The weekend entailed more bedroom shade hanging and laurel resting and video watching ("Ripley's Game", blech), along with some delicious Indian food preparation. I spent nearly 10 euros on a small amount of nuts for the dish--that's one food item that doesn't appear to be cheaper here. The almonds were imported from California. We also did some additional chocolate research, checking out a non-chain place down the street from us called Irsi. We got a small melange, and everything in it has been delicious.

Sunday we went to the Erasmus museum, which as previously mentioned was a house where the famous humanist lived for a period of several months. It was actually owned by the local church and a string of famous-at-the-time people stayed there, but Erasmus is the only one who has stood the test of time. The cost to enter was 1.25, and the woman at the front desk, after ascertaining that we spoke English, gave us a binder that contained a key to all the items displayed and proceeded to tell us a bunch of things in French. The only thing she was really insistent about was that the other museum you could enter on the same ticket, the Beguinage, was opening at 2 p.m. and we should definitely go there.

The house was nicely appointed, with wood floors and furniture, everything glowing in the mid-day light. There were many, many portraits of Erasmus. There were also some of the saint he was named after, well-known for having his entrails cut out and wrapped around a windlass. There were coins, stamps, first editions, letters, and so on, all bent on establishing the fact that Anderlecht was once a thriving, independent and well-regarded town about 500 years ago. The books were all covered in what was obviously leather, a clotted-creamy whitishness that seemed as if it would crack if you tried to actually open a book. The covers resembled actual animal hide and I would have been squeamish had I been forced to touch one--another instance of the modern world divorcing us from a product's origin: normal leather doesn't affect me that way. One of the rooms had wall coverings that were done in leather squares that had been stitched together, with a light-aqua field and gold-embossed patterns on it. It had been installed in the 16th century and was standing the test of time quite well.

After visiting the rooms, which were all meeting places or studies and really didn't give much insight into day-to-day life back then, we headed out into the garden. It was divided into two parts: the first, a formal setting containing herbal remedies of Erasmus' time (including an extremely stocky yet blooming castor bean plant--mine would have been at least twice that size by now), and the second a free-flowing philosopher's garden, in which four artists had been commissioned to install suitable pieces. The overall size of the garden is small, but there's some interesting stuff in there which made it pretty cool, such as a box made of individual rounds or ovals of glass welded together in a frame, each piece distorting things differently than its neighbor. I think Erasmus would be pleased had he stepped through a wormhole and arrived at the present day. We sat and philosophized for a bit, mostly about how we didn't remember any Latin from school and how we have no idea what a "humanist" actually is, and then headed out to lunch.

We had a fine meal of beer and spaghetti bolognaise in a patio area across the street from the restaurant and next to the church. After a handful of kids spent some time practicing penalty kicks against the wall of the church (it was the day of the World Cup Superbowl, and many people were decked out in team colors or flying flags), we watched as a small clutch of people awaiting the the start of a wedding milled about in front of the church, which appeared grossly oversized for the group.

We digested a bit in the breezy sunshine of the patio and then went to the Beguinage, which was a home for lay nuns (e.g., the unwed or widowed women who had no means of supporting themselves). As we entered the compound, surrounded by a high brick wall, the same lady who took our ticket at the Erasmus house appeared. There was another couple touring the museum, one of whom was fluent in French (the other seemed to know some French but primarily spoke Italian). The ticket taker recognized us from before, said something acknowledging the fact that we only spoke English, and then launched into a rapid-fire discussion of what the museum held, mostly in French, with a couple English words tossed in and a liberal amount of hand gestures. There was no guidebook for this place. In one room she pointed to a statue of a drunk-looking fellow with a violin and a missing shoe and talked about how the women always had to do all the work in the "cuisine" while the men played the "gameboy", watched the "tele" and drank "bier". This was hardly a fair representation of a quality male-female relationship, but we didn't know enough to argue the other position so resorted to nodding and laughing. At one point she insisted in French that I give her my age, to which I tentatively responded (one of the few things I can sort of say), so that we could compare it with that of a portrait of an middle-aged woman that was hanging on the wall. After further badgering me into saying whether I thought the sitter was younger or older than me, she revealed that the woman was "vingt-sept" (27). Quel surprise! With the belligerent setup to this result, I would have been taken aback if it turned out she actually WAS older.

The upstairs floor contained their folklore collection, and, if we understood correctly, a jail cell. "Folklore" in French means the accoutrements of daily life, rather than fantastical stories passed on by oral tradition. Most of it appeared to be from the Victorian era, with rotting baby carriages, creepy (possibly hair-related) jewelry, sketches of the town, and so on. There was some Roman-era pottery that had been found in the vicinity as well. After a few minutes the woman came up and told us, again in French with many gestures, about a few of the pieces. I'm not sure what she thought she was adding to the experience.

The building across the courtyard housed some additional relics of daily life as well as some handicrafts and such. There were some nice statues that appeared to have been rescued from earlier incarnations of the church next door, including some giant cherub heads, and a whole bunch of tiny iron legs and arms which people left for St. Guido in the hopes that he'd miraculously cure them of their leg or arm ailments. This must have worked at some time or other or he wouldn't have been elevated to the level of sainthood.

After that came the long stroll home. We managed to cross the main canal at the spot that if you look left it's all built up and industrial, and if you look right it's treesy and park-like, with a bike trail. You could probably sail down most of the way from our house without pedaling to this spot, enjoy some greenery, and take the metro home. I'll have to put a pin in that one. Also get a bike.