M&D, Part 2

More beer, as it turns out. We went to the Cantillon brewery and took the tour and sampled the wares. People are always asking me for directions and so on, but nearly always the person is asking in French. I have no idea why this is--maybe the French speakers are more befuddled or more likely to travel without a map, or just have fewer hangups about asking than the rest of the world. Who knows. But with my parents around, Americans felt more comfortable approaching us to ask for advice. Two women had taken a cruise from Amsterdam and had apparently run into the same issue with closed museums, and the tourist information office put them in a cab and sent them over to Cantillon. The neighborhood looks pretty blighted if your eyes aren't open to its charms, and they weren't sure the best way to get back to their accommodations. I showed them where they were and where they were staying, and they decided to take a cab back. Probably for the best.

My dad didn't cotton to the gueuze, unfortunately, but that's probably because his sample wasn't large enough. He had enjoyed the kriek he consumed with his mussels, but the kriek at Cantillon was something else altogether: fruity, but not at all sweet; nothing except a waft of cherry between you and the sour hit of lambic. Delightful, but not to everyone's taste.

Following naps and a trip to the grocery for my parents, at which they agonized over the bread selection because the store was out of the one variety suitable for sandwiches, we went to the Ultieme Hallucinatie, an interesting space with lots of strange Art Nouveau touches. I had a misunderstanding with the waiter about the beer, and he arrived at our table with a Hoegaarden, which I reluctantly pointed out wasn't what I had ordered. Fortunately, it didn't go to waste and was delivered to a woman sitting by herself, already deeply in her cups and very quiet and far away, who finished off several more beers while we ate. I had morels in a cream sauce with pasta, and the morels were meaty and divine.

Tuesday, which was a holiday, I put them on the train to Bruges with some maps and suggestions. At the train station, while buying tickets, I noticed the option to purchase tickets for seniors, and it turns out they were incredibly cheap. Makes me look forward to old age, although they will have probably raised the bar on seniorship by then. We employed the discount throughout the remainder of the trip.

From what I hear, my parents had a lovely time in Bruges complete with hanging out at a bar with a bunch of singing rowdies. I had a quiet day of being crushed to within an inch of my life at a giant annual flea market (I thought it was going to be a secret gem, but since most everything else was closed that day, the entire city showed up) accompanied by a lovely grilled sausage sandwich eaten in a grassy oasis of calm.

Wednesday was the day we were to visit the royal greenhouses, because at my suggestion they had scheduled their trip around the dates it was open. I made the mistake of taking them there the longest possible way, involving a single tram ride that describes a wide arc around the city. It was very pleasant, but better suited to a day with unlimited time. The gardens were lovely, and appropriately astonishing to the visitors, and as different as day and night from the experience a few days prior for me. The fuchsias dripped from the ceiling of the glass passageway while a myriad geraniums climbed the walls. The tropical trees in lush green hues scraped the sky of the central atrium. Hydrangeas billowed out of every corner and orchids gracefully punctuated the scene here and there. We made sure to use the greenhouse's bathrooms, the toilet seats hand-scrubbed after each use by the hardest-working Madame Pipi of all time. And she wasn't even actively shilling for tips!


And then over to the Atomium, where two guys were rappelling down the side to do some cleaning. We had to haul a bit due to all the lost time on the tram, which didn't make my parents terribly happy. But then they got a bit of a break while I did my work, and they subsequently went over to the Horta house for a visit (senior discount) and then to the Wednesday market for strawberries, using a detailed map I had drawn them of the neighborhood since I lost my good visitor's map the day before on the metro. As I had an evening conference call, I supped on ramen while Jack and my parents found a new neighborhood gem.

Jack took Thursday off to make up for the holiday earlier in the week. To break up the monotony of having fantastic coffee and delicious croissants every morning, we went out for breakfast at a nearby spot. Jack and I had coffee and croissants, naturally, while my mom had goat cheese on bread and my dad had an omelet. We saw one of Jack's colleagues walking to work outside the window, which would have proved something, surely, if my parents had seen him as well. I bravely tried the Sirop de Liege on a slice of bread, and it turns out that it's quite tasty--like apple butter but a bit sweeter and finer-textured. Could this be the European condiment I decide I can't live without, purchasing it at outrageous prices at specialty shops in the US? The coffee was good, but naturally not as good as the hotel's.

We spent some time in the art museum (senior discount), the parents and chilluns visiting the old and new sections, respectively. My mom was impressed by the young age of the children being exposed to the art on class field trips, and the earnestness of the docents helping them understand what they were seeing. She was also wowed by the carpeting in the ancient art section, which she referred to as suede-like.

Because Jack felt they hadn't really experienced many of the highlights of the Belgian cuisine to the fullest extent, we stopped by the Chapel Church for frites with mayo. Unfortunately they don't serve them in the paper cone there; creating the cones is a masterful art that is quite mesmerizing to watch, and half the fun of getting fries. My mom snapped some photos of us noshing away with our tiny plastic forks. We then visited the church, which is where one of the Brueghel ("pronounced BROY-gull," my dad says sagely, for he remembers this random fact from an art history class he took in college) clan had a hasty wedding. Subsequently we went to the junk market at Place Jeu de Balle, and then for another break at a sit-down waffle place.

They then bought some chocolates for the folks back home, and we took the metro to the Parc du Cinquantenaire, in a last ditch effort to cram in some culture on their remaining afternoon. We recently discovered that the arch had a viewing platform on the top that was open to the public. Unfortunately the museum through which you access the stairs was closing for the day, so we had to make do with a visit to the park grounds. A walk through some other areas in the European Quarter readied us for dinner, so we made our way back downtown to go to the beer restaurant. We had the same waiter as always, but this time we let him talk us into the aperitif of white beer with kir in it, which was pleasantly refreshing (and, as promised by the French waiter, "it will not give you a 'angover.") The table next to ours was full of Americans as well, and they desperately wanted our opinion on the other restaurants they had made reservations at, none of which we had heard of. I had some really good meatballs. That place might be touristy, but they create out some worthwhile dishes.

We stopped a final time at the Grand Place to sip decaf in the gathering twilight at one of the restaurants there. Et voila! The trip was over. I took them to the train station the next morning for their Parisian extravaganza.

M&D, Part 1

May marked our 1-year anniversary of living in Brussels and brought us our first visitors of the year (well, late April, actually, but who's quibbling?). My parents were doing a London-Brussels-Paris tour, and we met them at the train station after they took the Chunnel across.

Our first order of business was to get them checked in at their hotel. Although it was one of the few reasonably-priced places close to our house, I had looked it up on the web prior to their arrival and some of the comments made me a bit nervous, indicating that the owner was hostile and unaccommodating. We got there, rung the bell and were let in by the proprietor. She showed my parents how to use all the keys and told them not to let anyone in, because gypsies would try to give them a sob story about having lost their keys and then gain entrance and rob the place blind. She then declared that she wouldn't show us up to the room or help us with the bags, on account of the fact that she had just had knee surgery recently. She sat on a bench in the passage, pulled up her hem and showed us an old scar that wormed its way down her knee as evidence. I'm not sure why she thought we needed help, able bodied as we were, so we weren't inconvenienced.

The stairwell was full of stained glass and knickknacks, very quaint. Their room was tiny, with not much space for anything other than the bed, but sleep is sleep. Their window overlooked a tiny garden below. I was heartened to see they had a fan in their room, as the weather had been quite warm and might be unpleasant if you didn't have a cross breeze. Before they had even unlocked the door, the phone was ringing. It was the owner, two flights below, making sure everything was to their liking. Customer service at its best.

After a light lunch we commenced wandering, visiting the Sablon, the in-town palace, and an outdoor exhibit of aerial photos taken around the world. Before we knew it, it was dinnertime so we took them to our favorite moules-frites place. I had mine in diable sauce, which was good but difficult to sop up with just mussels and fries. Jack offered me €5 to drink out of the pot, so I did. I didn't need monetary persuasion, though, so I graciously turned down the cash (which anyone in their right mind should realize is legally mine, anyway).

