WEEK 5 - In which the sun shines, we walk in the woods, I take a tram ride and eat stoemp and am happy.

3 December, Wednesday:

Unbelievable! Blue sky today. Very nice. Plus the Christmas lights have been turned on in the streets, and the Ixelles town hall, which is just around the corner, has a Christmas tree and all sorts of lights in the trees on the front lawn. The front lawn itself (and the front steps) are covered with white sheets so they are supposed to look like there is snow. I had French class, then hustled back home for a 4 hour conference call with the Butler Funds. More gloom. After the call we caught a bus to ULB, wandered through the campus and found the lecture hall where a colleague/friend/student was giving a lecture. A lot of the usual people from Gent and Brussels were there. The lecture was in French. It was a work in progress about the medieval conception of time and space. Or something like that. I understood most of the words, but the actual thoughts behind the words were somewhat more difficult. I particularly enjoyed the part about changing perceptions of colors, since I had heard that before in Paris, about 3 years ago. After the lecture, we went out to dinner with about a dozen people including Marc and Claire Billens (an extremely nice francophone woman at ULB who was one of Beagle’s sponsors for the Franqui prize) and some of the usual suspects. The restaurant advertised itself as specializing in traditional Belgian food, so I had “stoemp.” It is a Belgian specialty which consists of a huge mound of mashed potatoes with various vegetables (such as leeks) mixed in, topped with some sort of meat and gravy. The drill is that you first ask what kind of stuff is mixed in with the potatoes, and then decide what kind of meat you want on top (steak, pork, etc). I had pork. It was delicious. It is exactly the sort of meal that Ralph Arditi would love, and that Robin would be horrified to see him eat (How about that for a plug, Ralph?!).

4 December, Thursday:

Factoid of the day: In Brussels, the metro and the trams and the trolleys work pretty much on the honor system. I think most people must have monthly passes, or something like that, but we buy little fare-cards that are good for 10 rides. Each 10 ride card costs €11.50. You can buy the cards at machines in the street, but you need cash (in coins) or some sort of special bank-card which we don’t have. Some of the metro stations also have manned kiosks where you can buy cards for cash, including bills, or with a special bank-card. But no credit cards. So right off the bat, the system doesn’t encourage people to pay for their rides, since it is hard to buy the ride cards in the first place…how may foreigners have €11.50 in coins in their pocket, or have a special bank-card of the sort only found in Belgium?...and often the place where you can buy a fare-card using bills is a few metro or tram stops away from where you happen to be. In the second place, when you go into the metro or get on a tram, etc., you are supposed to “composter” your fare-card…that is stick it into a little machine that stamps it (just like when you ride a regular train in France…but not in Belgium). These little machines are few and far between, and they are not easy to find. Since there are no turnstiles, half the time you find that you are on the metro platform and haven’t “composted” your fare-card. You then have the option of (a) getting on the train which has just arrived or (b) going back to the entrance to the metro station (several floors away, by this point) and searching around for one of the machines to “compost” your ticket. In Paris they have groups of heavily armed policemen wandering through the metro, stopping people to make sure they have a valid ticket that has been appropriately “composted,” plus they have entry turnstiles and exit gates which keep you from getting on or off the metro without a valid ticket. Not in Brussels. There are no turnstiles or gates, and no one ever checks to see if you have a valid ticket. Since no one ever checks, you would think that the temptation to cheat would be great. But apparently that is not the case. We dutifully compost our fare-card every time we take a ride, and we seem to be the only ones, but perhaps everyone else has monthly passes or something. Other than that, not much to report today. It was cold and wet, and I had a lot of things to catch up on, so I mostly paid bills, did web research to try to figure out the cheapest way to get to Washington DC for a board meeting at the end of January, cleared up a lot of correspondence, read my French book, and had a couple of American Rivers calls. In other words I mostly procrastinated. Now I know why animals hibernate in the winter!

