19 November, Wednesday:
We slept late, raced through our French homework, went to a 4 hour French class, went shopping, went to gym, ate dinner and collapsed. Oh yes. It was cold and grey. Yesterday was the same except with more rain.
20 November, Thursday:
Beagle gave up on French class today. Instead she went to the bank to try to get her bank account straightened out. One problem is that when she tries to e-mail the lady who is helping her, the bank rejects her e-mail. The bank's e-mail system says they have never heard of Beagle's friend. When Beagle told her that, the lady said oh yes, lots of people have told me that. I guess I should look into it.
Beagle tells me that she now has a bank account. It has no money in it, and she can't access it, but she has a bank account. Unlike Beagle, I did my French homework and went to class. It was the last class with Tanner. His accent is horrible, he can't understand anything anyone says, and he can't say anything much, but he knows all the grammatical rules. At the end of the class we played a game called 'Boogle.' It consists of trying to see how many French words you can make out of something like 36 randomly chosen letters - sort of like scrabble. We played 5 games. Tanner creamed me in all of them. Oh dear. I dragged my wounded pride back home, went to gym, etc. Oh yes. It was colder today, and grey. But there was no rain, or at least none that you would really count.
21 November, Friday:
No class today. It is wet and grey out, and it is supposed to get much colder. Last Friday I went to the Post Office near us. It was pretty chaotic, but things seemed to work pretty well. I was pleased because I had heard that the postal authorities had closed a lot of post offices in Brussels, leaving ours as one of the few left open. This week the Belgians decided to really reorganize the Post Office. I don't know everything that is involved in the restructuring, but the first step involves shutting down ALL the post offices in Brussels (and perhaps in all of Belgium as far as I know) until December 12th. What people are supposed to do in the interim, I don't know. Some supermarkets are going to sell stamps and accept outgoing mail, but it is hard for me to see how that is a real solution. I guess it is easier for them to get away with this in Belgium than it would be in the US, since no one here pays bills by mail any more, or for that matter uses checks. I suppose the only people who will be really affected are foreigners without Belgian bank accounts - such as us and the thousands of North-African immigrants, who were the ones jamming the post office last week! In the afternoon I went to Galerie Louise, a very upscale multilevel shopping mall a few blocks from here. It has entrances on Avenue Louise and Toison d'Or, and the entrances look more or less like those of any other fancy shop. But when you get inside there is a maze of shops, restaurants, etc. There are dozens of shops on 3 levels, without any map or guide or anything to tell you what stores are there or where they are located. It was very disorienting. I would be wandering around on one level and then discover that somehow I had ended up on a totally different level. In any event, I found a pretty good bookstore, so I was happy. We went to gym early, had an early dinner and then went to a dance performance where the choreographer and one of the dancers was the son of Beagle's Feldenkrais guru in NYC, Frania Zins. Frania had flown in for the occasion. The performance was in a remote part of Brussels, and we got lost getting there, which was fun in the rain, but the performance space was gorgeous and the dance was very modern and I thought very good. There were two parts; the first consisted of 4 or 5 young dancers doing sort of dance kind of things, clumping around in big heavy sneakers. The second part, which I loved, was 6 or 7 older people (and I mean older - median age was probably 80) doing somewhat the same. It was great. And as a bonus, in the process of finding the dance studio we also found the market at Place Sainte Catherine, which we had been unable to find the other day. There were dozens of stalls, dozens of restaurants, etc. How we could have missed it last week, I don't know.
22 November, Saturday:
It was dark, cold and snowing when we got up. I went grocery shopping after breakfast, and on my way to the grocery store thing cleared up and there was actually blue sky - a beautiful, cold, winter's day. There were Belgians in the street cheering. When I came out of the grocery store it was dark and wet and snowing again. Beagle had to go to a conference in Antwerp (which the French foppishly call Anvers), so we drove there through a mixture of light rain, heavy rain, snow, sleet, hail and slush. It changed every five minutes. Beagle's conference was in a big complex of buildings, courtyards, multiple entryways, etc. The conference organizers had printed up a brochure that had a map of the area showing parking garages, streets, etc. Unfortunately, none of the parking garages shown on the map existed. Plus once we found a parking garage (with NYC prices, almost), and found the entrance to the complex, we discovered (a) that the brochure neglected to say where in the complex Beagle's conference was taking place and (b) that none of the 3 people we found while wandering around the complex had ever heard of Beagle's conference. So we wandered around for a while, tried entrances G, F, E, D, C, B and A. By the time we got to entrance B for at least the second time, Madame was starting to do her imitation of Krakatoa about to erupt, and that attracted the attention of a young man who was 3 floors above us, and hearing English being spoken, figured that we were looking for the conference, and came and got us. In the meantime Beagle had called our friend Marc, who was also at the conference, and he also came to get us. But he took the elevator down and we took the stairs up, so we missed each other. Sort of like a Keystone Cops routine. In the end we found the conference and had lunch. In very un-Belgian fashion, lunch was cheese and egg sandwiches and water, eaten standing up. We thought it was fine, and the people from Gent are used to it. After all, the people from Gent tell us, Antwerp is in Northern Belgium, almost in Holland, so what do you expect (For that matter, so is Gent, but I guess that is something different). The conference was supposed to start after lunch, so I left. I wandered through a big garden, and when it started snowing hard, I took refuge in something that looked like a big greenhouse. As it turned out, part of it was a very warm and dry room with all sorts of cactuses and sand, and another room was hot and humid with all sorts of exotic rain forest vegetation. Interesting, and it got me out of the snow. After that I went to a museum that is in the house of a wealthy Belgian who lived in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was a big collector of paintings, furniture, etc., and the house was full of all sorts of Low Countries art and artifacts, a lot of it from the 15th and 16th centuries. Plus, in a modern portion of the museum, there was an exhibition of almost photographic still life paintings done by a contemporary artist. After that I went to Rubinshuis, which is exactly that…Ruben's house and studio in the middle of Antwerp. It was very crowded, but interesting. The museum has some painting by Rubens, but it mostly shows how the house was furnished when he lived there, and many of the paintings are those from his contemporaries that he had bought for his own collection. It was pretty interesting, and made more so by the audio guide that you got when you paid your admission. Then I wandered up and down the Meir, which is a very wide street, totally closed to traffic at that hour, and lined with fancy shops of all descriptions. There were literally thousands of people in the street, most of them with shopping bags. If the Belgian economy is in a recession, the people of Antwerp haven't heard about it. I bought an Economist magazine. The conference was supposed to be over by about 5:30, so I returned and after some stumbling around found my way back. There was the usual post-conference milling about, and then about 20 of us went across the street to get a beer at a bar. It was a great scene. There were lots of different kinds of beer (each in its own special glass), lots of conviviality, etc. Interestingly enough, some of the French people at the conference had never even heard of some of the Belgian beers (Kriek, for example), much lest tasted them. After beer, about half the original group joined up with another group and walked (for a long way) to the Belgian-American Club, where we had dinner. It was unclear exactly what the Belgian-American club is all about, but it had all sorts of American military memorabilia hanging around, including regimental plaques, wooden propellers, etc. The club itself a treat - in a lovely old building with a lot of 30's, 40's and 50's style. Sort of like the Harvard club without the stuffed animal heads hanging on the wall. I am told that the club is divided in a typically Belgian fashion - the Americans are on one side of the club and the Belgians are on the other. We must have been on the Belgian side, because except for some wandering Spanish guitar players who serenaded us at top volume and then asked for money and handed out business cards, we saw no foreigners on our side. Other than not being able to hear what anyone was saying until the guitar players quit, the dinner was fabulous. We had lots of Belgian specialties and they were all good. The conversation was in a mixture of French, Dutch and English. I am OK on the first and the last, but Dutch is Chinese to me. After dinner, everyone had to go home. In spite of the fact that a number of the people at the dinner were students or professors at the University of Antwerp, none of them appeared to live in Antwerp. They were all gong back to Gent or Brussels. Interesting, because Antwerp is a very nice city. New Belgian fact: At least one story has it that Antwerp got its name because of a giant living on the river Scheldt used to collect a toll from people crossing the river at the current site of Antwerp. If someone refused to pay the toll, the giant would chop off one of their hands and throw it in the river. One day a young man came along and killed the giant, chopped off his hand, and threw it in the river. If you believe the legend, 'hand werpen,' Dutch for 'hand' and 'throw,' got changed into Antwerpen, Dutch for Antwerp. With that interesting fact buzzing around in our heads, we drove back to Brussels, giving a ride to a young German man who had been at the conference.
