Sunday we woke up refreshed and ready to hit the pavement. We decided that we'd cut across the city in a northwesterly semicircle with our end destination being the train station. The first order of business was, of course, breakfast. We ended up at a famous old place down the street called La Cupole (the cupola), which had a large dome in the center of the building which presumably let in light until they built an office building over top of it. It was still nice in its old-school way, with a bunch of art on the walls and photos of it back in the 50s when all the cool cats would come there to while away the evenings and dance. We sat in the glassed-in patio and surveyed the street scene (most notably a trio consisting of an older gentleman, his somewhat younger employee and a old woman whose function I couldn't discern on the first floor roof of the restaurant across the street: the younger guy seemed to be cleaning the roof while the older man supervised and occasionally pitched in while the woman watched and would occasionally pick up things I couldn't see and then put them down). The breakfast was marvelous: 2 croissants, one roll, a little pitcher that held 3 cups of good coffee, and a glass of freshly squeezed juice. We were equally impressed by the bathrooms downstairs, which had a mechanism set into the floor to activate the tap with your foot.

Restoration complete, we started walking. We took some interesting-looking back streets in the general direction we were going and were surprised that every few minutes or so we'd encounter a nun going the opposite way. There must've been a convent nearby, and there was a church letting out its congregation as we went past. One nun was heading in the same direction as us so we kept an eye on her for a while. I was particularly interested in discovering which shop windows she peered into, but she was either singularly focused on getting where she was going or she was praying or both, because her eyes never strayed from her path.

We were going to take a quick look at the Hotel des Invalides, which was used for recuperating soldiers back in the day but was now a military museum, but we were so taken with the gold dome that we had to investigate more closely. It appeared to be partially surrounded by a moat, had cannons of every shape and size, the gardens featured some ruby-stemmed swiss chard to good effect, and there were a variety of sculptural pieces on the edifice. Of particular note were one of two horses cuddling (which I think symbolizes that they were both killed in a war) and the window frames of the exterior forming stone representations of various types of armor.

Next stop was the sewer museum, which ended up being one of the highlights of the trip. It was a mere four euros, and we spent probably an hour or so down there, wandering through the mains. Interestingly, there was actual sewage flowing underneath our feet, although it was suspiciously free of debris. Perhaps the good people of Paris heed the recommendations about what you shouldn't flush, unlike some American populations I could mention (I'm talking to you, DC). Also I gather that the technology for the garbage disposal hasn't yet crossed the pond, so there's a giant waste stream they're not adding.

It was an interesting system for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that the water mains traversed the same tunnels. Perhaps they don't get water main breaks there, but that type of combined use is a no-no at home. Sanitation in general doesn't seem to be a big a deal in Europe as at home anyway (witness the many times your sandwich is prepared by the same person who takes your money--no plastic gloves here), so perhaps they decided that the odds were against contamination and it wasn't worth spending the money digging up and re-laying all the pipes. Also interesting was the fact that the workers devised a number of creative ways of cleaning the accumulated silt out of the bottoms of the largest pipes. Additionally, they've been having tours of the system since the late 1800s. I wouldn't have thought there'd be much of a draw for this sort of thing back then due to general Victorian squeamishness, but they had photos of people sitting in the types of cars on tracks found in mines and amusement parks, so I guess it was viewed as a technological marvel rather than something gross. The signs said that the Seine has now been returned to its original "pristine" condition, but I wouldn't have guessed it from the murkiness of the water in the river. Plus, if you have to pump air into the water so that there's enough oxygen in there to support aquatic life, I'd say you still have a ways to go. They weren't doing that back in the Pliocene age, I assure you.

But enough about me...after ascending to the street level again, we crossed the river to the Right Bank and started to climb towards the Arc de Triomphe. We again ran into the problem of the city being bigger than we thought, and by the time we got there it was getting on towards midafternoon. The arch wasn't much to look at next to Brussels' own arch, and it was surrounded by a traffic circle, so we decided to press ahead. We unintentionally chose a street that was nearly abandoned because it was almost all office buildings, and we were beginning to despair ever seeing another eating establishment when it began to threaten rain, so we cut over to the metro just as the skies let loose. As we braved the downpour to get to the station to avoid being totally soaked, the storm subsided. Naturally.

