Life with “The Others”

I’m beginning to form this theory that America makes purposefully crappy TV shows and movies. Stuff that is never intended to show at home, only abroad, because it’s cheaper than the good stuff and they’ll buy it. Europe’s like the outlet shopper for tv shows. What’s worse is living in a non-Anglo country makes me watch it! Suddenly I think ZENA is awesome! So is Diagnosis Murder! Charmed! It’s all about a kitsch sort of cool. Right? Um…right?

It’s not like I miss English. I speak more than I’d like to here. That’s definitely not it. For some reason though, the stinkiest shows become comforting. I may miss certain things about home, but I’m certainly not homesick. Then again, my boyfriend Del can attest to the fact that I do have some sort of audience disorder. That is, once I am the audience of a story, any story, I become really invested in finding out “then what happens?”. I’m a producer’s dream.

I’m hoping this disorder can account for my most recent and inexplicable tv-watching habit…I can’t bear to tell you the name, but suffice it to say that there’s a certain teenage drama that I’ve taken to watching. (Though I do use the word ‘watching’ loosely.) And I hate it. It’s perhaps the most terrible show I’ve ever watched. Writing aside, it makes me feel old, since this show is not the 90210 genre when the characters were perhaps corny, 2-dimentional and unrealistic, but there was a conscience to the show. The Show-That-Must-Not-Be-Named is just as bad (case in point: it’s on tv now as we speak and the female characters are actually. having. a pillow fight. I’m not making this up!), except the show pretends that the teenagers are grown-up, with everything that entails. As I’m sure you get my points, and it’s perhaps not interesting enough to go on about, I’ll leave it there. Basically, it’s bad AND it makes me feel old and prudish. Maybe it’s just because I understand every cultural aspect of the show that makes me find it absurdly comforting to have on. I sure hope so.

It makes me miss the days of when I had a boyfriend who didn’t own a TV (you know who you are). I both loved it and hated it. I loved that it meant we did more stuff. I loved the culturally superior feeling it gave me. I hated that we always had to do stuff. I longed sometimes to just sit and cuddle up on the couch and zone out into a good story. Then again, as someone said recently “now we watch all the good stuff on DVD and all the crap on TV”. How ridiculously true.

Now, I do watch local TV sometimes. No matter what foreign country you are in, the local programming is weird. There’s no other word for it. Weird. It all seems to be such a caracature of cultre that it’s hard to believe. I often wonder how American TV looks to foreigners. (But then again I guess I know don’t I?) Perhaps they get so much of it that it doesn’t come across as so “out there”. (Hmm, I’m doubting that as I say it.)
Now for your enjoyment I offer a sampling of the cultural delights which apparently make the local families gather round the tube.

The German channel – likes some sort of live variety show which takes place in a beer hall…perhaps it’s a ski lodge. The entire community is there, families and people of all ages. They are singing the kind of local songs that make one sway their gigantic metal beer mugs from side to side with cheer. You’d think there was no flashy dance option to this kind of sing, but you’d be wrong. Cause on the little stage there’s surely a dance troupe of 20-somethings, complete with leiderhosen-inspired outfits and Heidi braids, doing what appears to be a slapstick impression of how one might try to make dancing in leiderhosen look “cool”.

The Portuguese Channel - On Saturday mornings comes a gem of a show for the under pre-teen crowd. It takes place on a very plain stage, with a crowd of kids just gathered around the “MC”. I think there is just a borderless blue space, as if the the highschool photographer has rented them his faux background to play with for some extra cash. The kids wear differing groups of matching T-shirts. I can’t watch too much of it, but I have an affinity for the part where a popular pop sing is played (last time it was “Maneater” by Nelly Furtado) and one of the matching T-shirt groups does a choreographed dance to the song. Apparently one they make up on the spot, cause there’s not much other excuse for what they do. I have a clear memory of 12 year olds in baggy T-shirts prowling around and clawing at the air like tigers across the stage. The other kids watch silently, gathered around. The music fades. Luckily the kids seem not to realize they’ve lost their dignity, because they stand up and accept clapping for whatever they just did. I’m just not sure I get it. Portugal is teaching it’s kids to be…um… uncordinated?

The French Channels – Inevitably showing some kind of talk show. They are sitting around a table talking about books, or around a table talking about movies…or around a table talking about politics. Sometimes there will be large puppets talking about politics. I mean it.

(They might also be showing some movie where everyone is sad and tortured and the main character dies tragically. But that goes without saying.)

