Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Weekend before last, Jack had to work most of the time so we didn't do much that was fun, aside from dinner on Friday at his coworker's house out in the suburb of Rixensart. She and her boyfriend had invited us to their place for a barbecue, although in the end the weather was deemed inhospitable for grilling. We took the commuter train for about a half hour to get to this tiny hamlet located in the rolling countryside bordered by fields and trees. We took a brief walk about before dinner, and it was so quiet as to seem almost unpopulated. We did encounter a few people, all of whom greeted us upon passing. It was nice to hang out with people and get out of the city for a while.

On Sunday afternoon we went on a mission to find St. Pie X church. My plan was to eat a pie in front of it for posterity's sake. We had to stop on the way to get provisions. It being Sunday, I was worried that the number of places selling actual pies (or "tarts" as they call them here) would be slim, so we went to a little convenience store and I got a cake-like thing with icing and chocolate sprinkles in a cellophane packet in case we didn't encounter anything else open. A few blocks further, a bakery/cafe was getting ready to close up shop, but I managed to get a cherry turnover, which is much more pie-like than the previous item.

We got to the church by a circuitous route that took us by the crenellated walls of the city's prison, by the house of a big Elvis fan (a large collection of dolls in their original packaging slowly yellowing in his window), and through a park where I was hoping to score some blackberries. I missed the turnoff for the spot where I had seen the fruits last time so we just kept going. We took a breather in another section where they had a school and a private home plopped down in the midst of the vegetation. (Parks frequently seem to have random buildings in them--there is one in a pocket park nearby that has space for a single office in it--I've never seen anyone in there, but it's definitely occupied.) The school had a very nice green and white striped awning made of glass protecting the front steps. We had a beer, worked on some French verbs, and then continued on.

After exiting the park I took us on a wrong turn down a street bordering a sporting complex with a bunch of tennis courts and people hanging about. We decided to head back in the direction we came, past the loiterers again, rather than pushing ahead. In an attempt to seem like we were in fact a different couple, and not the ones who had walked by moments before, we switched from English to broken Italian. When we got close to them we realized the error of our ways, as they were actual Italians playing bocce ball. Fortunately they chose to ignore us.

We finally got to the Pie church and discovered that, in the midst of the old rowhouses on either side, the congregation had decided to throw up a huge A-frame structure with a scrubby lawn in front. A family was playing soccer with their kids and dogs among the weeds and ratty trees. I imagine that the original Pie church had suffered some kind of egregious damage and had to be taken down, and they decided to set the new building back from the street for some reason. They didn't even have a proper sign, the hand-painted one looking pretty worn. The church did, however, seem to be in use.

As I didn't see the point of wasting time hanging around there, especially since Jack had convinced himself that he could climb up on the roof and I didn't want to encourage him, we took a couple of snaps but didn't have any pie. We went to another nearby church situated on a spot called Altitude 100, the highest point in the city. There were benches, so we sat and ate the crappy cake-like thing. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

Thursday was the last day of our class, and we were told by our teacher that we would be having a petite test. Knowing that the two other students (the couple from Ohio having dropped out) weren't going to study, I didn't either in an act of solidarity. The test was pretty straightforward if you knew your spelling and how to ask questions, both of which I had some problems with. Jack got the highest grade--yay! The rest of us passed, however. The one that all three of us got wrong was we were asked to convert "monsieur" to the feminine, and we had all put "madame" down, never having been informed differently. We were told that "madame" was reserved for prostitutes (unless you are speaking to the person or writing them a letter--so difficult to know when might potentially be insulting someone), and the proper term was "dame". Who knew?

Our brains having been taxed so that we weren't about to speak more French that evening, we went to a nearby Irish bar for dinner, where we had the worst pints of Guinness ever--it was almost like they were dispensing it from a soda fountain and someone had gotten the syrup-carbonated water mix wrong. It was inexplicably watered down. But we watched some football on the telly and had fish and chips, so it wasn't all bad.

No comments: