22 April, Wednesday:
I drove out to the airport this morning and dropped off the car. I had scheduled the drop off for today since Beagle was supposed to be flying in this morning, but obviously her plans had changed. Dropping of the car was as simple as dropping off a normal rental car. If anyone is thinking of spending a few weeks or more in France or Belgium, etc. and needs to rent a car, check out IdeaMerge. We had a brand new car, complete insurance, etc., and it all costs much less than renting a car from Hertz. We had no problems with our car, a Renault Megane, a sort of funny looking little car…but it had plenty of room, plenty of power, and it averaged 43 mpg for our entire trip, which included a fair amount of city driving, being struck in traffic jams, etc. I took the train back into Brussels and gloomily contemplated packing, but I was rescued by a three-hour French lesson with Aurélie, my last. We spent a lot of time on colloquial French expressions…none of which I knew. That made Aurélie happy, and I picked up a few new expressions…such as “être en nage,” which means “bathed in sweat,” which is frequently my state. Sufficiently cheered up, I packed up Beagle’s office. There goes one suitcase. It’s a little one, but it now weighs a ton. Lamb chops for dinner.
23 April, Thursday:
Today was my first day of serious clothes packing. I was stunned to see how many different articles of clothing Beagle has here. Her clothes plus jackets, etc. took up my biggest suitcase. I managed to sneak in hiking boots, etc., but getting everything else into the one remaining suitcase will be a challenge. I had an American Rivers conference call this afternoon, went out to try to retrieve Beagle’s watch from the watch repair place, and had dinner with Claire and Jacques, who had taken pity on me. It was a lovely dinner, and Claire and Jacques are very nice. The whole dinner was in French, since their English is even more limited than my French. I may not have gotten the pluperfect subjunctive just right, but I don’t think I disgraced myself either. Jacques is a big film buff. I asked him if he liked Ernst Lubitsch’s work and he almost jumped out of his chair. Apparently Lubitsch is his favorite director. I asked him if he knew David Mamet’s work, and he didn’t. I urged him to watch “House of Games,” my favorite, as William and John both know.
24 April, Friday:
Today was another gorgeous day in a string of gorgeous days. Apparently it was lovely in NYC as well. Beagle went to a physiatrist (a specialist in pain management, spinal problems, etc.) today. He looked at MRIs and confirmed that her back was a mess. He is going to give her a bunch of injections on Monday and we’ll take it from there. I spent much of the day packing. I pretty much filled up the 4th suitcase and I still don’t have most of my clothes packed. I can see this is going to be a problem. I turned my attention to Beagle’s medicine cabinet. Yikes! That alone will take a suitcase. I had hopes of using my backpack to accommodate most of my clothes, but that hope is fading fast. Lucky thing there are several luggage stores on Chaussée d’Ixelles!
25 April, Saturday:
This morning Jeun, one of Beagle’s students, and Erik, a young German man who is doing his doctoral work in England but is in Brussels for a year, turned up to pick up Beagle’s printer, my iPod speakers, a bunch of left over wine, etc. It was either that or leave that stuff in the apartment. As it is, we are leaving a lot of food, sparking water, etc. for the people who clean the apartment. I went out and bought another suitcase this morning. I was looking for a medium sized one, but the shop only had a big one of the kind I was looking for, so I bought it. That turns out to have been a good thing. The new suitcase is absolutely full and weighs a ton…but I was able to fit my briefcase, backpack, several pairs of shoes and most of my clothes in it, not to mention about a dozen books. Now I have 5 full suitcases and one carry on bag that contains 2 computers, etc. I will have to pay a staggering amount of money for 2 extra bags, since I am only allowed 3, and in excess weight charges, but there’s nothing that can be done about that. I just wonder how I’ll get all this from the cab to the check-in desk! To celebrate having finished packing, I treated myself to a farewell lunch at La Régence. It is sort of a dive, but I like it. A very mixed crowd…some people having lunch alone, some families, some people having drinking beer, etc. I had a beer and pintadau à la Normande. Very satisfying!
26 April, Sunday:
Departure day. I got up at the crack of dawn, hauled my 5 suitcases and 2 computers out of the apartment, and got a cab to the airport. Fortunately I had called a cab the night before, so I didn’t have to go looking for one on Chaussée d’Ixelles, which was deserted. It rained on the way to the airport, which somehow seemed fitting. At the airport there was some confusion since I was two bags over the limit, 4 of my 5 bags were over the weight limit, and the person checking me in was a trainee. I did have to pay €232 for the extra bags, but they took pity on me and didn’t charge me an excess weight penalty as well. The flight was uneventful, I got back to our apartment in NYC with no problem, and spent the afternoon unpacking. It was good to be home and to see Beagle after two weeks of being on my own. Unpacking was better than packing. We had dinner with John and Vic. Vic served us home-made ravioli. A real treat!
27 April, Monday:
This morning I took Beagle to the Hospital For Special Surgery to get some cortisone injections in her back. That all seemed to go well. The anesthetic they give you before they give you the cortisone is supposed to make you feel better, but not to last too long. The cortisone takes about a week to take effect, so we’ll see. In any event, Beagle felt relatively good all day, which was nice.
28 April, Tuesday:
This is the last entry in this journal. A good thing, since there is not much to report. Beagle feels OK. I spent the day sorting through mail, paying bills, etc. Very satisfying, but not very interesting!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Week 24 - In which Aurélie tortures us some more, I eat lamb snout and go to London, and Beagle decides to stay in New York
15 April, Wednesday:
I was in the Delhaize supermarket today, laying in provisions. A British lady of a “certain age” was pushing a baby stroller filled with groceries and was heading for the exit, where she was intercepted by the staff. I don’t think she was trying to steal the stuff…I just think that she in her inimitable British way, was confused and was barging ahead. She tried to explain to the staff that she had the stuff in the baby stroller because she was staying at her son’s home in Brussels and didn’t know how to drive his car. The problem was that she was explaining this in English, and when the staff did not seem to understand, she just kept saying it louder and slower, as if they were quite stupid children who were hard of hearing. I was tempted to intervene, but did not. Partly because I was bored and needed some entertainment, and partly because if this woman was so stupid that she didn’t understand that the way to exit a grocery store was to stand in line like everybody else at the checkout counters and pay for her goods, then she deserved what was coming to her. Finally, an English speaking staff person was located, and she explained that in Brussels there is a quaint (“old World”) custom that people have to pay for things they pick off the shelves at a grocery store, even if you are English. This appeared to have sunk in, and then the woman started looking for her husband, who, she claimed, had the money. The poor man, totally mortified was hiding in the adult magazine section pretending that he didn’t know his wife, but he finally appeared, brandishing his wallet. You have to love the Brits. After my supermarket adventure I had to get serious, as I had a 3 hour French class with Aurélie. Aurélie had e-mailed us a website which was supposed to test our level of proficiency in French. Beagle took it and said it was really hard. I took it and Beagle was right. I had no clue on about half of the questions, and ended up scoring 17 out of 30, which qualified my French level as “moyen.” Beagle says that she got the same score…but that she would have gotten one or two more right answers if she had spent more time. Ha!! Although I will admit that any French test on which I score the same as she does is a stupid and misleading test. Anyway, we were discouraged, and when Aurélie turned up I told her. She was delighted. She said that scores like that were very good. She had taken the test herself and got 28 out of 30, and many of her colleagues had done much worse. 17 out of 39 was a great accomplishment! Those French! How about a test that encourages you as opposed to discouraging you? Speaking of which, I get an e-mail every day with a new French word. Today’s was a word that you could use in the phrase “My father was arrested by the police today.” Recovering from French class, I was on the phone to Beagle when a male pigeon flew into our garden and started molesting a female pigeon who decided to flee from his amorous advances into our living room through the open French doors. It was a good thing I was there to usher her out. I went from Aurélie to gym to dinner. Typically, I had bought twice as much as I cooked, and I ate half of what I cooked. The meat I had bought was something from the bio section, something that was lamb of some variety. When I examined the package closely it turned lout to be something called noisette d’agneau (in French) and Lambsnoot (in Dutch). Holey moley! Did I really buy lamb snout? Lamb’s nose? It didn’t look like anything that would come from the nose of any lamb I had ever seen, but I decided to cook it before I looked into what it was any further. It was delicious, was not lamb’s snout, and went well with my salad. The prehistoric broccoli that II had bought was another story. After dinner I consulted google and wickipedia. It turns out that noisette d’agneau or lambsnoot is really a lump (piece/nut) of lamb without a bone. Whew! I’ll be glad when someone who knows what they’re doing in the kitchen returns to this apartment.
16 April, Thursday:
After at least two weeks of glorious weather, today was rainy and cooler…but still in the 60s. I am bored stiff here and may go somewhere else for the weekend. This is easy to do from Brussels. Brilliantly cooked lamb chops for dinner (tiny and very good, but not as good as NDF lamb chops). Stunningly enough, the avocado I bought this afternoon to spice up my salad was ripe and ready to eat. I pitched the broccoli and am ready for someone who knows what they are doing to take over the cooking. I looked at all sorts of fish, but realized that I had no idea how to cook it.
17 April, Friday:
I needed a change and was able to get a Eurostar ticket to London for a cheap price as well as a reservation at my “usual” London fleabag hotel, so I went to London this afternoon. Like Brussels, it was wet and rainy. I planed on visiting my usual haunts and reveling in the company of the flight crews from Trashkanistan, who seem to frequent this hotel. But instead I went to the Windsor Castle pub and had a pint of London Pride and had dinner there.
