10 December, Wednesday:
Today was the last day of class with Aurélie. That was OK with me. The classes were useful in that they got me speaking French, and I did learn stuff, but I didn’t feel that I was making that much progress, and that I’d probably be better off just reading books and watching TV in French. Besides, half the time Aurélie just wanted to talk, and I didn’t think that was what I was paying for! We’ll see. It was cold today. Beagle keeps complaining about the lack of heat in the apartment. I don’t know what she’s complaining about. The thermostat downstairs, which is conveniently placed near a large radiator, reads a toasty 21.4 degrees Celsius (70.5 degrees Fahrenheit). She has turned off all the radiators upstairs (where her desk is) and wonders why she is cold! But is a bit odd that she wears her ski clothes to dinner. I’ll have to get her another scarf. As compensation for freezing her, I booked a hotel in Comblain-la-tour, near Liege, over New Years. They promise all sorts of good meals and festivities, and since it is the “gateway to the Ardennes,” there is supposedly lots of walking and hiking nearby.
11 December, Thursday:
It turns out that the Christmas lights at the Ixelles Town Hall (right around the corner) are meant to look like snow falling. I guess they do, if you think of snow as foot-long flashes of blue light. But they do sort of flash downwards, so if you squint your eyes....you sort of get the idea. It also turns out that the white cloth that covers the front lawn and front steps of the Town Hall is made our of some sort of biodegradable material so it is supposed to melt in the rain and disappear altogether in a few weeks. I hope it lasts until Christmas. Luckily it hasn’t rained much in the past few days. Today was the final French class with Gabrielle, a nice young woman whom we have had once before. I am not sure who is learning more in these classes…Gabrielle or me. Last time she learned from me that there was actually a New York State as well as a New York City, and I taught her that Vermont was not in the Midwest. Today she learned that “melting-pot” was not originally a Belgian word. She was astonished. Time sort of got out of control tonight, and by the time we had finished answering e-mails, scanning stuff to insurance agents, etc., it was 8 PM and we had had no dinner. So on the pretext of scouting out places for when the boys visit, we went to Au Vieux Brussels for dinner. We had moules et frites, washed down with beer. I had a salade friesée avec lardons (which means a little bit of friesée lettuce and a lot of chopped up pork/bacon) to start. If you are determined to clog up your arteries, this is a great way to start. Next time I am having the sausages with stoemp and sauerkraut, which looked very good. The dinner was great, and we loved the restaurant. It was quite small, very drafty, and very Belgian. Not at all like those big synthetic moules et frites places you find near the Grand Place. We will go back. We left at about 10:30, and it looked like all the restaurants in the neighborhood were still busy, but had a few empty tables. In this neighborhood it seems like you had better eat early or late. And by early, I mean 7:30 PM. Most places don’t even open until then. Late is 10 PM or so.
12 December, Friday:
This afternoon we went to Gent. Beagle had to be part of a jury that was conducting a “private” examination of Frederik Buylaert’s doctoral thesis. Frederik is a nice young man who is a student of Marc’s, and was a student of Beagle’s when he was at Columbia a while ago. The thesis itself was 600 pages long, with a CD containing footnotes, all in Dutch. Beagle labored over that for several days and concluded that while Frederik could use a good editor, the thesis itself was an excellent piece of work. While the jury deliberated, and while Frederik worried, I read a book, recognizing that my sole function in this enterprise was to be the driver. There appeared to be unanimity on the jury, so the examination went quickly. Marc, Thérèse, Wim Blockmans and a couple of other people from the history department at U Gent then went with us to the “Vooruit” for a beer. The Vooruit used to be the headquarters of the Socialist party in Gent, and is a splendid building that was designed to rival the Christian Democratic headquarters elsewhere in Gent. Given the demise of the Socialists (I guess) it has been turned into a cultural center and a café/bar/brasserie. The latter was packed with students, children, etc. Some reading, some eating, some drinking, all having a good time. After a few beers, we went to a Turkish restaurant for dinner with Marc and Thérèse (good, and very inexpensive) and then drove back to Brussels.