23 November, Sunday:
Today was very cold and, of course, grey. But except for the occasional snowflake, it was relatively dry. None of yesterday's snow seems to have stuck. Beagle had to go to a seance with Frania, her NYC Feldenkrais guru. I went to Place Flagey to the market and bought food. Love those roast chickens! After Beagle's Feldenkrais session she and Frania went to a Pain Quotidien (one of the few places that is open in Brussels on Sunday, and which serves non-stop) for a late lunch. Frania's son, Andros, his girlfriend, and I were all supposed to meet there. Everybody got lost, as the restaurant was near Frania's son's apartment but not near much else. It was cold (-3 degrees Celsius, 26-27 degrees Fahrenheit), very wet, very windy, and was snowing like mad. We all finally got there, dripping wet with shoes soaked through, in time for a 4 PM lunch. After lunch the streets were very slushy and icy, and we slid home. Our garden had about an inch of snow in it. We have outdoor lights that light up the garden, and it is quite pretty in the snow. I am off to gym in a bit. Beagle says she has to stay home and work and then we'll have a late dinner.
24 November, Monday:
Today started out warmer, and there were even a few glimpses of blue sky. By early afternoon, however, it was back to rain mixed with sleet and snow. Today was the first day of our new French classes. We will have the same teacher most of the time, but it is just the two of us for around three hours a day, 3 days a week, for the next 3 weeks. We are going to split the classes so each of us has about 1 1/2 hours of private lessons, 3 days a week. By Christmas I should be able to order a beer. The first class went pretty well. We did a few exercises with the subjonctif passe, but mostly it was conversation. One thing I learned was that the French hate repetition, both in speaking and in writing. Plus they are by nature pessimistic. So, to use an example from a book I am reading, if you want to say that Mr.X's wife committed suicide in 1979 and then (several sentences later) that Mr. X himself committed suicide in 1980, you have to use two different ways of saying "committed suicide." Somehow I think that Americans would use a different example. After French class, we went to gym. Our gym is small, but perfectly nice. It is not used very much, but there appear to be a few regulars. One is a young man who speaks some sort of Slavic language, flails around on all the machines having set them at almost zero resistance, thus not getting much of a workout. Mostly he talks to a friend. And in spite of the fact that he doesn't seem to break into a sweat, most of the time he has a body odor that would make a New York City homeless person's eyes water. We have discovered that he generally turns up at around 8PM, so we try to leave before then. The gym also has a changing room that has lockers, showers, a steam room, a seating area, etc. The men's changing room appears to be bigger than the gym itself. People go in there and stay for hours. The gym is two doors down from our apartment, so we just walk down the street in our gym clothes. Belgians who see us think we are mad. They may have a point.
25 November, Tuesday:
This morning the ground was wet, and it was cloudy and cold, but there were patches of blue sky. That didn't last long. Grey and wet again. Did French exercises this morning and went to class. On the way there and on the way home, I did some more exploring in our neighborhood. The other day I had found a nice looking square right near us with a few restaurants. When I looked at my Routard (a guide book) I discovered that they recommended one of the restaurants. Then Frania's son told us about a bunch of good restaurants in our neighborhood that happened to be on that square, including one that was mentioned in my Routard. Today I saw another restaurant called Au Vieux Bruxelles. I looked it up, and it is one of the 5 or 6 top restaurants recommended by Frommer or Fodor, or one of those guys. Not because it is fancy, but because it is 100 years old and serves great moules et frites in an authentic setting with no tourists. At least the sign over the door looks to be 100 years old. It turns out that Place Boniface (which is where these places are) is so named because there is a lovely Gothic church (so I am told - the church is being renovated and is completely wrapped in some sort of material - sort of like a Christo installation) called Saint Boniface at the head of the square. Place Boniface, according to the web, is one of the trendiest places in Brussels for those in the know, with a bunch of restaurants and bars, etc. It is sort of in the middle of the African quarter of Brussels, which may explain why it is off the main tourist route. In any event, it is only a few blocks from us, and once Beagle stops being consumed by conferences and the like, we may have a chance to explore it. I certainly plan to go there with the boys and Vic for moules and frites and beer when they are here for Christmas.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
WEEK 2 - Printers, riot police and our encounter with them, and supermarkets in Bruxelles
12 November, Wednesday:
A routine day. Sleep late, work, prepare for class, go to class, go to gym, have dinner and sleep for another 12 hours. Oh yes…it is dark and grey and rainy. Like every other day. A few Belgian facts…did you know that in Brussels, all doors to commercial establishments open in? In the US they open out, presumably so that in case of a fire, people can more easily get outside. My theory is that in Brussels, doors open in, because if there is a fire people want to rush inside to get warm. The only apparent exception to this rule is in the building where we take our French classes. It is a smallish office building with an imposing lobby, and the doors are all big and heavy, and open out. This has evidently caused a lot of confusion so there are signs on all the doors as you enter the building and the inner lobby that say “Pull” in big letters. Another Belgian fact: In French, a Walkie Talkie is called a Talkie Walkie. No kidding. Or at least that’s what our French teacher seems to think.
13 November, Thursday:
Went back to Carrefour to try to return the printer which I couldn’t get to work. No only did they happily take it back, but they also refunded Beagle’s money in cash! That so excited us that we bought some extension cords and went next door and bought a floor lamp. It makes all the difference in the living room. Now instead of a few 40 watt bulbs burning feebly in the dark, we have a 300 watt halogen lamp blasting light up to the veiling and an attached reading lamp that can be aimed at your book. Now I can read in the living room. I don’t know why, but it seems to me that all European rooms are poorly lit. Don’t those people ever read?
14 November, Friday:
Beagle was up half the night with what seemed like a less serious version of the infection she had when we were in France in September. She did some web research and got a 10 AM appointment at a clinic close to the apartment. They gave her a couple of prescriptions and all seems well. Then she went to ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) to meet people, sign millions of forms, and discover that she has an office there. Since it was cold and wet and dark, I went shopping. There is a little stereo system in the apartment, but it doesn’t have a way to hook up an external source, so I couldn’t play my iPod. I went back to our friendly electronics man and he advised me to buy a Logitech system…it works like the Bose SoundDock which I have in NYC but has a clock and an alarm and was much cheaper. It works fine. As I was leaving the store I told the man that the cell phone and the printer were working fine. He said “À bientôt,” which loosely translated means “see you later, sucker.” I also went to the post office. Quite an experience. You take a number from a machine, just like at the cheese counter at Zabars. Then you mill around for a while with a lot of other people. There are about 20 windows, but only 3 of them have people behind them, and they are all talking or stamping forms or something. Every once in a while someone’s number shows up on an TV screen and that person goes and renegotiates the national debt or something which only takes 30 minutes. It actually isn’t too bad, since the wait is so long that half the people in line get disgusted and leave…so in the end, things move along reasonably quickly. Sort of like what Yogi Berra said about a restaurant, “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.” I also picked up a prescription for Beagle, bought a sandwich for lunch (the man asked to be remembered to Madame), and got back to the apartment in enough time to meet up with Reuben, the handyman, who was at the apartment to change a few of the 40 watt bulbs that had failed. Just the name you’d expect for a Belgian handyman, right? When Beagle got home we went to the newly discovered big Delhaize supermarket. It is great. It is sort of strangely laid out, but it seems to have everything. Plus it has several of those bottle disposal things right across from the entrance, which is handy. In Brussels you have to separate your trash into regular garbage, paper trash, and metal and plastic trash. Each has its own colored plastic bag, and each has a scheduled collection day. Heaven forbid you should mix paper with garbage or put something out on the wrong day. But you will note there is no bag for glass. That you have to put in these glass disposal containers which are hidden in various places in Brussels. So far we have discovered two…one at the Delhaize and one on the way to school. It is sort of fun…you throw the bottle in, it lands inside with a big crash of breaking glass. What you do if you don’t have one of these things nearby, I don’t know. I guess you just sneak around and stuff the bottles in the small trash bins meant for cigarette butts and used tissues that are on some lamp posts. Take it from me, those things only hold 3 bottles, tops. And did I forget? Today was dark and wet and cold.