18 April, Saturday:
Today was a glorious day, and London “showed” very well. The first thing I noticed was that it is very clean, especially compared to Brussels. The sidewalks are wide and clean, and there is no dog poop to be seen. There are street sweeper people everywhere, picking up trash, sweeping the gutters and cleaning up dead leaves and flower petals. All the buildings are clean, the streets are pretty, and there are trees and fllowers and grass everywhere. The parks are lush and green and full of people lying on the grass, playing soccer, learning how to ride bikes, etc. Quite a change from Brussels. I spent most of the day walking, although I did go into Harrods and bought a book. While there I gazed admiringly at a sculpture of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed entitled “Innocent Victims,” which was commissioned by Mohamed Al-Fayed, Dodi’s father, the odious owner of Harrods. It was quite wonderful, if you like things in grotesque bad taste. There appears to be no recession in London. Ferraris and Porsches everywhere, every other house seems to be under renovation, and the streets are full of people. At least the center of the city gives off an aura of being rich. And I thought that (a) London depended on the City of London (the financial sector) more than New York depends on Wall Street, and (b) that the City was hemorrhaging money and laying off anyone they could find. It didn’t look like that to me.
19 April, Sunday:
Today was another wonderful day. Cool and sunny in the morning and warm and sunny in the afternoon. Shirtsleeve weather. In spite of the fact that it was Sunday, most stores and restaurants seemed to be open, and there were people everywhere. I went to the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, close to Sloane Square. It is in a big, fancily renovated old building, and is, I guess, dedicated to modern art. Today they were focused on Iranian artists, most of whom I could have done without. But in the basement there was a wonderful “installation.” There were about 10 very realistic mannequins (I guess that’s what you’d call them) that were made up and dressed to look like old arab men, some dressed in robes, some in military uniforms, some in business suits, etc. All asleep and seated in electric wheelchairs. The wheelchairs rolled quietly around in the gallery, changing direction every time they bumped into a wall or a pillar or another wheelchair. You could watch this little “ballet” going on from a small balcony, but you could also go onto the floor of the gallery and walk around the wheelchairs, making sure not to run into them, and jumping 10 feet when one of them ran into you. It was marvelous. And admission was free! After that I went to the Royal Academy and saw an extraordinary exhibit of color woodblock prints by a Japanese artist named Kuniyoshi who lived from 1797 – 1861. The prints were fabulous…very detailed with vibrant colors, etc. In some respects reminiscent of the elaborate grafitti and comic book artists that modern Japanese and Europeans (and William and John) like so much, but with an incredible attention to detail. How you could cut so much detail into a woodblock is beyond me. I walked back to my hotel through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, had a British version of a club sandwich (chicken and huge slabs of incredibly greasy bacon…Yum) and caught my train back to Brussels. It was sort of foggy and gloomy when we came out of the tunnel into France, but in Brussels it looked like it had been a warm and sunny weekend. But the streets were empty, the sidewalks were covered in dog poop, and I almost fell into a huge hole in the sidewalk. Welcome to Brussels!
20 April, Monday:
Today was a lovely sunny day in Brussels. I kept the French doors to the garden open all day, went food shopping, took a walk and generally wasted time.
21 April, Tuesday:
Beagle has decided that she is not coming back to Brussels, and I will be leaving as soon as I can manage it. She has seen the hip doctor, who tells her that the problem in her hip has gotten better, but that her current pain is coming from her back. She is going to see someone called a physiatrist, which is apparently a doctor who specializes in pain management and restoring functionality to people with injuries or disabilities, but in the interim the thought of getting on a plane back to Belgium is too much for her. I am trying to figure how to pack up everything in the apartment in 4 suitcases, since we arrived here with 4 suitcases and 2 backpacks, and have accumulated a lot of junk while we were here. Yuck. I had lamb snout again tonight. I’m getting pretty good at cooking it, but I did manage to generate enough smoke in the kitchen that the smoke alarm went off.
I was in the Delhaize supermarket today, laying in provisions. A British lady of a “certain age” was pushing a baby stroller filled with groceries and was heading for the exit, where she was intercepted by the staff. I don’t think she was trying to steal the stuff…I just think that she in her inimitable British way, was confused and was barging ahead. She tried to explain to the staff that she had the stuff in the baby stroller because she was staying at her son’s home in Brussels and didn’t know how to drive his car. The problem was that she was explaining this in English, and when the staff did not seem to understand, she just kept saying it louder and slower, as if they were quite stupid children who were hard of hearing. I was tempted to intervene, but did not. Partly because I was bored and needed some entertainment, and partly because if this woman was so stupid that she didn’t understand that the way to exit a grocery store was to stand in line like everybody else at the checkout counters and pay for her goods, then she deserved what was coming to her. Finally, an English speaking staff person was located, and she explained that in Brussels there is a quaint (“old World”) custom that people have to pay for things they pick off the shelves at a grocery store, even if you are English. This appeared to have sunk in, and then the woman started looking for her husband, who, she claimed, had the money. The poor man, totally mortified was hiding in the adult magazine section pretending that he didn’t know his wife, but he finally appeared, brandishing his wallet. You have to love the Brits. After my supermarket adventure I had to get serious, as I had a 3 hour French class with Aurélie. Aurélie had e-mailed us a website which was supposed to test our level of proficiency in French. Beagle took it and said it was really hard. I took it and Beagle was right. I had no clue on about half of the questions, and ended up scoring 17 out of 30, which qualified my French level as “moyen.” Beagle says that she got the same score…but that she would have gotten one or two more right answers if she had spent more time. Ha!! Although I will admit that any French test on which I score the same as she does is a stupid and misleading test. Anyway, we were discouraged, and when Aurélie turned up I told her. She was delighted. She said that scores like that were very good. She had taken the test herself and got 28 out of 30, and many of her colleagues had done much worse. 17 out of 39 was a great accomplishment! Those French! How about a test that encourages you as opposed to discouraging you? Speaking of which, I get an e-mail every day with a new French word. Today’s was a word that you could use in the phrase “My father was arrested by the police today.” Recovering from French class, I was on the phone to Beagle when a male pigeon flew into our garden and started molesting a female pigeon who decided to flee from his amorous advances into our living room through the open French doors. It was a good thing I was there to usher her out. I went from Aurélie to gym to dinner. Typically, I had bought twice as much as I cooked, and I ate half of what I cooked. The meat I had bought was something from the bio section, something that was lamb of some variety. When I examined the package closely it turned lout to be something called noisette d’agneau (in French) and Lambsnoot (in Dutch). Holey moley! Did I really buy lamb snout? Lamb’s nose? It didn’t look like anything that would come from the nose of any lamb I had ever seen, but I decided to cook it before I looked into what it was any further. It was delicious, was not lamb’s snout, and went well with my salad. The prehistoric broccoli that II had bought was another story. After dinner I consulted google and wickipedia. It turns out that noisette d’agneau or lambsnoot is really a lump (piece/nut) of lamb without a bone. Whew! I’ll be glad when someone who knows what they’re doing in the kitchen returns to this apartment.
16 April, Thursday:
After at least two weeks of glorious weather, today was rainy and cooler…but still in the 60s. I am bored stiff here and may go somewhere else for the weekend. This is easy to do from Brussels. Brilliantly cooked lamb chops for dinner (tiny and very good, but not as good as NDF lamb chops). Stunningly enough, the avocado I bought this afternoon to spice up my salad was ripe and ready to eat. I pitched the broccoli and am ready for someone who knows what they are doing to take over the cooking. I looked at all sorts of fish, but realized that I had no idea how to cook it.
17 April, Friday:
I needed a change and was able to get a Eurostar ticket to London for a cheap price as well as a reservation at my “usual” London fleabag hotel, so I went to London this afternoon. Like Brussels, it was wet and rainy. I planed on visiting my usual haunts and reveling in the company of the flight crews from Trashkanistan, who seem to frequent this hotel. But instead I went to the Windsor Castle pub and had a pint of London Pride and had dinner there.
18 April, Saturday:
Today was a glorious day, and London “showed” very well. The first thing I noticed was that it is very clean, especially compared to Brussels. The sidewalks are wide and clean, and there is no dog poop to be seen. There are street sweeper people everywhere, picking up trash, sweeping the gutters and cleaning up dead leaves and flower petals. All the buildings are clean, the streets are pretty, and there are trees and fllowers and grass everywhere. The parks are lush and green and full of people lying on the grass, playing soccer, learning how to ride bikes, etc. Quite a change from Brussels. I spent most of the day walking, although I did go into Harrods and bought a book. While there I gazed admiringly at a sculpture of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed entitled “Innocent Victims,” which was commissioned by Mohamed Al-Fayed, Dodi’s father, the odious owner of Harrods. It was quite wonderful, if you like things in grotesque bad taste. There appears to be no recession in London. Ferraris and Porsches everywhere, every other house seems to be under renovation, and the streets are full of people. At least the center of the city gives off an aura of being rich. And I thought that (a) London depended on the City of London (the financial sector) more than New York depends on Wall Street, and (b) that the City was hemorrhaging money and laying off anyone they could find. It didn’t look like that to me.
19 April, Sunday:
Today was another wonderful day. Cool and sunny in the morning and warm and sunny in the afternoon. Shirtsleeve weather. In spite of the fact that it was Sunday, most stores and restaurants seemed to be open, and there were people everywhere. I went to the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, close to Sloane Square. It is in a big, fancily renovated old building, and is, I guess, dedicated to modern art. Today they were focused on Iranian artists, most of whom I could have done without. But in the basement there was a wonderful “installation.” There were about 10 very realistic mannequins (I guess that’s what you’d call them) that were made up and dressed to look like old arab men, some dressed in robes, some in military uniforms, some in business suits, etc. All asleep and seated in electric wheelchairs. The wheelchairs rolled quietly around in the gallery, changing direction every time they bumped into a wall or a pillar or another wheelchair. You could watch this little “ballet” going on from a small balcony, but you could also go onto the floor of the gallery and walk around the wheelchairs, making sure not to run into them, and jumping 10 feet when one of them ran into you. It was marvelous. And admission was free! After that I went to the Royal Academy and saw an extraordinary exhibit of color woodblock prints by a Japanese artist named Kuniyoshi who lived from 1797 – 1861. The prints were fabulous…very detailed with vibrant colors, etc. In some respects reminiscent of the elaborate grafitti and comic book artists that modern Japanese and Europeans (and William and John) like so much, but with an incredible attention to detail. How you could cut so much detail into a woodblock is beyond me. I walked back to my hotel through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, had a British version of a club sandwich (chicken and huge slabs of incredibly greasy bacon…Yum) and caught my train back to Brussels. It was sort of foggy and gloomy when we came out of the tunnel into France, but in Brussels it looked like it had been a warm and sunny weekend. But the streets were empty, the sidewalks were covered in dog poop, and I almost fell into a huge hole in the sidewalk. Welcome to Brussels!
