I'd arranged to meet my high school friend Eric in Belgium where I was going for a conference. I flew Northwest and had rented a car for the two days I'd be there. After leaving the airport together, we navigated the highways, a complex twisting set of over- and underpasses with occasional glimpses of the ocean.

It was already the second day, business part over, when we decided to head up to the Netherlands and stop at a random small town. The street we parked on was kind of a main street in a downtown area; oddly, it had the setup of a real Dutch town and the atmosphere of a Hong Kong sidestreet. It was a gorgeous evening, slightly darkened blue with a still but crisp air. We picked a small tech store to wander around in, and spent some time finding interesting files on their showroom computers. One was a mouse icon shaped like an ass, and Eric couldn't stop laughing at it as I browsed the backroom filled with mp3 players. As we left the store and walked further down the street, Eric suddenly decided to go back and download the icon to his laptop.

After he was done, we walked out towards our car and I said that seeing it was around 6pm, we should head back to Belgium and find a hotel. I warned him that I would be driving semi-randomly (for some reason I thought Belgium was southwest) and that no maps were allowed unless we became hopelessly lost. Eric didn't seem to mind. As we passed a large blue-canopied restaurant, Eric excitedly pointed to the cartoon drawings of crawfish that covered the building, though the label read "mini-lobsters." Since he ran straight in without asking first, I followed and decided to check it out.

Suddenly, we were no longer by the road, but rather the restaurant was open-faced and recessed a long ways by means of a large parking lot and outdoor seating area. My cousin Justin joined us at the table, which was in the innermost left corner of the place. They brought us a couple slices of fresh bread as we looked through the menu. I think I decided on squid, but I didn't get a chance to order. Eric was still outside; apparently, there was a problem with where we parked. After settling things down, I went back in only to find that my slice of bread had fallen on the floor. I tried to brush it clean, but I couldn't get rid of all the dirt no matter what I did. Since I knew from real life how amazing Dutch bread was, I decided it was worth trying to cut off the top layer. When I moved to do so, the bread turned into a pack of cards. I thought nothing of it and cut the top edge off of the first couple cards, as if that was going to do it. They were the only pack of cards I'd brought, and as I started to shuffle them (which I equated to eating the bread, apparently) they shrank and I lost control before giving up entirely. I went back outside to check on a commotion that had started up near our car, but it had nothing to do with us. When I got back in, Justin and Eric had switched tables.

The next thing I know, it's 10pm and I'm staring at the bed of my hotel, still in the Netherlands, and thinking about how good it'll be to fall asleep. I also couldn't believe the trip was over so fast; it seemed like it had started only hours ago. As I start changing for the night, I suddenly realized that my flight is early next morning and that we had better head out to Belgium now. I knocked on Eric's door and waited while he got off the phone and out of the shower. He stuck his head out and seemed annoyed that we had to leave right away, but he didn't complain. I waited for him out in the "laptop lounge" of the hotel where my dad happened to be trying to connect to the internet through his own laptop. I checked out the files for a while, but didn't see anything more than some of the popular mouse and arrow icons that were at the store earlier. My dad finally got cnn.com to show up, but at that a moment a girl from the hotel stuck her head around the corner and said that guests weren't meant to be able to connect to the internet. As my dad reluctantly turned off his computer, my advisor's wife Alexandra walked in and asked what time it was.

I waited outside for Eric, and as I stood there, a red-headed girl called me over from the next store over. I recognized her somehow as a girl that Eric had made friends with earlier and who was likely to give us some free stuff before we left. Eric joined me as we arrived at the shop. The girl became Chinese, and was being helped by her sister. Turns out they ran a Chinese bakery, and began loading a paper plate full of dumplings, cakes, and sweets. As they started talking to me in Cantonese, an old Chinese woman who apparently knew us started yelling at them in Cantonese as well, complaining that the recipes weren't traditional. But I woke up before we got to do anything else.

posted by Larry at 10:18 AM