15 November, Saturday:
We got up at the crack of dawn…or at least for us the crack of dawn…and drove to Lille, in France, for the 12th annual exposition of independent vignerons of France. The deal is that about 400 or so wine makers from all over France (plus assorted paté makers, etc.) turn up to have people taste and buy their wines. These are mostly small producers that you have never heard of, and because you are skipping many layers of middlemen, the prices are pretty low. We had arranged to meet our friend Marc Boone, his son Simon, and another American friend named Susie there at 10AM, just when the exposition opened. We got there in plenty of time, but it took us 45 minutes to get into the parking garage. We finally hooked up with Marc and followed him around from booth to booth, tasting all sorts of wines and buying when he bought. Marc was in a rush to get to lunch, so we finished our business quickly, borrowed a few of those hand carts that you use to lug wine cases around with, and tried to return with our purchases to our car. We had bought enough to fill up two hand carts, so we had to do this in two trips. I did the first trip on my own. What a mistake! I got terminally lost in this multi-level, cavernous garage, which helpfully had everything color coded. Being color blind, knowing that we were in the “section rose” didn’t do me much good. I wandered around for about 45 minutes lugging huge quantities of wine, sweating profusely, and cursing the madman who had designed the garage. I finally found our car by accident, unloaded the wine, and got back to the exhibition hall by taking the stairs (which were pretty well marked, in contrast to the ramps you had to use if you were using a hand cart). The second load of wine we carried by hand. Then we went to lunch, which Marc was anxious not to miss. On our way to lunch we wandered through Lille, which is a very pretty city, at least in the old part. Lovely old buildings in the northern style, all cleaned up and lit, etc. After lunch we wandered around some more, stopping twice for coffee, and then drove back to Brussels. It rained some, but not much.
16 November, Sunday:
We slept late and staggered down to the Place Flagey to buy food, including a roast chicken I had been lusting for all week. The weather was pretty much normal except that it poured rain most of the time. No one at the market seemed to mind, or even notice, except for one guy who had an umbrella with writing on it that said “Merde, Il pleut.” Then back home for gym and dinner and work.
17 November, Monday:
Much to everyone’s surprise, it rained today. We went to the bank to straighten out some of the details about Beagle’s bank account. It seems that you need a bunch of papers, a bank card, and a code. All three require separate transactions. You get the card in person, but they have to mail the code to you. Beagle’s code never came. It appears that they mailed it to New York. It is clear that it will take a while for this bank account to be set up. Perhaps it will be done by the time we leave. After the bank we went to French class. This one went until 5:30, so that pretty much took care of the afternoon. We went to gym and then had dinner.
18 November, Tuesday:
When we first got here, we noticed an apparently abandoned department store (or something like that…large, anyway) on Chaussée d’Ixelles. The store appeared to have been taken over by a bunch of people protesting the treatment of immigrants, “sans papiers,” etc. There were generally people hanging around the front of the building, people ducking in and out under a half lowered security gate, all sorts of posters out front, etc. All very peaceful, but you had to wonder. The other day this made the news, and there was a demand from the city administration that the squatters leave the building. If they wouldn’t go peacefully, there was the threat of force. This afternoon, as we were preparing to leave for Gent, I heard some noise outside. I looked out the window and saw about 30 riot police, complete with helmets and shields and truncheons, double-timing down the street, with about 30 people with cameras running after them. Hmmm, thought I. So we went to our garage (it is an underground garage, 2 doors down from our apartment), got our car, and drove onto rue Souveraine, on our way to Gent. The street looked a little empty, but we didn’t think much of it until we got to the end of the block, about 30 yards away. There we discovered that our neighborhood had been all cordoned off by the police, all traffic diverted, etc. while the police evacuated the squatters from the building. Other than dozens of police cars, riot vans, huge armored trucks with water cannons mounted on them, etc., we were the only car in the area. The police were as surprised to see us as we were to see them! But they took one look at us, all dressed up to go to a ceremony in Gent, and rapidly concluded that we weren’t squatters and posed no immediate threat to law and order, so they escorted us out of the “zone sanitaire” and let us go. We drove down the street to Place Flagey, at the bottom of the hill, and discovered an even bigger assemblage of police and trucks, etc. Apparently these were the reserves in case the situation got out of hand. We quickly maneuvered past this group, picked up a friend and a woman who had been described as being very distinguished, very old, and incapable of making the train journey to Gent. I’m sure she was distinguished, but she didn’t look frail at all to me, she had a wicked sense of humor, very strong opinions, and was more or less our age or perhaps a few years older. Oh dear. The ceremony in Gent featured s a lecture given by our heroine to kick off the “Year of Henri Pirenne,” a year celebrating the life and works of Henri Pirenne, Belgium’s and Gent’s most famous historian. A bunch of people gave speeches. Some in Dutch, some in French, some in English, and some in all three. The Rector of the University of Gent made a speech and gave Beagle a medal. The head of the Franqui Foundation officially gave Beagle the Franqui award, and gave her a medal. He pointed out that quite a few of the previous recipients of this award had gone on to get Nobel prizes. He also told a little bit about the history of the Franqui Foundation. It seems that it was established after WWI by M. Franqui, a Belgian industrialist (and presumably, in the grand Belgian tradition, a looter and pillager of the Congo) and Herbert Hoover. As you will recall, Hoover was in charge of US relief work in Europe after WWI, and with the money “left over” from that, he and M. Franqui founded the Franqui Foundation. In any event, after the Franqui guy spoke and gave Beagle her medal, she gave a lecture. The lecture was called “Lost in Translation,” and covered such subjects as how Americans use Pirenne in their studies, the differences between the European and American educational systems, the differences between Jacksonian and Jeffersonian democracy, the influence of Frederick Turner and his theory of the frontier, and Sarah Palin. Her talk was well received, especially the Sarah Palin part. The lecture was given in a grand old hall in a place called the “Belfry” (you know, as in “you’ve got bats in your belfry”), which was just that. There was a minor acoustical problem during Beagle’s speech…there was a lot of noise overhead, a lot of thumping and crashing. As it turns out right above the grand hall there is another large room where the Gent fencing club was having a practice! Anyway, the lecture was concluded with much applause. Then our friend from the Université Libre de Bruxelles got up and gave a speech and gave Beagle a medal. Then the representative of the University of Antwerp gave a speech saying that he was very sorry but that the University of Antwerp didn’t have any medals. Then we all went to dinner at a place called het Pand, which as far as I can tell is a place where they serve extraordinary meals to University of Gent people on special occasions. We’ve eaten there before, and I can tell you, Columbia could only dream of serving a meal like that. We staggered out, found our car and drove everybody home to Brussels.