20 April, Monday:
Today was a lovely sunny day in Brussels. I kept the French doors to the garden open all day, went food shopping, took a walk and generally wasted time.
21 April, Tuesday:
Beagle has decided that she is not coming back to Brussels, and I will be leaving as soon as I can manage it. She has seen the hip doctor, who tells her that the problem in her hip has gotten better, but that her current pain is coming from her back. She is going to see someone called a physiatrist, which is apparently a doctor who specializes in pain management and restoring functionality to people with injuries or disabilities, but in the interim the thought of getting on a plane back to Belgium is too much for her. I am trying to figure how to pack up everything in the apartment in 4 suitcases, since we arrived here with 4 suitcases and 2 backpacks, and have accumulated a lot of junk while we were here. Yuck. I had lamb snout again tonight. I’m getting pretty good at cooking it, but I did manage to generate enough smoke in the kitchen that the smoke alarm went off.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Week 23 - In which we eat brilliantly in Dranouter, I get sick again but rise from my bed on Easter, and Beagle goes to NYC to get jabbed
8 April, Wednesday:
Today met our friends Walter and Frieda Prevenier at In deWulf, a small inn in a town called Dranouter near Ypres, deep in the Flemish countryside. Dranouter is part of a relatively newly formed municipality called Heuvelland (hilly country in Dutch, although the highest hill is Mount Kemmel at 156 meters). There is no town called Huevelland, it is just a governmental creation which contains the towns of Dranouter, Kemmel, De Klijte, Loker, Niewkerke, Westouter, Wijtschate and Wulvergem. Huevelland’s total population…all 8 towns…is 8,217. So when I say it is deep in the Flemish countryside, you know what I mean. We got to the inn (or perhaps I should say that it is a restaurant with rooms) at about 5:15, having been delayed by a huge traffic jam with no apparent cause…more on that later. We went for a pre-dinner walk on tiny roads that allowed us to circle the inn. Smells of cow manure abounded. Made me homesick for the farm. The restaurant has been in business for many years, but a while ago the woman who was running it decided to turn it over to her son, who had been studying cooking at a variety of places, including France and Spain. It had been raining as we drove to Dranouter, but by the time we got there the sun had come out. Dinner started with, of course, champagne, and about 4 amuse-gueules (literally, mouth entertainers). Then we went to our table and had a magnificent meal. We all took the “modest” tasting menu as opposed to the big time tasting menu, which was a good thing. We started off with about 4 appetizers, which were followed by about 4 main courses, which were followed by 4 desserts. Plus we had a riesling from Austria, a chardonnay from Chile, and a red wine from Italy that contained cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and one other obscure grape the name of which our wine waiter had forgotten. Incredibly enough, it was a pretty light meal. All of the portions were very small…sort of like tapas…there was a fair amount of fish, etc. Everything was beautifully served and imaginatively presented, and at the end of the evening while we were ready to stop eating, we weren’t really full. Very nice. Michelin gives this tiny place one star, but there are those who think it is the best restaurant in Belgium.
9 April, Thursday:
After breakfast we went for a walk around and up Mount Kemmel. I had been there before on a tour of WWI battlefields and graveyards. Interestingly enough, Mount Kemmel features prominently in a letter that my father has from his father when he was fighting nearby during WWI. On my last visit, many years ago, I even saw a monument to the men of a US machine gun company that I think was my grandfather’s. Mount Kemmel, being the highest point for miles around, was a great vantage point and artillery location, and when the Germans occupied Mount Kemmel, they kept pretty busy shooting at and shelling the soldiers down below, including my grandfather,. As I recall he talked in his letter about the “accursed Mount Kemmel” lurking over them. In any event, this whole area is beautiful and sobering at the same time. There is a monument on the side of Mount Kemmel to 5,237 unknown French soldiers who are buried there, along with 57 who were identified. At Ypres, only a few kilometers away, the Menen Gate has inscribed on it the names of 54,896 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in that area before August 16, 1917 but whose bodies were never recovered. It is estimated that there were 90,000 British soldiers who died in this area whose bodies were never recovered. And that is just the ones whose bodies weren’t found. There are dozens of military cemeteries, seemingly down every little road, containing the bodies of those who were recovered and identified. So on to more cheerful things. It seemed that the cause of the big traffic jam yesterday was a big bicycle race from Gent to somewhere nearby. It is run on tiny little roads, and one of the most interesting parts is where they ride up and down Mount Kemmel. Twice. On a steep, narrow, wet, slippery, cobblestoned road. As we were walking up, we saw a huge tractor trailer truck that was trying to make it up the hill, which advertised a 23% grade in addition to cobblestones so slippery you could barely walk on them. The truck was from an equipment rental company, and was clearly trying to get to the top of Mount Kemmel to pick up tents and other bicycle race paraphernalia at the top. The driver tried heroically, but failed about 5 times. Each time he’d get about a third of the way up, just before it started to get really steep, and then would run out of power and traction. Then he would have to back down this steep, slippery hill, around a slight corner, avoiding the French cemetery on one side and a café on the other. We were terrified that he would loose it and crash into us, so we took to the woods and made it up to the top. As we started down the other side, we observed that the road was not quite as steep and not quite as slippery as on the other side, although it was longer and had more curves. And who should appear again but our friend the truck driver, driving us off the road once again. I guess he gave up on the other side and thought he’d try to make it from this side. Nice try, but no cigar. After watching him make a few more tries, we took to the woods again and the last we saw of him he was almost to the top, but stopped and partially off the road sort of leaning into a steep bank. We finished our walk and tried to get lunch in Kemmel, the tiny town we had parked in. As we were taking off our hiking boots, who should reappear but our friend the truck driver! It took him about 10 minutes to get through the town, since the road was so narrow, his truck was so wide, and there were cars parked on either side of the road. When last seen he was happily picking up tents, etc. left over from the bicycle race in Kemmel. Other than the people taking down tents and loading trucks, the village appeared deserted, but when we went into the only restaurant in town, we discovered that it was jammed. No room for us, so we drove 10 minutes to Ypres to get something light…a sandwich or something. It was getting late for lunch, but the restaurant we picked was pretty elegant and they said that they could still give us the menu of the day, which we agreed to. I should have been alerted by the words “puréed potatoes,” but I was hungry and this was our last chance. We had a lovely vegetable soup, elegantly presented. This was followed by stoemp with a huge sausage on top. It was Beagle’s first experience with stoemp and she handled it quite well. Even though Madame was not amused, she ate about half.
10 April, Friday:
Friday was a gorgeous day. It was sunny and in the high 70s. We walked around, checked out a restaurant in Place Saint Catherine and learned that not only is there a Mannekin Pis statue in Brussels, but there has also been a female equivalent since 1987 called Jeanneke Pis and there is even a statue of a dog lifting his leg on a fire hydrant. Those Belgians sure know how to attract the tourist crowd! We also did some shopping, and since Beagle is going back to NYC tomorrow, she went to about 100 stores looking for chocolates and other stuff to make Easter baskets for John and Vic. En route we stopped and had our first ice cream cones of the season. Very satisfactory. I got wobblier and wobblier as the afternoon went on, and by the time we got home, I had to lie down. I had a fever and as far as I was concerned, I had heat stroke! These New Englanders just can’t stand the hot weather!
11 April, Saturday:
Beagle left for New York today. She is going to see my hip doctor to see what can be done about her hip. Her back surgery was a success, and that pain is gone, but it appears to have been masking other pain that originates in her hip. She is getting better, slowly, but this is ridiculous. This has been going on for months, and looks likely to continue forever, so she finally decided to try something other than Feldenkrais and PT…which help, but which, in my opinion, can’t cure the underlying problem. So I packed her bag for her yesterday (including some of my winter gear, which was the excuse she gave for making me pack for her) and drove her to the airport this morning. I was still feeling sick, so I went back to bed for about 3 hours, then did some grocery shopping and pretty much stayed inside except for that. I did manage to watch most of a rugby match between Cardiff and Toulouse, which was evidently very important…part of some tournament or something. Anyway, Cardiff won. I had to do the grocery shopping because Sunday is Easter and Monday is a holiday as well…which means that all of the grocery stores and 95% of the restaurants will be closed. One of Beagle’s students who is in Belgium for a year or two is a Catholic and he tried to find a church where he could attend Easter service in Brussels. Apparently there are none. Despite Belgium being a Catholic country (when it is not being Socialist or “Free”), the churches appear to be shut on holidays, including religious holidays like Easter…and, as far as I can tell all churches are shut on Sundays anyway. A day of rest and all that.
12 April, Sunday:
Today was Easter. Supposedly a religious holiday, but as far as I can tell it is an excuse for Belgians to eat chocolate. I watched French TV last night, and they said that the average annual per person consumption of chocolate in France is 4 kilos (8.8 pounds) and they were proud of it. But Belgians apparently eat 11 kilos (24 pounds) per year. So there, you stuck up Frenchies! Even the US, at 5.6 kilos (12 pounds) whips them. I went out today to see what Belgians actually do on Easter. Other than the young man who was checking all the cars on rue Souveraine to see which cars were worth breaking into, the streets were pretty much empty. Everyone had either left town or was lying on the grass in a park. Spring is really here. The tree in our garden, which had been violently pollarded, is sporting little green leaves everywhere they cut branches off. They’re not big, but they have appeared in the last few days and show promise. On another subject, did I tell you that the other day, when we were investigating rue Molière, we walked through a square that is apparently famous for its parrots. Evidently, some time ago some people released domestic parrots, and now there is a big colony there that has survived. They have built huge round nests in trees, telephone poles, etc., that are evidently communal lodging places. Quite impressive, especially when you are expecting pigeons.
