It's 9:49 here in mighty Brussels and I am just waking up.....terrible. I know. But I need as much sleep as I can get in preparation for Madrid. I have a feeling that in order to make up for the long hours of listening to conference papers, that I will be forcing my self to stay up in order to enjoy the city.

I went to see The Wedding Present last night with Kevin and Chris. Amazing band, amazing show - even better than Arcade Fire. Perhaps it was knowing I was going home to my own bed, rather than keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't get a case of the always potential travelling bed bugs, or maybe it was the pretty appealing plate of Turkish food I had before the concert - either way, it was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday night.

After a day of art store shopping, tummy aching, hairy-olive eating and wardrobe pushing we headed out for The Rotunde (the great venue where I saw Blanche). Before settling into our standing-room-only positions, we ventured to the favourite street or otherwise known as 'the site of the really dodgie kebab'. I was tempted to make Kevin bring me to that wonderfully exceptional, high quality establishment one more time....but decided against it, didn't want Chris to have too good of a time. We kept on walking and came to another row of 'dish specific' restaurants. This time it was Turkish pizza, rather than the 'kebabs' (read: chip buddies) served by their competitors on the more southerly end of this northern quarter curved street. My advice to anyone looking for a pre-concert bit is to keep on walking - this little place (the name of which has fluttered out of my head) was a world better - in fact, you could say the difference between this restaurant and the wrap hut was about the same as the distance between New Zealand and the rest of the world.

Anyhow, before you go on the hunt for Turkish pizza, double check your internal vegan sensitivity meter and make sure it doesn't say: MONDO POLITICAL, INFLEXIBLE AND WILL FLIP OUT IF THERE IS EVEN A SUGGESTION THAT MY FOOD WAS TOUCHED BY A HAND THAT AT SOME POINT MAY HAVE MASSAGED A COW THAT WAS ON ITS WAY TO THE SLAUGHTER HOUSE. I ordered my Roman-boat-shaped pizza sans fromage. This actually only meant that they didn't put cheese as the bottom layer; my pizza came with two huge triangles worth of feta atop it. There was a brief and calm exchange of "I can't eat this" and the pleading eyes of "I don't want to take this back". In the end, I was quite happy to receive the original pizza back with the feta lovingly and understandingly scraped off with the spatula that had not been moving the hache around the pan.

The crust was exceptionally thin (thinner than the Lyndsay Special at Il Fiasco, or the Skinny at Pappa Cieo), and was dressed up with a smidgen of tomato sauce, diced onion, and chopped mushroom. It took me a while of watching other patrons, but I realized that the large salad that is plunked down into the middle of the table is communal, and everyone is meant to pile the lettuce, tomato and mild chillies from the salad onto their pizza. The meal was great, and the service was acceptable. The atmosphere was perfect for: we are going to see a really loud and sweaty band. Great dinner.

The Wedding Present was amazing.

Ohhhh...and I am also in the middle of planning a menu for K and L's Christmas Party -done totally vegan style.