The next day was Sunday, and they had asked us to take us to an interesting church service. Not being well-versed in the religious offerings of the area, I picked out the Notre Dame du Sablon, definitely one of the favorites for us and visitors, since there's a lot to look at. Much to our chagrin, the entire back of the church was closed for renovation, so everyone was crammed in the front, where a few rows of chairs had been set up. I had been looking forward to sitting in the waaay back, staring at some creepy gravestone entombed in the wall or some such while the priest's sonorous and unintelligible French ricocheted off the ceiling, columns, windows from every angle. After we were seated, the priest asked everyone to move closer, so he probably would've done the same if the whole church was open. The best part was the mini pipe organ they were using, which had these perfectly-formed doors to close over the pipes to muffle the sound. The organist periodically opened and closed them during the service, the hinges whining in protest.

We headed out for the Grand Place, which was overrun with scouts celebrating some kind of scouting anniversary. Having had enough of that, we took in the Mannekin and then visited a bar across the street. We strongly encouraged my mom to get the Kwak beer, which is something every tourist should be talked into, but somehow it managed to elude us in the past. Jack visited the restroom and reported back that the way there was filled with puppets. And scouts.

After lunch, we went to see some Art Nouveau stuff down by the Ixelles ponds (where I took a great spy photo of an amorous couple on the other side using my dad's huge telephoto lens) and then on to the Abbaye de la Cambre, which has some old buildings and gardens. There were more scouts. I had wandered down there by myself on a warm spring night not too long before, and was astonished to find a jazz band jamming in a courtyard. Jack was somewhat incredulous that I had witnessed this random bit of culture, but the selfsame band (who I suspect are students at the art school housed in one of the Abbaye's buildings) was playing when we went there with my parents. Vindication! We listened for a while, and as it was getting on towards dinnertime, I decided to make a foray into the Bois to visit the cafe there that I had attempted to go to several times previously (initially I couldn't find it, and then it was closed for the season). Happily, we found ourselves a nice table, enjoyed a beer, and then went out for Thai.

Every morning my parents reiterated what wonderful coffee they'd had at the hotel. The great croissants and yogurt and on and on...I was quite impressed by the spread they were offered, given that simple rolls and coffee seem to be the norm. Monday, after failing to send them off to the art museum due to its normal Monday closure, we went to the cathedral, much of which was off-limits as well because a service was starting. We visited the Galeries St. Hubert (like Parkington except nice) and then took in the Grand Place again, this time mercifully free of throngs of kids, and after a look at some of the original city walls and a too long sojourn for food, we lunched in the middle of a dust storm brought on by the drought, complete with little green bugs dropping out of the trees into everything. Monday wasn't getting a lot of popularity points. What was next? A general transit strike??

Late April-early May is when the royal greenhouses are open to the public on the grounds of the residential palace. I had been the previous year by myself, stumbling upon it by accident, but I wanted to make sure that Jack got a chance to experience it and didn't relish the prospect of going during the busy weekend days. On weekends they are open at night, for some reason.

It's strange that a place that's normally so well-guarded would let the public tramp about for a couple weeks, and in particular at night when it would be extremely easy to dash off the path into darkness when a guard's back was turned, and then live off the fat of the land (fishing in the ponds, trapping small mammals, eating fiddleheads and mushrooms and wild strawberries, finding the crop of wacky weed that the black sheep prince surely grows in a hidden spot somewhere) for a couple weeks until an opportunity to escape presented itself. The darkness also lent a hint of intrigue that wouldn't otherwise be there: no streaming sunlight on the happy plants, and the spotlights often emphasized the plants' forms while the colorful flowers receded into the background, a dramatic role reversal. It was very cool.

Afterwards we walked by the church where the royals are buried and snapped some interesting photos. We ended up going back to the church a week later to visit the royal crypt, which turned out to be an extremely plain subterranean room. No pomp or nothin'. The graveyard surrounding the church is much more worthwhile.

Jack and I went to Antwerp last month. The express purpose was to see an exhibit of Flemish religious art from back in the day. We never made it to the museum, deciding instead to wander the streets gawking at stuff, as per usual. It was a really nice day and I just couldn't see us spending the time indoors shuffling from one painting to the next.

We had lunch at a restaurant that had rescued parts of Horta's Art Nouveau building Maison du Peuple, which was located in Brussels and torn down in the '60s to be replaced with an unremarkable office building. Other parts of the building have been incorporated into a tram stop in Brussels, and the rest is probably quietly rusting away somewhere.

Later we spent some time hanging out in the main square, where there's a statue/fountain of a guy who had just slain a giant. This has to do with the legend of the city's founding, as the young feller kills the giant, who has been making like difficult for the citizenry, and cuts off his hand. In the statue, the guy's in mid-toss, about to chuck the hand into the river. There's water spouting from the severed wrist. On the back side of the statue, where we sat, the giant lies dead at the feet of the hero. There is water spitting out of a variety of holes in the giant's body where he had received his mortal wounds. Wouldn't it be great if they took one of those staid statues of an unknown Civil War hero on his horse, bored a few holes in it in historically accurate locations, and hooked it up to the water supply? Instant notoriety.

After visiting some churches and drinking some beer, we were ready for dinner. The place we ended up was decent, but nothing exceptional. I had the eel in green sauce, which was not as good as the eel I had in Bruges. The highlight of the meal was undoubtedly when Jack excused himself to use the bathroom after finishing his dinner. I sat there looking into the middle distance for a moment, quietly enjoying thinking about nothing, when something caught my peripheral vision. Jack's napkin had unfurled from its crumpled position and caught on fire in the candle!

Turns out, nothing hushes a room more quickly than someone waving a flaming object. I whipped the burning napkin around in the space between tables as everyone turned to stare. ("Americans are so gauche, always needing to be the center of attention," I'm sure they were all whispering.) After a couple of flaps it was no longer actively alight but still smoldering, ready to burst back into flame as soon as I stopped, so I then proceeded to pound it on the table (on my paper placemat, naturally) to extinguish the glow. Everyone then turned back to their dining companions and the normal conversational hum resumed. The whole thing didn't last more than a few seconds, but I'm sure it was an evening's worth of entertainment in the repeated retelling for some. Who knew they'd get dinner AND a show?

The waiter came around to clear up the table, and I decided to play it cool thinking that there was a chance he wouldn't immediately toss me out for having allowed such a dangerous thing to occur. He noticed the burnt napkin and the black char marks on the placemat and said, "You had a little accident?" So I fessed up and apologized. He was very understanding and removed the offending articles. There was no evidence that anything amiss occurred by the time Jack returned to the table. I could be making this anecdote up--you'll never know.

On the train ride home, we got an upper berth so we could better watch the countryside fly by under cover of darkness. Jack was keeping an eye on two guys who were clearly plastered a few seats back from us. One of them kept speaking in a low, monotonous voice occasionally punctuated by loud gurgles. The whole thing seemed like an incident waiting to happen.

Sure enough, not long into our ride the more sober of the two came around to our seats hawking Liza Minnelli t-shirts from her 2006 tour (she had a show in Antwerp that evening). I declined to take one, and thankfully he moved on quickly without being insistent. As he went down the aisle, it became clear that he was giving them away for free. One person tried to give him some money and he seemed to indicate that the offer was breaking his heart. He ended up handing out about a dozen, including one to Jack. He was very sincere in his approach, and people began making a sport of it, asking for a second shirt or a different size to get a rise out of him. If I had been able to compose the sentence in French (we only had our Dutch dictionary with us, but everyone on the train was speaking French or, in the case of one elderly couple, Russian) I definitely would have asked everyone to hold up their shirt for a photo.

Springtime in Belgium...last week it hovered near 80 degrees for 4 days. It hasn't rained at all in weeks and weeks. This isn't at all what it was like last year, but I'm not complaining. Well, not about the weather at any rate.

While Appalachia has ramps, garlicky greens that sprout in spring and are consumed by the local community, Western Europe has ramsons, essentially the same thing. First we noticed the aroma as we crushed it underfoot in a park in one of the communes to the NW of the city, and shortly thereafter (in the park across the street) we saw an interpretive sign indicating that it was "l'ail des ours", or bear's garlic. It was blanketing the ground and crowding out any other life forms in this second park, and putting up a pleasantly biting aroma when disturbed. I didn't find out it was edible until we arrived home and I did some research. The next time we tramped around in the woods, this time to the south of the city, I made sure to bring my pocket knife for collecting purposes, because who's going to notice that the amount sufficient for pesto has gone missing, and sure enough there was none in this park.