13 April, Monday:
This being Belgium, today was another holiday. The city was deserted, and it was another gorgeous day. I can’t get enough of this Belgian weather! The big news of the day is that Beagle had an appointment with the famous Dr. Buly, one of the world’s leading hip doctors, and the guy who not only fixed my hip a number of years ago but also told me that I didn’t need my knees replaced, contrary to the advice of the quack who operated on (and made worse) my right knee. Being famous, there are all sorts of pictures of Dr. Buly in the halls of the Hospital For Special Surgery in NYC, all of which show him with large amounts of curly blond hair. It comes as quite a shock when you see him in person and discover that he is bald as an egg. Either he was wearing a wig in the pictures or he was starting to go bald and decided to shave his head. In any event, he poked and prodded and looked at X-rays and MRIs and told Beagle that she did not need hip surgery and that her problem was, in fact, severe tendonitis in her psoas muscle, a muscle that runs from your back around in front of your hip and down. The cure for this is rest and a great whacking cortisone shot. So she got her shot (actually shots…Beagle said they did 5 shots in each of 4 spots), and we’ll see. It apparently takes somewhere between 2 and 8 days for the cortisone to take effect, so it will be a while. It is nice to know what the problem was, and even nicer to know that surgery is not required. Now if we can just keep her from continuing to inflame that muscle by maniacally exercising! She should eat more stoemp and relax.
14 April, Tuesday:
Things got off to a bad start today when the cleaning lady turned up at 8:30 AM. I told her that being a gentleman of leisure, it was too early for me to do my usual routine of scuttling around the apartment trying to stay out of her way, and she left. I, however, finished my morning ablutions and desperate for something to do, drove out to Turvuren to the Africa Museum. It was a beautiful day, and I walked through the park and then into the forêt for a while. I returned to the museum and gave it a thorough going over and then repaired to the cafeteria. I had been under the impression that the museum had a pretty good restaurant, run by the same people who have restaurants in several other museums in Brussels, and which are pretty good. This turned out to be wrong. The bill of fare was pretty pathetic, and my mind was made up for me when about 50 hearty Belgians wearing “Hi, My Name Is Jean-Pierre” nametags turned up. I fled back home, only to find that as punishment for having rejected our regular cleaning lady earlier in the day, two Amazons who were doing their best to demolish our apartment had replaced her. I fled and returned after they had gone, only to find that we were without internet access, that Beagle’s computer was inert, etc. I spent the next two hours trying to figure out the problem…which turned out to be that the cleaning ladies had unplugged the surge protector into which Beagle’s computer is plugged, had whacked the cable modem with the vacuum cleaner in a subtle way so that the cable connection at the wall was disabled (but not visibly so), etc., etc. Exhausted by my labors in putting everything right, I repaired to La Régence for dinner and had veal kidneys and frites to give me strength. That did the trick…put me in a much better mood, but dining alone at a restaurant is not really high on my list of things I love to do. If Uncle Brian were to go into La Régence he’d know everyone there before the evening was out. Not me.
Today met our friends Walter and Frieda Prevenier at In deWulf, a small inn in a town called Dranouter near Ypres, deep in the Flemish countryside. Dranouter is part of a relatively newly formed municipality called Heuvelland (hilly country in Dutch, although the highest hill is Mount Kemmel at 156 meters). There is no town called Huevelland, it is just a governmental creation which contains the towns of Dranouter, Kemmel, De Klijte, Loker, Niewkerke, Westouter, Wijtschate and Wulvergem. Huevelland’s total population…all 8 towns…is 8,217. So when I say it is deep in the Flemish countryside, you know what I mean. We got to the inn (or perhaps I should say that it is a restaurant with rooms) at about 5:15, having been delayed by a huge traffic jam with no apparent cause…more on that later. We went for a pre-dinner walk on tiny roads that allowed us to circle the inn. Smells of cow manure abounded. Made me homesick for the farm. The restaurant has been in business for many years, but a while ago the woman who was running it decided to turn it over to her son, who had been studying cooking at a variety of places, including France and Spain. It had been raining as we drove to Dranouter, but by the time we got there the sun had come out. Dinner started with, of course, champagne, and about 4 amuse-gueules (literally, mouth entertainers). Then we went to our table and had a magnificent meal. We all took the “modest” tasting menu as opposed to the big time tasting menu, which was a good thing. We started off with about 4 appetizers, which were followed by about 4 main courses, which were followed by 4 desserts. Plus we had a riesling from Austria, a chardonnay from Chile, and a red wine from Italy that contained cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and one other obscure grape the name of which our wine waiter had forgotten. Incredibly enough, it was a pretty light meal. All of the portions were very small…sort of like tapas…there was a fair amount of fish, etc. Everything was beautifully served and imaginatively presented, and at the end of the evening while we were ready to stop eating, we weren’t really full. Very nice. Michelin gives this tiny place one star, but there are those who think it is the best restaurant in Belgium.
9 April, Thursday:
After breakfast we went for a walk around and up Mount Kemmel. I had been there before on a tour of WWI battlefields and graveyards. Interestingly enough, Mount Kemmel features prominently in a letter that my father has from his father when he was fighting nearby during WWI. On my last visit, many years ago, I even saw a monument to the men of a US machine gun company that I think was my grandfather’s. Mount Kemmel, being the highest point for miles around, was a great vantage point and artillery location, and when the Germans occupied Mount Kemmel, they kept pretty busy shooting at and shelling the soldiers down below, including my grandfather,. As I recall he talked in his letter about the “accursed Mount Kemmel” lurking over them. In any event, this whole area is beautiful and sobering at the same time. There is a monument on the side of Mount Kemmel to 5,237 unknown French soldiers who are buried there, along with 57 who were identified. At Ypres, only a few kilometers away, the Menen Gate has inscribed on it the names of 54,896 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in that area before August 16, 1917 but whose bodies were never recovered. It is estimated that there were 90,000 British soldiers who died in this area whose bodies were never recovered. And that is just the ones whose bodies weren’t found. There are dozens of military cemeteries, seemingly down every little road, containing the bodies of those who were recovered and identified. So on to more cheerful things. It seemed that the cause of the big traffic jam yesterday was a big bicycle race from Gent to somewhere nearby. It is run on tiny little roads, and one of the most interesting parts is where they ride up and down Mount Kemmel. Twice. On a steep, narrow, wet, slippery, cobblestoned road. As we were walking up, we saw a huge tractor trailer truck that was trying to make it up the hill, which advertised a 23% grade in addition to cobblestones so slippery you could barely walk on them. The truck was from an equipment rental company, and was clearly trying to get to the top of Mount Kemmel to pick up tents and other bicycle race paraphernalia at the top. The driver tried heroically, but failed about 5 times. Each time he’d get about a third of the way up, just before it started to get really steep, and then would run out of power and traction. Then he would have to back down this steep, slippery hill, around a slight corner, avoiding the French cemetery on one side and a café on the other. We were terrified that he would loose it and crash into us, so we took to the woods and made it up to the top. As we started down the other side, we observed that the road was not quite as steep and not quite as slippery as on the other side, although it was longer and had more curves. And who should appear again but our friend the truck driver, driving us off the road once again. I guess he gave up on the other side and thought he’d try to make it from this side. Nice try, but no cigar. After watching him make a few more tries, we took to the woods again and the last we saw of him he was almost to the top, but stopped and partially off the road sort of leaning into a steep bank. We finished our walk and tried to get lunch in Kemmel, the tiny town we had parked in. As we were taking off our hiking boots, who should reappear but our friend the truck driver! It took him about 10 minutes to get through the town, since the road was so narrow, his truck was so wide, and there were cars parked on either side of the road. When last seen he was happily picking up tents, etc. left over from the bicycle race in Kemmel. Other than the people taking down tents and loading trucks, the village appeared deserted, but when we went into the only restaurant in town, we discovered that it was jammed. No room for us, so we drove 10 minutes to Ypres to get something light…a sandwich or something. It was getting late for lunch, but the restaurant we picked was pretty elegant and they said that they could still give us the menu of the day, which we agreed to. I should have been alerted by the words “puréed potatoes,” but I was hungry and this was our last chance. We had a lovely vegetable soup, elegantly presented. This was followed by stoemp with a huge sausage on top. It was Beagle’s first experience with stoemp and she handled it quite well. Even though Madame was not amused, she ate about half.
10 April, Friday:
Friday was a gorgeous day. It was sunny and in the high 70s. We walked around, checked out a restaurant in Place Saint Catherine and learned that not only is there a Mannekin Pis statue in Brussels, but there has also been a female equivalent since 1987 called Jeanneke Pis and there is even a statue of a dog lifting his leg on a fire hydrant. Those Belgians sure know how to attract the tourist crowd! We also did some shopping, and since Beagle is going back to NYC tomorrow, she went to about 100 stores looking for chocolates and other stuff to make Easter baskets for John and Vic. En route we stopped and had our first ice cream cones of the season. Very satisfactory. I got wobblier and wobblier as the afternoon went on, and by the time we got home, I had to lie down. I had a fever and as far as I was concerned, I had heat stroke! These New Englanders just can’t stand the hot weather!
11 April, Saturday:
Beagle left for New York today. She is going to see my hip doctor to see what can be done about her hip. Her back surgery was a success, and that pain is gone, but it appears to have been masking other pain that originates in her hip. She is getting better, slowly, but this is ridiculous. This has been going on for months, and looks likely to continue forever, so she finally decided to try something other than Feldenkrais and PT…which help, but which, in my opinion, can’t cure the underlying problem. So I packed her bag for her yesterday (including some of my winter gear, which was the excuse she gave for making me pack for her) and drove her to the airport this morning. I was still feeling sick, so I went back to bed for about 3 hours, then did some grocery shopping and pretty much stayed inside except for that. I did manage to watch most of a rugby match between Cardiff and Toulouse, which was evidently very important…part of some tournament or something. Anyway, Cardiff won. I had to do the grocery shopping because Sunday is Easter and Monday is a holiday as well…which means that all of the grocery stores and 95% of the restaurants will be closed. One of Beagle’s students who is in Belgium for a year or two is a Catholic and he tried to find a church where he could attend Easter service in Brussels. Apparently there are none. Despite Belgium being a Catholic country (when it is not being Socialist or “Free”), the churches appear to be shut on holidays, including religious holidays like Easter…and, as far as I can tell all churches are shut on Sundays anyway. A day of rest and all that.