The Dutch Channels – Hmm. These are watched a lot by foreigners because they show a lot of English programming, not dubbed but subtitled. They show great movies also. Their OWN programming is a lot of reality tv (their version of the same shows we have) and, at night time, it’s not rarely things I’d be embarrassed to watch with my parents, or friends for that matter. (I always find it interesting that these shows are always in English, though they’d never ever be shown on Anglo-TV. See my first comment of this entry.) I remain slightly proud of them for the fact that there is a greater equality of male nudity to female. Not equal, but closer then most other countries programming gets. There’s something.

They all have a daytime phenomenon, by where a young cute host fills time while viewers are encouraged to call in to win money by solving some random little puzzle or game. Typical games are tasks like “find the difference between these 2 photos”, “words that start with the prefix re-”, or “find words that can be made with the letters POSNUED”. These shows make no sense to me. I mean, is it really the cheapest or most interesting thing to put on all day? However, they are strangely mesmerizing. The hosts are just so perky! And cute! And the games don’t seem so hard! (Well, that photo one is impossible.) Thankfully, I have managed to resist any urge to call in, perhaps due to the fact that I fear getting through and stumbling over my French or Dutch on live TV. I would assume the shows are a cover while they beam subliminal messages, except I don’t have strange urges afterwards. Unless…they’re telling me to watch bad Anglo-tv…

Huh. I might be on to something.

Finally, the conversational delicacies I promised. Some various thoughts and impressions from Spain:
Disclaimer: I make no claims as to the maturity or depth of my comments. I’m aiming more for honest impressions and fun. As an anthropologist, I’d be kicked out of the club. But then again they can take themselves waaay to seriously!

~ Spanish haircut: there seems to be a national password, except it’s not a word but a hairstyle. You can be in just about any European city and pick out the Spaniards from across the square because of their hair. The first characteristic is bangs. Everybody loves bangs, bangs, bangs everywhere. Most often they are cut just a little too short to be accidentally so and/or they are cut quite deep (towards the ears). Normally it’s waht I’d associate with a slightly “alternative” look. Throw into the mix: dark roots, faded or purposefully off-color highlights, obvious layers, and casual waves that manage to accentuate where the layers are. It’s a very laid-back look. It’s not the French-type “I pay a lot of money to look like I just got out of bed” look. It’s more a distinctly Spanish-type “I live on the beach and cut my hair with a kitchen knife” look.

~ As I mentioned before, the Spanish don’t seem too keen on anything but bread, olives, meat (jamon!) and pastries. I’ve been to Spain now 4 times, and every time I had to stop and buy fruit to carry around for snacks after the first few days. Even ordering a “salad” in Spain usually get your some combination of potatoes, mayonnaise, eggs…perhaps 5 peas and a garnish of shredded carrots.

~ I am struck by how “Spanish” Madrid is. What I mean is, it looks like it would be more vaguely “European”, like Paris, London, Brussels, etc. An international mix more than anything else. But no. It looks grand and beautiful like London, but the feel is distinctly Spanish. You go for dinner with some Spaniards and you are standing at a bar at 11pm eating individually purchased sliced of baguette with a bit of topping on it for dinner. That’s REALLY dinner. I can’t get the hang of standing up to eat at the bar and feeling like it meets the ritual standards of “dinner”. Barcelona, on the other hand, looks completely local. “Barcelonan”/Catalan/Spanish. However, it feels like it’s in the club of “international” or generally “European” cities. I return from Madrid feeling like I’ve actually been to a distinctly foreign culture, which is simply not what is often expected when traveling around EU capitols. It’s a refreshing bit of variety.
~ The Spanish don’t seem to have gotten the memo that napkins are for absorbing gook and moisture from hands and other things. Thier napkins, identical to those in much of South America (so it’s some ancient quirk perhaps?), are little squares on tissue paper. Not tissue like you blow a nose on. Tissue like you wrap a shirt in for Christmas. Except, of course, they’d only wrap the shirt of a cockroach, cause they’re tiny.

On the intellectual track, my friend Ilse and I went to Toledo, the capitol of Spain until 1651. Thus, it is packed with treasures for such a small city. One day turned into two there, and we wore ourselves ragged poking around (possibly due to the 45 minutes of walking in circles down the winding, vaguely mapped streets that it required to find each landmark). What’d I learn about? Goya, El Greco, Visigoths in Spain, Sephardi Jews in Spain, the legacy of the Moors in Spanish culture, which is seems I see more and more of with everything I read and see about Spain recently. I happen to have just finished a book about Queen Katherine, Henry VIII’s first wife, daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand, who defeated the Moors in Grenada and finished recapturing spain from the Moors, ruled over the Inquisition. It gave everything excellent texture and context for my understanding. Once going to places like Toledo, it’s horrifying to think that I could have gone my whole travel life passing so very close to such treasures, not knowing they werre there and missing them altogether. Wondering how many times I have done that in other places.

