Leuven Town Festival

This is the annual festival in Leuven. I guess it happens just before most of the students arrive back in town. Just the international students who have to move in and take care of all their registration and immigration issues from here, rather than commuting from the area.

There are many parts of the festival. I happened upon some races. They blocked off the entire street from the Leuven Rail Station to St. Peter's Church in the center of town. Then there was a Corvette racing back and forth between the two. Note that this street (Bondgenotelan) is one of the main streets in town and the track runs from the edget of town to the center, about 1km. You can just make out the buildings at the station (start of movie) and church (end of movie). See movie (to upload).

Then there was a bike race. There seemed to be several classes of racers. This is the second group riding by the church. They seemed to do several laps. I didn't see the end of the race. See movie. (to upload) After the bikers, there came a dozen or so cars with top racks that carried about a dozen bikes each. Some racks were full, some had just a few bikes on them. See movie. (to upload)

Apparently there is some sort of blessing of the animals tomorrow in the west part of town. It starts around 3-4am, and the whole thing is over around 9am. So I'll see if I can catch some of it. My landlord said he and his whole office will be over there working the crowd. He's a property lawyer (called a notary here) and his clients and potential clients are will be there with their animals and produce.

One other thing, I should show you my ride. I got a rental bike $35 euro for the whole year. I got it from VELO, a nonprofit that rents, resells and repairs bicycles. The idea is to promote energy friendly transportation. Folks in business suits and skirts, etc. all ride bikes here. The whole town (inside the ring) is about the land area of Tower Grove Park in St. Louis. There is more of the town outside the ring, but most of my days will be spent inside the ring, so this should work just fine.

All is well here. There is a carnival in front of the library, so my usual internet spot is a little noisy, but still works. Peace to all. I enjoy your messages and comments. Also, this makes responding to emails easier, because I can put general info and photos here then give other tidbits in the emails. I couldn't manage to upload the movies. Not sure why. I'll try later when I have a power connection.

Peace,
Amy

P.S. Here is a quote from a blog entry from my friends Elizabeth and Colby's blog. There is a link at the left to get more....

I wanted to take this moment to do another list of weird things about Belgium, so here we go: 10 more oddities,

(1) When you go to sleep at night with the windows open, there are no bug sounds anywhere to be heard. Just pure silence, then someone talking somewhere.

(2) The bell tower near us chimes every 15 minutes like most, but on some days it rocks out for nearly 5 hours on end with tunes from ABBA and Iron Butterfly, and I'm not even kidding.

(3) The preferred nomenclature for the 'Port-a-potty' here is the 'toiletwagen'.

(4) All beer comes in smaller bottles (22mL) but is much higher in alcohol (8-12%) and is oh-so-delicious.

(5) Virtually no one uses credit cards here, period. Also, they've stopped using checks in Belgium. It's all online. My bank contact looked at me like I was from Mars when I said we still used checks in the US.

(6) Even the man who runs the cheese stand at the Friday market speaks 4 languages.

(7) The other day we followed a large rat down the street to a friend's house. He would move a few steps then stop, we'd follow then stop. This went on for blocks.

(8) Carnival workers in Belgium are nearly identical to the ones in America. Apparently they are related. There is a carnival outside our window (about 4 ft actually) right now.

(9) At the market, the panties hang next to the fruit. A woman went up to a pair of panties and stretched the crotch out as far as she could . . . not quite sure what she was checking for.

(10) Don't try to contact anyone for anything in August in Belgium. The nation is on vacation. The most efficient thing in Belgium, we've found, is the Swiss consulate. (Sidenote: embassies in foreign countries usually adapt to the host country. Example, the Canadian embassy here makes their building appear Belgian using Belgian materials, decor, etc. The American embassy is known to import everything in the building from America, from the building material to the carpet to the clocks, which is funny because it's all probably then made in China, right?)