Here's a photo of Jesus on a hilltop in the garlicky park. Jesus has taken the gold, while a towel draped on a chair receives the silver. Congrats, Son of God!

Sunday by all accounts started simple enough: walk to the park for a drink at the cafe there. So we made our way out into the world.

The first stop was by a row of carriage houses that fronted the street--fairly unusual for this area, where most garages are built into the ground floor in the front of the residence. There was one that had brown vines growing down the front of it, not yet leafed out, and cropped straight across above the entrance. The place looked for all the world like Moe from the Three Stooges. Nice.

Arriving at a side entrance to the park, I noticed that a building next door was having an open house. I thought the company might have something to do with our water service, so I convinced Jack to take a look. Sure enough, it was the company that provides water to the Brussels region.

We went in and they immediately started chattering at us and handing us folders of information. We indicated that we couldn't understand, and they got someone who spoke a healthy amount of English. They said that they were having tours of the laboratory facilities, something they did only once every five years, for their clients. Since we just pay a certain portion of the bill that our landlord receives, we never heard anything about it. We got a personalized tour by a woman who runs one of the lab stations.

It was an interesting tour, much of which was familiar to me. They seem to do testing of all the normal and some unusual constituents, such as radioactive fallout. They alternately treated us like water quality professionals, answering my detailed questions about the analyses, and like consumers, telling us that water hardness wasn't dangerous to our health. By the end, we were pretty sure that they believed that we were spies of some sort, as they were much more defensive than they should have been. We kept insisting that we just happened upon it on our way to the park, but even to me that sounds fishy. But it was nice that they were so open about what they were doing--with all the fears of terrorism and theft, I don't see any of the labs in the DC area letting the general public in. It probably helped that the lab was off-site rather than at a treatment facility.

At the end of the tour, we saw that they had converted the break room to a reception area, where tap water and coffee were available. Since we really were on our way to the park, we declined the invitation from our tour guide to sit and drink. However, the woman monitoring the reception area caught up with us on our way out and again asked if we wanted a beverage. We again said no, and she insisted that we each take a to-go bottle of delicious tap water. Our water at home is pretty gross and extremely hard, but if you go a couple streets away in either direction they get it from a different source (presumably because each of the communes originally produced their own water before it was consolidated under one roof), and so the bottled tap water was much tastier than what arrives at our faucets. Thankfully.

Then over to the park, where the groundcovers are taking advantage of the fact that the trees are still mostly dormant, producing a riot of tiny blooms. The cafe, alas, hadn't yet opened for the season, but I considered it a victory that I even found it, since the winding paths mostly circumvent the area and I visited the park several times before coming upon it. So we'll have to go back.

Exiting the park in a different location, we encountered two brick water towers. The doors at the base were open so we went in. The structures had been put out of service and repurposed as art galleries. They didn't seem to be making effective use of the space, although they could have if there had been more vertically-oriented art, but it was nice that the towers weren't torn down.

Using a hand-me-down map from 1989, I pointed us in the direction of some other green spots on the map. Observatory: closed to the public. Chateau Zeecrabbe: closed to the public, occupied by Russians. One day I'm going to find a more recent version of the same map (which is a good one because it covers more territory than most), and hopefully they'll have straightened all this out. [Update! They have not distinguished between public and private green space on the newer map!]

Verdict: Sunday was probably not stranger than Saturday, but it had its own charms.

Another weekend that practically defies explanation: 3/24-25.

Saturday we went to CERIA, a trade school (and yet so much more) that was having an open house. I wasn't sure if it was more for people considering enrolling or everyone, but there were all kinds of tempting items in the announcement, so we had to check it out. Plus I had been intrigued by it since I first came across it (as described here). What was it? Why did it look abandoned yet under renovation? It was time to find out.

Disciplines covered at some level that we saw or were mentioned:
- chocolate, candy, pastry, bread, other food making
- chemistry, including beer making, odors, and paint
- microbiology
- hotel school
- phys ed
- floral arts
- photography
- decorative food arts: swans out of vegetables, inedible sugar sculptures, full-size landscapes of fruit
- and so on.

There were young people in black suits and red ties passing out brochures at the front gate, looking like they were straight out of an MTV video from the 80s. We followed the flow of traffic into a building containing a room filled with chocolate sculptures, including this full-size depiction of Einstein in a classroom of chocolate (the theme of the open house was "Alimentary, my dear Einstein!" ["Alimentaire, mon cher Einstein!"]). Then we went up the stairs and saw some chocolate making, and were offered the meltiest chocolate ever--your fingers just oozed right on in. Very sloppy eating. After some soft-serve ice cream, marshmallows and caramels, the latter of which we bought after sampling (after all, we are not total mooches), we went on and saw some bread making. They put the dough in a machine called a roller to make...rolls. It was pretty cool: the guy pus a loaf-sized piece of dough on a plate in there and pulls down the outsized handle (like one for an olde-tyme water pump) to close it. The thing vibrates around wildly for a few seconds, and the plate comes out with a bunch of perfectly formed spheres. Rad.

There was a room where a woman was making delicate sugar hearts as if they were blown glass. There was a corridor full of breads made into crustaceans. There was a waffle stand. Jack bought a waffle and we lumbered off to the building across the street. I'm not sure how the skills taught in this one differed from the first, except that they were making more complicated foods there: quiches and cakes and tarts and such. I had a bite of tuna served on a spoon, like an amuse bouche in a fancy restaurant.

Then we wandered off the beaten path and visited the chemistry/biochemistry building. Whereas the other parts were full of people of all ages buying delicious treats, this one seemed to contain only prospective students. We went up to one lab where they offered us a bite of whipped cream mixed with coconut, and then dipped into liquid nitrogen for an instant freeze. That's lab safety for you. That particular room was dedicated to odors, and they claimed to have solved a problem that Chimay was having with off aromas in their beer. We went into the microbiology lab and the guy went through his spiel in French, which was okay since many of the techniques were familiar. Then...the Paint Lab. Man, could that kid talk. It's not that his discussion (in English) of the vagaries of paint adherence and color matching wasn't interesting, but. There. Was. No. Food.

Downstairs was the beer lab, where another talk in French netted us a glass of pilsner. Since most of the group was leaving as we were arriving, we got singled out for some extra attention with an explanation of the beer ingredients, not too difficult to understand since we knew what everything was. At the end, in French, the woman asked if we had any questions. We said no, she seemed to think this was inadequate, so I added "C'est bon," and she said "C'est bon? Bleh, bleh, bleh". I don't know what. But at least she left us alone then.

After that, we mainly wandered around and saw the rest of the campus, and saw people swimming in the pool, checked out a photo exhibit and some other decorative arts, mostly trying to avoid being talked to or at. Many of the exhibits were shutting down at this point, as it was towards the end of the day. On the way out there were two giant bins of apples, and as a parting gift, the school offered one per person. I took my one while the woman next to me filled her shopping bag.

We wandered around the southern part of Anderlecht, the commune where I've increasingly come to conclude that everything interesting takes place, and then caught the metro home. As perhaps mentioned, all the metro stops have different art in them. This one had a colorful flying craft.

Sunday: even weirder?

There was an article in the weekly English-language magazine that described a company near Brussels that had constructed some buildings to show us what the future will look like. There's a house that is clad in a skin of metal slats that helps control the internal light and temperature. Sounds like a good idea! They haven't really focused on how life will improve for the average denizen of Belgium, though. My crystal ball predicts that life will be radically different for Belgians in the future. Changes may include:

+ Window screens. This major technological advance keeps flying insects from entering the house, and in particular mosquitoes can't get in and bite your face while you sleep.

+ Extended store hours. While this revolutionary idea isn't exactly "state-of-the-art", it would allow working people to shop for groceries at their leisure rather than cramming the aisles between 7-8 in the evening, pushing through the crowds with a half-crazed gleam in their eyes. It might cause a drop in revenue for the restaurant trade (and, in fact, they might be the shadowy cabal behind this conspiracy), but if restaurants themselves offered better food and/or service (newsflash: it is not a good business plan to open a middling Italian restaurant 2 doors down from a middling Italian restaurant), perhaps even takeout or (gasp!) delivery, they'd probably be fine. [This is not to say that there aren't good restaurants here; there are plenty, but there's also a lot of really terrible ones that are probably a front for the criminal underworld. How else would they stay open and yet remain always ominously empty?]