I’m back from my most recent traveling education (Madrid and Toldeo) and have impressions to thrust upon you share. First, a little recovery is in order. I am so tired…I’m not sure if it’s the awesome cheap hotel beds, the (seeming) spectacular lack of fruits and vegetables in the Spanish diet, the dehydrating desert-like air, or my post medical treatment wimp-dom…whatever it is, I require a rest up before I get moving like a regular person again. I think I’m remembering a massage gift certificate I got for my birthday, and I think I’m likin’ it. I wouldn’t mind being back at that spa right about now!

Today I am off to Madrid! It’s a last-minute trip that came a bit out of the blue via an invitation from a friend and former consulting colleague. She said “I’m going to be in Spain for a conference and I’ll stay for 5 days after. Why don’t you come?”

Not working at the moment, it’s a little hard to say no to these things, except in the case of money. As it turns out, that’s the main reason I’d ever balk at a travel opportunity. I promised to ‘look into’ flights, fully expecting to find a ready excuse from the airlines. However, thanks to the magic that is RyanAir, I can’t refuse a round-trip for 50 Euros! So…off I go.

It’s fully Ilse’s trip. Contrary to my usual position of being the planner, I am fully the follower in this one. Wanna do a winery tour, she asks? Sure, I say, even though I barely drink ay more. Apparently I’m up for anything…Wanna toilet paper the royal castle and see what happens? Sure! Wanna go Spanish cow tipping on the outskirts of the city? Sure!

Given such hypothetical dangers of agreeing ahead of time to follow another’s whims, it’s a good thing my guide is an interesting cultural type and not a chew tobacco, break laws type.
A dangerous agreement or not, I don’t mind. I figure I will see Spain through her interests and surely discover something different than I would have should I plan it.

Now, if only she would plan what I should pack…

I’m less a “thing” person that I am an “activity” person. That is, in terms of presents. Given the choice between receiving an item and creating a memory, I will go for the 2nd everytime, and birthdays are a perfect excuse to spend a little more green than one normally does on one’s self.

Since I went 8 months after my surgery last year not being able to get fully, naturally, gloriously submerged in water, I’ve had a little fascination with the European spa experience. Not a spa like in America, all beauty treatments and luxury (although that’s an option). I mean spa as in modern Roman bath. A community swim and relaxation “hole”. Something that we really don’t have going for us in the States. I’ve been once in Austria. (I will never forget going to the spa for an apres-ski dip…the warm pool lying half indoors, half outdoors. We swam under the plastic divider between the two parts and sat in the steam-producing waters, cushy warm while the snow on the mountains glowed in the night all around us.) I wanted to go when we were in Cologne, Germany for Carnivale but was warned that Germans are a little fond of the nakedness. Word is that they often ban swimsuits in most or all of the common areas, and well, frankly that can get awkward with friends, no matter how body-comfortable one is.

So, my boyfriend Del took me to Spa, Belgium. First used by the Romans, it was once so renowned for it’s healing waters that it spawned the word ’spa’ in generic use. The town? A little strange, considering its illustrious past. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice enough. Clean, with a sparkling Casino and some beautiful architecture. But otherwise it seems a little forgotten, like the Ardennes forest that cloaks it on all sizes muffled its sounds of life from the outside world until most forgot that it was there.

(Source: Lebioroles homepage)

Del happened to have discovered a gem of a hotel, a castle cum hotel (and soon to be spa), newly renovated in a luxurious mix of antique and modern tastes. It’s called “Manoir de Lebioles” and is worth the weekend trip to Spa itself. With a decor mix of antique and modern, it looks like the kind of place you could never afford. I purposely didn’t look at the prices (it was a gift, after all), the standard room price is not bad, according to Del. We were definitely the “junior” clients of the weekend, judging by the dinner crowd. I only felt it in the fact that the dining was so fancy I didn’t know what half of the things were they put in front of us or what to do with them. Example: the foie gras came with a black truffle consume in a teeny tiny bowl. So….was that to eat as a soup or dabble on the foie gras? Del didn’t know either. It was pretty strongly flavored so I chose to drop it on my fois gras, as discretely as possible in case that was dead wrong. We probably looked like homeless people, pouring our thousand dollar soup over our food. No one gasped and fainted so we were at the very least uninteresting to watch.

