14 January, Wednesday:
Today was a day of little chores and dealing with Brussellian bureaucracy. I took some shirts to the laundry and asked them if they could fold the shirts rather than hanging them on hangers…easier to pack that way. They cheerfully complied, and charged me €3.80 a shirt…$5.00. I own shirts that cost less than that! No wonder I have taken to wearing my shirts for more than one day. Besides saving money it makes me feel more European, if you know what I mean. Once I had gotten over that shock, I went off to the notary to get my signature notarized on some legal documents. Same procedure as last time…push open the 3,000 pound iron doors, push a buzzer, get admitted into the inner sanctum, have a functionary stamp and seal and notate and do all that, wait for the great man to emerge from his inner sanctum and scribble his signature on the form, and pay them €15 for the entertainment. My brother Richard says he is a notary and would do it for free, but he wouldn’t be as entertaining. Then a stop at the bank to get some cash, mine having been depleted by trips to the notary and the cleaners. The Belgian banking system is interesting. Aside from being broke and beset with political scandals, just like ours, they have a funny way of doing things. When you go to a “cash point” at a bank there are plenty of machines that dispense cash, plus there are other machines whose function was, at least to me, obscure. But there are always people at those machines doing something that results in the machines spitting out a seemingly endless stream of little pieces of paper. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Belgians don’t use checks anymore. Almost all transactions are done on line, saving time and all that paperwork. Indeed, in their zeal to save paper, Belgian banks don’t even seem to produce paper monthly bank statements. But every time you do a transaction, such as paying a bill on-line, there is an electronic record of the transaction. And the banks insist that you go to a cash point, stick your card in one of those mysterious machines, and it will then spit out, one at a time, little paper slips which memorialize on paper each electronic transaction you have made. If you don’t do this, after 3 months the bank will print out all those little slips and mail them to you, and charge you €5 for the privilege. That is why you see all those people at the cash point furiously printing out 3 months worth of transaction slips. What you are supposed to do with the little pieces of paper after you have gotten them is a mystery to everyone. Seems to me to defeat the whole purpose of electronic banking, but what do I know. After my banking expedition, I got a magazine and some food and went to the post office to wait to mail some stuff and buy stamps. I mailed 2 pretty much identical envelopes to the US. One cost €1.13, the other €6.28. No explanation other than a well-practiced shrug. Then I produced a sample Christmas card (I know, we’re late this year, for obvious reasons) and asked how much it would cost to send it to the US. The man told me that if I could use a different envelope, one that met some Belgian guideline about dimensions, it would cost a lot less, but this particular one would cost €3.18. He said that without consulting any manual, without weighing the envelope or anything. It seems that the Belgians like standards, and my envelope wasn’t standard. But then he told me I could put three €1 stamps on the envelope, and that would be fine. I asked about the missing €0.18. He smiled and shrugged. I guess individual clerks at Belgian post offices have a lot of leeway, but what about the people who are actually going to handle the envelopes themselves? We’ll see. If you don’t get a Christmas card, you’ll know why. So I bought stamps until I ran out of cash (the post office only takes cash or 2 special types of cash cards…the same ones you need to buy metro tickets. But at least in the metro you can just not pay, and no one cares, I suspect with the post office it is different).