We took the metro to the train station. The two weren't right next to each other, but there was some kind of back way to get from one to the other. We opted to go by the streets to scout out a place to eat. We walked a gauntlet of delicious smelling Indian foods, but we didn't see anyplace that had takeout aside from a few bakery-type places, and I wanted something more filling than a couple of samosas. There were a number of markets selling mangoes, and I regret not wanting to spend the time out how to buy a few (there were no bags, but also no people to assist) because Indian mangoes are the best. Someday I'll find Little India in Brussels...

We eventually arrived at a pita and pizza joint across the street from the station. There were well-stuffed calzones in the window, so we decided to get those. As we waited to order it occurred to me that they might not be calzones at all but rather misshapen, puffed-up pitas (much like the delicious ones at Perfect Pita in Old Town), and that's what they were. So we got gyros instead, and the puffy pitas were just large enough so they could fit some fries in them, which they are unable to do in Brussels. We went over to the station to eat and wait.

After eating we checked out the architecture and the views from various spots. One woman was dressed in a traditional African print dress with a pattern of spark plugs radiating outwards on the back of the skirt. It was sensational. Then it was time to bid Paris adieu and head back across the border. The train was periodically bombarded with short but fierce storms, so we picked a good time to leave. We watched a guy who was clearly scamming the system because he'd switch seats everytime the rightful occupant came along, and the woman who had most likely been to a wedding over the weekend if her hennaed feet were any indication.

All in all, Paris didn't do that much for me. But I've already been told that I HAVE to go back, so I guess I will at some point, maybe when another cheap train fare crosses my path.

Since we hadn't gone anywhere in, like, a month, and O and J were kind enough to give us their Eurail pass that they hadn't used up, we decided to head down to Paris to see what there was to see. Jack had Friday off because Tuesday had been a holiday and he switched it. So Friday we went to the train station to reserve our places and then to a lunch spot across the way called Raconte-moi des Salades (which I think means "tell me some salads"). This is a weekday lunch-only spinoff of a popular restaurant in our neighborhood, so we went there to try their recommended cuisine and to avoid having to make reservations at the closer place.

The salads were the type that I like to make: huge, with a lot of stuff going on. Mine had prosciutto, hard-boiled egg, and mushrooms stuffed with cheese and baked. Jack's had cured duck breast on it, among other things. They were both fantastic, and a great way to start the day given that we had skipped breakfast for some reason. Sitting outside, we got to watch the vignettes play out in the plaza in front of the restaurant: the homeless-looking guy with the tiny puppy who inexplicably started shouting at the sky, the business types trying to decide where to eat, the train passengers loitering about while waiting for their ship to come in, the young family with an infant all dressed in olive shirts of different intensities, the police having a chat with a woman who had been shooed off by our waiter moments before for begging among the patrons. We spent the rest of the day running errands and the like. Jack finally got a haircut after much trepidation, and although it was the most expensive one he's ever gotten (20 euros), I think it was also one of the best since despite the language barrier he was able to communicate to the guy not to take too much off--usually the people he goes to at home ignore him when he says this. Plus the barber is this old-school dude who has a single chair in a tiny storefront, so I'm hoping it's the beginning of a beautiful relationship. (I had gotten my first haircut the day before, paying 33 euros, or 8 euros above the stated price, 4 because I had "long hair" and 4 because I had agreed to the conditioner after shampooing. Not the most expensive haircut I've ever gotten, but it was up there.)

Early Saturday we got up, had some breakfast and made our way down the hill to catch our train. The first difference between the Thalys service and the regular train is that there was an inclined moving walkway up to the platform. Why they thought that was necessary instead of a regular escalator I have no idea. We had reserved seats and were glad to find that, in spite of the fact that the numbers were non-sequential, we were sitting across from each other. The whole process was fraught with mild worry that we would be caught out, forced to pay a fine as well as the full fare on the spot. However, the ticket purchasing had gone smoothly, the agent not even looking inside the little sleeve to verify that we did indeed have a valid Eurail pass in there for the country we were in--we could have had an expired pass or one only good in the Ukraine or something else stapled in there altogether. The next hurdle was to not wither under the scrutiny of the train conductor--would he require proof that we were, in fact, the O and J listed on the pass? He just punched our tickets and moved on, not bothering to look at the pass; he didn't even look to see whether we had validated it for the date of our travel, which is a crucial part of the Eurail process, or else you could basically use the pass for unlimited travel instead of the 5 trips you've paid for.