12 April, Sunday:
Today was Easter. Supposedly a religious holiday, but as far as I can tell it is an excuse for Belgians to eat chocolate. I watched French TV last night, and they said that the average annual per person consumption of chocolate in France is 4 kilos (8.8 pounds) and they were proud of it. But Belgians apparently eat 11 kilos (24 pounds) per year. So there, you stuck up Frenchies! Even the US, at 5.6 kilos (12 pounds) whips them. I went out today to see what Belgians actually do on Easter. Other than the young man who was checking all the cars on rue Souveraine to see which cars were worth breaking into, the streets were pretty much empty. Everyone had either left town or was lying on the grass in a park. Spring is really here. The tree in our garden, which had been violently pollarded, is sporting little green leaves everywhere they cut branches off. They’re not big, but they have appeared in the last few days and show promise. On another subject, did I tell you that the other day, when we were investigating rue Molière, we walked through a square that is apparently famous for its parrots. Evidently, some time ago some people released domestic parrots, and now there is a big colony there that has survived. They have built huge round nests in trees, telephone poles, etc., that are evidently communal lodging places. Quite impressive, especially when you are expecting pigeons.
13 April, Monday:
This being Belgium, today was another holiday. The city was deserted, and it was another gorgeous day. I can’t get enough of this Belgian weather! The big news of the day is that Beagle had an appointment with the famous Dr. Buly, one of the world’s leading hip doctors, and the guy who not only fixed my hip a number of years ago but also told me that I didn’t need my knees replaced, contrary to the advice of the quack who operated on (and made worse) my right knee. Being famous, there are all sorts of pictures of Dr. Buly in the halls of the Hospital For Special Surgery in NYC, all of which show him with large amounts of curly blond hair. It comes as quite a shock when you see him in person and discover that he is bald as an egg. Either he was wearing a wig in the pictures or he was starting to go bald and decided to shave his head. In any event, he poked and prodded and looked at X-rays and MRIs and told Beagle that she did not need hip surgery and that her problem was, in fact, severe tendonitis in her psoas muscle, a muscle that runs from your back around in front of your hip and down. The cure for this is rest and a great whacking cortisone shot. So she got her shot (actually shots…Beagle said they did 5 shots in each of 4 spots), and we’ll see. It apparently takes somewhere between 2 and 8 days for the cortisone to take effect, so it will be a while. It is nice to know what the problem was, and even nicer to know that surgery is not required. Now if we can just keep her from continuing to inflame that muscle by maniacally exercising! She should eat more stoemp and relax.
14 April, Tuesday:
Things got off to a bad start today when the cleaning lady turned up at 8:30 AM. I told her that being a gentleman of leisure, it was too early for me to do my usual routine of scuttling around the apartment trying to stay out of her way, and she left. I, however, finished my morning ablutions and desperate for something to do, drove out to Turvuren to the Africa Museum. It was a beautiful day, and I walked through the park and then into the forêt for a while. I returned to the museum and gave it a thorough going over and then repaired to the cafeteria. I had been under the impression that the museum had a pretty good restaurant, run by the same people who have restaurants in several other museums in Brussels, and which are pretty good. This turned out to be wrong. The bill of fare was pretty pathetic, and my mind was made up for me when about 50 hearty Belgians wearing “Hi, My Name Is Jean-Pierre” nametags turned up. I fled back home, only to find that as punishment for having rejected our regular cleaning lady earlier in the day, two Amazons who were doing their best to demolish our apartment had replaced her. I fled and returned after they had gone, only to find that we were without internet access, that Beagle’s computer was inert, etc. I spent the next two hours trying to figure out the problem…which turned out to be that the cleaning ladies had unplugged the surge protector into which Beagle’s computer is plugged, had whacked the cable modem with the vacuum cleaner in a subtle way so that the cable connection at the wall was disabled (but not visibly so), etc., etc. Exhausted by my labors in putting everything right, I repaired to La Régence for dinner and had veal kidneys and frites to give me strength. That did the trick…put me in a much better mood, but dining alone at a restaurant is not really high on my list of things I love to do. If Uncle Brian were to go into La Régence he’d know everyone there before the evening was out. Not me.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Week 22 - In which Jean arrives, we find a new restaurant and learn about Audrey Hepburn, and Beagle buys still more black pants
1 April, Wednesday:
Some April Fool’s Day. I picked up Beagle’s sister Jean at the train station this morning. She had just flown into Paris from DC, and is spending a few days with us in Brussels before she goes to Provence for a month. Our day was full, what with Jean’s arrival, 3 hours of French lessons with Aurélie, multiple conference calls for both Beagle and me, and an afternoon meeting for Beagle. Jean napped and made a few forays into the neighborhood. We thought about having dinner out, but ended up punting and having spaghetti at home.
2 April, Thursday:
Jean needed to revisit Brussels and it was a nice spring day so we walked to the Grand Place, had lunch at La Becasse…where the gueuze was wasted on Jean…, walked back along Avenue Louise and into Saint Gilles, visited the Horta House, and looked at lovely houses on rue Molière. There were even streets with trees in flower…very unusual for Brussels. By the time we got to Bois de la Cambre everyone was walked out, so we took a tram home. After a long bout of talking and foot rubbing (during which I absented myself), we went to Au Vieux Bruxelles and ate moules and frites for dinner. Everyone was happy and tired and we went to bed early.
3 April, Friday:
Today was a lovely spring/summer day. It was sunny, with temperatures in the 70s. We walked to the lakes near Place Flagey, then to the Abbaye de la Cambre, then along Avenue Roosevelt, and then into the Bois de la Cambre and the Forêt des Soignes. It was just wonderful. There were flowers everywhere, trees in bud and starting to turn green, etc. We left the forêt at Watermael-Boitsfort and went to our “usual” restaurant and had a lunch of pizza and beer sitting outside. We took the tram home, opened all the doors to our garden and enjoyed the weather. We had dinner at Les Brassins, a restaurant in our neighborhood on Kleienveldstraat/rue Keyenveld that was recently recommended to us. This was exactly as advertised. This turned out to be a great restaurant in the Belgian fashion with all sorts of typical Belgian food. Jean had tuna, Beagle and I had lapin à la kriek (rabbit cooked in cherry beer…you could choose one leg or two, and we both chose one), and we had frites, stoemp and boiled potatoes on the side. The restaurant has an extraordinarily broad beer list…maybe 30 different beers plus about a dozen beer “specials”… plus wine, etc. It was very informal, and not super expensive (at least I think so, but Jean paid), and it was a few doors down the street from the house where Audrey Hepburn was born. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Audrey Hepburn’s life story, she was born on this tiny, dingy street in Brussels in 1929. Her original name was Audrey Kathleen Ruston, and she was descended from, among others, King Edward III of England and the consort of Mary Queen of Scots, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was apparently also an ancestor of Katharine Hepburn. She was also a distant cousin of Humphrey Bogart and Prince Ranier III of Monaco, but then again, I am sure that I am related to Vlad the Impaler of Transylvania and Brittany Spears. Her father was a Nazi sympathizer and her mother was a fascist, and that seems to have caused family problems. Her parents got divorced in 1935 and her mother moved Audrey to Holland in 1939 to be safe from the Nazis. As we all know, this did not work out so well, since the Nazis arrived in Holland shortly after Audrey did. Audrey danced to raise money for the Resistance, and among her childhood memories were those of seeing her uncle and her cousin being executed by Germans for being members of the Resistance. While she was in Holland she assumed the name Edda van Heerrnstra so as not to have too English a sounding name. She moved to London in 1948 where, apparently, her film career took off. I hope she got to eat at Les Brassins before she left Brussels.
4 April, Saturday:
Today started out as cool and foggy. Jean had a 10:21 train from Gare de Midi to Avignon, so needless to say, she was ready to go at about 6AM. We were not so alert. Jean and I took the Metro to Gare de Midi, which perhaps was a mistake. They were inaugurating a new service on the Metro today…two new lines, much improved displays that tell you how long you have to wait for a train, better and more frequent schedules, etc. According to all the signs, on the weekends the metros should run every 5 minutes on the line we were taking. We waited for about 10 minutes and then, when the train came, it sat in the station for another 10 minutes, etc. Good thing we had allowed a lot of time for the Metro ride. A ride that should have taken 5 minutes took 30. I am not impressed with the new Metro. The same was true on the way back…and even more annoying was that after I had searched all over the place for one of those ticket “composting” machines I finally found one and managed to pay, but then heard an announcement that in honor of the inaguration of the “new” Metro, everyone could ride for free. Once I got back home we were free, but we couldn’t figure out what to do. So, since it was a grey and depressing day, we went to the movies…the first time since we have been in Brussels. We went around the corner (literally) to the Styxx, which is a tiny theatre with two screens and a seating capacity in each screening room of about 35 seats. We saw “Entre les murs,” which is distributed in the US under the title “The Class.” In good European fashion, they run about 8 movies at the theatre, but since there are only two screens, each of them has different viewing times…so if you want to see a particular movie, you have to go there at, say Saturday at 4:45 PM, when it is playing that day. The next day it will be at a different time, etc. Very confusing. We had to arrange our schedule so we could see this movie. But since it was a sort of grey and foggy day, that was fine. It was a great movie…more or less a documentary about a teacher and his class of mixed-race, mixed-culture junior high school students in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. How anyone is a high school teacher is beyond me.
5 April, Sunday:
Today started out being gray and unpromising, but it warmed up and turned into a real spring day. We did one of our standard walks and ended up in the Bois de la Cambre. Everyone in Brussels was there with their kids, all of whom were learning to ride bicycles except for the ones who were playing soccer or sleeping on the grass. It got pretty hot…into the 70s…and people were taking full advantage of it.
