Week 17 - In which I buy an aiguiseur, Thérèse has a wonderful idea, and we go hiking in a peat bog

25 February, Wednesday:

I diligently studied French today, and then had a class with Aurélie. Aurélie says that we need to practice speaking more. I agree. I know, or at least have studied, most of the rules, and it is more a matter of practice since (a) there are a million exceptions to every rule and (b) the French have a dozen different ways of saying anything, and hate repeating a word or a phrase. Plus if there is an easy and straightforward way of saying something and a convoluted and flowery and complex way of saying the same thing, the French will go for the latter every time. And they are very critical of you don’t say it correctly. There was a YouTube clip of President Sarkozy circulating the other day. He was talking about the forces of resistance to his policies having “the power to say no” and “not having the power to say yes,” and these two things counterbalancing each other, with the result that nothing gets done. The French found this hilarious, since how could you have two similar forces counterbalance each other, and how could you call the lack of power a power, etc.? They kept saying that they couldn’t understand what he was talking about. The clip came from a TV show where everyone was laughing at a clip of Sarkozy making a speech. I have to admit that Sarko’s formulation was a little inelegant, but I understood the point he was trying to make. It sounded to me like George Bush on a good day. And what would the French make of Rumsfeld with his” known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns?” In any event, Beagle and I have promised to practice our “indirect discourse” this week…you know, “He said that…” We thought we’d start with Obama’s speech to Congress. It will give us a chance to read the speech and practice our French.

26 February, Thursday:

A fair bit of yesterday and today was spent on American Rivers business. We are trying to figure out the slate of officers for the coming year, etc. This has been made more complicated because (a) the man who was Vice-Chair, my presumed successor the year after this one, has left the Board because he has been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Interior and (b) two logical candidates to replace him have flatly refused, and a third logical candidate is in the middle of business and personal crises so he is unavailable. It looks like I will have to stay on for an extra year, extending the normal 3 year term to 4. I feel like Guiliani. Or Bloomberg. To cheer myself up I went to a very fancy cooking store on Avenue Louise to buy a knife sharpener, because all of our knives are impossibly dull. I’m sure there must be dozens of stores nearby where you can buy stuff like that, but this was the only one I have seen since we’ve been in Brussels. And let me tell you, it is the Tiffany of cooking stores. I had neglected to look up the French word for knife sharpener before I left our apartment, but I figured that this would be a good chance to practice my French. It was. After much struggling and pantomime and the like, the salesman led me to the section where they had “aiguiseurs.” Ah ha! That’s how you say it! Now I know. Having gotten that far, I figured I’d better buy one of the things, but was a little shocked when the first model he showed me cost €106 ($135). I choked and asked if he didn’t have anything cheaper, and he showed me the €76 model. We finally got down to a €41 model, the cheapest he had, which I bought. I figured that considering I’d had a French lesson and had also bought an aiguiseur that I could take home to NYC with me, that wasn’t so bad…although the same thing at Zabars would probably cost $15. So now we have sharp knives.

27 February, Friday:

Thérèse had a wonderful idea. It is a long-standing tradition of the Medieval History Department at the University of Gent that graduate students go on occasional weekend trips together, led or at least accompanied by faculty members. In 1976 we were invited on one of those trips, a hiking trip in the Ardennes. I remember sleeping in a freezing cold barn, taking cold showers, and being introduced to chocopasta. It seemed pretty disgusting to me…eating chocolate paste smeared on bread for breakfast…but it actually tasted pretty good after a cold shower. And besides, as the Belgians pointed out to me, Americans eat peanut paste smeared on bread, so who were we to talk. In any event, Thérèse’s idea was to have a reunion of the same group 33 years later. She rented a gîte in Hockai, a little town near Spa (Spa is famous for its drinking water, its casino and thermal baths, etc. When you go to a health spa in the US, that’s where the term “spa” comes from). 12 people ended up being able to make it, coming from Gent, Antwerp and Brussels. There was Marc and Thérèse, André and Ghislaine, Eric and B (Birgit), Philippe and Leen, Claire and Jacques and Beagle and me. We all arrived in Hockai on Friday afternoon and spent the first hour with everybody trying to remember if they had actually been on that original trip, and trying to remember each other. Since we were all 33 years older, that was not an easy job. Luckily, Philippe had brought a photo album with pictures of the actual event, so we were able to confirm, and in most cases sharpen, our memories. The only people who hadn’t been on the original trip were Claire and Jacques who were relatively new friends. They were the last to arrive, and before they turned up Thérèse and Marc explained to the rest of the group that neither of them spoke Dutch or English, or at least not much. The others, all Flemish, could forgive the lack of English, but were horrified that they didn’t speak Dutch. Somebody asked, “Aren’t they Belgians?” But everybody liked them when they arrived, and we spent the rest of the weekend speaking a mélange of French, Dutch and English. Most conversations started in French but quickly moved to Dutch, and then occasionally veered into English. By the end of the weekend everybody seemed to understand everyone else, and everyone turned out to speak something other than his or her primary language…not necessarily well, but adequately. What was interesting to me was that most of the Flemish speakers didn’t have very good French…I had always assumed that most Flemish speakers also had good French but just didn’t like to used it, as a matter of principle. Not true, as it turns out. Our gîte was large and well equipped, and we settled down to a simple dinner of wine and cheese, which Marc and Thérèse had brought. Some simple dinner. We must have had 20 different kinds of cheese, all bought from a cheese store in Gent that makes its own cheese, plus bread, rolls, champagne and several different wines.