If going to the Manor you’ll want to rent a car, or else you’ll need to strike up a friendship with the one taxi in the entire city, as we did. In fairer weather we planned to walk the Ardennes and go horse back riding. In the weather we got, an afternoon at the new Thermes de Spa sufficed nicely. While it didn’t match my first, Austrian ski spa experience in glamour (that one’s pretty hard to beat), it was 3 hours of “I’ll definitely come back and do this again” dips in warm and cold pools, saunas, steam rooms, heat lamp reclining and plain old sit-in-the-comfy-lounger-and-watch-the-town-play.

Check out the Manor and spa at www.manoirdelebioles.com and www.thermesdespa.com/php/EN/bains.php (take you to the English site and the photos of the baths).

Last week it was beautiful, utterly beautiful. A friend replied to a group email calling the gang to outdoor libations, “If it is one of those sunny days on “Temptation Square”, fingers crossed, it will have come one full month early this year! You know the first sunny Friday of every April (you know the one!) when sun and friday intersect and everyone comes out? Can you imagine if we had it already in March?”.

How well she captures the local “event” that is the coming of sunny days here. Unfortunately, it turned out to be teaser weather, as it’s gross outside now and tomorrow’s forecast calls for snow. I’m not sure why that should be surprising to me, as the weather is the most untrustworthy force around these parts. Sometimes it just likes to get our hopes up I suppose. Humph…

Surely the last thing the world needs is another blog. (I know, I now, your name’s not Shirly) But I’ve been toying with the idea for a while and today, the first day into my 30th decade, I finally figure ‘what the hell?’. Certainly I’m as interesting as all the other nobody’s out there, and considering that I live a serious plane ride away from a good many of my friends, and it’s just not possible to talk to everyone often enough to share all the adventures, we all might enjoy a new way to keep up. (“We” meaning “I” and “keep up” meaning one-sided commentary from yours truely!)

While I will generally desribe this blog’s subject as a Culturephile’s journey and musings, and that means heavy on observations of cultural quirks and good old travel stories, it doesn’t count out much of anything that inspires me.

Seeing as how yesterday was my birthday (contrary to what the opening statement might seem to insinuate, I turned “20 plus 11″), my first comment will be to say thank goodness I escaped “Belgian” celebration of my day. You see, Belgians seem to have some twisted impression that the person celebrating his/her birthday is supposed to give other people goodies, and well, I don’t wish to be ungenerous…but I’m admittedly too lazy to cook my own dinner each night much less to cook some sort of sweets for everyone around, and too poor to buy my way into cultural appropriateness. Besides that fact that it just plain doesn’t make sense! Why should one person treat 30 friends as a way to celebreate him/herself instead of vice-versa?

No, instead I had a wonderful dinner with my dear boyfriend and dear friends Pia and Yvonne. The decor alone was worthwhile. Our waiter was a hysterical cartoon character of a “French” garcon. Picture John Leguizamo waiting tables in a pinstriped suit, jacket continuously buttoned, accent strong enough to sound fake, snear permanent enough to seem a ruse. He meant well, but was too caught up in his own assurance of how funny he was to see that he was merely awkward. You can always count on the Francophones…

The Belgian style of customer service wasn’t limited to him: walking in to an almost empty restaurant and being seated at a table that was not to my bf’s liking, we asked to move to another table. We were told that they were all reserved and they seemed very confused by our request. I explained in French that we preferred a booth, and again, we were told they were all reserved.

We reserved as well. I do believe that a handful of people do call and reserve specific tables, but certainly the whole restaurant (3 dining rooms) was not complete with table-specific rservations. Perhaps it simply did not occur to them to consider one of the other 2 rooms. I have said it before and I’ll say it agian, they’re just not problem-solvers.

In the end, going into the other room and asking the hostess opened up a host of possibilities (“Of course. where would you like to sit. Just pick. Anywhere’s fine.”) and we were happy, if not confused as always by the incapability of the average Beglian service worker to actually be helpful. (It’s only fair to note: there were actually a couple of very helpful staff. They are the rare breed though, and that’s no lie.)

Update: Strangely I realize that I never mentioned exactly which restaurant we ate at. It’s called Brasserie du Prince d’Orange. Overall, even though it’s not the best restaurant we’ve eaten at locally, the food was plenty good and the decor is worth at least one look.