6 April, Monday:
Another day with an unpromising beginning that ended up being really nice. I went grocery shopping, did e-mail, etc., and then went to Filigranes and bought a guidebook for Lille, because we are going to be there next month with some British friends. Beagle went clothes shopping and…hold your breath…bought some black pants. I spent part of the afternoon reading my book in the garden. It was very pleasant, and the first time I had spent more than 2 minutes in the garden.
7 April, Tuesday:
On Wednesday we are going to be meeting our friends the Preveniers in a town called Dranouter, in West Flanders, so we had to reschedule our regular Wednesday French lesson for today. However, Aurélie called at about 8 AM to say that she couldn’t make it, that she had been stricken with a terrible case of the flu, that she had been vomiting all night, etc., etc. Hmmm. It does seem that Aurélie misses more classes than she makes. But no big deal. Instead of having a French lesson I read an excellent trashy book.
Some April Fool’s Day. I picked up Beagle’s sister Jean at the train station this morning. She had just flown into Paris from DC, and is spending a few days with us in Brussels before she goes to Provence for a month. Our day was full, what with Jean’s arrival, 3 hours of French lessons with Aurélie, multiple conference calls for both Beagle and me, and an afternoon meeting for Beagle. Jean napped and made a few forays into the neighborhood. We thought about having dinner out, but ended up punting and having spaghetti at home.
2 April, Thursday:
Jean needed to revisit Brussels and it was a nice spring day so we walked to the Grand Place, had lunch at La Becasse…where the gueuze was wasted on Jean…, walked back along Avenue Louise and into Saint Gilles, visited the Horta House, and looked at lovely houses on rue Molière. There were even streets with trees in flower…very unusual for Brussels. By the time we got to Bois de la Cambre everyone was walked out, so we took a tram home. After a long bout of talking and foot rubbing (during which I absented myself), we went to Au Vieux Bruxelles and ate moules and frites for dinner. Everyone was happy and tired and we went to bed early.
3 April, Friday:
Today was a lovely spring/summer day. It was sunny, with temperatures in the 70s. We walked to the lakes near Place Flagey, then to the Abbaye de la Cambre, then along Avenue Roosevelt, and then into the Bois de la Cambre and the Forêt des Soignes. It was just wonderful. There were flowers everywhere, trees in bud and starting to turn green, etc. We left the forêt at Watermael-Boitsfort and went to our “usual” restaurant and had a lunch of pizza and beer sitting outside. We took the tram home, opened all the doors to our garden and enjoyed the weather. We had dinner at Les Brassins, a restaurant in our neighborhood on Kleienveldstraat/rue Keyenveld that was recently recommended to us. This was exactly as advertised. This turned out to be a great restaurant in the Belgian fashion with all sorts of typical Belgian food. Jean had tuna, Beagle and I had lapin à la kriek (rabbit cooked in cherry beer…you could choose one leg or two, and we both chose one), and we had frites, stoemp and boiled potatoes on the side. The restaurant has an extraordinarily broad beer list…maybe 30 different beers plus about a dozen beer “specials”… plus wine, etc. It was very informal, and not super expensive (at least I think so, but Jean paid), and it was a few doors down the street from the house where Audrey Hepburn was born. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Audrey Hepburn’s life story, she was born on this tiny, dingy street in Brussels in 1929. Her original name was Audrey Kathleen Ruston, and she was descended from, among others, King Edward III of England and the consort of Mary Queen of Scots, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was apparently also an ancestor of Katharine Hepburn. She was also a distant cousin of Humphrey Bogart and Prince Ranier III of Monaco, but then again, I am sure that I am related to Vlad the Impaler of Transylvania and Brittany Spears. Her father was a Nazi sympathizer and her mother was a fascist, and that seems to have caused family problems. Her parents got divorced in 1935 and her mother moved Audrey to Holland in 1939 to be safe from the Nazis. As we all know, this did not work out so well, since the Nazis arrived in Holland shortly after Audrey did. Audrey danced to raise money for the Resistance, and among her childhood memories were those of seeing her uncle and her cousin being executed by Germans for being members of the Resistance. While she was in Holland she assumed the name Edda van Heerrnstra so as not to have too English a sounding name. She moved to London in 1948 where, apparently, her film career took off. I hope she got to eat at Les Brassins before she left Brussels.
4 April, Saturday:
Today started out as cool and foggy. Jean had a 10:21 train from Gare de Midi to Avignon, so needless to say, she was ready to go at about 6AM. We were not so alert. Jean and I took the Metro to Gare de Midi, which perhaps was a mistake. They were inaugurating a new service on the Metro today…two new lines, much improved displays that tell you how long you have to wait for a train, better and more frequent schedules, etc. According to all the signs, on the weekends the metros should run every 5 minutes on the line we were taking. We waited for about 10 minutes and then, when the train came, it sat in the station for another 10 minutes, etc. Good thing we had allowed a lot of time for the Metro ride. A ride that should have taken 5 minutes took 30. I am not impressed with the new Metro. The same was true on the way back…and even more annoying was that after I had searched all over the place for one of those ticket “composting” machines I finally found one and managed to pay, but then heard an announcement that in honor of the inaguration of the “new” Metro, everyone could ride for free. Once I got back home we were free, but we couldn’t figure out what to do. So, since it was a grey and depressing day, we went to the movies…the first time since we have been in Brussels. We went around the corner (literally) to the Styxx, which is a tiny theatre with two screens and a seating capacity in each screening room of about 35 seats. We saw “Entre les murs,” which is distributed in the US under the title “The Class.” In good European fashion, they run about 8 movies at the theatre, but since there are only two screens, each of them has different viewing times…so if you want to see a particular movie, you have to go there at, say Saturday at 4:45 PM, when it is playing that day. The next day it will be at a different time, etc. Very confusing. We had to arrange our schedule so we could see this movie. But since it was a sort of grey and foggy day, that was fine. It was a great movie…more or less a documentary about a teacher and his class of mixed-race, mixed-culture junior high school students in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. How anyone is a high school teacher is beyond me.
5 April, Sunday:
Today started out being gray and unpromising, but it warmed up and turned into a real spring day. We did one of our standard walks and ended up in the Bois de la Cambre. Everyone in Brussels was there with their kids, all of whom were learning to ride bicycles except for the ones who were playing soccer or sleeping on the grass. It got pretty hot…into the 70s…and people were taking full advantage of it.
6 April, Monday:
Another day with an unpromising beginning that ended up being really nice. I went grocery shopping, did e-mail, etc., and then went to Filigranes and bought a guidebook for Lille, because we are going to be there next month with some British friends. Beagle went clothes shopping and…hold your breath…bought some black pants. I spent part of the afternoon reading my book in the garden. It was very pleasant, and the first time I had spent more than 2 minutes in the garden.
7 April, Tuesday:
On Wednesday we are going to be meeting our friends the Preveniers in a town called Dranouter, in West Flanders, so we had to reschedule our regular Wednesday French lesson for today. However, Aurélie called at about 8 AM to say that she couldn’t make it, that she had been stricken with a terrible case of the flu, that she had been vomiting all night, etc., etc. Hmmm. It does seem that Aurélie misses more classes than she makes. But no big deal. Instead of having a French lesson I read an excellent trashy book.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Week 21 - In which we walk on the Belgian Champs-Elysées, are frustrated with french lessons, Thérèse cooks dinner and we go on daylight savings time
25 March, Wednesday:
If you were to walk through our apartment, through our garden, through the next garden and through the building on the other side, you would come to a street called Champs-Elysées. This is not like the Champs-Elysées in Paris, which is a long, wide avenue which the Parisians think is the most beautiful avenue in the world, and which has some of the most expensive real estate in the world. The Champs-Elysées in Brussels is a different matter. It is a narrow street with narrow sidewalks that runs about three blocks, and if you follow it down the hill to the end, you get to some bottle recycling bins and the Delhaize supermarket, which we frequent. The street itself has a few nice buildings on it, but is generally grim. You have to watch where you step because a lot of people seem to use the sidewalks as a place to walk their dogs, and there is generally some broken glass on the sidewalks where some delinquent has broken a car window to rob what was inside. But if you look carefully you see that on the left-hand side, as you go down the hill, there is a big yellow house which, behind a high metal wall, has a huge garden. It is a little hard to say how big the garden is, because you can only see it if you peek through holes in the fence, or stand on a bench or something. But it surrounds the house on two sides, and I would say it is 1 - 2 acres in size. And on the other size of the street, also behind a wall, is another house with what looks like another nice garden. And down the hill a bit you can get a glimpse through a gate of a big free-standing house that overlooks what must be a huge garden, entirely surrounded by a very high concrete wall. It is hard to guess exactly how big this garden is…when you look at a map, it shows a big green space…but based on the layout of the streets and the fact that it completely occupies the space between two streets, all the way down to the Delhaize, I would say that it is at least 2 complete city blocks big, which is about 11 acres. And this is hidden from view in the middle of what appears to be a pretty grimy neighborhood in the middle of Brussels.
26 March, Thursday:
The weather here has developed a new pattern. In the morning it is rainy, or at least there are signs that it has rained during the night…the ground is wet, it is grey, etc. Then the sun comes out, and while it is cool and sometimes cloudy, the days are pretty nice. And it is now light until 7PM…and that will be later soon, since we go on daylight savings time this Sunday. I spent much of the day doing French exercises, and being frustrated by them. Part of my problem appears to be that my mind works (when it works) differently from a French person’s mind. An example: One of my chores was to write a description of what was going on in a comic strip. The comic strip depicted a man trying to unravel a bunch of rope or electrical cables that had become hopelessly snarled. He tries and tries, and is very frustrated, but in the end he succeeds, and is briefly very elated. But then he becomes despondent and unhappy. This is a French comic strip. The French think it is very funny. I couldn’t figure it out. I got the part about being frustrated by trying to untangle a tangle of rope/string/electrical cables. I understand that. I understand the elation when you are successful. But the despondency I couldn’t figure out. It was later explained to me that it was the unhappiness that follows success that was so funny. Apparently the French would rather be miserable than happy, and the man was unhappy after he untangled the wire because he suddenly realized that he had no more impossible challenges to face. My view is that you are frustrated when trying to untangle the wire, and then you are happy when you succeed. Then you are on to something else that is more interesting than untangling wire. The French see it differently. Ha Ha.