A routine day. Sleep late, work, prepare for class, go to class, go to gym, have dinner and sleep for another 12 hours. Oh yes…it is dark and grey and rainy. Like every other day. A few Belgian facts…did you know that in Brussels, all doors to commercial establishments open in? In the US they open out, presumably so that in case of a fire, people can more easily get outside. My theory is that in Brussels, doors open in, because if there is a fire people want to rush inside to get warm. The only apparent exception to this rule is in the building where we take our French classes. It is a smallish office building with an imposing lobby, and the doors are all big and heavy, and open out. This has evidently caused a lot of confusion so there are signs on all the doors as you enter the building and the inner lobby that say “Pull” in big letters. Another Belgian fact: In French, a Walkie Talkie is called a Talkie Walkie. No kidding. Or at least that’s what our French teacher seems to think.
13 November, Thursday:
Went back to Carrefour to try to return the printer which I couldn’t get to work. No only did they happily take it back, but they also refunded Beagle’s money in cash! That so excited us that we bought some extension cords and went next door and bought a floor lamp. It makes all the difference in the living room. Now instead of a few 40 watt bulbs burning feebly in the dark, we have a 300 watt halogen lamp blasting light up to the veiling and an attached reading lamp that can be aimed at your book. Now I can read in the living room. I don’t know why, but it seems to me that all European rooms are poorly lit. Don’t those people ever read?
14 November, Friday:
Beagle was up half the night with what seemed like a less serious version of the infection she had when we were in France in September. She did some web research and got a 10 AM appointment at a clinic close to the apartment. They gave her a couple of prescriptions and all seems well. Then she went to ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) to meet people, sign millions of forms, and discover that she has an office there. Since it was cold and wet and dark, I went shopping. There is a little stereo system in the apartment, but it doesn’t have a way to hook up an external source, so I couldn’t play my iPod. I went back to our friendly electronics man and he advised me to buy a Logitech system…it works like the Bose SoundDock which I have in NYC but has a clock and an alarm and was much cheaper. It works fine. As I was leaving the store I told the man that the cell phone and the printer were working fine. He said “À bientôt,” which loosely translated means “see you later, sucker.” I also went to the post office. Quite an experience. You take a number from a machine, just like at the cheese counter at Zabars. Then you mill around for a while with a lot of other people. There are about 20 windows, but only 3 of them have people behind them, and they are all talking or stamping forms or something. Every once in a while someone’s number shows up on an TV screen and that person goes and renegotiates the national debt or something which only takes 30 minutes. It actually isn’t too bad, since the wait is so long that half the people in line get disgusted and leave…so in the end, things move along reasonably quickly. Sort of like what Yogi Berra said about a restaurant, “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.” I also picked up a prescription for Beagle, bought a sandwich for lunch (the man asked to be remembered to Madame), and got back to the apartment in enough time to meet up with Reuben, the handyman, who was at the apartment to change a few of the 40 watt bulbs that had failed. Just the name you’d expect for a Belgian handyman, right? When Beagle got home we went to the newly discovered big Delhaize supermarket. It is great. It is sort of strangely laid out, but it seems to have everything. Plus it has several of those bottle disposal things right across from the entrance, which is handy. In Brussels you have to separate your trash into regular garbage, paper trash, and metal and plastic trash. Each has its own colored plastic bag, and each has a scheduled collection day. Heaven forbid you should mix paper with garbage or put something out on the wrong day. But you will note there is no bag for glass. That you have to put in these glass disposal containers which are hidden in various places in Brussels. So far we have discovered two…one at the Delhaize and one on the way to school. It is sort of fun…you throw the bottle in, it lands inside with a big crash of breaking glass. What you do if you don’t have one of these things nearby, I don’t know. I guess you just sneak around and stuff the bottles in the small trash bins meant for cigarette butts and used tissues that are on some lamp posts. Take it from me, those things only hold 3 bottles, tops. And did I forget? Today was dark and wet and cold.
15 November, Saturday:
We got up at the crack of dawn…or at least for us the crack of dawn…and drove to Lille, in France, for the 12th annual exposition of independent vignerons of France. The deal is that about 400 or so wine makers from all over France (plus assorted paté makers, etc.) turn up to have people taste and buy their wines. These are mostly small producers that you have never heard of, and because you are skipping many layers of middlemen, the prices are pretty low. We had arranged to meet our friend Marc Boone, his son Simon, and another American friend named Susie there at 10AM, just when the exposition opened. We got there in plenty of time, but it took us 45 minutes to get into the parking garage. We finally hooked up with Marc and followed him around from booth to booth, tasting all sorts of wines and buying when he bought. Marc was in a rush to get to lunch, so we finished our business quickly, borrowed a few of those hand carts that you use to lug wine cases around with, and tried to return with our purchases to our car. We had bought enough to fill up two hand carts, so we had to do this in two trips. I did the first trip on my own. What a mistake! I got terminally lost in this multi-level, cavernous garage, which helpfully had everything color coded. Being color blind, knowing that we were in the “section rose” didn’t do me much good. I wandered around for about 45 minutes lugging huge quantities of wine, sweating profusely, and cursing the madman who had designed the garage. I finally found our car by accident, unloaded the wine, and got back to the exhibition hall by taking the stairs (which were pretty well marked, in contrast to the ramps you had to use if you were using a hand cart). The second load of wine we carried by hand. Then we went to lunch, which Marc was anxious not to miss. On our way to lunch we wandered through Lille, which is a very pretty city, at least in the old part. Lovely old buildings in the northern style, all cleaned up and lit, etc. After lunch we wandered around some more, stopping twice for coffee, and then drove back to Brussels. It rained some, but not much.
16 November, Sunday:
We slept late and staggered down to the Place Flagey to buy food, including a roast chicken I had been lusting for all week. The weather was pretty much normal except that it poured rain most of the time. No one at the market seemed to mind, or even notice, except for one guy who had an umbrella with writing on it that said “Merde, Il pleut.” Then back home for gym and dinner and work.
17 November, Monday:
Much to everyone’s surprise, it rained today. We went to the bank to straighten out some of the details about Beagle’s bank account. It seems that you need a bunch of papers, a bank card, and a code. All three require separate transactions. You get the card in person, but they have to mail the code to you. Beagle’s code never came. It appears that they mailed it to New York. It is clear that it will take a while for this bank account to be set up. Perhaps it will be done by the time we leave. After the bank we went to French class. This one went until 5:30, so that pretty much took care of the afternoon. We went to gym and then had dinner.
