Part 6 - More
You thought that was it, ha? Think again. And keep reading.
Wine tasting - By far the most popular activity of the stage. With all my influence, I only managed to register and go twice. But of course, it was well worth it. For the first time, stagiaires were meeting together in order to taste, not to get drunk. And we had quite some specialists doing the presentations (the chief connaisseur Andras pictured here). We agreed to arrange further private wine tastings for those that stay in Brussels.
Beer tasting - couldn't live in Belgium without. We expected to have small quantities of beer, like you get for wine. But no, Belgians do not go for posh resemblances with wine tasting. You got a whole beer every time. About five times. I seriously don't remember what the last one was. Probably because it was the strongest anyway. Labels get all blurry after a while in any case.Men tasting/testing - clearly, if you want interesting men, you've got some choice. Not alot though. They tell you in the first day that there are 2/3 women and 1/3 men among the stagiaires. Apparently they are quite prone to statistics here at the Commission. I will not go into the national stereotypes, cause I could write till tomorrow. It is worth mentioning that men react strangely if you tell them you're married. They play the good catholics all of a sudden. What they mean is "oh my god she's married and I just wasted ten minutes here flirting instead of talking to that blond Swedish girl". Just an example. Clearly again, male stagiaires do not understand women. They are every now and then good fun though. Some samples:
Martin - Spanish
Virgilio - Italian
Antoine - French
But non-stagiaire best choice - Belgian
Theatre - Of course stagiaires are attracted to art. And some are born actors. Or politicians. Or both. Well, we were supposed to have a nice theatre performance, namely "The Importance of Being Earnest". I am not going to start now with the genuine attraction that I have for Wilde's plays. The performance was cancelled (not that it was ever planned) because there were not enough men in the team. So easily adapting stagiaires found the all-women solution: "The Vagina Monologues", and profits went to a charity dealing with violence against women. I will refrain from making any comments regarding the content or the performance of my female colleagues, but I will mention that it was very entertaining, and the overall conclusion was that men should pay more attention to what vaginas have to say.
Language classes - of course one of my goals for these months was to improve a bit the languages I sort of know, but not really. That includes Italian and Dutch. For Italian, I trusted the stagiaire system of free language classes offered by voluneer stagiaires. Well, I said, it is well worth it. And I was right. It helped into talking to lots of Italian men, of course. And we even made a little Italian corner during the ski trip. Clearly I wouldn't write a novel in the language now. As for Dutch, I chose the more official way of doing it, with evening classes at a language school in Brussels. I ended up the second time with the best mark. The Romanian school system is obviously to blame.
Indoor climbing - I don't think I told many of you that for some time now, I have discovered the beauties of indoor wall climbing. A very challanging sport that represents the ideal of getting to the top vertically, not horizontally. I'm getting quite good at it and I am happy to be able to do it together with my husband too. We had a little weight control problem in the beginning, but now I seem to get the hang of it. We had a stagiaire climbing club too, and I managed to go a few times with them, not too often unfortunately. Since some are staying over in Brussels, we are planning an outdoor trip as well.
posted by Dana @ 12:17 pm
2 Comments:
Buna , vad ca viata ta e f palpitanta si plina de peripetii! M-am distrat de minune cu relatarile tale despre stagiu, excursii si m ales cu noile definitii ale comisiei, comisarilor, stagiarilor, etc. Si cand te gandesti ce ne invatau pe noi la facultate! Mult succes in continuare si tine-ne la curent cu viata ta bruxelliana!
te pup, Ioana
Oh gosh, yes, men tasting is very funny - I know what you mean about the reactions.
It is especially funny in Hungary. Hungarian men coulnd't flirt if their life depended on it, and amusingly enough you often only find out that they were attempting to flirt with you when you tell them you're spoken for.They are very unsubtle.
One of my Hungarian colleagues that I was talking to (in my opinion a VERY innocent chat) actually ran away when I told him. Quite funny.
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