even though it's bright and sunny.
12) In Flanders: The more you try to learn flemish, the more the flemish refuse to speak flemish to you and the more they complain that you haven't. learned flemish (this one isn't mine, but it's 100% true don't you think?)
13) Is it really necessary to have up to five names when you will be using only one?(got a friend called Jean Paul Marie Laurant Charles :s)
14) Belgians have made out of dish washing a real national cult. Instructions of how to wash dishes Belgian style: In a team of at least two (actually, the whole family can take part of this), position yourselves in such way that you stand next to each other and in front of the sink (which is commonly divided in two parts). Fill the two sinks with water, but only purr the washing material in the left sink. The left-standing person will gently wash the dish, put it on the water of the right sink, and pass it to person number 2 (or 3 ,4 or 5). Person number 2,3,4 or 5 will gently receive the dish and proceed to dry it with a drying handtowel. Voila! You have the formula to success at any house event ;)
15) Top three national topics of discussion: the never-ending works around the kennedy tunnel in antwerpen, the louzy soccer team, and Prince Laurent's strange love towards its dogs
16) If you feel like giving your walloon friends a nice 1st of may joke, tell them Flanders has decided to become independent. 100 % horror guaranteed!
17) Where else in Europe will you find people crazy enough as to wake up at 4 am in the morning, just to make it to a place so they can see the begining of the 'tour of Flanders'?
18) Customer service is a priority here indeed! Otherwise take a look at all shops and services that are open after working hours!, isn't it good to know you just have to take a half day off at your work in order to be able to do anything :s??
19) Why do people keep pushing me in, every time I want to get out of the metro station in brussels?
20) Unless you want to wait for a never ending explanation, don't ask a bartender in a cafe how many kind if beers do they have whenever ordering a drink.
You have more than enough reasons to love this country don't you think :)??!!
1) In flanders: they use the diminutive form for almost every darn word. E.g: kindJE, frietJE, wagenJE...etc etc and so on and so on and so on.
2) Almost every Belgian knows the name of at least 10 sauces that can along with fries
3) Dutch speakers pronounce the word IDEA as ID (like 'I have and Idee " instead of "I have an idea")
4) French speakers think dutch speakers kind of suck...and viceversa
5) People in Wallonia drive in summer for around 3 hours in the middle of the traffic jam, just to make it to the coast which is already packed with thousands of people chillin' out.
6) As soon as there is an itsy bitsy ray of sun, everybody goes inmediately out to 'enjoy' it. I mean d***I've never seen people in terraces at 10°C only because there was a bit of sun outside!
7) Apparently people think is absolutely normal to go out to eat in a restaurant everyday of the week :s
8) Unless you're southamerican, african, scandinavian, russian or something alike...people will think you have an awful taste or just look ridiculous if you wear anything that is lighter than dark green.
9) Do you know the capital of the german speaking part of Belgium? Don't worry, nobody does ;)
10) In the same line with the previous remark: Ask a Belgian the first sentence of their national anthem. At least 50% will answer they didn't knew there existed one!!
11) People are ok with the fact of driving with the lights on even though it's bright and sunny.
12) In Flanders: The more you try to learn flemish, the more the flemish refuse to speak flemish to you and the more they complain that you haven't. learned flemish (this one isn't mine, but it's 100% true don't you think?)
13) Is it really necessary to have up to five names when you will be using only one?(got a friend called Jean Paul Marie Laurant Charles :s)
14) Belgians have made out of dish washing a real national cult. Instructions of how to wash dishes Belgian style: In a team of at least two (actually, the whole family can take part of this), position yourselves in such way that you stand next to each other and in front of the sink (which is commonly divided in two parts). Fill the two sinks with water, but only purr the washing material in the left sink. The left-standing person will gently wash the dish, put it on the water of the right sink, and pass it to person number 2 (or 3 ,4 or 5). Person number 2,3,4 or 5 will gently receive the dish and proceed to dry it with a drying handtowel. Voila! You have the formula to success at any house event ;)
15) Top three national topics of discussion: the never-ending works around the kennedy tunnel in antwerpen, the louzy soccer team, and Prince Laurent's strange love towards its dogs
16) If you feel like giving your walloon friends a nice 1st of may joke, tell them Flanders has decided to become independent. 100 % horror guaranteed!
17) Where else in Europe will you find people crazy enough as to wake up at 4 am in the morning, just to make it to a place so they can see the begining of the 'tour of Flanders'?
18) Customer service is a priority here indeed! Otherwise take a look at all shops and services that are open after working hours!, isn't it good to know you just have to take a half day off at your work in order to be able to do anything :s??
19) Why do people keep pushing me in, every time I want to get out of the metro station in brussels?
20) Unless you want to wait for a never ending explanation, don't ask a bartender in a cafe how many kind if beers do they have whenever ordering a drink.
You have more than enough reasons to love this country don't you think :)??!!
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
My shoes!!