18 November, Tuesday:
When we first got here, we noticed an apparently abandoned department store (or something like that…large, anyway) on Chaussée d’Ixelles. The store appeared to have been taken over by a bunch of people protesting the treatment of immigrants, “sans papiers,” etc. There were generally people hanging around the front of the building, people ducking in and out under a half lowered security gate, all sorts of posters out front, etc. All very peaceful, but you had to wonder. The other day this made the news, and there was a demand from the city administration that the squatters leave the building. If they wouldn’t go peacefully, there was the threat of force. This afternoon, as we were preparing to leave for Gent, I heard some noise outside. I looked out the window and saw about 30 riot police, complete with helmets and shields and truncheons, double-timing down the street, with about 30 people with cameras running after them. Hmmm, thought I. So we went to our garage (it is an underground garage, 2 doors down from our apartment), got our car, and drove onto rue Souveraine, on our way to Gent. The street looked a little empty, but we didn’t think much of it until we got to the end of the block, about 30 yards away. There we discovered that our neighborhood had been all cordoned off by the police, all traffic diverted, etc. while the police evacuated the squatters from the building. Other than dozens of police cars, riot vans, huge armored trucks with water cannons mounted on them, etc., we were the only car in the area. The police were as surprised to see us as we were to see them! But they took one look at us, all dressed up to go to a ceremony in Gent, and rapidly concluded that we weren’t squatters and posed no immediate threat to law and order, so they escorted us out of the “zone sanitaire” and let us go. We drove down the street to Place Flagey, at the bottom of the hill, and discovered an even bigger assemblage of police and trucks, etc. Apparently these were the reserves in case the situation got out of hand. We quickly maneuvered past this group, picked up a friend and a woman who had been described as being very distinguished, very old, and incapable of making the train journey to Gent. I’m sure she was distinguished, but she didn’t look frail at all to me, she had a wicked sense of humor, very strong opinions, and was more or less our age or perhaps a few years older. Oh dear. The ceremony in Gent featured s a lecture given by our heroine to kick off the “Year of Henri Pirenne,” a year celebrating the life and works of Henri Pirenne, Belgium’s and Gent’s most famous historian. A bunch of people gave speeches. Some in Dutch, some in French, some in English, and some in all three. The Rector of the University of Gent made a speech and gave Beagle a medal. The head of the Franqui Foundation officially gave Beagle the Franqui award, and gave her a medal. He pointed out that quite a few of the previous recipients of this award had gone on to get Nobel prizes. He also told a little bit about the history of the Franqui Foundation. It seems that it was established after WWI by M. Franqui, a Belgian industrialist (and presumably, in the grand Belgian tradition, a looter and pillager of the Congo) and Herbert Hoover. As you will recall, Hoover was in charge of US relief work in Europe after WWI, and with the money “left over” from that, he and M. Franqui founded the Franqui Foundation. In any event, after the Franqui guy spoke and gave Beagle her medal, she gave a lecture. The lecture was called “Lost in Translation,” and covered such subjects as how Americans use Pirenne in their studies, the differences between the European and American educational systems, the differences between Jacksonian and Jeffersonian democracy, the influence of Frederick Turner and his theory of the frontier, and Sarah Palin. Her talk was well received, especially the Sarah Palin part. The lecture was given in a grand old hall in a place called the “Belfry” (you know, as in “you’ve got bats in your belfry”), which was just that. There was a minor acoustical problem during Beagle’s speech…there was a lot of noise overhead, a lot of thumping and crashing. As it turns out right above the grand hall there is another large room where the Gent fencing club was having a practice! Anyway, the lecture was concluded with much applause. Then our friend from the Université Libre de Bruxelles got up and gave a speech and gave Beagle a medal. Then the representative of the University of Antwerp gave a speech saying that he was very sorry but that the University of Antwerp didn’t have any medals. Then we all went to dinner at a place called het Pand, which as far as I can tell is a place where they serve extraordinary meals to University of Gent people on special occasions. We’ve eaten there before, and I can tell you, Columbia could only dream of serving a meal like that. We staggered out, found our car and drove everybody home to Brussels.
WEEK 1: In which I have much to say
This is a repost of my journal, originally sent out in e-mail form.
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5 November 2008, Wednesday:
Departure Day. After several days of trying to cram all of the stuff we would need into two suitcases each, we gave up. We each ended up with 2 suitcases and a backpack, all stuffed to the gills…and a lot of things were left behind. I’m sure we’ll discover that we packed a lot of stuff that we’ll never use, and that we left behind all sorts of things that we will desperately need. Off we went to Newark and Jet Airlines. Jet Airlines is an Indian airline that for some strange reason has its European hub in Brussels. We chose it because it was dramatically cheaper than any other airline, and because Beagle insisted on traveling business class because of her back. As it turned out, we had a splendid experience. They checked all our bags without any question (or charge) and a young lady escorted us to a lounge where we made a spectacle of ourselves by wolfing down enough tea sandwiches so we could skip dinner on the plane. Once on board, the stewards and stewardesses were horrified that I didn’t want any dinner. They kept trying to tempt me with offers of soup, or dessert, etc., but I remained firm. For me, the smell of Indian food was enough to kill any appetite I might have had. Our seats went totally flat, so we actually got a fair amount of sleep.
6 November 2008, Thursday:
Beagle says that her breakfast on the plane was wonderful. I slept through breakfast, even though I had asked to be awakened. After landing, we picked up our bags and went to the Europcar rental desk to pick up a car that we had leased under a special French program. As I understand it, about 50 years ago the French government, trying to encourage the sale of French cars, created a program whereby tourists could lease brand new French cars, tax free, for periods of up to 170 days. The bottom line of this is that people like us get a brand new French car for much less than it would cost to rent from Hertz or even Europcar. There was no hassle on picking the car up…I just had to show them my passport and a document showing that I had paid for the lease of the car, and sign a piece of paper. We now have a silver Renault Megane (diesel), 5 doors, etc. with something like .5 kilometers on the odometer. The car also appears to have come with a built-in GPS device, but after a quick look at the half inch thick instruction manual and the 10 buttons that you had to push to make it work, I quickly put all that stuff back in the glove compartment and hooked up the Garmin GPS which I had recently bought. The Garmin has a 4 page instruction manual which basically tells you how to turn the thing on. Other than that it is all intuitive and/or self-explanatory. So I turned it on and it delivered us to 24 rue Souveraine without any problem. We are on a fairly narrow street that runs between Avenue Louise and Chaussée d’Ixelles. Louise is a big wide street with trolleys, etc. running down the middle. It is very elegant and has all sorts of very fancy shops on it, and hardly any people. Chaussée d’Ixelles is narrow with narrow sidewalks (which are being dug up about every 5 feet), and it has every sort of shop you can imagine on it. The vehicular traffic on it is always very heavy, as is pedestrian traffic. It is clearly the place to be, and it is about a half block from our apartment. Our apartment is nice…big and airy, with 3 big double glass doors in the living room that open onto a nice garden with grass and a tree. It is furnished, but without a lot of fairly basic kitchen stuff (you would think that a furnished 3 bedroom apartment would have enough glasses and dishes for 3 or 4 people for more than 1 meal!), the knives are dull, there are no big casseroles, there are no reading lamps in the living room, the router only has an outlet for one ethernet cable so only one computer can be hooked up at a time, etc. So we made lists of what we needed, and to give ourselves strength we went to lunch at a place called La Régence, a sort of tavern/brasserie place right around the corner. It was wonderful. Beagle had a vegetarian cheese and cruditiées sandwich, which, this being Belgium, came with a large and very thick slice of ham. I had the rabbit cooked in beer with frites, washed down with beer. It was great. Very lively, very buzzy. It may become our local if we eat out at all. After lunch we walked down Chaussée d’Ixelles to Place Flagey and found a small and totally inadequate supermarket where we laid in some basic provisions for dinner. We walked back to the apartment and Beagle immediately took a long nap. I futzed around trying to make our computers work. I finally figured out that you had to reboot both the router and your computer to connect to the internet. If you want to use another computer, you have to do the same thing again. This has got to change.