+ Street signs. This safety innovation specifies exactly who has the right of way at intersections. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law, but ignorance also causes accidents. UPDATE: Belgium recently passed a law that cars driving the wrong way down a one-way street do NOT have the right of way when entering traffic from the right. This is a step in the right direction!

+ Clean sidewalks free of multiple tripping hazards. I don't get the old-world charm of small paving stones and dog poop. I'd rather have clean, hazard-free concrete. Press in some patterns if you like to stare at squares. They make some really nice sidewalks out of recycled tires, for those who are ecologically conscious. For those who like to stare at turds, I got nothing.

+ Hoverbikes, Star-Trekky outfits, talking computers, gelatinous super-foods in tiny packets, all the normal Epcot-y stuff.

I know this is a radical vision, and it will take time and money and perseverance to achieve, but if Belgium wishes to enter the 21st century at long last, then they're going to have to make some changes around here.

Weekend in review.
(3/3 - 3/5 was the arts fest known as BRXLBRAVO, where €10 gives you entry into dozens of places around town [many of which normally charge admission] as well as free public transport for the whole weekend.)

Friday
0. Swung by ISELP to see their photo exhibit and they weren't open yet, even though they were supposed to be.
1. Went to Place Royale and saw the giant sandwich board entitled "Dear Prudence". It was up, but all was still very quiet.
2. Down the hill to check out the genetically-modified strawberries in "Strawberry Fields", but they were absent. I thought maybe the kids in the orange hats were supposed to be representative of the strawberries, which is not that far-fetched once you get to know these European arts fests, but it soon became clear that they were merely a tour group.
3. Went to the bookstore and purchased "Germs, Guns and Steel".
4. Gave directions to 2 groups of people in French. I hope they got where they were going.
5. Went to the Asian grocery and got Assam tea for Jack and shrimp chips for me.
6. Saw the maze set up in Place St. Catherine, but didn't go in for fear that the cluster of people outside it was just waiting for someone to get up the nerve to check it out, at which point they'd pounce and get all performance-arty on them.
6. At La Centrale Electrique, viewed a wonderful exhibit of photos by African artists of all nationalities. It was large but not overwhelming and very well put together.
7. Over in St. Gilles, checked out the "moving portraits" installed on the glass of a storefront.
8. Got home in time for lunch. I was wiped out.
9. Took a break in the mid-afternoon to take a look at the architectural installation at Flagey--it appeared as if the plastic houses were still getting their finishing touches.
10. Convinced Jack to visit the plastic houses a second time in the dark, but there wasn't much more to look at.
11. Ate pizza.
12. Bed.

Saturday
1. Went to ISELP again. The exhibit was small, and the photos were behind tables in a cafe, so it was difficult to see them without getting in people's faces.
2. Back to the giant sandwich board. Now they had a bunch of mattresses piled at the bottom, and the ladder up to the top was open. People seemed to be enjoying the view from the top, but no one got up the gumption to jump while we were there.
3. The GM strawberries were hung, but sadly were not that interesting.
4. Across the street, the music museum was hosting a display of an "interactive room". It was small, interesting, and strange, but we mainly were awed by their collection of mundane and bizarre instruments (mechanical people on a player piano are shown). We didn't spend much time there, due to our punishing arts schedule for the weekend, but we'll be back.
5. Stopped by Pierre Marcolini to pick up some chocolates.
6. We almost missed "Cars and Composers" in Place Poelaert because of the distraction of the music museum, but we caught the tail end: souped-up hot rods blasting classical music. Some of the car owners had already gotten bored with the concept and had rolled up the windows so as to enjoy their own choice of tunes.
6.5 Took the tram from one stop to the next because we could.
7. Over to Molenbeek to see if we could catch up with one of the parades, but we were too late. And, by this point, starving. We wandered around for a while until our next event started.
8. Encountered a playground with all handmade equipment--the swingsets featured giant cutlery and fried eggs, one could climb on a turtle's back for a vantage point about 2 feet off the ground, and there was a hand protruding out of the ground, holding a knife, cutting a piece of cheese. If only the Belgian children realized how hilarious this was!
9. To the Molenbeek community center, which was hosting a trippy art exhibit as well as dancing and drumming demonstrations for kids. Jack was accosted by mimes while I was in the bathroom, which is apparently his greatest fear, and then on to...
10. Pancake Fest! Pancakes from around the world. Stuffed with potatoes and deep-fried from Tunisia; stretched to windowpane-thinness, refolded and pan-fried from Morocco; nearly-American from Russia (except toppings were jam, honey, concentrated sugar in a tube and/or cream); Breton crepes from France filled with cheese, greens, egg and mushrooms; dry buckwheat pancakes from Belgium topped with brown or powdered sugar; quesadillas from Mexico with homemade guacamole; and blinis. They only charged us one euro each for all this! The Russian women apparently thought Jack looked too thin, because they forced an extra one on him when he came by to borrow some cream for a Moroccan 'cake. As nothing ever, ever starts on time here, we got there a few minutes after the appointed hour and they hadn't really gotten the system down yet. But the first wave of people were the cheap young ones who typically show up at places featuring free or low-cost food. I commented to Jack afterwards that, had it been in DC, we probably would have at least recognized someone, since the same group of people seems to travel from one low-cost event to the next. Later came the people with children and others from the community who had a greater bond to the place and to each other. Everything about it was fab except the timing--we were supposed to arrive at a friend's house for dinner in another 3 hours!
11. Got on the train for the ride to Rixensart. At the second stop, the car filled with 8 year old scouts. The ones that sat at our seat were playing an elaborate version of "Pierre, Papier, Ciseaux" (rock, paper, scissors) in which one kid would show his hands first and then the other, and then the first would react in some comical fashion. Like kids everywhere, they were drawn to Jack and were showing off for his benefit. About 10 minutes into this display, the ringleader caught a bit of our conversation and discovered that we weren't speaking French. This caused a lot of sideways glances like we were some kind of talking animals. He tried to play it off as if everything was still cool, which was going fine until Jack sneezed, and the boy's eyes flew open and he stared at Jack as if he had suddenly sprouted a second head. It was pretty funny.
12. We arrived at our destination and managed to consume our meals without exploding, even though it included individual cheesecakes, birthday cake, and cloudberry and lingonberry liqueurs. The chocolates were a big hit. We kept an eye out for the lunar eclipse as we listened to old-school tunes from Cat Stevens and Sly and the Family Stone. I had promised everyone that the moon was going to be a spectacular blood-red, but apparently NASA was only predicting what it would look like in the US. We did see it, but it was just the regular color. Towards the end there was kind of a brownish cast over it, but that might have been more wishful thinking than anything else.
13. Ride home.
14. Bed.

Sunday
1. Up early with no breakfast aside from coffee to go to the Horta Pavilion to see the "Human Passions" bas-relief and listen to a concert. We got there a few minutes before the start and were surprised to discover the place wasn't packed. The sculpture was lovely and in good condition considering that it had been cooped up in the decaying building for the last hundred years. The string trio played a selection of short pieces by Bach, and it was great to sit in the front row and experience the intensity of the performers.
2. Breakfast and people-watching in the Galleries St. Hubert.
3. Visit to the 13th century archaeological excavation under the Place Royale featuring an earlier palace, road, church, and assorted other buildings. We've wanted to go there for some time, so this was a good opportunity since it was essentially free. It was interesting to see how the area had changed over time.
4. We had only visited the merest fraction of the things set up for the weekend, and only about half of the items I flagged as worth checking out, and it was still early afternoon, but we were wiped out and our brains were full of new information that needed to be processed, so it was time to call it a day.
5. Washington Post, lounging, napping in some cases.
6. Dinner.
7. Bed.

We finally met our downstairs neighbors, due to the fact that we had locked ourselves out of our apartment. What began as an idea to go pick up some beer ended with our wallets lightened by €114.