Ok, so I decided to start publishing some of my memories while living on this side of the world. In case there are some dudes out there googling for info about Europe and Belgium in general, this tags should help you get here: EUROPE, BELGIUM, GENT,GHENT, GAND, GANTE, LIFE, NIGHTLIFE, STUDENT, ANECDOTES,LOVE, FUNNY, STORIES, EXPERIENCE....there, that should do it :)
So, this time I will speak about something that happened to me looooooooong time ago, longer that what it takes a snake to fart (you get the point right?). Anyways, this happened to me, let's see...somewhere during the first months of 2003..It think it was between march and april, not really sure to be honest...
It was a saturday, and there I was waking up from my bed at the good ol' student house at Sint Lievenslaan 37 in Gent (man, if that place could speak of all the things that happened there hi hi). I realized there was a bit of sun out there (which for Belgian standars means: it's a shinny day!), so I thought it would be a good excuse to go out and have a walk in the downtown.
Wandering through the city's beautifull city center I started walking through one of the main avenues, called Veldstraat. If you want to make a comparisson it's like the 8th avenue of NY, or something like that....Which means shops, people, lots of ATMs, etc etc etc. There I was, feeling a bit miserable for not being able to buy anything (for the record: it was my student time, which meant I was depending on good old dad and mom to pay my room and living expenses. Just to give you an idea: my weekly food budget was €20)...I mean, I couldn't buy most of the 'nice' things I wanted to buy, but I did have some money on the savings account, given that the previous week had been my birthday, and I had received some extra €€€ from the monthly cash allowance that my parents used to send me.
Going back to the story: there I was walking when I came across the Levi's shop and I saw them. It was as if time had stoped and I was meant to be there, right on that moment, on that place, at that time. Yes! I saw this nice pair of shoes...and Boobs :p!. To be honest I don't remember which lead my attention to the other. In any case, the price of the shoes were interesting €40!. For those who don't know, shoes here in Belgium are extreeeeeeeeeemly expensive if you compare it to what you can get at the US for example (or Peru). The cheapest 'decent' pair of shoes/snikers you will find here won't go below €60 ($80), and that is just a normal -regular -shoes in the box/payless shoes brand. And as I mentioned, the 'boobs' (let's call her my her official name: sales girl) was a beautiful exemplar of what we man make call 'a nice european ass'. And just to make a pause here: that's one of the things I love about this country! You can find models look a like everywhere! Otherwise take a look at my girlfriends picture ;).
Ok, so I was right there standing in front of the shop with three big motivations to enter: shoes, price, girl ...I still couldn't determine which was the strongest reason, but anyways, I entered the shop. I started trying the shoes on and the sales girl came to me of course (me with a HUGE smile) and asking if she could help me. For my VERY good luck I had just taken a shower, and had hole-less socks that morning, so I had to problem in walking shoeless and trying on the model I was interested on. I was thinking and thinking how could I ask something interesting to the sales lady, but before I could realize it I was already paying for the shoes and out of the shop. Yeah, what could I do? I was just the typical man that would become a chicken in the presence of a girl like that :(.
Anyways, c'est la vie as I always said...so off I went back to the Kame-house (my place). As soon as I arrived chez moi I put the shoes on and went inmediately upstairs to tell Apu (read the second blog...just to remind who's this dude: classmate and housemate of mine while studying at the Vlerick school) about the good deal I had just closed . Apu takes a good look at my shoes and tell's me (imaging him asking this with the typical indian voice): 'Hey Luis, why do your shoes have different colour'?
On that moment I had this 'WADAFXXK???' face. My shoes? Different colour??? And my pal was right actually..the shoes had a DIFFERENT colour! The right shoe was somewhat light brown, whereas the left shoe was some kind of dark creme. On a first glance it wasn't that obvious, but on the momment I started staring at them it was more that clear that they were indeed different :s.
The first thought that came to my mind in that moment was: excuse to go back to the shop and see the girl, yeahhh :). But apparently I wasn't smart enough, given that I decided to go back to the shop with the shoes ON.
Anyways, I grabbed apu and we went back to the Levi's shop. I entered the place and saw the sales lady (me again with a HUGE smile), and told her about the different colours. Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything, but I had an excuse to take her out for drinks or something like that, I was thinking in saying 'Well, given that you sold me different shoes the least that you can do is go out for drinks with me'. Back to that moment: as soon as I told her my problem she had this face of not knowing what to say or do, and there I was ready to say my sentence when the owner of the shop comes to us and asks what the problem is (as you can imagine I was swearing all kind of words in my mind). I told him again what the deal was about...the first thing the guy did was try to 'clean' the shoes with masking tape (?), for he apparently thought it was just due to dust that caused the difference in colour. I couldn't help laughing a bit seing this dude trying to 'take the dust' off. When he realized that dus wasn't the problem he came up to me and told me 'Look, the best I can do is give you half of the price back', and he gave me a €20 bill.
Apu and I shared looks, probably thinking the same thing '20 euros, damn!', which in other words meant that we could probably buy at least 15 beers with that. As I mentioned again, €20 in my student time was -at least for me- a mine of gold. So i grabbed the bill, said good bye to the girl (the smile wasn't so big anymore), and left the store with my still new shoes and some money in my pocket.
Whatever happened with the shoes some time after that....that's a different story ;)
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