Monday, June 05, 2006

June 1 was another frigid rainy day here. I turned on the heat when it got down to 63 in the house and felt terrible about it for a number of reasons. The next day dawned clear and bright, with highs predicted to be in the 60s. Jack had just received one of Belgium's favorite tax dodges, food vouchers (paid by one's company pre-tax), so I went to the store to stock up. The vouchers (or "food stamps", as we call them) come in 6 euro increments and can only be used for food items (including alcohol), as I discovered when I attempted to pay for mouthwash along with the rest of my groceries. Although in a few months' time I hope to be able to argue the point of whether something that CAN be swallowed for intoxicating purposes but is not should be considered food, on this occasion I just paid the remainder of my bill with cash and lit out.

Earlier that day I noticed a black and white cat in the back yard, the first time I had seen one since our arrival. I thought it very charming how it was walking atop the high walls dividing the yards, going from one to the next via the landscaping. Later on Jack and I had lunch in a park which was practically overrun with cats--we saw several of them within a few minutes' time. Later still, Jack opened the bathroom curtain to discover an orange one staring back at him, sitting on the 2nd storey ledge in hopes of getting at a noisy bird. That evening we went for a walk and sure enough, more cats. I decided that June 1 was probably the annual Release of The Cats from Their Interior Confinement Day, but since it had been so nasty out everyone had observed it on the 2nd. I'll have to keep an eye out in the fall for the annual Gathering of The Cats Day, which I'm sure is a much more difficult operation. Perhaps they dedicate a whole week to it.

Sunday I took the metro out to the end of the line. My nominal goal was to go to the Erasmus Museum. Erasmus was some philosopher dude who lived in Brussels for a handful of months about 500 years ago. Apparently he made enough of an impact on the city that they made his home into a museum, one of the cheaper ones around town (when you think of it, not so different than places that crow about how Washington slept there for a single night). I decided to go past the museum to the end of the metro line and walk back to it, hoping to find out more about the character of the sprawling Anderlecht community, which I am told has a proud working-class character that is not always visible to us non-natives.

Imagine, if you will, hopping on an Orange Line Metro train at Federal Triangle and riding it out to Vienna. It may take a half hour or so, depending on the time of day and other factors. Okay, a half hour if you're lucky. Perhaps my ride was more like to West Falls Church. At any rate, it was not a long trip. I stood the whole way without fatigue. So I got off at the Erasmus station (the museum is actually located at the St. Guido stop in order to confound tourists), which is designed like a long, white circus tent--each of the stations here has a different style created by a local artist. I had alighted at a location that was off the edge of my map, so I started walking back in the direction of the metro line, towards the city center. There was a hospital and a university campus located at the stop, but then...nothing. A wheat field bordered the wide sidewalk, empty save for me. The next field contained cows! Unbelievable that the city is so small and so compact that you can encounter bovines within walking distance. I assumed that they were somehow affiliated with the school, but the tumbledown shacks adjacent to the road suggested otherwise.

As I continued on, I decided that at some point the Brussels area had done some serious thinking about future expansion plans and had built massive infrastructure to support it, but that time has apparently not yet come. There were a few detached homes sprinkled about and some large car dealerships. A little further on I entered a bedroom community, with houses and a cemetery and more wide, wide roads, but not much else. The whole place was creepily quiet, but it is a 3-day weekend and I'm assuming that most people were out of town. After passing some big box stores (Ikea!) I entered an older area, with row houses sporting tidy front yards and a young family tending a fire in an oil drum in their back yard. Rounding the corner I came upon a decaying campus of some sort (CERIA) surrounded by a fence and shrubbery. The signs seemed to indicate that it was under renovation, but if so they had a long way to go (see the photo). Past this was an attractive canal (unlike the more utilitarian one in town), with pleasure craft motoring up it and the boathouse for kayakers nearby.

After crossing the canal I entered an area with a number of new-looking low office buildings, and then passed under the railroad tracks to arrive at the more urban portion of the community. The railroad bridge was somewhat terrifying to behold, as it was comprised of a series of small brick arches perpendicular to and supporting the track bed. Holding it all up were these decorative metal columns that didn't look like they were very strong. It looked very old and, as a train passed overhead making a low rumbling I could feel in my gut, I quickened my pace so that I wouldn't get crushed under the collapsing structure (surprisingly, it held together). Not having any idea where I was at that point, I kept pushing forward in the general direction of what I thought was the city center and eventually ended up somewhere I recognized. I never made it to the museum, but that's okay; I find that having a destination in mind helps me get motivated to leave the house whether or not the end result is that I go there.

Later on, looking at the map, I found that I had walked right through an area called "Poxcat" and I hadn't even known it.

As a side note to all you sci-fi fans AND bibliophiles, I'm reading "The Poisonwood Bible" right now which is about a missionary family in the Belgian Congo around the time of its independence. Very timely. One of the characters makes reference to "klatu barada nikto", which is very similar to the line that the hero flubbed in "Army of Darkness". I googled it and Wikipedia says that this phrase has been an inside joke for a good many years, showing up in such films as "Tron" and "Return of the Jedi". I never knew. The book is good, too.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

klatu barada nikto originally comes from "the day the earth stood still". It stopped the robot.

I can't imagine walking to downtown from West Falls Church. But then again, I'm freaking lazy.

By the way, I can walk from my office and see cows, too.

And I'm hoping cat season is over by the time we show up, or I'm going to have a real problem. A REAL problem.

Anonymous said...

Show us a picture of the rickety railroad bridge!
I don't have to go too far to see cows where I live. Or chickens -- seems like a majority of my neighbors have backyard coops. And some keep pigs. Or sheep. Or goats. Argh! Get me out of here.
Glad to see you're enjoying Brussels. Do you read the local newspapers? Any English-language papers there?
Mike

ms said...

Anonymous, I'll see what I can do about the cats. We got some kind of note from the police this week and it looks like we're supposed to go into the station to make ourselves known next week. I'll bring up the cat situation.

AR Mike, actually I still pretty much read the Washington Post on-line. There is the Herald-Tribune that the NYT puts out, but its really expensive. Also we can get UK papers at the shops. I don't think there's a local English daily though. Maybe you should come and start one.

--Jack

Anonymous said...

Excellent idea! With a wife who speaks French and a one-year old who can haul newsprint off to the printers, we're all set.

Anonymous said...

Ah, the Poisonwood Bible - excellent reading! Have you read any other Kingsolver? She's amazing. Did you bring the book over with you, or did you find an English copy over there?

Heather (Dave's wife)

ms said...

Hi Heather!
I thought I had read some other Kingsolver, but looking on Amazon I don't recognize any of the titles. If you have any recommendations, let me know. The book was loaned to me by Jack's coworker, who recognized my desperation and was kind enough to give me 4 to read. The destruction of the Congo by Belgium and the US is not something that they discussed in my h.s. history classes, so it's quite eye-opening. Particularly the part where Mobutu owned a castle outside of Brussels, which is according to the 'net now a private club. The 'net also says that he had a hotel here in town he used for a prostitution ring. May be speculation, but all in all he sounds like one scary dude.

There are some English bookstores here (British-English, I gather), but I haven't explored any yet. Found a good secondhand store with an English book section which we will be revisiting tomorrow. Probably with hilarious results.

Anonymous said...

Other notable Kingsolver titles are Prodigal Summer and The Bean Trees. I liked Prodigal Summer the best of those 3, probably because it takes place in Appalachia, so it felt close to home. Her short stories are also good stuff.