As soon as Jack closed the door to our place, he turned to me and said "Do you have your keys?" Turns out I hadn't thought to grab them. Neither had he. As we hadn't yet exited the building, we woefully made our way downstairs to see if the people below us were home. Thankfully they were, and they were kind enough to let us use their phone and impose on them for a half hour while we waited for the guy to show up. Their place is much nicer than ours, probably due to the fact that they own more than secondhand trash and Ikea furniture. I told them they were welcome to lock themselves out of their place and hang out with us at any time, but they had to give us a half hour's advance notice.

When the locksmith finally showed up, he was, naturally, a burly tattooed guy who looked like a criminal who had been convinced to go straight at some point. He pulled out the tools of his trade, sorted through them for the perfect implement, and came up with...a piece of plastic. Essentially he used a credit card to jimmy our lock open. It was actually a bit more flexible than a credit card, and he sprayed a little WD-40 on it, but the technique was the same as in the movies. We jokingly said that we'd have to try that ourselves next time we locked ourselves out, and he countered defensively that it was a special kind of plastic and we wouldn't be able to do it. Thankfully our main front door is a bit more secure.

One blustery Sunday in February we made our way over to the Antoine Wiertz museum. This guy did some of the most epic and ghoulish paintings from the 19th century as I've ever seen, many with strongly moralistic themes: a woman who went crazy with hunger and chopped up her infant for the stew pot; people shooting their own or others' heads off; a woman vainly preening in a mirror while the devil leers at her; and a monumental work entitled "Last Thoughts and Visions of a Decapitated Head". Not terribly subtle, but interesting. He was also somewhat of an eccentric, rejecting Paris as the center of artistic thought and re-envisioning it as a suburb to the new artistic capital of Brussels. He also did away with oils in many of his works in favor of a recipe of his own creation that gave his paintings a more matte appearance. While the pieces done in oil are well-preserved, the other works are slowly reverting to darkness, like Polaroids in reverse. He somehow scammed Belgian government into housing and displaying his art in perpetuity, and it's clear from the water stains on the deteriorating paintings and other signs of disrepair that they've resented the imposition ever since.

It's true what they say about waffles: indoor ones are better than outdoor ones. Why is that? If you buy one from a van or stand with no seating, they're sweet and dense. My teeth practically hum their displeasure at me. If you get one in a restaurant, they're significantly less sweet and airier. Is this because you can't keep eggs fresh in a vehicle? Is there some Guild of the Wafflers that has a code of conduct specifying the exact ingredients to be used by the different purveyors? I'll have to look more closely at the symbols on the guildhalls in the Grand Place to see if any includes the telltale cross hatch of the Wafflers. Maybe I can infiltrate their ranks by flashing their gang sign--three fingers of both hands overlapping each other at right angles--and blow the cover off their whole nefarious operation.

Things we learned in French class last week.

+LOL = MDR (mort de rire, dead of laughing)
+not to be confused with MDF (mort de froid, dead of cold)
+which might be more likely to occur if you are SDF (sans domicile fixe, homeless)

How any of this is relevant to my ability to get by in Brussels is unknown. If I could just learn the phrase "We are collectively paying you over €70 per hour for the privilege of being here so could you please stay on topic" I'd probably be all set. But until that day comes, I'll be learning things such as that a one-legged person is known as a "unijambiste".

On Saturday we went to a party where a cute 5 year old boy was doing the hair of all the women. By "doing the hair" I mean he would drag a comb through it regardless of obstacles, not very enjoyable when one has not really done a thorough job of brushing one's hair that day. At any rate, he came around to me and started combing, and was making some hairstylist's banter, consisting of "do you speak French?" I replied "a little", but it was startling that he addressed me in the familiar form, even though we had never met or spoken before. I was under the impression that that just wasn't done! Maybe for children the rules are different. How bewildering. The exchange was soon over, and after I swept the large mass of hair on the cushion behind the couch, I spent the some time with his 1.5 year old brother, who was terrified of the small dog belonging to the owners. He and I could communicate more equally, and essentially our dialogue consisted of me saying "c'est bon" everytime he started freaking out about the dog. It was very effective.

January started out full of drear, with illnesses all around. Jack even took the highly unusual step of taking a day off work to recuperate! Practically unheard of. In spite of this, we managed to start our French class and begin readjusting to life in Brussels. It was tough to get back in the groove, though: I forgot to apologize in French to people I nearly impaled with my umbrella on the street, and I got turned around three times on my walk to class on the first day. Apparently being away and speaking English for two solid weeks takes its toll.

Much to my chagrin, I purchased a 5-lb. cookbook while I was at home. I had a gift card I needed to take advantage of before I left, but didn't want to purchase anything that I might otherwise receive for Christmas. Nearly all of my cookbooks were relegated to storage to decrease the weight of the goods being shipped when we moved here, and I was desperate for some fresh ideas. The one I bought is by Bittman and contains his favorite international recipes. The very first recipe I tried in the midst of the winter blahs was for Caribbean plantain soup, which contained a mere 5 ingredients. I had to make a special trip to the African quarter to get the plantains in a small shop that seemed primarily to feature dried, smelly fish, but it was definitely worth it. The soup was hearty and satisfying, thickened by the grated plantains until it was nearly (but not quite) gelatinous, with a kick from limes and cayenne. Truly a revelation.

Weather has generally been gray and damp and in the upper 40s, but one day there was a terrible wind storm (for some reason the German meteorologists felt it was worthy of a name, "Cyril") with gusts locally up to 100 kph (and 160 kph elsewhere) that resulted in a number of deaths across the continent and some downed trees and a toppled statue in Brussels. There was little evidence of damage in our neighborhood, if you don't include my umbrella's loss of another pin (and subsequent gain of another paperclip). Since I acquired the umbrella secondhand in 1991, I try to maintain it in working condition. More recently, the weather has turned colder for the first time and we had flurries!

On a squally Saturday, we finally got around to checking out the Porte de Hal (Jack prefers the Dutch name "Halleport"), the last remaining gate to the city that comprised part of the second ring wall enclosing Brussels. It is being used as a museum, and they had an exhibit of life in rural Morocco. The artifacts were interesting, but the space itself was the real draw. There was an elaborate spiral stone staircase framed by stained glass windows (through which the photo above, showing the Atomium and Basilica in Martian-miniature, was taken) and containing statues in niches in the center . Each floor had a room with a vaulted ceiling, and bits of other demolished buildings were located throughout. The top floor was the most interesting, as it was located under the eaves and held the cafeteria, shrouded from view by curtains set up in the doorway. There were picnic tables set up under the beams and in one corner there was a rustic cabin that housed the snack bar. Most people who came up there probably reacted like we did ("Huh?") and left. Rumor has it that they'll let you up to the overlook on the roof if you ask, but we only discovered that afterwards. We also later learned that the building was renovated in the 19th century in the "Romantic Medieval" style after the city wall was demolished, which explains why, if you entered the city through the exterior door, there is no corresponding exit on the interior side, since the spiral staircase blocks your path.

To complete our Moroccan-themed day we went and saw "Babel". A mistake, naturally, due to the fact that 5 or so languages are spoken and none of them were translated into English. But we managed to get the gist. We ordered a large coke from the concession stand, thinking it would be a refreshing way to quench our thirst after walking all over tarnation, only to be reminded when we saw the girl filling up the cup that They Don't Do Ice Here. Not quite as refreshing as I had hoped. The whole movie experience reminded us once again that we really had forgotten just about everything we had learned about living here.

We've done some more walks from the book I got and located the spot where the Tsar drunkenly fell in a secluded fountain in 1717 and found the scandalous 1894 statue by Lambeau that resides, partially hidden behind shrubbery, in front of the adjoining community's town hall.

Being in the States over the holidays was nice, although a bit overwhelming what with all the running around. We managed to eat an obscene amount of delicious food while in the DC area, such as Five Guys burgers and fish & chips from the new Eamonn's in Old Town. We went with my parents to Layalina for dinner one night and supped on a fine Middle Eastern feast washed down with Syrian wine. We had a fantastic Chinese repast with MA and her family at a restaurant with a table for 15 that had a giant lazy susan upon which we passed secret notes to the aforementioned N, who was celebrating her birthday. All this food got me to the point that I was eating dinner leftovers for breakfast, since all my other eating opportunities were spoken for. My mom also made some noteworthy meals, and my dad whipped up a batch of perfect pancakes one day. What a country!