15 January, Thursday:
Who was complaining about Belgian weather? It couldn’t have been me. Today started out dark, as usual, since the sun doesn’t come up until 8:40 AM these days. It was a bit foggy but relatively warm, and the fog rapidly cleared away and we had another beautiful day, with blue skies and sun. We had to go to Boisfort to see Claire’s dentist because Beagle was having tooth troubles. Boisfort, a part of Brussels and near the Forêt des Soignes, is very much a little village that seems to have been absorbed over the years into Brussels, but still has very much of a village feel, with a town center, etc. Very nice. Claire’s dentist was a very nice woman who immediately diagnosed Beagle’s problem and set to work on the first of what will be four visits to do a root canal. I waited in the waiting room and admired the view. A little while ago, when it was so icy outside that you couldn’t even walk on the sidewalks, Beagle went on the web, consulted her gear expert (William) and bought some Yaktrax from a Spanish mail order place that William knew about. Yaktrax are these things that you strap onto your boots to keep you from slipping on the ice. Not as aggressive and technical as crampons…more suited to city and country use. Beagle has a pair in Garrison, but she is terrified of slipping and falling and re-injuring her back, so she decided she needed a pair here. Me too. So this afternoon a very puzzled UPS man buzzed at our door. He had a package addressed to rez-de-chausée, 24 rue Souveraine, but with no addressee named. Seeing that it was a package from Spain, I figured that it was the Yaktrax and I was right. Good thing we now have them, since it has warmed up, the snow and ice have gone away, probably to reappear in 10 years. We were so pleased with the Yaktrax that we decided to go out to dinner instead of shopping and eating at home. We went to Volle Gas. It was great. The food is only OK, but the atmosphere and décor is wonderful. Lots of wood and brass and beer. Our waiter first thought we were English, and was shocked to discover that we were American. I must say, he was the only person we have run into here who, when finding out we were American, didn’t immediately start off on a long discourse about Obama, who they all think is wonderful. Our waiter told us he was Spanish, and throughout our dinner kept saying things in English to us that actually made sense, but weren’t exactly what an American would say. He reminded me of Manuel, the waiter in Fawlty Towers. Beagle had blanquette de poulet (with lots of vegetables) and I had a geuzue and Stoemp Royale (regular steomp with two sausages instead of one). My vegetables were in the stoemp. We were happy.
16 January, Friday:
There are no stop signs in Brussels. Brussels is a city of millions of intersections, probably because the current streets follow old cow paths, etc., and while there are traffic lights at some of the biggest intersections, there are no stop signs. The theory is, I guess, that if you are smart enough to drive a car, you are smart enough to stop at each and every intersection, or at least slow down and check to see if anyone is coming. When you reach an intersection, I believe that the car on the right has the right of way (priorité à droit). This creates some interesting situations when you arrive at a 4-way intersection, and find that there is a car coming from each of the 4 directions. Who has the right of way then? While you are trying to figure that out, the Belgian drivers will take advantage of you and zoom through the intersection. The key is not to hesitate if you have the right of way. If you do hesitate, even for a second, everyone figures you have given up your right of way and they charge into the intersection ahead of you. Even more interesting are the 5 and 6-way intersections, of which there are many, including ones that also have trams thrown in for good measure. Trams always have the right of way, and they insist on it. If a car is in the way of a tram, the car is supposed to get out of the way, even if that means the car backing into a busy intersection, which happens more often than you would think. I just figured this out about stop signs yesterday. Up until then I had figured that if I didn’t have a stop sign at an intersection, then the other people did, and I could zoom right through. Ooops! Good thing my reflexes still function! In addition to the absence of stop signs, there are other things that are different about Belgium. After her visit to the dentist yesterday, Beagle decided she had better sign up for Belgian health coverage, which is supposed to be very good. Since she has a post at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, in theory she can get onto their plan. There is an excellent universal health care program in Belgium, which everyone gets, so why Beagle has to sign up for it through ULB is beyond me…perhaps just because she has to prove that she is really working in Belgium and is entitled to it. When she went on-line to sign up this morning, she discovered that there are actually three different plans, or at least three different “avenues” for applying. The plans are “Catholique,” “Socialiste,” or “Neutre.” What do you suppose the differences are? Does the Catholic plan not pay for birth control? Does the Socialist plan give everybody the same treatment no matter what their illness is? And as for Neutre, I’m not sure I want to go there, even though that really means “neutral,” or “free” in the sense of the Université Libre de Bruxelles” (The Free University of Brussels). Imagine what Jon Stewart could do with this. What are you going to do with a totally non-religious country where everything is divided by religion, political party, and language?
