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.