On Christmas Eve Eve we met up with some pals to catch up, drink beer, and play a game of croquet lit by candles and assorted fireworks. Team Strelsch couldn't manage to beat our host, who had the home field advantage. As a consolation prize we got a couple of books by this fellow. He claims to live the life by only teaching classes two days a week, but this website makes him look like he keeps pretty danged busy.

Sunday was supposed to be our family gift exchange day, but my brother became violently ill earlier that morning, so the remainder of us just ate brunch and Jack and I hit the road for OH to visit his family and friends. It was nice to see A at the gathering, since the last time we met up was in Rome. He had gained some weight since then, but since it was the holidays I didn't mention it.

We arrived at Jack's parents' house in time for Christmas Eve dinner, at which I made the mistake of consuming a half can of jellied cranberry sauce. Turns out that's just a wee bit too much for me.

We received a movie-themed game from Jack's parents for Christmas, and we played it with his mom, and they both beat the pants off me. Jack's parents received their 4th calendar, among other delightful surprises. Lunch was with Jack's brother W and family, and much bustle ensued over a repast of sloppy joes. We finished off the meal with some cookies from the amazing variety that Jack's mom makes every year.

The next day Jack's brother R and his family arrived, usurping our spot in the limelight (they brought some grandchildren, after all) and the guest bedroom. Dinner was Ham in a Blanket, and the annual holiday sentiment of "you ate the blanket?!?" was shared. Ah, tradition! R got some chili-flavored beer from his sister, and being that the entire family (including, apparently, some non-blood-related members) are a bunch of spice wusses, I was the only who could drink the stuff. It was no Belgian beer, but it was drinkable.

We moved over to the B&B for the night, and were greeted by the proprietor at the door, who encouraged us to come back down from our room for a nightcap of sherry and some Christmas music. We did, and to our surprise it was the owners and two of their children and their spouses. Jack and I definitely felt like outsiders as we listened to Dylan Thomas' "A Child’s Christmas in Wales", a first for us but an annual event for them. Verrry civilized, what with the sherry and the chuckling and sighing at all the appropriate points. The next night the family members were all congregated in the common room again, and seemed a little crestfallen that we didn't join them, as if we had been the only thing preventing them from rehashing their annual holiday disagreements. Tradition!

The next day we took a stroll to visit the big park in the town center where many of Jack's most colorful childhood stories took place. For some reason I had never been there, and had imagined it in a totally different location and on a smaller scale. In the lifelessness of winter, it looked pretty tame, so it was difficult to overlay the exciting adventures on the scene at hand. But it was nice to see it, and hopefully I’ll come back during a more temperate time of the year and get a better sense of it.

Jack's sister B arrived with her three kids a bit later, for a total of five youths in his parents' tiny condo for the day. It was quite a scene of mayhem. We managed to beg off for a while for a lunch appointment with J&D, who were driving back to NYC and agreed to meet us for lunch. We ended up at a pizza joint with an extreme draft problem. The pizza, however, was quite tasty. It was nice to see those guys even if it was for such a short time.

We went to the movies with B's family the next afternoon to give the grandparents some time off, and saw "The Pursuit of Happyness". It was pretty good, and although you knew the protagonist was going to come through okay in the end, it was at times difficult to see how he could possibly struggle back up to the top. The kids were all very good during the film, and I don’t know if it was because they were bored or being polite or what, as they didn't seem to enjoy the movie much (although they had picked it out). Later we went out to Belleria for wedding soup and pizza and beers in frosty mugs, all of which were enjoyable.

And then we were on the road again. Having not been able to pass up the fruit and coffee that we had already paid for at the B&B, we stopped off for second breakfasts with Jack's pals A&N in Kent on our way to Columbus. A. was working 12-hour graveyard shifts as a nurse, so by the time we arrived he was running on empty and pretty slap-happy. They took us to a fantastic place with delicious homestyle breakfasts, and I had coffee and biscuits and eggs and mashed potato pancakes and bacon...mmm. A&N had both recently finished their schoolin' and were out in the real world with new jobs and a new house. The house made me a little homesick for ours, as it was a tiny one with warm wood floors and orange paint on the walls and lots of windows. Sniff. They had a lot of cool furniture they’d gotten secondhand that gave it a retro feel, which is more than I can say for our home furnishing style, the polite term for which is "eclectic". (Our current residence is decorated with what could be not-so-euphemistically termed "recovered trash".)

We arrived in Columbus around mid-afternoon to stay with Jack's sister M's family for a couple of days. We were greeted by her and her two daughters, R, 1.5 years, and S, 4 years. S gave us the grand tour of the house and then asked if we wanted to see "the back forty", and led us out the door to check out the yard, compete with a creek running through it and evidence of deer, birds, and other wildlife. Husband D came home and joined in, occasionally calling into question our minimal French skills by speaking fairly fluently. The favorite game of the afternoon was superfast Ring Around the Rosy, in which the two girls would end up flying through the air while holding hands with me and then be delicately stacked on top of one another like cordwood made of spun sugar.

Jack's other sister MK and her family arrived for dinner and we enjoyed a pleasant meal and good conversation. D built a fire early on, so later we digested in front of the warm glow.

We decided to take in Columbus' Franklin Park Conservatory the next day with the women folk. In addition to the wide variety of interesting flora, they were featuring a glass blowing artist who made beautiful swirls of luminescent color and interspersed them with the plants. Superb.

And then we were off again, after starting the day with breakfast at the Waffle House. I got the pecan waffle with a side of grits, and the grits, I'm ashamed to say, had so much butter in them that I couldn’t finish them. I would have never guessed that such a thing was even possible.

Having some time for the drive, we decided to cut a straitish course by taking some back roads. This placed us a short hop from the Prabhupada's Palace of Gold in WV, which is some kind of focal point for Hare Krishna in the US. The guided tour of the palace cost a $6 "donation", and we didn't feel like paying it, so we checked out the grounds. Their website, which has lots of photos, says that the building was crafted by unskilled devotees. Although the building is very nice from a distance, there are large chunks of the exterior plaster that are missing upon closer inspection, giving it a dejected appearance. Plus, there was a large lattice structure covering the stairs to the building with a sign saying "DEER FENCE". Could they have come up with something that, I don’t know, fit in a little better with the overall motif of fanciness? There was a temple, living quarters, and a lake across the street. We entered the temple, removed our shoes, and watched some guys playing mystical music and sweating and dancing, as people stood around and took pictures and generally looked happy to be there. I had never seen so many Indian Hare Krishnas in one place before, and I knew that they took their religion seriously so I felt a bit intrusive. We exited, took in the sight of the two giant statues of dancing ladies by the lake, who looked like they had just executed a high five because their cricket team had won, then hit the road again.

We arrived back in Arlington on New Year's Eve evening, and spent the remaining hours of 2006 in front of the tube with a bottle of bubbly. It was nice to chill out for a while in such a peaceable fashion. I was quite disturbed to discover that Carson Daly is beginning to look a lot like Dick Clark in his younger years. Dick Clark should really just retire. He must have an airtight contract or something.

New Year’s day was Christmas Part II, so we trekked out to C&J's house again and had chili and mac & cheese and presents. A good time was had by all, even though Jerk-ass didn't seem to believe my mom's protestations that the tiny ceramic basket with the words "to a favorite daughter in law" on the side wasn't from her. It's a mystery.

And then, back to Brussels for 2007...

They do the St. Nicholas thing here on December 6th, so they start in on the holiday happenings pretty early (but not TOO early—there’s an official start date, and some retailer got in trouble for jumping the gun this past year) and everything emerges fully realized rather than crescendoing up to a frenzy. The lights and decorations and market were installed by the 1st, so the next day we went downtown to check things out. We encountered the following:

- Booths selling everything from churros to handmade jewelry to cell phones
- A section of the market devoted to the 2011 cultural capital of Europe, Tallinn, complete with Estonian mulled wine, Estonian gifts, and an Estonian brass band playing carols
- Ice skating rink, Ferris wheel (a view overlooking the rink at left), two carousels and an inflatable, monster-shaped house of horrors where you entered through the mouth and exited near where you’d expect to find the cloaca
- Nativity scene with live animals and fake people
- Light show on the Grand Place that projected “snow” onto the buildings using mirror balls while simultaneously changing the color of the buildings’ faces
- Mannekin Pis dressed as Pere Noel
- Young Americans wherever we turned

There was also a parade of people in green windbreakers through town, which at first we thought was the Santa Claus parade that had been scheduled for the previous day. The large number of police cars and the armored police vehicle parked nearby told a different story, though, and we figured out that it had something to do with the closure of the local VW plant that had been announced. (Under intense pressure, they backed off the closure later.)