17 January, Saturday:
Today started out rainy, but we felt like being outside so we got suited up in our raingear and drove to Terveuren, parked at the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Central, and walked in the museum’s park. It is quite splendid, with terraced gardens, sculpted bushes and hedges, huge fountains, reflecting pools, long rectangular lakes, wide allées and splendid vistas. Sort of like Versailles. Quite impressive, especially when you look up a long wide stretch of lawn, over a few fountains and up over several terraced gardens and see the museum itself, a gigantic structure, looming over everything. We then walked out of the park into the Forêt ds Soignes. At one point we walked about 5 – 6 kilometers along a very wide and very straight path/road with 100+ foot trees planted on either side of the road about every 10 yards. And when you came to an intersection the same was true of the road you crossed. Incredible. As you looked down these roads it seemed as if the lines of trees stretched out forever in straight lines. The forêt is clearly not “natural.” It is broken up into sections, and as you walk along you may find one section which is entirely made up of huge hardwood trees, while the section immediately next to it is all evergreens. Some sections have clearly been thinned, some have not, some have stands of new trees, some are older trees, etc., and there are signs of logging (or at least vigorous thinning) here and there. After about two hours of walking we ended up in the little town of Jezus-Eik (Jesus Oak) on the edge of the forêt and went to a brasserie to have lunch. This is a Dutch-speaking town in a Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. All the signs are in Dutch. There is a church there that was reconstructed sometime in the past 100 years after some disaster, and there are about 20 plaques with pictures and descriptions and explanations of the reconstruction. All in Dutch. But since this is Belgium, we were not at all surprised when we entered the brasserie and were greeted in French by the two waiters (who were, of course, Korean). The brasserie was very nice and buzzy and full of people having a nice Saturday lunch. 2/3 of them were speaking French. I had andouilletes and frites and Beagle had lentils with huge slabs of bacon (most of which she didn’t eat). We were warm and happy. After lunch it stopped raining and we walked back to our car. The sun was out so there were suddenly lots of people out walking their dogs and playing with kids. All in all, it was a nice day. 3 ½ hours of walking and 1 hour of eating. A nice balance!
18 January, Sunday:
It was raining again today. Beagle went off to a bookstore to buy some trash novels in French. I tried to watch the biathlon, but it just didn’t grab my interest so I paid bills, balanced my checkbook and did Christmas cards. Then I went to the bookstore (which of course has a café/restaurant), picked up Beagle, and we went for a walk. As we were walking down Toison d’Or, one of the main drags, I noticed a bunch of police cars and paddy wagons in front of a big office building which had big “Bloomberg” signs in the windows…presumably offices for Bloomberg the company, not Bloomberg the mayor. As we walked past, a bunch of policemen came out of the building with three young men in handcuffs and stuffed them into the paddy wagon. Hmm. They must have been hedge fund traders or Bernie Madoff associates or something. As we continued down the street, another young man wearing a “hoody” came hustling around a corner, took one look at the police and immediately turned around and walked briskly away in the other direction. Perhaps he was a lookout. We walked past the park Cinquantenaire and down Avenue Terveuren, which is very wide and very nice looking. The avenue is centered on Leopold II’s huge triumphal arch in the park, so when you turn around and look down the avenue, that is what you see looming up there. Very impressive. All the statues of Leopold II make it look like he was very tall, but I bet he was 5’2”.
19 January, Monday:
Things have slowed down here for the moment, so to do something different I decided a few days ago to stop shaving for a while. I had hopes of growing a nice “salt and pepper” beard…sort of going for the George Clooney look. That partially worked. The salt bit was fine, but there isn’t much pepper. Instead of George Clooney, I look more like the character in The Old Man and the Sea, and I don’t mean the fish. The beard is going to go before the outside world sees it.
20 January, Tuesday:
This was Obama day. Newspapers, magazines, TV, etc. are full of nothing but Obama. The Europeans think that we have finally come to our senses, and they are most taken by Obama. We watched everything on CNN, and while having to put up with several hours of Wolf Blitzer is probably worse than being waterboarded, I had to admit that I enjoyed the whole spectacle.
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