7 November 2008, Friday:
We set off this morning to find a bank so Beagle could open a bank account. The Franqui Foundation is going to be paying her and reimbursing her for a bunch of expenses, so she needs some place to easily deposit and withdraw euros. We walked to Louise, turned right and stopped at the first bank we saw. It was Fortis, a bank which had recently failed and had to be rescued by the French and Belgian governments. That didn’t faze Beagle. Better to open an account in a bank which had failed and been rescued rather than one which had not yet failed but was going to. In any event, all the posters in the lobby claimed that it wasn’t the bank itself that had failed, but rather the holding company. That made us feel better. So Beagle announced to a sort of concierge type person that she wanted to open an account. This came as quite a shock to the Fortis people. It appeared that no one had even considered opening an account there for several weeks, since it was a failed bank. We were escorted upstairs and were greeted by a cheerful woman whose desk was completely clear of any papers. She rapidly remedied that, pulling out masses of forms that had to be signed, etc. In the course of the process of demonstrating some features of the account she also managed to dump the contents of her purse onto the desk (she was searching for her Fortis bank card). Anyway, she was very nice and we learned all about her…her child had been sick the prior day so he hadn’t gotten much sleep. We learned about her plans for the weekend (it is a long weekend since Tuesday is a holiday and everyone is going to “faire le pont” (make a bridge) and take Monday off as well. And for that matter, Friday afternoon as well! So Beagle got her bank account…confirmed in a call that afternoon from madame…without depositing a dime! Interestingly enough we learned that in Belgium no one uses checks. It just isn’t done anymore. You transfer money from your account to the other person’s account…all done electronically. After that adventure we went to a local electronics store and Beagle bought a cell phone. She got a pink one. Hmmm. After that we went home, stopping off at a small grocery store to buy some lunch. We picked out sandwiches and took them to the cashier, but he refused to sell them to us, explaining that we could get something much better for less money at the cheese store across the street. Somewhat stunned by this, we went across the street and a nice man in the cheese store made us sandwiches, which were indeed pretty good, and cheaper than at the grocery store. We have gone back several times since to buy sandwiches and cheese, and Beagle appears to have made a conquest. If I go there alone, the man always asks after ”Madame.” We then went home and, while eating our sandwiches we got an urgent call from Amira, the language school where we are going to take classes, asking us to come and register. So we did. The school is only about a 10 minute walk from the apartment, and is actually very close to the Academy, where Beagle had an office the last time we were in Brussels. You can see her old office window from the school. The school itself is in a quite swank office building which, like all the office buildings in that neighborhood, appears to be almost entirely occupied by ING, a Dutch bank. We are signed up for classes 3 afternoons a week for the next 5 weeks. The first 2 weeks it will be the two of us with one other person. The next three weeks will be just the two of us. The literature for the school talked all about group lessons, etc., but it appears that the only people who signed up for courses at our level (or should I say levels, since Beagle is much better than I am, or so she tells me…I can’t understand a word she says. Sounds like she is speaking a foreign language). Having gotten banks, phones, lunch and French courses out of the way, we got in our car and drove to a Carrefour, a huge Walmart kind of place, where we bought tons of food, glasses, etc., and a printer. The bill was staggering. We went back to the apartment so Beagle could relax and so I could install the printer. That did not go well. I tried for about 8 hours to make the damn thing work. I just couldn't. The printer seemed to work fine (it copied, printed test pages, etc.), but I just couldn't get it hooked up to SWMBO's computer or mine. I was about to bust a gut I was so mad, but decided to go to bed instead, since it was about 1AM.
8 November, Saturday:
Seeing the kind of mood I was in, Beagle wisely suggested a solution to the printer problem. Namely that we go to the electronics store a few minutes from our apartment where we had bought her Belgian cell phone...which, by the way, we had to bring back because I couldn't get the SIM card to stay in it...the nice man there showed me how to do it. And buy another new printer there and worry about returning the first printer some other time. This seemed profligate to me, but Beagle insisted that (a) she needed a functional computer NOW and (b) her research account was paying anyway. So we schlepped over to the electronics store, carrying Beagle's computer because her theory was that we would ask the nice man in the store to set the printer up for us. Now this guy already clearly thought we were a little strange because we couldn't put a SIM card into the phone (plus Beagle got him to activate it for her, get her phone number, etc.), but when we told him that we had just bought a printer which we couldn't get to work and we wanted to buy another one, he clearly thought we should be institutionalized. After seeing that the printer we had bought at Carrefour, the big discount place, was being sold at the fancy electronics store for 25 euros less than at Carrefour, I agreed. Anyway, he said he was not able to help us set up the new printer we were going to buy from him...a violation of store policy or something...but he said that this was really easy to do, and that any idiot could do it (he said this while looking at me, having earlier recognized that Beagle was incapable of even turning her phone on without help). In any event, we got the printer home, followed the directions and got it up and running in about 10 minutes. I think the software that came with the other computer was defective...I couldn't even get my computer to load it. Now everyone is happy. Our new printer doesn’t have a fax, but it can scan and copy, so all we need to do is call up tech support (John or William) and have them tell us how to scan things. I can’t cope with a fax…I can’t even figure out how to work the phone in the apartment. The damn thing blinked at me for several days before I figured out how to turn off the message light. But incredibly enough, I managed to figure out the user ID and password for the previous tenant’s voicemail! They had no messages! After our triumph with the printer, we walked down Chausée d’Ixelles again and found a big outdoor market at Place Flagey. Not as good as those in Paris, but pretty good. We think it is there on Saturday and Sunday, but we’ll see. A website covering all of Brussels says otherwise, but we have discovered that that kind of website in Brussels is generally extremely inaccurate. Place Flagey has apparently been under construction for several years and is one of those large sort of soulless places that Brussels seems to specialize in, but it is supposed to be the heart of Ixelles (our commune or arrondissement) and is right next to some pretty “lakes,” so we’re not complaining.
9 November, Sunday:
This was a quiet day, mostly spent at home working. We did take a walk across the city to Place Catherine where there is supposed to be a daily market…mostly flowers and fish… we remembered it from our last time in Brussels. As it turned out, our memory wasn’t so good! We looked and looked, and could find no trace of a market, even though it is featured in all the guides to markets. Hmmm. We’ll find it eventually! On our way back home we managed to buy some napkins in the Sablon (you know who has a thing about napkins) and buy some bread at Le Pain Quotidien.
10 November, Monday:
This was our first day of French class. Our teacher is a young French woman named Aurélie Delacencellerie. She is originally from a town near Lille and has been living in Brussels for a while. It is clear from her physique that she has developed a fondness for Belgian food. She also appears to be fond of low cut blouses and sweaters that display her considerable rubenesque charms. She claims that food speaks to her, saying “eat me!” She claims all sorts of academic degrees and honors, but why she is teaching French in a language school is beyond me. The other student in our class is a young American man named Tanner. He comes from San Francisco but is originally from South Carolina. He has a shaved head, a cute little goatee, a squeaky voice and he giggles a lot. He has an American accent that makes mine sound like Jacques Chirac. He works for an outfit he calls “my company.” I am not sure exactly what it is, but it is some sort of Christian organization that works with immigrants in Belgium. He has been in Brussels for 6 months with his wife and daughter, and plans to stay here forever. His “job” at the moment is to learn French. That’s all he and his wife do, except for taking care of their child (and his wife, who is now pregnant, apparently spends much of the day being sick!). Apparently the plan is to do nothing for the first year or so except learn French. After that he will start to work with immigrants. His past includes living in Tunisia and working as a tourist guide, going to some sort of seminary, etc. I don’t probe too deeply! In any event, he is sort of sweet. I am not sure how old he is, but an answer he gave to some question indicated that he thought anyone who was 30 was quite old. Oh well. On our way to class we stopped by the local halal (sort of kosher for Moslems) butcher to order a roast chicken for dinner…we had noticed over the weekend that they had a big display of roasting chickens, and they looked good. The butcher said that if we wanted a chicken that we’d better reserve one, so we did, and he marked that down in his order book. When we went back after class, the butcher first denied that we’d ordered a chicken, and when we wouldn’t buy that, he just mumbled that he had forgotten. So no chicken for us. Beagle says we’re never going back there! Today was “officially” a regular work day, but since tomorrow is a holiday, most people took today off as well and consequently most stores are shut. Beans for dinner.
11 November, Tuesday:
Today is a holiday…Armistice Day, which Europeans take very seriously. Almost everything is closed except for shops run by north africans/arabs…which are always open. Beagle stayed home and worked, waiting for her friend and colleague Claire to come by with some forms to sign. I explored the neighborhood. I followed directions I got from the official Brussels website for the Post Office. I ended up at the police station, which is handily close to our apartment. The Post Office was somewhere else and, of course, it was shut. I looked for an alternative butcher so we wouldn’t have to patronize our surly friend. I found one on the web, which is quite close to our apartment, but it appears to have been closed by the health authorities. Not a good sign. Then I found a great big Delhaize supermarket, quite close to our apartment…or at least a lot closer that the totally inadequate mini-Delhaize supermarket we shopped at our first day here. Needless to say, it was shut, but at least I now know it is there. I also went across town to check out some bookstores. Waterstones, a British chain, had observed 2 minutes of silence in honor of the holiday. Sterling, an English language bookstore that I had patronized when we were last in Brussels, was closed.