As we ate rather divine Vietnamese food for lunch, we watched a guy across the street painting the long stretch of plate-glass windows of an Irish bar with holiday words and images, and each time I glanced over he had done all his detailed artistry in one color and was on to the next. Before we knew it, he was gone. Man, did he work fast.

Another festive event was the holiday party given by Jack’s Finnish coworker, featuring mulled wine with almonds and raisins steeped in it and a variety of traditional and non-traditional sweets. People were strangely interested in what we had done for Thanksgiving--I have no idea what holidays are celebrated in other countries, so it was odd that they knew about this one. There was an Actual Belgian at this party, so I took the opportunity to ask about the holidays, and he said that December 6th was for kids, so I guess the more general celebration is on Christmas.

Not so enjoyable were the crowds in the stores. We did our best to stay in the small, homegrown shops, but unfortunately that’s where everyone else wanted to be, too. As holiday shopping usually makes me hate everything, I think I did a pretty good job of maintaining a positive attitude. It didn’t hurt that my family changed their gift giving scheme this year to something a bit more manageable. The only item that I regret not snapping up was a set of nesting dolls featuring Vladimir Putin, which I spotted at a Ukrainian and/or Russian general store. When I decided to go back and get it a few days later, it was gone. I got a bottle of vodka shaped like Attilla the Hun (or somebody) instead.

Jack participated in a teambuilding thing for work one night that involved wine tasting and preparing Thai food. The idea was to pit two teams against one another and see which was the best at doing the assigned tasks. Jack felt it was unstructured and chaotic, and he didn’t learn much about either cooking or wine, although he did get to brown some chicken pieces and chop onions. The other team, somewhat arbitrarily, won the competition. This cooking school has a huge storefront on a major thoroughfare in our area, and I think it’s only a matter of time before they go belly up if his experience is at all representative of how they do business.

What does your Domino's Four Cheese pizza have on it? We recently received their flyer in our mailbox, and in addition to the two special pizzas, which were turkey and salmon, they had their regular assortment. In the Classics portion of the menu, they listed the Four Cheese, which consists of Swiss, goat, mozzarella, and blue.

Although they apparently deliver, at €17.50 for a large, I think I'm gonna pass. There's better and cheaper pizza to be had nearby. Plus they probably wouldn't understand my order if I called.

November.

As previously mentioned, we went to Ikea and bought some furniture, including a desk for my office. The desk is egg-shaped and yolk-colored, an immense and cheerful improvement over the brokeback box. I celebrated its existence by creating this lovely diorama of a kid who throws like a girl playing catch with his sky-frog. As you can see, it is also a desk organizer. Handy!

J came and stayed with us for a few days in mid-November. She’s a world class traveler due to her employment at the State Department, so she knows how to get through security, can get a business class seat at the government’s expense, and has less need for companions than most visitors. This last bit was fortunate, since I got sick AGAIN while she was here, and she took day trips to Ghent and Bruges. We did, however, manage to have some memorable experiences.

J had been in town for a conference and therefore had already perused most of the downtown tourist attractions, a nice break from the routine for me. We took some time to visit the EU quarter, with the immense government buildings, triumphal arch, and parks with autumnal trees. I had earlier spied a Tunisian-Columbian restaurant in the neighborhood, so I convinced her that we should check it out. We peeked in the windows and there was a couple in there at one of the tables, giving us confidence that there might be hope for it. We entered and...the couple was the waitress and the cook. I confirmed (in French) that they were serving lunch, and the waitress handed us menus and took our drink order. After perusing the menu we decided on a South American appetizer and North African entrees. I attempted to order, only to be told that the empanadas “are finished”. All the appetizers were finished. Everything on the menu was finished! There were paper notes taped to the windows indicating the existence of tagines, so we asked about those. After consulting with the cook in the back she returned to inform us that they were available. They were not, however, very good, particularly considering our incredible tagine experience of a few months back. When she brought the check, the price was €4 more than stated in the window. I pointed out the discrepancy, and she said it was some kind of Sunday special that was no longer valid. While we were pulling out money and grumbling, she went over to one of the pieces of paper and cut out the price, leaving the rest taped up. A very unsatisfactory start to J’s visit!

The rest of the week was somewhat hazy due to my ailment, but we did have dinner from the Italian delicatessen down the street one night, which was very tasty. We also went to a Korean/Japanese restaurant and to a Brazilian place for nourishing feijoada (festooned with plastic palm trees!), both of which were delicious. J enjoyed her sojourns into the countryside, taking the transit systems all by her lonesome, and surviving mostly on beer and waffles during the day.

Saturday I was feeling a bit better, and what else can one do when recovering from an illness than go on a bender? I did it for the antioxidants. Actually, it was just an amazing coincidence that our favorite brewery was having their semi-annual open brewing day, in which they’re actually producing the beer, and that a wine shop near our place was having a tasting.

The tour featured a wiseacre guide and an extremely large group of people who spoke something other than French or Dutch, so the default was English. At one point I was standing next to a guy with a Virginia Tech t-shirt. They were boiling the wort when we walked through, so we didn’t get a chance to see the cooling liquid being inoculated by airborne yeasts. We did, however, see them loading large, steaming vats of the used grain into trucks for shipment to farms.

After having lunch with more beer and wandering around some less touristy spots, we made our way back to our neighborhood for the wine tasting. This was no ordinary wine tasting, though: this was like an open bar with as many 1/2-ounce beverages as you could consume, including some potent liqueurs with up to 40% alcohol. The first room we went in had a tasting quiz (Jack won) and some interesting Eastern European wines, but as we moved onward the pourers gave up the charade and didn’t tell us anything about the beverages. There were some young American women, clearly out on a spree, that made me cringe, so we left without ever even getting to the end of the long, long list. For that I donated €5 to Amnesty International? Bah!

The next day J departed and I celebrated my birthday. There’s no denying I’m in my mid-30s at this point. I had to come to terms with the fact that, by pretty much every measure, I am considered a full-fledged non-young adult, more depressing than the actual number. Now I have to start acting all mature and stuff. That’s, like, so not me. Jack gave me some book-related things and concert tickets to see Yo La Tengo the following week. We went and saw “Scoop” at the multiplex out by the Atomium, with a side of Stella Artois and popcorn.

The next day we went out for dinner with N, who was in town briefly in the midst of her tour of the Low Countries and Germany. The restaurant we went to was one that Jack had been to for lunch before, and he swore by their lunch specials. Their dinner options weren’t all that interesting, though, and so we got pizza and pasta. For an appetizer we ordered some kind of chicken in sauce, which bore an uncanny resemblance to chicken wings. How can they eat such an undignified dish in Europe and still think they’re better than us? It’s a mystery. N regaled us with her trip tales, including the scary friend she made at the laundromat, and told us about the new job she was taking in the NC (like the OC, but the other coast). We wish her the best!

Yo La Tengo rocked. What more can I say?

Oh yeah. For some reason the tour was called “Psychedelica Now!” even though there wasn’t much evidence of psychedelic-ness among the 5 bands, particularly not YLT. So what if they like to take uncharted excursions in the land of heavy guitars for several minutes? That doesn’t make them “far out”. During the intermission between bands we saw Georgia and Ira sitting at a booth, unattended, and I wanted to practice my French on them (with hilarious results, naturally) but apparently Jack doesn’t like talking to famous people. There was a Scottish guy in front of us during their performance who seemed extremely eager to identify other English-speakers so he could chat with them about how awesome everything was. He roped some English-speaking Spaniards into discussing the acoustics of the place. Somehow, even though he turned around to glance our way about half a dozen times, he never got up the gumption to talk to us, perhaps because he didn’t hear us actually speaking and decided that we might be Belgian or something.