27 March, Friday:
Beagle had to get up at the crack of dawn today to go to a Pirenne colloquium (whatever that is) starting at 9 AM in Gent, where she was delivering the opening statement at 9:30 AM. I was offered the opportunity to get up at the crack of dawn as well and drive her to Gent and then hang around all day while the colloquium was going on. I declined and instead stayed in Brussels and had a 3-hour French lesson with Aurélie. I have decided that Aurélie is not a very good teacher, but we are sort of stuck with her. She loves to talk, so you have to remind her from time to time that we are paying for a lesson, not paying to listen to her talk. She also has a tendency to explain to you the 365 different ways of saying something…I simply can’t remember 365 ways of saying the same thing. What I want to do is to learn one way of saying something, and then learn one way of saying something else. Once I have learned one way of how to say a lot of things, then I’ll focus on learning how to say them differently. My objective is to be able to carry on a conversation, to be able to express myself in French, etc. I’ll deal with how elegantly I say things later. The exercise book that Aurélie gives us homework from is also, in my opinion, deficient. It simply gives you exercises to do without giving you any instruction in what you are supposed to be learning. This, needless to say, is frustrating, since after flailing away for a while doing exercises, you then go over them with Aurélie who points out all the mistakes you have made since you didn’t know the rule you were supposed to be learning, not to mention the 35 exceptions to that rule. I have another French grammar book that I use on my own, and Aurélie cheerfully admits that that book is much better as a teaching tool than hers. Yet she persists in using the other one. She claims that the French like variety! Today was a particularly frustrating class, for some reason. We were working on “indirect discourse” and “reported discourse,” and things like that…for example, when someone says to you “I just strangled my French teacher,” you would report that to someone else by saying “He told me that he had just strangled his French teacher.” Except you do that in French. I have had this lesson many times before, but it is always useful to review things like this, especially since my mind is a sieve. So there are rules about how you do this, including something called “concordance des temps.” These are rigid rules that must always be followed. I object to this in certain situations because it sometimes appears to me that there would be a better way of expressing it. For example, when someone says to you “I believe that wife-beating is bad,” you would “report” that by saying “He told me that he thought wife-beating was bad.” I would like to report that by saying “He told me that he thought wife-beating is bad.” By the way, this is a real example from today’s class…all the exercises you have in French involve people arguing, robbing or being robbed, being cheated at the store, loosing their job, etc. The French don’t have a positive or optimistic bone in their bodies. Aurélie kept slapping me down, saying that I had to follow the rule of “concordance des temps.” So I did, but then about halfway through that particular set of exercises she changed her mind, and then told me that while I should obey the rule and say things in a certain way, I could in fact say it the way I wanted, and that it all depended on the sense of the sentence. And that sometimes disobeying the rule was better. I wept with frustration at this point. Aurélie was very happy. The French like strife, argument and misery, so she had done her job. I threw her out and drove to Gent for a marvelous dinner with all the speakers at Beagle’s Pirenne colloquium. All the usual suspects were there, plus a few new faces. The dinner was at Het Pand, which is sort of like the University of Gent faculty club. We have eaten there several times, and each time I come away impressed. It is like eating in a starred restaurant. The food is excellent, beautifully presented, and well served in a beautiful space. And of course you have different wines matched with every course. Beagle says that the Columbia Faculty Club has improved a lot in recent years, and we have had some excellent meals at the President’s house, but Columbia still has a long way to go to match this. After dinner we drove back to Brussels, giving a ride to a German man and a French man who were staying at a hotel near our apartment, and to a very lively Belgian French-speaking woman who also lives nearby. She gave us the name of a restaurant in our neighborhood that is supposed to be great. As usual it is hidden away, down an alley that you’d never walk down at night unless you knew where you were going. We’ll check it out. It is open 7 days a week, including Sundays, which is unusual.
28 March, Saturday:
The Pirenne colloquium continued, today in Brussels. I guess that means the papers were in French, not Dutch. The colloquium went well, except one of the presenters, the nice German man we gave a ride home to last night, was apparently outraged that his presentation wasn’t received with enough respect by the Belgians. The Belgians were not impressed. Stunningly enough, there was no dinner afterwards. So Beagle and Thérèse and Marc decided they’d come back to our apartment and cook dinner. Thérèse was in charge of cooking. Beagle was her assistant. Marc and I were in charge of wine and cheese. We failed, because the cheese shop was closed when we got to it. We called Thérèse and Beagle, caught them at the grocery store, and settled down to watch the news, comfortable that we had done our best. Thérèse and Beagle came back from the supermarket with a wonderful dinner…smoked duck breast and roasted chèvre on toast rounds on salad, lieu noir (pollock) with spinach, and four different kinds of chees bought at the Delhaize supermarket. Why don’t we find that kind of stuff when we are there? Anyway, it was a great dinner with good wine (a sparking wine from the Lille wine fair, a white wine with the fish and a red with the cheese, both from Delhaize.
29 March, Sunday:
Daylight savings time started last night in Europe. So we celebrated by sleeping late, and then went to the market in Place Flagey to buy some food and plants. While there we noticed that there were a bunch of tents and a lot of people at the end of Place Flagey. So we went to see what was going on. It was a spring festival sponsored by the Socialist party, and while there didn’t appear to be a lot of political activity, there was food and drink everywhere…literally every kind of food and drink you could think of. I guess Belgian politicians know their audience. We went home and planned our day. Beagle wanted to take a walk, but I didn’t. So we compromised and took a walk. We started out in the direction of Parc Cinquentenaire, but veered off to Place Jourdan, which has a famous frites stand. On the way we ran into an older gentleman who claimed that he lived in Brussels but was lost in the whole EU complex. We helped him with some directions and he gave us candy. Somewhere in the back of my mind there is some warning bell that sounds when I talk about nice old gentlemen giving me candy, but I suspect that this was something different. Imagine the headlines…63 year old molested by 86 year old pervert! So we escaped that, and went in the direction of Place Jourdan. On the way we saw a 6 year old kicking a soccer ball back and forth with his older brother. The first time he kicked it, we thought it was cute, but perhaps an accident…he kicked it hard, and straight, and with great force…enough so that had you been in the way you would have been driven back. I would not have wished to be in the path of that ball. Then he did the same thing ten times. This kid was fantastic. A true rival to Graham. After watching this future Pélé or David Beckham for a bit, we continued to Place Jourdan where there was, in fact, the famous frites stand, which I had visited before. I was about to stand in line to get frites, but since there were 2 lines, and each was 30 people deep, and since Beagle refused to eat anything fried, we ended up in a café where we had a great lunch. I had spaghetti bolognaise and Beagle had salade niçoise. We left the café and walked to Parc Cinquentenaire, where we had been planning to visit the art museum. But since we had started late, by the time we got there it was about 30 minutes before closing time. So we gave up and walked home. On the way we saw a group of young men playing 4 to a side soccer in a “field” the size of a tennis court with wooden walls. It was very reminiscent of pickup basketball games in NYC. The game was very fast, and the players were very good…the key to the game was ball control, and they were good at it. We then walked towards home, through Square Ambiorix and Square Marie Louise, very pretty residential areas with huge EU buildings looming up behind them. On the way we also stopped at Filigranes, a bookstore that is open on Sunday. It is a great bookstore with very narrow aisles and lots of people. It has books in all sorts of languages…except Dutch. And this is officially a Dutch/French speaking country. Go figure.
30 March, Monday:
Today was another nice spring day. It was sunny and in the 50s. I did some French homework, went marketing, etc. and went to the post office to mail a package. The way it works at the post office is that when you enter you get a little slip of paper with a number on it from a machine. Eventually your number will pop up on a video screen, and it tells you on the screen which window to go to. It is a pretty efficient system, but the place was jammed, so I was prepared for a long wait. But an older man came up to me as I was getting my number from the machine and offered me his slip of paper, which had a much lower number on it than the one I had. I guess he had given up and was leaving. I thanked him and took his slip, and was pondering the ethics of using it to cut the line, when that number was called. Rather than upset the smoothly working post office system, I marched up to the window indicated on the screen, mailed my package and was out of there.
31 March, Tuesday:
Today was a day of conference calls and board meetings and not much else. 3 ½ hours for the Butler Funds and 1 ½ hour for IRRC. Those plus lunch and gym and a little French homework and the day was pretty much used up.
If you were to walk through our apartment, through our garden, through the next garden and through the building on the other side, you would come to a street called Champs-Elysées. This is not like the Champs-Elysées in Paris, which is a long, wide avenue which the Parisians think is the most beautiful avenue in the world, and which has some of the most expensive real estate in the world. The Champs-Elysées in Brussels is a different matter. It is a narrow street with narrow sidewalks that runs about three blocks, and if you follow it down the hill to the end, you get to some bottle recycling bins and the Delhaize supermarket, which we frequent. The street itself has a few nice buildings on it, but is generally grim. You have to watch where you step because a lot of people seem to use the sidewalks as a place to walk their dogs, and there is generally some broken glass on the sidewalks where some delinquent has broken a car window to rob what was inside. But if you look carefully you see that on the left-hand side, as you go down the hill, there is a big yellow house which, behind a high metal wall, has a huge garden. It is a little hard to say how big the garden is, because you can only see it if you peek through holes in the fence, or stand on a bench or something. But it surrounds the house on two sides, and I would say it is 1 - 2 acres in size. And on the other size of the street, also behind a wall, is another house with what looks like another nice garden. And down the hill a bit you can get a glimpse through a gate of a big free-standing house that overlooks what must be a huge garden, entirely surrounded by a very high concrete wall. It is hard to guess exactly how big this garden is…when you look at a map, it shows a big green space…but based on the layout of the streets and the fact that it completely occupies the space between two streets, all the way down to the Delhaize, I would say that it is at least 2 complete city blocks big, which is about 11 acres. And this is hidden from view in the middle of what appears to be a pretty grimy neighborhood in the middle of Brussels.