5 December, Friday:

What a horrible day. Dark, cold, and raining steadily all day. Even the Belgians were complaining about the weather. Now I know what those people in the WWI trenches went through. I got trench foot just looking outside. For entertainment, Beagle persuaded me to take a ride with her on the 92 tram, which she takes to visit her Feldenkrais PT person. Beagle said that the facades of the houses on the tram’s route were worth seeing. She was right…sort of. The facades were very interesting when I could see them, but for most of the 30 minute trip, the windows of the tram were all fogged up. It was actually an interesting ride, since it goes from the heart of Brussels into the “suburbs.” As you leave the center of Brussels behind you start to see more detached houses, houses with lawns, parks, and while you are still in Brussels proper, you go through several “village centers” such as Uccle, Wolvendael, St. Job and Fort Jaco. Interesting. I took the tram all the way to the end, and on the ride back the tram appeared to have hit something…there was a loud crash, the tram driver slammed on the brakes and everyone in the tram was startled. But I guess trams have the right of way, so the driver just kept going. My fellow passengers included a lot of students and 3 three or four year olds who were eating and squabbling over candy and in general ignoring their keeper, a somewhat frazzled looking woman. Pretty cute, even if all their teeth will rot out before they are six! Having no food in the house, we made an executive decision to go out to dinner, so after gym we set out to see who would have us…on Friday night at 8:30PM within 2 minutes of our apartment. Au Vieux Bruxelles said it would be a 45 minute wait. So did Belgo Belge. L’Ultime Atome (it is a play on words…say it 3 times quickly with a French accent) had room for us. It was a very buzzy, very hip place. Lots of dreadlocks, face-piercing, bluejeans worn around the knees, etc. It is a brasserie/bar that is clearly too cool for us, but we did see some people who were older than we were, and while the menu wasn’t extensive, the food was good and the service was great. We both had steak-frites and were very happy. Interestingly enough, it was the first place we had been to in Brussels that was really racially mixed. Perhaps that’s why Frania’s son, who is half black and half white, had recommended it to us. In any event, it is very close to our apartment, is open all day, has beer and frites and other good stuff. What more could we want?

6 December, Saturday:

Today was a great day. It rained lightly 3 or 4 times and rained hard 2 or 3 times, but in between the rain there was brilliant sunshine. The Belgians were running for cover, afraid that the sun would blind them or do something to their accustomed deathly pallor. We went to the market at Place Flagey. For some reason, the market doubled in size this weekend. There were a lot more people selling kitchenware, etc. But our bread man was nowhere to be found. Then we went to the Delahaise for grocery shopping. It was mobbed, and we had to wait 20 minutes to check out. After laboring up the hill carrying 3 heavy shopping bags, I decided that I couldn’t wait for the boys to be here. I will make them go there with me every day and carry back all sorts of heavy stuff, like water and juice and wine and long-life milk. We had a quick lunch and then went to Place Sainte Catherine where we found a very nice milk and cheese shop, which is run by a young couple who don’t appear to be American (at least not the wife, who waited on us), but speak American English to their child. We then went to the Brussels branch of Waterstones, a British bookshop, and ended up in City 2 (a huge indoor mall) and went to FNAC, a book/CD/DVD etc. store. It was unbelievably mobbed. We had to wait in line for 20 minutes just to check out, and that was with 5 or 6 checkout lines with two checkout counters per line. While waiting in line something struck me. Have you ever noticed that in the US, the people manning the cash registers at checkout counters at the grocery store or at a bookstore, etc., are always standing up? In Europe, or at least in Belgium or France, they are always sitting down. I wonder why. Must be the unions. After FNAC we walked down rue Neuve (New Street), a wide pedestrian shopping street that runs for several blocks, and is lined with every mid-priced store you could think of, complete with natives from Columbia playing music and selling knitted goods in the middle of the street. It was mobbed. These people clearly haven’t heard about the recession. We fought our way through the crowds, took the metro to Louise and bought some bread at Paul (the fancy bread store on Place Stephanie), and went home. I tried to find some sports on TV and discovered instead a telethon featuring all sorts of singing and dancing and wonderfully healthy looking children who have some malady that France 2, the TV station, is raising money for. From this I learned that French-speaking (or at least French-singing) black people can’t dance any better than French-speaking white people. Which is to say not at all. During dinner we watched our first movie from DVDPost, “Bienvenue chez les ch’tis.” It is a very sweet and very funny French film about a man from the south of France who is forced to move to the north of France, where they have a different climate and a very different accent. Part of the joke is that people from the south of France think that the north of France is like the North Pole. What must they think of Belgium?

7 December, Sunday:

Today was the best day since we arrived in Brussels. The ground was wet when we woke up, but we had blue sky and brilliant sunshine all day. In the afternoon we took a tram to the Bois de la Cambre and went for a long walk through the Bois and into the Foret de Soignes. On our walk we came across an old hippodrome (a horse racing track) which clearly hadn’t seen any horse racing for a while, but which featured a golf course in the “infield.” The golf course was pretty flat, and pretty wet…the tees were wooden platforms with Astroturf on them because it was clear that a regular tee would subside into the mud in no time. Beyond the hippodrome we entered a real forest…nothing but trees and, of course, paths and little roads going everywhere. It was glorious to be out of the city. Beagle was very happy. After a couple of hours we emerged from the forest at something called the International School of Brussels and the American Protestant Church. All we saw were huge playing fields, lots of signs telling people to keep out, etc. No sign of a church. And, since it was Sunday, there was no one around, church or no church. We walked across a busy road, into a small and not very interesting residential area, and then we blundered into the town center of Watermael-Boisfort. There was a very imposing town hall, a street market that was just closing down, and, totally unexpected in Brussels, about six restaurants all in a row, open for business. We went into an Italian restaurant that looked nice and were told that since it was 3:30PM, we had missed the main meal but we could have a “petit restauration,” where we had a choice of lasagna, spaghetti bolognaise, or penne with cheese. I had spaghetti. Beagle had penne. It cost €36 including a bottle of wine. We were happy. There was a tram stop right across from the restaurant, so we caught a tram back to Place Stephanie. The ride took 22 minutes, and was very interesting. Watermael-Boisfort appears to be a very affluent suburb…sort of like a close-in Greenwich. There were a lot of very important single-family, free standing houses with gardens, lots of Porsches and seriously big Audis, etc. That quickly gave way to attached houses and apartment buildings, then office buildings, etc. The tram took us right past ULB, the restaurant where I ate stoemp after the event at ULB the other night, Claire’s apartment, etc. Now Beagle knows a different way to get to ULB. We bought bread at Place Stephanie, went home, went to gym, had dinner and watched a movie…Caché, starring Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil. It was very interesting and I had no idea what was going on. I followed the French, pretty much, but the plot pretty much escaped me. I then read a few reviews, which made me feel better. All of them say that this is one of the greatest movies ever, but also say that who does what to whom, and exactly what is going on, is totally shrouded in mystery and is open to dozens of explanations. I think it is James Bond for me.

8 December, Monday:

Another nice day. The skies weren’t exactly blue, but they weren’t grey either. There wasn’t much sun, but it didn’t rain. I did French homework, went to class, had a conference call and watched part of a movie…Mrs. Brown. It is about Queen Victoria and Mr. Brown, a Scot. I had seen it before in English, but it was interesting to see/hear Judi Dench speaking French. It seemed perfectly natural to hear the Scot speaking French, since Scots speak a foreign language anyway.

9 December, Tuesday:

The cleaning lady arrived at 8:45 this morning and refused to go away. She said she couldn’t come back later, since she had many other apartments to clean and she had to do ours first. She flailed around with the vacuum cleaner for a while, then went upstairs and spent about an hour on her cell phone. It was cold and wet today with some snow. Nasty. We went out shopping this afternoon, and went our neighborhood bread store. The young serveuse there recognized me again…she must like gentlemen of a certain age with grey hair…and asked, with a knowing look, how I liked the “pain tradition” I had bought the other day. I told her that the “ancienne” was much better and she gave me an “I told you so look” and stamped our carte de fidelité twice so we got a free loaf of bread. We had some packages to mail to the US, so we summoned up our courage and marched off to the Delahaise grocery store, which is where you have to go until the post offices reopen on 12 December. We thought it would be a horror, but it turned out to be just fine. There were no lines and no one was there renegotiating the national debt. In fact, there was no one there at all except for the woman behind the counter, her friend who was on our side of the counter and vigorously chatting her up, and a man behind her who was very meticulously, one at a time, throwing bottles into a trash bin, with a very satisfying crash and tinkle of glass each time. With no wait and no fuss, we got our packages weighed, stamped, and sent. Perhaps we’ll stick with Delahaise and forget the Post Office. We saw a movie tonight called “The Widow’s Journey.” I thought I had read the story before…the story I read was about a widow who, during WWI, traveled to the front to find her husband, who (unbeknownst to her) had been executed for destroying military property (he had shot himself in the foot to get out of military service). The reason for his execution was, as they say, “pour encourager les autres” (to encourage the others). The plot of the movie was somewhat different. It was about a group of civic officials who took an arduous journey to the front, complete with shelling, rain, mud, etc., with a portable guillotine to execute someone who had committed some offense. A different story, but pretty much the same idea. Those French have an interesting perspective on life.