Two interesting things about the venue: first, there was a 20-cent deposit for the plastic cups, which resulted in just about everyone cleaning up after themselves rather than throwing trash on the floor. The cups were that rigid, breakable type of plastic, and were washed and reused. A genius idea, if you ask me. Second, we learned that the concert hall (Ancienne Belgique) is Flanders’ place for big acts in the capital. The one we had been to before, the Botanique, is Wallonia’s venue. Neither headliner had anything to do with Belgium (NJ and TX, respectively), so I’m not sure how they determine who goes where. Do the artists have to write and essay describing their affinity for the region? I have a suspicion that the opening acts may have hailed from the sponsoring region, but I can’t recall who preceded Jolie Holland so I can’t be sure.

As mentioned in the previous post, we went out to Lake Genval one weekend and hit the Water and Fountain Museum, which had this creepy mannequin of an African woman with a baby on her back standing in the middle of a sand pit, and the woman would swivel her head and the baby would silently slide up her back like a spider. I have no idea what they had to do with the water situation in Africa. There were a variety of experiments relating to water movement designed by professors at the local university, many of which were choked with the crystalline residue of the minerals from the water’s hardness, causing them not to work properly, if at all. The best was a bunch of tennis balls with a hole cut into each one and attached to a rope. If you pulled them through the pipe fast enough they’d make a great thwocking noise and splash water all over.

One of the things I got with the gift certificate Jack gave me was a book of walking tours of Brussels. It’s got a ton of tidbits on Brussels through the ages, so you can determine whether the place where you’re standing was bombed in the 1500s or where Charlotte Bronte’s character was stoned on opium in Villette or where Brueghel the Younger got married under duress. We’ve done a couple of walks so far and made some interesting discoveries, including this statue of a guy who appears to be using a crucifix as a steering mechanism. Definitely a winner.

Jack had to work on Thanksgiving, as we were saving up vacation time for the big December trip home. We briefly considered going to one of the many restaurants that cater to people like us by serving turkey and the trimmings, including the American bar around the corner that was going to be showing NFL games, but in the end we just prepared an enormous salad with all kinds of good stuff in it and called it a night. It was a little sad knowing that everyone was having a four-day weekend and hanging out with loved ones at home, even though the salad was particularly festive.

Festive, though, would be a good way to describe December in Brussels...

Various things not related to visitors.

1. It was a big day for Jack and me. We had finally gotten the letter saying that our ID cards were ready. So that morning, we went over to the commune's office and picked them up. It was very exciting given that we had started the process before we even left the states: getting married, sending fingerprints off to the FBI and birth certificates off to our originating states to get notarized. We submitted the voluminous paperwork in May, and here it was mid-October when the documentation was finally coming through. They didn't even fake us out, either--the guy at the window had our cards (heavyweight paper: Jack's a cream-colored tri-fold and mine a orangesicle-y bi-fold) ready for us to sign. We were glad to finally be done with it, although somewhat disappointed to discover that Jack's was only valid until next May, at which point it would need to be renewed. Argh.

2. Encountering art in this city is no big chore; like music, the hefty taxes we pay go to various demonstrations of stuff, many of which are further subsidized by companies.
a. Art in A Garage.
We assumed it would kind of have that Art-O-Matic rogue art flavor, given the setting, but it was nine artists, one per floor, who had created installation pieces, including this pink dripped latex foam. And the garage was still open, so you had to dodge moving vehicles to get to some of them. The best part, undoubtedly, was the view from the top, which was several stories above the original skyline.
b. Truc-Troc. We encountered this one by accident, when we saw a parade of people walking by with free stuff in their hands. We followed them to the building they were trickling out and were told that the art in the temporary gallery was ours for the taking if we "proposed" something to the artist that he or she was willing to exchange for. They set us loose with a pad of sticky notes. The mood of the crowd was rather gleeful, and people were proposing all kinds of stuff, most of it better than what we had to offer (cases of champagne, weekend use of second homes, etc.). The art was of varying quality, but there were some very nice pieces. Jack suggested I offer up the recently-acquired head of Jesus in exchange for an ethereal street scene. "Je propose le tete du Jesus." Another piece had a magazine that was exploded outward at the viewer: "Je propose une nouveau magazine." We left with free coffee drinks in our bellies and free chocolates in our pockets.
c. Bozar's India Festival. The exhibit on the religious artifacts of India had a different theme every weekend, and we chose to go when they were having a bazaar to scout for possible Christmas presents. I didn't enjoy the exhibit itself much at all, as it was dry as unbuttered toast, but the expo featured puppets, Bollywood dancing, henna tattoos, a cricket workshop, Indian goods and food. It smelled fantastic. We got a wrap with lentils and seasoned rice and a piece of gulab jamun. Mmmm. There was also, inside the museum, a live elephant. The children were ecstatic.
d. Freebie. Jack discovered a lovely impressionistic painting on a board that of a bilious green nude being hovered over by an ominously reptilian character someone put out for the trash. Can you imagine? It's now over the fireplace in the living room.

3. Wanderings can be somewhat limited when you're reliant on public transportation, but we took an outing to visit the sculpture garden at the University on the edge of the metro system some time ago. The pieces were not very numerous or interesting, for the most part, but there was a garden of herbal remedies bordering it on one side and a double-wide old-school Pizza Hut on another. The former was empty and in a state of late fall decline, but the latter was absolutely packed on that Sunday. It looked like they had table service and wine and everything--definitely worth checking out at some point. We decided to head for another section of the transportation system to catch a tram back, and we found a shopping mall, a house with a thatched roof, the store that carries English and American products, an old-school mill converted to a fancy restaurant, natural watercourses, unnatural ponds, birds, trees...pretty much a little of everything, depending primarily on what side of the street you were on. A few weeks later we went out to visit Lake Genval, just a short regional train ride away. This was a former resort community with a variety of grand old houses around the lake, reminding me a bit of a miniature Lake George. We took in the Water and Fountain Museum, which showed us how they moved water through the ages. Thankfully, they had an old pipe made from a bored-out tree trunk--no water-related museum is complete without one. We had lunch in town at the restaurant La Clé where I found the following scrawled in ballpoint pen on the bathroom stall door: "Je t'aime mon lapin" (I love my rabbit).

4. The Balmoral Milk Bar is a "50s-Style diner", and is nearly always packed. We wandered by one day when there were a few free tables and so we stopped in. We each ordered some of the most expensive hamburgers ever (more than €10), but they were enormous. Jack's was so filled with stuff that he gave up handling it after a couple of bites and attacked it with knife and fork (which is probably more European, anyway). They were quite tasty, although I was unable to finish mine due to the size. Jack also got an almond milkshake, which seemed to have been thickened with not only ice cream but also ground almonds and was a delicious treat. I got a Dr. Pepper, because how often do you see Dr. Pepper in Belgium? There was a large mural on one wall with James Dean doing his normal smoldering gaze thing. He was being pursued by a train, for some reason.

5. We took the opportunity of the lull in visitors to take a trip out to Ikea, where we bought some desperately-needed additional storage and a desk to complete my fabulous office-nook (I had previously [for 5 months] been using a corrugated box). Jack took some convincing, but we were really out of places to put stuff, and I had gone earlier in the week to scope things out, so I knew we could keep prices reasonable. What I didn't know was how to get the stuff home. We researched the options before purchasing and learned there was a system called Taxis Verts that would deliver your stuff (and you, if necessary) to your house. A pleasant gentleman who spoke good English explained how it worked. So we bolstered ourselves on €1 hotdogs (terrible, again) and made our purchases. Once we got back to the Taxis Verts stand there were a number of people waiting around for someone to tell them what to do. One of the trucks pulled up and people thronged the guy when he came in. He didn't speak any English. He was writing people's name on a form and I was pretty desperate not to lose my place in line, so I let him know as best I could that I was waiting as well. I got the message across somehow, since he wrote down my destination and my name, "Annette". He left and another guy showed up, and I indicated that I was me, and we loaded the stuff in the truck and headed out down the road. It was the most circuitous route imaginable, during the afternoon rush hour, but he got us home in amazingly short order. Now I have a lovely spot from which I type, complete with a decorative homemade organizer, and all I need is a lamp and a taller chair to make it perfect. But I'm getting there.