26 March, Thursday:
The weather here has developed a new pattern. In the morning it is rainy, or at least there are signs that it has rained during the night…the ground is wet, it is grey, etc. Then the sun comes out, and while it is cool and sometimes cloudy, the days are pretty nice. And it is now light until 7PM…and that will be later soon, since we go on daylight savings time this Sunday. I spent much of the day doing French exercises, and being frustrated by them. Part of my problem appears to be that my mind works (when it works) differently from a French person’s mind. An example: One of my chores was to write a description of what was going on in a comic strip. The comic strip depicted a man trying to unravel a bunch of rope or electrical cables that had become hopelessly snarled. He tries and tries, and is very frustrated, but in the end he succeeds, and is briefly very elated. But then he becomes despondent and unhappy. This is a French comic strip. The French think it is very funny. I couldn’t figure it out. I got the part about being frustrated by trying to untangle a tangle of rope/string/electrical cables. I understand that. I understand the elation when you are successful. But the despondency I couldn’t figure out. It was later explained to me that it was the unhappiness that follows success that was so funny. Apparently the French would rather be miserable than happy, and the man was unhappy after he untangled the wire because he suddenly realized that he had no more impossible challenges to face. My view is that you are frustrated when trying to untangle the wire, and then you are happy when you succeed. Then you are on to something else that is more interesting than untangling wire. The French see it differently. Ha Ha.
27 March, Friday:
Beagle had to get up at the crack of dawn today to go to a Pirenne colloquium (whatever that is) starting at 9 AM in Gent, where she was delivering the opening statement at 9:30 AM. I was offered the opportunity to get up at the crack of dawn as well and drive her to Gent and then hang around all day while the colloquium was going on. I declined and instead stayed in Brussels and had a 3-hour French lesson with Aurélie. I have decided that Aurélie is not a very good teacher, but we are sort of stuck with her. She loves to talk, so you have to remind her from time to time that we are paying for a lesson, not paying to listen to her talk. She also has a tendency to explain to you the 365 different ways of saying something…I simply can’t remember 365 ways of saying the same thing. What I want to do is to learn one way of saying something, and then learn one way of saying something else. Once I have learned one way of how to say a lot of things, then I’ll focus on learning how to say them differently. My objective is to be able to carry on a conversation, to be able to express myself in French, etc. I’ll deal with how elegantly I say things later. The exercise book that Aurélie gives us homework from is also, in my opinion, deficient. It simply gives you exercises to do without giving you any instruction in what you are supposed to be learning. This, needless to say, is frustrating, since after flailing away for a while doing exercises, you then go over them with Aurélie who points out all the mistakes you have made since you didn’t know the rule you were supposed to be learning, not to mention the 35 exceptions to that rule. I have another French grammar book that I use on my own, and Aurélie cheerfully admits that that book is much better as a teaching tool than hers. Yet she persists in using the other one. She claims that the French like variety! Today was a particularly frustrating class, for some reason. We were working on “indirect discourse” and “reported discourse,” and things like that…for example, when someone says to you “I just strangled my French teacher,” you would report that to someone else by saying “He told me that he had just strangled his French teacher.” Except you do that in French. I have had this lesson many times before, but it is always useful to review things like this, especially since my mind is a sieve. So there are rules about how you do this, including something called “concordance des temps.” These are rigid rules that must always be followed. I object to this in certain situations because it sometimes appears to me that there would be a better way of expressing it. For example, when someone says to you “I believe that wife-beating is bad,” you would “report” that by saying “He told me that he thought wife-beating was bad.” I would like to report that by saying “He told me that he thought wife-beating is bad.” By the way, this is a real example from today’s class…all the exercises you have in French involve people arguing, robbing or being robbed, being cheated at the store, loosing their job, etc. The French don’t have a positive or optimistic bone in their bodies. Aurélie kept slapping me down, saying that I had to follow the rule of “concordance des temps.” So I did, but then about halfway through that particular set of exercises she changed her mind, and then told me that while I should obey the rule and say things in a certain way, I could in fact say it the way I wanted, and that it all depended on the sense of the sentence. And that sometimes disobeying the rule was better. I wept with frustration at this point. Aurélie was very happy. The French like strife, argument and misery, so she had done her job. I threw her out and drove to Gent for a marvelous dinner with all the speakers at Beagle’s Pirenne colloquium. All the usual suspects were there, plus a few new faces. The dinner was at Het Pand, which is sort of like the University of Gent faculty club. We have eaten there several times, and each time I come away impressed. It is like eating in a starred restaurant. The food is excellent, beautifully presented, and well served in a beautiful space. And of course you have different wines matched with every course. Beagle says that the Columbia Faculty Club has improved a lot in recent years, and we have had some excellent meals at the President’s house, but Columbia still has a long way to go to match this. After dinner we drove back to Brussels, giving a ride to a German man and a French man who were staying at a hotel near our apartment, and to a very lively Belgian French-speaking woman who also lives nearby. She gave us the name of a restaurant in our neighborhood that is supposed to be great. As usual it is hidden away, down an alley that you’d never walk down at night unless you knew where you were going. We’ll check it out. It is open 7 days a week, including Sundays, which is unusual.
28 March, Saturday:
The Pirenne colloquium continued, today in Brussels. I guess that means the papers were in French, not Dutch. The colloquium went well, except one of the presenters, the nice German man we gave a ride home to last night, was apparently outraged that his presentation wasn’t received with enough respect by the Belgians. The Belgians were not impressed. Stunningly enough, there was no dinner afterwards. So Beagle and Thérèse and Marc decided they’d come back to our apartment and cook dinner. Thérèse was in charge of cooking. Beagle was her assistant. Marc and I were in charge of wine and cheese. We failed, because the cheese shop was closed when we got to it. We called Thérèse and Beagle, caught them at the grocery store, and settled down to watch the news, comfortable that we had done our best. Thérèse and Beagle came back from the supermarket with a wonderful dinner…smoked duck breast and roasted chèvre on toast rounds on salad, lieu noir (pollock) with spinach, and four different kinds of chees bought at the Delhaize supermarket. Why don’t we find that kind of stuff when we are there? Anyway, it was a great dinner with good wine (a sparking wine from the Lille wine fair, a white wine with the fish and a red with the cheese, both from Delhaize.
29 March, Sunday:
Daylight savings time started last night in Europe. So we celebrated by sleeping late, and then went to the market in Place Flagey to buy some food and plants. While there we noticed that there were a bunch of tents and a lot of people at the end of Place Flagey. So we went to see what was going on. It was a spring festival sponsored by the Socialist party, and while there didn’t appear to be a lot of political activity, there was food and drink everywhere…literally every kind of food and drink you could think of. I guess Belgian politicians know their audience. We went home and planned our day. Beagle wanted to take a walk, but I didn’t. So we compromised and took a walk. We started out in the direction of Parc Cinquentenaire, but veered off to Place Jourdan, which has a famous frites stand. On the way we ran into an older gentleman who claimed that he lived in Brussels but was lost in the whole EU complex. We helped him with some directions and he gave us candy. Somewhere in the back of my mind there is some warning bell that sounds when I talk about nice old gentlemen giving me candy, but I suspect that this was something different. Imagine the headlines…63 year old molested by 86 year old pervert! So we escaped that, and went in the direction of Place Jourdan. On the way we saw a 6 year old kicking a soccer ball back and forth with his older brother. The first time he kicked it, we thought it was cute, but perhaps an accident…he kicked it hard, and straight, and with great force…enough so that had you been in the way you would have been driven back. I would not have wished to be in the path of that ball. Then he did the same thing ten times. This kid was fantastic. A true rival to Graham. After watching this future Pélé or David Beckham for a bit, we continued to Place Jourdan where there was, in fact, the famous frites stand, which I had visited before. I was about to stand in line to get frites, but since there were 2 lines, and each was 30 people deep, and since Beagle refused to eat anything fried, we ended up in a café where we had a great lunch. I had spaghetti bolognaise and Beagle had salade niçoise. We left the café and walked to Parc Cinquentenaire, where we had been planning to visit the art museum. But since we had started late, by the time we got there it was about 30 minutes before closing time. So we gave up and walked home. On the way we saw a group of young men playing 4 to a side soccer in a “field” the size of a tennis court with wooden walls. It was very reminiscent of pickup basketball games in NYC. The game was very fast, and the players were very good…the key to the game was ball control, and they were good at it. We then walked towards home, through Square Ambiorix and Square Marie Louise, very pretty residential areas with huge EU buildings looming up behind them. On the way we also stopped at Filigranes, a bookstore that is open on Sunday. It is a great bookstore with very narrow aisles and lots of people. It has books in all sorts of languages…except Dutch. And this is officially a Dutch/French speaking country. Go figure.
30 March, Monday:
Today was another nice spring day. It was sunny and in the 50s. I did some French homework, went marketing, etc. and went to the post office to mail a package. The way it works at the post office is that when you enter you get a little slip of paper with a number on it from a machine. Eventually your number will pop up on a video screen, and it tells you on the screen which window to go to. It is a pretty efficient system, but the place was jammed, so I was prepared for a long wait. But an older man came up to me as I was getting my number from the machine and offered me his slip of paper, which had a much lower number on it than the one I had. I guess he had given up and was leaving. I thanked him and took his slip, and was pondering the ethics of using it to cut the line, when that number was called. Rather than upset the smoothly working post office system, I marched up to the window indicated on the screen, mailed my package and was out of there.
31 March, Tuesday:
Today was a day of conference calls and board meetings and not much else. 3 ½ hours for the Butler Funds and 1 ½ hour for IRRC. Those plus lunch and gym and a little French homework and the day was pretty much used up.
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