I wandered some more and found a Le Pain Quotidien close to us, on Louise. This is good, because we have been finding it hard to get really good bread in Brussels. Everyone sells what they call baguettes, but they really aren’t. Apparently a real French baguette is called pain français, but most people don’t have them. I also found a sort of arty movie theatre right around the corner from us. Most of the movies they have seem to be in English. Apparently in Brussels all movies are shown in their original language, unlike in Paris where most are dubbed into French.
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5 November 2008, Wednesday:
Departure Day. After several days of trying to cram all of the stuff we would need into two suitcases each, we gave up. We each ended up with 2 suitcases and a backpack, all stuffed to the gills…and a lot of things were left behind. I’m sure we’ll discover that we packed a lot of stuff that we’ll never use, and that we left behind all sorts of things that we will desperately need. Off we went to Newark and Jet Airlines. Jet Airlines is an Indian airline that for some strange reason has its European hub in Brussels. We chose it because it was dramatically cheaper than any other airline, and because Beagle insisted on traveling business class because of her back. As it turned out, we had a splendid experience. They checked all our bags without any question (or charge) and a young lady escorted us to a lounge where we made a spectacle of ourselves by wolfing down enough tea sandwiches so we could skip dinner on the plane. Once on board, the stewards and stewardesses were horrified that I didn’t want any dinner. They kept trying to tempt me with offers of soup, or dessert, etc., but I remained firm. For me, the smell of Indian food was enough to kill any appetite I might have had. Our seats went totally flat, so we actually got a fair amount of sleep.
6 November 2008, Thursday:
Beagle says that her breakfast on the plane was wonderful. I slept through breakfast, even though I had asked to be awakened. After landing, we picked up our bags and went to the Europcar rental desk to pick up a car that we had leased under a special French program. As I understand it, about 50 years ago the French government, trying to encourage the sale of French cars, created a program whereby tourists could lease brand new French cars, tax free, for periods of up to 170 days. The bottom line of this is that people like us get a brand new French car for much less than it would cost to rent from Hertz or even Europcar. There was no hassle on picking the car up…I just had to show them my passport and a document showing that I had paid for the lease of the car, and sign a piece of paper. We now have a silver Renault Megane (diesel), 5 doors, etc. with something like .5 kilometers on the odometer. The car also appears to have come with a built-in GPS device, but after a quick look at the half inch thick instruction manual and the 10 buttons that you had to push to make it work, I quickly put all that stuff back in the glove compartment and hooked up the Garmin GPS which I had recently bought. The Garmin has a 4 page instruction manual which basically tells you how to turn the thing on. Other than that it is all intuitive and/or self-explanatory. So I turned it on and it delivered us to 24 rue Souveraine without any problem. We are on a fairly narrow street that runs between Avenue Louise and Chaussée d’Ixelles. Louise is a big wide street with trolleys, etc. running down the middle. It is very elegant and has all sorts of very fancy shops on it, and hardly any people. Chaussée d’Ixelles is narrow with narrow sidewalks (which are being dug up about every 5 feet), and it has every sort of shop you can imagine on it. The vehicular traffic on it is always very heavy, as is pedestrian traffic. It is clearly the place to be, and it is about a half block from our apartment. Our apartment is nice…big and airy, with 3 big double glass doors in the living room that open onto a nice garden with grass and a tree. It is furnished, but without a lot of fairly basic kitchen stuff (you would think that a furnished 3 bedroom apartment would have enough glasses and dishes for 3 or 4 people for more than 1 meal!), the knives are dull, there are no big casseroles, there are no reading lamps in the living room, the router only has an outlet for one ethernet cable so only one computer can be hooked up at a time, etc. So we made lists of what we needed, and to give ourselves strength we went to lunch at a place called La Régence, a sort of tavern/brasserie place right around the corner. It was wonderful. Beagle had a vegetarian cheese and cruditiées sandwich, which, this being Belgium, came with a large and very thick slice of ham. I had the rabbit cooked in beer with frites, washed down with beer. It was great. Very lively, very buzzy. It may become our local if we eat out at all. After lunch we walked down Chaussée d’Ixelles to Place Flagey and found a small and totally inadequate supermarket where we laid in some basic provisions for dinner. We walked back to the apartment and Beagle immediately took a long nap. I futzed around trying to make our computers work. I finally figured out that you had to reboot both the router and your computer to connect to the internet. If you want to use another computer, you have to do the same thing again. This has got to change.
7 November 2008, Friday:
We set off this morning to find a bank so Beagle could open a bank account. The Franqui Foundation is going to be paying her and reimbursing her for a bunch of expenses, so she needs some place to easily deposit and withdraw euros. We walked to Louise, turned right and stopped at the first bank we saw. It was Fortis, a bank which had recently failed and had to be rescued by the French and Belgian governments. That didn’t faze Beagle. Better to open an account in a bank which had failed and been rescued rather than one which had not yet failed but was going to. In any event, all the posters in the lobby claimed that it wasn’t the bank itself that had failed, but rather the holding company. That made us feel better. So Beagle announced to a sort of concierge type person that she wanted to open an account. This came as quite a shock to the Fortis people. It appeared that no one had even considered opening an account there for several weeks, since it was a failed bank. We were escorted upstairs and were greeted by a cheerful woman whose desk was completely clear of any papers. She rapidly remedied that, pulling out masses of forms that had to be signed, etc. In the course of the process of demonstrating some features of the account she also managed to dump the contents of her purse onto the desk (she was searching for her Fortis bank card). Anyway, she was very nice and we learned all about her…her child had been sick the prior day so he hadn’t gotten much sleep. We learned about her plans for the weekend (it is a long weekend since Tuesday is a holiday and everyone is going to “faire le pont” (make a bridge) and take Monday off as well. And for that matter, Friday afternoon as well! So Beagle got her bank account…confirmed in a call that afternoon from madame…without depositing a dime! Interestingly enough we learned that in Belgium no one uses checks. It just isn’t done anymore. You transfer money from your account to the other person’s account…all done electronically. After that adventure we went to a local electronics store and Beagle bought a cell phone. She got a pink one. Hmmm. After that we went home, stopping off at a small grocery store to buy some lunch. We picked out sandwiches and took them to the cashier, but he refused to sell them to us, explaining that we could get something much better for less money at the cheese store across the street. Somewhat stunned by this, we went across the street and a nice man in the cheese store made us sandwiches, which were indeed pretty good, and cheaper than at the grocery store. We have gone back several times since to buy sandwiches and cheese, and Beagle appears to have made a conquest. If I go there alone, the man always asks after ”Madame.” We then went home and, while eating our sandwiches we got an urgent call from Amira, the language school where we are going to take classes, asking us to come and register. So we did. The school is only about a 10 minute walk from the apartment, and is actually very close to the Academy, where Beagle had an office the last time we were in Brussels. You can see her old office window from the school. The school itself is in a quite swank office building which, like all the office buildings in that neighborhood, appears to be almost entirely occupied by ING, a Dutch bank. We are signed up for classes 3 afternoons a week for the next 5 weeks. The first 2 weeks it will be the two of us with one other person. The next three weeks will be just the two of us. The literature for the school talked all about group lessons, etc., but it appears that the only people who signed up for courses at our level (or should I say levels, since Beagle is much better than I am, or so she tells me…I can’t understand a word she says. Sounds like she is speaking a foreign language). Having gotten banks, phones, lunch and French courses out of the way, we got in our car and drove to a Carrefour, a huge Walmart kind of place, where we bought tons of food, glasses, etc., and a printer. The bill was staggering. We went back to the apartment so Beagle could relax and so I could install the printer. That did not go well. I tried for about 8 hours to make the damn thing work. I just couldn't. The printer seemed to work fine (it copied, printed test pages, etc.), but I just couldn't get it hooked up to SWMBO's computer or mine. I was about to bust a gut I was so mad, but decided to go to bed instead, since it was about 1AM.
