Wednesday, April 4, 2007

craziest story in belgium thus far

it's official - it's only been one day and i'm already going through baseball withdrawl.
i'm sick as a dog - i thought orginally a flu, now of course, turned into a full-blown sinus infection that has kept me up three nights in a row coughing and nose running and headache and with my out of date allegra not helping i must turn to my advil cold and sinus i luckily brought with me from the states and then some other things in erwin's cabinet that i can't read and hopefully won't overdose on while he is away on business in amsterdam...the only real solution is to get this disorder operated on when i get back to the states...

in the past few days i've received my first phone call from jimmy duggan (asking for pitching tips, bless his heart he deserves to have a great season at GW this year), mom, and today, yep that's right, rachel sara prinstein, the one - the only, and always too busy to make time for her brother actually sat on the phone and listened today ( i guess she had no choice being stuck on the washington to new york bus)... so shout outs to all of them for calling, and in case anyone else that reads this wants to here what it sounds like on the other end of the globe feel free to type in +32 4 99 22 88 99. looks strange, like just about everything i've seen here (fries in mayo????)

i'm having a blast with the mlb package erwin purchased the other night and i'm getting set to watch the tigers in a little while, meanwhile, it looks like the pioneers will be squaring off against one of the top dutch teams this weekend for a little home and home warm-up before the season kicks off the following weekend in antwerp, ill be throwing on saturday which means if i'm able to breathe tomorrow i'll work a baseball camp for all ages at the club from 9-5 and then throw an extended bullpen session followed by some light tossing on friday before my start on saturday.

last night quite the experience...after taking some meds that i couldnt read to feel better i left my humble adobe for the tram #2 and Ilse recommended and headed toward Plaantin station, in hopes of finding someone that a) spoke english and b) could point me in the direction of where i could go for a seder that evening since my other 3 contacts from various people...the ijc in brussels, michael wolf from back home, and Ilse friend the De Wulfs friend (yes quite a stretch but i tried) all were abroad... i was lost for a bit when i got out of the tram but found my way to the chabad house where i walked the street for about 15 min looking for signs of life, with nothing to be found, finally a man emerged from a building with his kid and i asked him if he spoke english, "a little," he replied, i continued by asking him about where i can find a seder, if the chabad was open, etc. etc. and he walked up to the door and pointed at a sign that was for april 2nd (the day before) and told me to try to come back between 8 and 9 tonight, and someone should be here...

battling my sinus infection/flu virus/something that makes you want to sleep all day and not breathe or eat, i went to practice and aside from long tossing tried to keep it low-key, i left around 720 to go find a place for the seder and see if i couldnt make the night real interesting...
i took the tram to plaantin station like earlier in the afternoon, but now with the sunset i was pretty discombobulated, wandering the streets, in a foreign country tired and sick. i walked to the chabad house again where it seemed this time lights were on and some commotion going on upstairs, so the first man that i saw i asked him if he knew if there was a seder there tonight...
in horrible english he told me to wait (yeah, i'm wondering how you can screw up "wait here"as well... but he did) he then motioned to me to follow him up the stairs where i was told to wait again. a man emerged who began to speak pretty decent english with me... we chatted for a bit, he was the son of the rabbi who everyone had told me to find (so he did exist, although not listed in information as Ilse had found out) and actually lived in new york city with his new wife. he invited me in for services and then afterwards to his family's seder.