28 February, Saturday:

Today everyone staggered out of bed, had a big breakfast, and took a short walk through the town of Hockai. It is evidently a cross-country skiing center, because there were several ski rental places and lots of trails, but other than clumps here and there, the snow was pretty much gone. We then had a quick lunch and drove to the Hautes Fagnes, a big (4,500 acre) natural preserve, where we were to meet a guide. According to the dictionary, Hautes Fagnes means “high mud,” but a more accurate translation might be “high bog.” This is an area that is pretty flat, but is the highest part of Belgium. It is right on the border with Germany, and in the past at various times belonged to Germany, Holland, Luxembourg, Prussia, etc., but the Belgians got it after W.W. I and have hung onto it. Our guide was just great, although he only spoke French. He took us on a long (18 kilometer) walk while explaining about all the flora and fauna. The area is mostly a gigantic peat bog that has been used over the years for peat production, pasture, growing cranberries and, in the case of the Germans, growing trees. The area is now (slowly) being returned to its original state as a peat bog. The peat there is in some cases as deep as 7 meters, and since peat (which is made of decomposed and decomposing moss) accumulates at the rate of 1 millimeter per year, that means this process has been going on for at least 7,000 years. Give it another couple of million years and maybe it will turn into coal. Our hike started on wide paths that are evidently used as cross country ski trails. While there were no skiers around, the trails themselves still had several inches of snow and ice on them, and were very slippery and pretty tough going. We certainly could have used our YakTraxs, which we had cleverly left in Brussels. After a bit of that we went into the peat bog itself, walking much of the time on narrow “boardwalks” which were just above ground/water level. Most of the bog itself is covered with big tussocks of grass about 2 feet high and 3 or 4 inches apart. The tussocks themselves aren’t stiff enough to support your weight, and the spaces in between the tussocks are filled with about 4 inches of water. This makes walking very difficult…you sort of lurch from tussock to tussock, falling into the water at every step. I remember scrambling though terrain exactly like this 33 years ago, and it was exhausting. I was glad for the boardwalks…they made walking a lot easier. However, there were plenty of places where there were no boardwalks, just grass, and since a peat bog is in essence one big sponge, every time you took a step on grass the water squirted up around your feet. Where there weren’t tussocks of grass or regular grass, there was mud. Lots of it, generally on slopes that were made delightfully slippery by the mud. By the end of the day everyone was wet and muddy. Interestingly enough, part of the reclamation project that is going on there now is to remove a bunch of drains and restore the water to its previous levels. It is hard to think of this place getting any wetter, but that’s what they have in mind. We started our walk at 1PM and ended a little after 6 PM, when the sun was starting to set. Progress was slow after we had gotten about half way, partly because the going got tougher and partly because André, who was recovering from a series of operations, had to stop from time to time to rest. No one seemed to mind except for the guide, who was concerned that he had taken us on too long a hike. One interesting thing was that of our group, Marc, who firmly believes that exercise is bad for you, seemed to be one of the strongest hikers in the group. He was always in the lead, wearing his trench coat and his Belgian army boots, and never seemed in the slightest tired. It was truly a glorious hike. Interesting, very beautiful in a peat bog-like way, and it was a nice day for hiking…cool and somewhat misty from time to time, but no rain. We went back to the gîte, rested briefly, and then went to Spa for dinner at a very nice restaurant called Le Grand Maur (I was told that this means “Moor,” as in someone from North Africa, but perhaps it also means “moor,” as in a heath or a bog. A French play on words?). Since there were 12 of us, we had a private dining room. Our meal was excellent, the room was great, and our waiter appeared to be 14. Everyone wanted to adopt him. That happens with people who were graduate students 33 years ago. The highlight of the dinner for me, other than wines specifically chosen for each of our individual courses by a sommelier, was that Marc and B. had quite a violent dispute over the importance of preserving/learning/speaking the Dutch language. Marc made the point that there were more people who spoke Dutch than all the people who spoke all the Scandinavian languages combined. Marc was as animated as I have ever seen him, pounding on the table for emphasis. Clearly a nerve had been touched. However most of the argument was lost on our end of the table, since neither Claire or Jacques or I, who were at that end of the table, understood a word they were saying. The others paid no attention.