13 December, Saturday:
Today was the formal investiture of Marc as a member of the Royal Flemish Academy in Brussels. This is a big deal, so we went. The ceremony started at 10:30 AM, and seemed to go on forever. There were a number of people being admitted as members of the Academy, a couple being given prizes, a couple being given awards, etc. There was a program (in Flemish) giving the bios of each person being honored, which all 400 of us in the hall read with interest. The ceremony started with an attractive young woman, fashionably dressed with a scarf casually (but very carefully) thrown around her neck and over her shoulder, introducing the first speaker, and telling us what he was going to say. Then the first speaker, a distinguished-looking white-haired gentleman, got up and made a 30 minute speech in Flemish, introducing another white-haired gentleman who got up and made another long speech in Flemish and then gave the long version of the first honoree’s biography (Marc) , elaborating at length on the bio contained in our program. Marc got up, was applauded, and sat down. Then the attractive young woman (who turned out to be Inez, who we knew from our last stay in Brussels when Beagle was at the Academy) introduced the next white-haired gentleman, and so on. For a diversion between sections of the program, a violinist came out and played. As time went on the audience became somewhat restless, but the white-haired gentlemen kept being introduced and kept speaking at length in Flemish. I learned a few new words/phrases in Flemish, such as “soft-porn.” And almost all the speakers used the phrase (in English) “last but not least,” but unfortunately it was always in the middle of their discourse. One of the gentlemen started his comments by saying “and now for something completely different,” but then he went on for another 30 minutes in Flemish before he showed a film clip of a pretentious Belgian intellectual interviewing a pretentious American intellectual, in English with English subtitles. The most exciting part was when a woman (I forget whether she was an honoree or a presenter) fell when getting off the stage. That woke the audience up. At some point the speakers must have been told to speed things up, so they stopped elaborating and started just reading the bios of the honorees, and then started summarizing them. Finally one of the white-haired gentlemen stood up…he was evidently the President of the Academy and had spoken several times before…and introduced the new President of the Academy, a woman. She spoke briefly and was heartily applauded. Then she got a bouquet of flowers, as did the violinist. Then everyone bolted for the champagne reception in the next room. No wonder. The whole ceremony lasted for 2 ½ hours without a break. Trying to get to the bar at the reception was like being in a rugby scrum. I can tell you that a group of academics on the scent of champagne and various wonderful hors d’oeuvres is a formidable sight, especially after they have been imprisoned for 2 ½ hours without food or drink. We grabbed some food, drank a glass of champagne, talked to some friends and went home for a rest. Later in the afternoon Beagle went out to meet Thérèse at the Grand Place to do some shopping. That turned out to be an adventure. The Grand Place was jammed, Place Sainte Catherine was jammed, more Christmas booths had been installed everywhere. Beagle’s unerring sense of direction resulted in them getting on metros going in the wrong direction twice. They arrived home exhausted with a few things to show for their efforts. After resting for about a half hour we drove to Hermann and Monique Van Der Wee’s house near Antwerp for a dinner honoring Beagle. It was quite an affair. There were 14 people at the dinner, all academics or the spouses of academics, including two couples that we didn’t know and several old friends (the Prevenirs, the Blockmans, and Marc and Thérèse. We also got to meet Hermann’s dogs, which are two German hunting dogs that were sort of like chocolate labs but different. They were gorgeous…very excited to have guests, but very friendly and well trained. Hermann, who is 80, apparently takes an 1 ½ walk with them each day, as well as playing tennis. The dinner was most elegant, served by two young men dressed in black, with each course introduced by a young chef and accompanied by a different wine, and each course (I think there were 5) more spectacular than the last. It was a meal worthy of a top restaurant, and was very nice in that while each course was exquisite, none were very big so that at the end you didn’t feel stuffed. The whole thing was very baronial, which makes sense since Hermann is a Baron. He was made a Baron by the state because of his great distinction as a scholar, and, as we found out during dinner, the title is hereditary, at least as far as his male children are concerned. Women, including his wife, don’t rate. In any event, we felt very honored. How on earth do you pay that back? We don’t even know a chef, much less have the table settings (or the table) for 14! We all staggered up from the table at about midnight and headed home.
14 December, Sunday:
Our day started early, since we left the Van Der Wee’s at about midnight. The Van Der Wees have a very nice, very modern house in the outskirts of a very tiny town called Sint-Pauwels, which is part of the tiny town of Sint-Gillis-Waas, which is near the small town of Sint Niklaas, which is not far from Antwerp. We got there with no problem, using my GPS (aka Edith). Apparently the dinner was too much for Edith, since she seemed to have a massive brain cramp the minute we left the Van Der Wees and went totally berserk. She couldn’t locate the roads we were on, kept giving us totally inappropriate instructions such as telling us to make a U-turn in the middle of an 8 lane highway, telling us to turn sharp left on an 8 lane highway between exits, “recalculating” every 15 seconds, etc. We very rapidly discovered (a) that we had no idea where we were, (b) that Edith had less of an idea, and (c) that we had better rely on the fact that we knew there was a highway going directly from Antwerp to Brussels and that we had at least started close to Antwerp. We probably had gotten half way to Brussels, but in the face of a blizzard of contradictory instructions from Edith, we turned around, went back to more or less where we had started from, drove to Antwerp and headed to Brussels. Except for the fact that we had to drive through a roadblock where they were checking people for drunk driving, this went without incident. I had been careful at dinner, but the Belgians are very tough on drunk driving, and after having sampled (well, more than sampled) 5 different wines in the course of the evening, I was not sure how well I would do if I had to blow into a balloon. But since we had a French license plate, looked respectable and were studying the map, the gendarmes just waved us through. As we got close to Brussels, Edith seemed to recover her sanity and she guided us back home without further incident. I wonder whether it was a problem with the satellites? This whole adventure took a while, so we didn’t get home until about 1:30 AM, and we slept late this morning. Once we got up, we went to Place Flagey to shop at the market. Much to our surprise, we found that a giant “Christmas Market,” which was housed in several very big, heated, tents, had replaced the regular market. There were all sorts of Christmas stuff, along with the usual booths selling food, wine, beer, cheese, and there were, of course, several bars. Everyone was happy. We found some things, but weren’t so happy because the regular market, where we had planned on buying the ingredients for dinner, had disappeared. However, we found it along the side of one of the “Etangs d’Ixelle,” small lakes near Place Flagey. We even found our bread man. We bought dinner food and bread, went home, had lunch, put on our hiking boots and parkas and went for a walk in the Forêt des Soignes. It was cold (around freezing) and while we didn’t have the blue skies of last weekend, it was very nice. We walked for about 2+ hours, ending up at the Watermael-Boisfort village again. We stopped at a café, had a hot chocolate, and took the tram home.