i was able to hold my own in the services, obviously not too different from the states, but things got interesting once i started walking "home" with the rabbi and his family. he was a very nice and wise man asking me a ton of questions about my life, what i was doing in belgium, about baseball in particular, however, his english was horrible although he told me he could understand most of what i said. what became apparent once the setting moved into their residence was that everyone spoke to each other in hebrew and yiddish, with the seder conducted entirely in english, and the rabbi's other son, who was currently living in chicago with his wife from west bloomfield michigan (very very small world) translated almost everything for me. there is no way to classify this phemonenon other than simply stating from saturday to tuesday i heard nothing spoken but 3 different languages (dutch, flemish, and hebrew) and frankly i was having trouble keeping track of everything. however, it felt great to be at the seder with the whole family there were definitely over 20 people total there, including friends and little kids running around, and as noted, by the rabbi, for what the holiday is all about - for the youth, to pass on the story and make it fun for them, as well as following the commandment to observe it. what was amazing was how late the five 2-5 year old kids stayed up and participated (well past 3 AM) and how they helped lead the service in the entirely different language than i could understand. it was also nice to be there because despite the language barrier and being in a whole different country and with a group that was far more religious, the customs they took part in with so similar to everything i've done with our family in michigan that i felt right at home. except, for the fact that we never actually got to the meal part of the seder. i think we started around 10 pm but when i got up to leave at 1235 so i could make it home before the tram closed, we still hadn't eaten although i thought we were close, i was coerced, ok, definitely not but i didnt want to be rude since they were being so nice, so i decided to take them up on the offer to stay downstairs at their family friends' empty apartment who had gone abroad for the holiday. the next 3 hours were a blur as i was becoming increasingly sick, increasingly light headed from lack of food, and then somehwere in between from the wine they kept pouring. by 345 am they had just begun to start serving fish (of course to my pleasure!) and some sort of potato kugel concoction, by this time i was almost asleep at the table so i was led downstairs by a family member whose name (like everyone there) i have forgotten, and i laid down on a fold-up bed around 415, setting my alarm for 7 am so i could make it up to the baseball camp i was scheduled to help out with at the field, 40 min away in hoboken. one problem, my sinus thing had become so bad i could not breathe and therefore as i blew my nose the entire 3 hours, did not sleep a wink. i got up and slipped out (along with some food they had left for me in two huge bags, so unnecessary but also so nice) traveled back to my place in hoboken and could not breathe or even talk nor stand enough to be able to work the camp so i passed out for about 3 hours. the good news it helped me entirely get over my jet lag because tonight i'm finally going to bed at like 11 pm, the bad news is that i have practice tomorrow and i'm horribly sick still...
what i will take away from this experience:
it took a lot of guts to travel to a place (couldn't have done it without ilse's help either) that i had no idea how to get to and didnt know a single person and had to deal with two language barriers and then find someone who spoke my language to ask them if i could come to their house to eat dinner...sounds a lot weirder than it actually was, oh wait...it was that odd. nevermind.
at the services, i met two young men, probably a few years younger than me, one of whom, i had been to the luvabich center in southfield michigan (can you believe the coincidences!) and was surprised to find out that i'm from southfield michigan, but spoke english alright and his friend invited me to their house to have seder as well, but afterwards, the father who teaches in a school there or something, i was having trouble understanding, as usual, insisted on my attendance to some of their saturday morning services and other functions (not fully trying to covert me, but i got an inclination) which similarly was stated by every member of the slavatisky (sp?) household that i attended the actual seder at...they were pretty addament (sp? again...it's late i'm tired, so cut me some slack today) about my continued participation and baseballness in their lives...so we'll see.
they definitely treated me amazing and were beyond cordial, in fact, i must say i was the hit of the seder. the rabbi tried to tell a baseball story with a jewish/life analogy (standard) that he couldn't complete because of lack of vocabularly so it was bounced around the table a few times before i think his wife finally was able to finish it. then there was also numerous justin story times - about baseball, about my customs, about my life in american and what the heck i was doing in belgium, but mostly they were intrigued with the baseball and the baseball in belgium, which a solid 2 hours of the seder was probably spent discussing, which i did in english, and i'm sure maybe 5-6 people understood, and half of them under the age of 8. i even told how baseball and passover were always making for interesting experiences during my college career (like flying in a prop plane from pittsburgh to st. bonaventure in middle of nowhere new york during the middle of a t-storm and getting to the game 30 min prior to start after being up til 3 am at uncle sheldon's for seder and waking at 5 to get to BWI airport in DC last year)
i think the entourage was interested in coming to see a game or something. should make for an interesting summer, regardless. so there it is mom, my passover experience...it was more exciting as it actually happened, and unfortunately the orthodox don't really allow you to take pictures at the seder, but maybe i'll venture back with the camera one of these days so we can all have some visual images (rachel still doesnt even believe i'm in europe because she has no visual evidence) and hopefully i can be an example for jewish baseball players everywhere (all six of them including andrew haberern at gw) and from this experience i may be blessed with a reappearance of the 86-88 mph fastball for the first game of the season...

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