1 March, Sunday:

We started the day with brunch…omelettes with bacon, yogurt, boudin blanc, boudin noir, thinly sliced smoked ham, smoked trout, paté, bread, toast, rolls, 22 kinds of cheese, juice, jam, chocopasta, peanut butter, green salad, fruit salad, milk, tea and coffee. Then we drove to Limbourg, stopping on the way to visit the “Barrage de la Gileppe,” a big dam built to supply power and water to the wool industry in Verviers. The dam was quite impressive, and featured a 70 foot high observation tower which, this being Belgium, housed a cafeteria. The parking lot was full…apparently it is a Belgian tradition to visit this dam. Most of our group remembered being taken here in school groups. Since we were a group of historians (actually nine current or former medieval historians, one civil engineer, one psychiatrist and one former financier), we of course knew that the great Belgian historian Henri Pirenne gave his first public address at the dedication of this dam when he was 14 years old, and his audience was the King of Belgium. Apparently the King asked for a copy of the speech, but young Henri refused to give it to him. From there we went on to Limbourg, a lovely little medieval town perched right on the top of a hill with a big church (closed for renovations). The town center is made up of a whole bunch of very old buildings (I saw one with a date of 1671) grouped around a rectangular “place,” and the main street is about half cobblestones and half potholes (to keep people from speeding, I suppose). We walked around for a while, and then since there appeared to be no cafés open in Limbourg, drove to Verviers for a beer. For once we skipped lunch, since our brunch seemed adequate. After the beer, most of our group drove back to Gent or Antwerp. Marc and Thérèse and Beagle and I were staying at the gîte for one more night, so we walked around Verviers and visited a museum dedicated to the wool industry. Verviers used to be a very prosperous wool processing/weaving city, right up until the 1950s and 1960s, but the industry died quickly after that. Today there are only two places in Verviers that make cloth. One makes fabric for the top of pool tables and the other makes some other sort of highly specialized cloth. The museum had exhibits showing how the wool was washed, processed, etc. and turned into cloth. It was interesting for this group of medieval historians, who spend a lot of time studying the economics and politics of the cloth industry, to see how this is actually done. One interesting tidbit was that before they had soaps that could clean wool, they used human urine, which apparently contains lots of ammonia, which is good for cleaning wool. A man would go around the town every morning collecting urine from the local households, for which they got paid. Part of his job was to taste each “deposit” of urine to make sure that it contained enough ammonia…i.e. to make sure that the local citizenry weren’t diluting the urine they were selling him with water. After being educated about wool, we drove back to the gîte, took showers, and went out to dinner in a little town called Solwaster at a restaurant called Le Vinâve. It was excellent, and featured local produce, etc. We even had a Belgian wine.

2 March, Monday:

We got up early today, straightened out the gîte, and drove back to Brussels. We got caught in a big demonstration of some sort right as we were coming into Brussels…there were a lot of people with banners and orange jackets walking down the street and chanting unintelligible slogans. That slowed us down a bit. I was supposed to be going to ULB for a tour that was being led by Claire, but I never made it. I waited for about a half hour for a bus that takes you right to ULB, and normally runs all the time, but it never came…perhaps the demonstration affected the busses as well. Subsequently I discovered that there is a big postal strike going on…it started on Friday and is supposed to last until Thursday, so perhaps that’s what caused the disruption. In any event, it has disrupted our supply of DVDs from DVDPost, who are unsure of what to do about the strike. The man I spoke to at DVDPost said that they had no idea where all their DVDs were, whether any would be delivered this week or next, etc. He was sympathetic but didn’t appear to be overly troubled. I guess the post office shuts down all the time.

3 March, Tuesday:

A nice blue sky day here, temperature in the mid 40s. There appears to be a blizzard going on in New York, and the financial world is continuing its meltdown. I checked into the Belgian postal strike. It appears that postal workers in Belgium have gone on strike, protesting wages, working conditions, privatization, post office closings and potential future job losses. The postal union claims that everyone has gone on strike, and management claims that half the mail was delivered on Monday and 80% of post offices were open, albeit with only one employee. This being Belgium, things are more complicated than they seem on the surface. I discovered that one of the complaints of the postal workers is that Danish Post, owned by the Danish government, bought 25% of Belgium Post about three years ago and is now selling it to CVC Partners, a Luxembourg based buyout firm, at a €200,000,000 profit. Sometimes the mix of socialism and capitalism produces interesting results. In the interim, we are getting no mail and are enriching FedEx, who we hope is not on strike. We went to gym tonight. There appears to be a rapid turnover of the people who use the gym, leading us to believe that most people who stay in this furnished apartment complex are only here for a short time. The smelly man who spoke in some Slavic tongue has gone. So has the Italian man with spaghetti strap t-shirts and a huge mane of hair that flopped all over the place whenever he did anything. He sported a Charles Atlas-like upper body and Woody Allenesque legs and did nothing but free weights. Two burly men, one of whom has tattoos all over his arms, who speak some bizarre language, replaced them. Beagle was convinced that they were speaking some Scandinavian dialect, but after listening closely I determined that it was English. Tonight, the gym was populated by two women who had with them a little boy who appeared to be about four years old, and a 9 month old who was asleep in his stroller. They were all very cute, but they took up a lot of room, and the women seemed to spend more time talking on their cell phones than working out.