15 December, Monday:
The excitement of the day was that I had to get a “bank guaranty” of my signature for some legal documents. In New York you get things notarized, but these documents originated in Boston, and I guess in Boston the banks guaranty things. Not in Belgium. We tried at Beagle’s bank, and they told us that banks in Belgium couldn’t do that sort of thing. But they referred us to a Notary down the street. I am not sure exactly what a Notary is in Belgium, but it is more than a notary public. We went to the place we had been told, were buzzed in through a heavy door, and went into a room filled floor to ceiling with what looked like law books and occupied by 6 women with computers, stacks of papers, etc. One of the women took care of us. She made a copy of my passport, stamped my documents multiple times with seals and stamps that said, in English, that they were authorized to do this, and signed and dated everything. Then we waited. Then an elegantly dressed man entered to room, shook my hand, looked me in the eye, checked the documents, and made a totally illegible mark on them, shook my hand again, and then left. Then the first lady laboriously made out a bill for €15. I gave her a €20 bill, which she gave to another lady who opened a huge safe and extracted €5 in change, which she gave to the first lady, who gave it to me. We all smiled and thanked everybody and left. At least it was cheaper than Paris, where a similar transaction (for which I had to make an appointment) cost €20. One thing I did note, both at the bank and at the Notary, is that in Brussels a large number of women of a “certain age” dress in…how shall we call it…age inappropriate clothing. Somehow it startles me to see a 50 year old woman wearing a mini-kilt that was clearly designed for a 13 year old. After the excitement of getting my documents notarized we went shopping and had lunch. Beagle went to Feldenkrais, then we went to gym, and then I had a 2 hour Butler Funds conference call.
16 December, Tuesday:
Determined not to be rousted out of bed by the cleaning lady again, we got up early. And waited. She was clearly playing a game of psychological warfare, since instead of turning up at 8:30 she turned up at 10. We’ll get her the next time. This afternoon we went to ULB to participate in/witness a “soutenance,” the public defense by a student of his doctoral thesis. This takes place in a classroom filled with all sorts of friends, family members and colleagues of the student, various and sundry faculty members, a 6 person jury and a presiding faculty member, and various hangers-on like us. First, the student gives a brief talk summarizing the essence of his thesis. Then the jury members, who have all read the thesis and represent various disciplines and are both internal and external faculty members, go to work. Each jury member starts by saying what an excellent thesis it is, what a wonderful person the student is, etc., etc. Then they make a few criticisms of the thesis, point out areas where the student made mistakes or could have done something better or differently, and then ask a few questions. My impression was that some of the comments and questions were pretty mild, but some were tougher, but not too tough. Then the student gets to respond. Sometimes there was a little back and forth with the professor asking the questions, and sometimes not. Then the jury (which included our friends Thérèse and Claire) and all the faculty members from ULB leave the room and huddle somewhere else for 30 minutes and vote on whether to accept the thesis or not. Then they return, the presiding faculty member, who is now wearing academic robes, announces that the student’s thesis has been accepted and that he has been awarded a PhD. They give him the formal document, which for some reason he signs, and everyone kisses everyone else. Then everyone leaves for another room elsewhere on campus where we have a “pot de thèse,” which is to say lots of champagne. The whole ceremony was interesting, and valuable to me in that I got to listen to a lot of academics speaking French, but it struck me as a little odd because if this is done the same way as it is in Gent, the real decision had been made in a private session a week earlier, and the only way the student wouldn’t have gotten his doctorate was if he had completely gone berserk during the public ceremony. And even then, who knows? Anyway, it was good practice because Beagle is on the jury for Frederik’s public defense in Gent on Thursday, and she needed to see how it was done, what the protocol was, etc. After the ceremony we went home with Marc and Thérèse, had tea, and then went out to dinner at Belgo Belge, a Belgian-style restaurant in our neighborhood that gets consistently good reviews. We received a warm welcome, the restaurant was nice and the service was excellent, but the food was mediocre at best. Martha and Marc had “back of hare” and I had escalope of veal smothered in cheese. However, the highlight of the evening was that Thérèse ordered the “Trio of Stoemp,” three different kinds of stoemp that came with about 3 feet of sausage. Thérèse is not exactly a picky eater, but even she was unable to plow through all of that. Incredible. I think it might have been a first.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment