Visit to Leuven Belguim

Another trip to another lab in another country.  I have been visiting labs to see where in Europe I might spend two years after I get my PhD, gaining training and experience in science.  I was able to arrange a trip to visit the university town of Leuven, Belgium.

I arrived on Saturday, and after walking what seemed like an hour through the Brussels airport, I finally got to the baggage area. I never realized how big their airport was, but they have NATO and the European Union headquartered here.  Walking from Terminal A took at least fifteen minutes and then I still waited another twenty minutes before my luggage showed up.  There is only one train per hour on the weekends that goes to Leuven. When I got down to the basement to catch the train, I missed the previous one by only 10 minutes and I sat on the platform for another 45 minutes before the next train arrived.  Twenty-five minutes later I was in Leuven.  Once I was out of the train station the area was full of character and color.


Aaron, a New Englander and a grad student from the lab I was visiting, met me outside the train station and we walked down the main street (Bondgenotenlaan) from there towards the church in the middle of town.  Aaron had originally arranged for me to stay in his room, but instead I got to stay at his girlfriend's apartment on the 4th floor (top floor) near the center of town while she was away on a skiing holiday.  The living room and kitchen area of the apartment was about twice the size of my whole apartment in Lyon.  There was a separate bedroom about the size of my apartment and a nice bathroom three times the size of mine.  It was like being in a 4 star hotel.


Aaron showed me around the town and we got a late lunch at a bar along the "Longest bar in  Europe", or at least in Belgium. It is a set of bars all right next to each other (at least 15) around the old market place.  The center of the square is filled with outdoor seating and is even filled on sunny days in the winter. We talked about science for a couple hours and I called it a day.

Argh.  Daylight saving time started in Europe on Sunday.  Lost an hour.  It was already 11:00 when I got up.  I was going to go into Brussels to visit a museum, but I decided to just wander through Leuven a bit.  I tried to stop and sketch, but it was near 0 Celsius, so my hand froze and I could not draw.  I took pictures instead and will be able to draw them later. 

Aaron and I went to a little Dutch restaurant for dinner.  We had Draadjesvlees, a traditional Dutch slow-braised beef stew.  It was like a delicious pot roast with small spring onions in a rich beef broth.  It came with a salad and fries.  Belgium is known for french fries, and almost everywhere you go in the city, fries are unlimited.  Bad thing for me because I love fries.

Later that night, John, another American from New Hampshire, came over to practice his dissertation talk.  He was defending his thesis on Friday and he wanted to try out his talk on a few friends.  So, Aaron, another friend of theirs, and I listened to his talk and gave him lots of feedback. Hopefully he will ignore most of it.

The Monday after Easter is a holiday throughout most of Europe.  School and many of the shops were closed in town and Aaron decided he wanted to take me to Ghent.  It is about half an hour by train on the other side of Brussels from Leuven.  Ghent also has a large University, but the population is about twice that of Leuven.  Ghent is the quintessential Dutch town.  Yes, I know that it is not in the Netherlands, but this part of Belgium (Flanders) speaks Dutch. The town has a castle (right out of the knights of the round table) and canals with barges.  Very touristy, but it was nice to walk around and much more lively than Leuven.

That evening Kevin, whose lab I was visiting at K.U. Leuven, took Aaron and me out to dinner at a very nice restaurant.  I had a quail salad with toasted pine nuts and foie gras as the starter, sea bass as the main course, and a different wine with each course, of course.  For dessert: we had banana slices with Iced Cream (whip cream that is frozen around an ice cream) and brown sugar crumble on top.  Very delicious.  We talked about science for the two hours and I headed back to the room to finish preparing my talk for the next day.

Tuesday morning I ran my suitcase down to the train station and put it in a locker so I wouldn't need to drag it around town.  It was a gloriously sunny day.  I met up with Aaron to walk the 25 minutes across town to the lab.  I met with a couple people before my talk and then gave a short talk over lunch.  The talk went okay, and I met more people in the lab after lunch.  I also discussed funding possibilities with Kevin and I now have another post-doc opportunity to be explored when I graduate.

Aaron gave me a parting gift.  He had something imported from the US that I have been craving.  He had three bottles of cayenne pepper.  One of the bottles was almost empty so he asked me to take it.  He is almost through his PhD and will be heading back to the US for a visit in a couple months and he will restock his supplies at that time.  I am so excited.  I can't wait to make some pasta and have something to spice it up.