8 November, Saturday:
Seeing the kind of mood I was in, Beagle wisely suggested a solution to the printer problem. Namely that we go to the electronics store a few minutes from our apartment where we had bought her Belgian cell phone...which, by the way, we had to bring back because I couldn't get the SIM card to stay in it...the nice man there showed me how to do it. And buy another new printer there and worry about returning the first printer some other time. This seemed profligate to me, but Beagle insisted that (a) she needed a functional computer NOW and (b) her research account was paying anyway. So we schlepped over to the electronics store, carrying Beagle's computer because her theory was that we would ask the nice man in the store to set the printer up for us. Now this guy already clearly thought we were a little strange because we couldn't put a SIM card into the phone (plus Beagle got him to activate it for her, get her phone number, etc.), but when we told him that we had just bought a printer which we couldn't get to work and we wanted to buy another one, he clearly thought we should be institutionalized. After seeing that the printer we had bought at Carrefour, the big discount place, was being sold at the fancy electronics store for 25 euros less than at Carrefour, I agreed. Anyway, he said he was not able to help us set up the new printer we were going to buy from him...a violation of store policy or something...but he said that this was really easy to do, and that any idiot could do it (he said this while looking at me, having earlier recognized that Beagle was incapable of even turning her phone on without help). In any event, we got the printer home, followed the directions and got it up and running in about 10 minutes. I think the software that came with the other computer was defective...I couldn't even get my computer to load it. Now everyone is happy. Our new printer doesn’t have a fax, but it can scan and copy, so all we need to do is call up tech support (John or William) and have them tell us how to scan things. I can’t cope with a fax…I can’t even figure out how to work the phone in the apartment. The damn thing blinked at me for several days before I figured out how to turn off the message light. But incredibly enough, I managed to figure out the user ID and password for the previous tenant’s voicemail! They had no messages! After our triumph with the printer, we walked down Chausée d’Ixelles again and found a big outdoor market at Place Flagey. Not as good as those in Paris, but pretty good. We think it is there on Saturday and Sunday, but we’ll see. A website covering all of Brussels says otherwise, but we have discovered that that kind of website in Brussels is generally extremely inaccurate. Place Flagey has apparently been under construction for several years and is one of those large sort of soulless places that Brussels seems to specialize in, but it is supposed to be the heart of Ixelles (our commune or arrondissement) and is right next to some pretty “lakes,” so we’re not complaining.
9 November, Sunday:
This was a quiet day, mostly spent at home working. We did take a walk across the city to Place Catherine where there is supposed to be a daily market…mostly flowers and fish… we remembered it from our last time in Brussels. As it turned out, our memory wasn’t so good! We looked and looked, and could find no trace of a market, even though it is featured in all the guides to markets. Hmmm. We’ll find it eventually! On our way back home we managed to buy some napkins in the Sablon (you know who has a thing about napkins) and buy some bread at Le Pain Quotidien.
10 November, Monday:
This was our first day of French class. Our teacher is a young French woman named Aurélie Delacencellerie. She is originally from a town near Lille and has been living in Brussels for a while. It is clear from her physique that she has developed a fondness for Belgian food. She also appears to be fond of low cut blouses and sweaters that display her considerable rubenesque charms. She claims that food speaks to her, saying “eat me!” She claims all sorts of academic degrees and honors, but why she is teaching French in a language school is beyond me. The other student in our class is a young American man named Tanner. He comes from San Francisco but is originally from South Carolina. He has a shaved head, a cute little goatee, a squeaky voice and he giggles a lot. He has an American accent that makes mine sound like Jacques Chirac. He works for an outfit he calls “my company.” I am not sure exactly what it is, but it is some sort of Christian organization that works with immigrants in Belgium. He has been in Brussels for 6 months with his wife and daughter, and plans to stay here forever. His “job” at the moment is to learn French. That’s all he and his wife do, except for taking care of their child (and his wife, who is now pregnant, apparently spends much of the day being sick!). Apparently the plan is to do nothing for the first year or so except learn French. After that he will start to work with immigrants. His past includes living in Tunisia and working as a tourist guide, going to some sort of seminary, etc. I don’t probe too deeply! In any event, he is sort of sweet. I am not sure how old he is, but an answer he gave to some question indicated that he thought anyone who was 30 was quite old. Oh well. On our way to class we stopped by the local halal (sort of kosher for Moslems) butcher to order a roast chicken for dinner…we had noticed over the weekend that they had a big display of roasting chickens, and they looked good. The butcher said that if we wanted a chicken that we’d better reserve one, so we did, and he marked that down in his order book. When we went back after class, the butcher first denied that we’d ordered a chicken, and when we wouldn’t buy that, he just mumbled that he had forgotten. So no chicken for us. Beagle says we’re never going back there! Today was “officially” a regular work day, but since tomorrow is a holiday, most people took today off as well and consequently most stores are shut. Beans for dinner.
11 November, Tuesday:
Today is a holiday…Armistice Day, which Europeans take very seriously. Almost everything is closed except for shops run by north africans/arabs…which are always open. Beagle stayed home and worked, waiting for her friend and colleague Claire to come by with some forms to sign. I explored the neighborhood. I followed directions I got from the official Brussels website for the Post Office. I ended up at the police station, which is handily close to our apartment. The Post Office was somewhere else and, of course, it was shut. I looked for an alternative butcher so we wouldn’t have to patronize our surly friend. I found one on the web, which is quite close to our apartment, but it appears to have been closed by the health authorities. Not a good sign. Then I found a great big Delhaize supermarket, quite close to our apartment…or at least a lot closer that the totally inadequate mini-Delhaize supermarket we shopped at our first day here. Needless to say, it was shut, but at least I now know it is there. I also went across town to check out some bookstores. Waterstones, a British chain, had observed 2 minutes of silence in honor of the holiday. Sterling, an English language bookstore that I had patronized when we were last in Brussels, was closed.
I wandered some more and found a Le Pain Quotidien close to us, on Louise. This is good, because we have been finding it hard to get really good bread in Brussels. Everyone sells what they call baguettes, but they really aren’t. Apparently a real French baguette is called pain français, but most people don’t have them. I also found a sort of arty movie theatre right around the corner from us. Most of the movies they have seem to be in English. Apparently in Brussels all movies are shown in their original language, unlike in Paris where most are dubbed into French.
Welcome to the Blog
As I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams I found myself in Bruxelles.
This is my blog. It is about my stay in Belgium. I live here for the time being with my wife. At times my son (the good one) will handle the administrative functions of this blog. In fact, he set the darn thing up for me and is the author of this message. Have I mentioned what a good son he is? How I don't blame him for the household destruction, grey hair, and lost youth which he caused me? In fact, he's such a good son I think I'm going to make sure he gets all my business suits - lord knows, the little rotter may just need them.
This is my blog. It is about my stay in Belgium. I live here for the time being with my wife. At times my son (the good one) will handle the administrative functions of this blog. In fact, he set the darn thing up for me and is the author of this message. Have I mentioned what a good son he is? How I don't blame him for the household destruction, grey hair, and lost youth which he caused me? In fact, he's such a good son I think I'm going to make sure he gets all my business suits - lord knows, the little rotter may just need them.
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