I am studying in Belgium at KU Leuven through the EuroScholars program. EuroScholars is essentially an internship; most days, I work with a PhD student at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law. My mentor studies the ethics of stem cell-based embryo models – within that, my project works to understand the attitudes of different stakeholders towards embryo research and the embryo models. Pretty cool!
This last week, I went to the Midstay Program. There are also EuroScholars students at the University of Geneva and Leiden University, so during this program, we all met in Leuven for a few days to share our respective research, eat some classic Belgian dishes, and check out the city.
We met for the first time to get some lunch before touring the city. I’m always amazed by how old the structures in Leuven are – every day on my way to work, I walk past the old city walls, still standing from medieval times. It was pretty sunny out, which was nice for walking around.
The tour guide told us stories of the Gothic-style city hall and the removal of a statue of Leopold II, a dorm where a pope studied and lived, and my favorite, the statue of Paep Thoon, a historic trickster. Apparently, this little guy annoyed the town so much that he was kicked out and banned from ever touching the soil; so he showed back up, standing in a wagon filled with soil from the next town over.
After the tour, we took the visiting students to one of the frituurs for some Belgian fries. The best part of the frituurs (in my opinion) is the vast amount of sauces; this time around, we got samurai sauce, classic mayo, and a curry sauce. We ended the day with dinner at ’t Oud Gathuys – a lovely Belgian restaurant where I tried duck for the first time!
The next day was presentations. I had prepared a short talk going over some of the background to my work and the social science methodologies I am learning. A few days before the program, I noticed we had a jury of professors scheduled to evaluate our presentation skills. Yikes! Luckily, I had time to go through some practice rounds with my lab, so the presentation went well.
The professors were pretty intense, but they gave good advice: avoiding American “uptalk” helps you sound more sincere, it is possible to train out the filler words, and body language matters. “Uptalk,” the way Americans often end their sentences with a questioning tonation, was new to me – I had never realised the way the rhythm or tone of the language could appear to someone from another country.
The other students’ presentations were fascinating: from characterizing nanoparticles in physics to studying gene variants. We all work on very different projects, so it was really neat to hear how laboratories, especially more scientific labs, worked at the different universities.
After the presentations, we got some lunch and took a quick train over to Brussels for another tour. Highlights for me included stunning stained glass in the cathedral, beautiful Gothic architecture, and another (more famous) little statue, Manneken Pis. We had dinner at Wolf, a choose-your-own restaurant venue. I had Syrian food (delicious).
St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral.
The two students from Geneva talked about the challenge of the majority of their lab speaking French and adjusting to apartment-style living. Talking with the two of them, I realized how international my lab group at KU Leuven is – most days, people speak English as a common language, since we have folks joining from across Europe, China, and Africa. It’s not surprising to walk into a room and hear French, Dutch, Spanish, or Italian.
I was also curious to hear about the differences in costs of living and access to travel within our same program – I feel super lucky to be so central! Leuven is super connected by train, so my friend and I have been able to travel all over Belgium on the weekends.
After dinner, we walked through Brussels, stopping for gelato and a waffle. They were starting to put up the Christmas lights, and the storefronts were lit up in the cold. We ended the night on the Oude Markt back in Leuven – since most Belgian students go home on the weekends, Thursdays are the night for cards and Belgian beers.
Stella Artois and Duvel are the classics.
The next morning, we ended the program with a lovely lunch and a trip to the local museum. This year is the 600th anniversary of KU Leuven, so the whole town is celebrating. The museum had a special exhibition tracing the history of how knowledge was taught and carried through the university. The curators arranged artifacts from fossils, to pottery, to old machines and photographs, through patterns in shape and topic – the wealth of information in the basements of these institutions is crazy to imagine.
My favorite exhibit was by a guest artist, Alicja Kwade. All of her work felt vast. There was a room where giant dice rolled through the darkness on screens, like waves over a shore. There was a massive boulder balanced perfectly, dangerously still above a chair, and a room painted with lapis lazuli taken from the stone in the center. Very cool.
After the tour, we said our goodbyes and headed out. While unexpected, the program was a nice way to fully tune in to the city where I am studying. The folks from the other universities had entirely different experiences from my own, and I really enjoyed the chance to hear about the day-to-day of their work. Presenting my own work helped me consider the differences in presenting to international audiences, something I hope to improve on in the future. All in all, a lovely couple of days!