That being over, we spent the rest of the trip watching the countryside roll by. I was told by an English guy living here that, as we approached the border with France, we would be switching from the left side of the track to the right via some kind of underpass so that we could be on the European standard, but that never happened, perhaps because the line was a dedicated route and there was no reason to switch. Or maybe he had no idea what he was talking about.

We rolled into Gare du Nord about an hour and a half after departing. Our first order of business was to wander in the general direction of our hotel while attempting to do such things as eat lunch and buy tea. This eventually lead us by some opera house where we poked our heads in to see the beautifully appointed lobby, then over to Place Vendome to see the column made of melted-down cannons, then eventually over to Place Madeline where the Fauchon was located. The square contained what appeared to be the Pantheon, but turned out to be a church. We went to Fauchon, where we wandered around looking at all the tempting high-end goods (and at one point got treated to a thin graham cracker enrobed in dark chocolate--mmm), got some tea and szechuan peppercorns and then went across the street for lunch.

Lunch was a fairly standard Parisian affair for a touristy area: rude waiter, overpriced food at the wrong temperature, and a loud and chatty Texan a few tables down. It began to sprinkle as we sat outside, and the awning couldn't sufficiently protect Jack from the weather. After eating we checked out the church in the square, which was notable for the fact that it had no natural light aside from three tiny domed skylights. I couldn't envision spending time in there before the advent of electricity, and also couldn't imagine why they would have done a recessed fresco high above the altar that would have been all but impossible to illuminate back in the day.

Once quit of the square we made for the Seine so we could follow it for a bit and then cross to the Left Bank. We took the path alongside the water, which was 10-15 feet below the surrounding area, making the monuments on the Right Bank invisible to us. A nice variety of houseboats sat moored to the side, and in contrast to those in Amsterdam they looked like they could actually be used as boats. Eventually we wandered back up to street level, crossed the river and made the long slog down a dull street to our hotel.

It being August, quite a number of shops were closed and it appeared that a lot of the residents were on vacation, because there was not a lot of vitality on the streets. But who knows--maybe that's the way Paris is. It's no sleepy hamlet, though: we quickly learned that everything is further away than it appears on the map, in contrast to Brussels, where practically everything is within a mile or so of where you are. Eventually we got to our hotel, which was directly above the Montparnasse-Bienvenue metro stop and across from that highrise building that sticks out like a sore thumb.

After some recharging, we hit the streets again, this time heading for Notre Dame and its famous towers. First, though, we went to the Montparnasse cemetery, a lovely spot that contained some big names and some very original grave markers. One was comprised of a bunch of pitted stones cemented together to look like a large craggy rock, although this effect could only be achieved from a distance and through very squinty eyes since there was no top coat on it to give it a uniform appearance and so it just looked like rocks in cement. Baudelaire seemed to be the most popular, more so than Sartre or Sontag, as demonstrated by the number of pebbles and notes and used metro tickets on his grave. Given that it was constantly threatening to rain, we scoped out the place for nice spots to take shelter should we need to. I could easily pass myself off as a mourner of some variety, as long as I'm distraught enough to be burbling incomprehensibly (in a French accent, naturally), and in a downpour who's going to look that closely?

Back in the land of the living, we stopped for a beer and then for croissants in which by some diabolical sorcery the baker managed to cram twice as much buttery goodness as normal. We checked out the real Pantheon as we passed by. We crossed over onto the Ile de la Cite and Jack stole me a mimosa flower from the park behind the church. Once we got to the front of Notre Dame and noted the length of the lines to go up into the towers and into the church itself, we quickly lost interest. We'll just have to come back during the winter at some point.

We checked out Pont Neuf to see if any of the faces carved into it resembled us, but they were all grimacing so it was hard to tell. Later, using an outdated Washington Post article as a guide, we selected a restaurant in the Latin Quarter for dinner. It was a nice spot: a pedestrian street full of restaurants and people, but not enough to make it noisy or crowded. The weather having cooled off a bit, and having brought an inadequate number of layers, we sat in the restaurant's open front window rather than on the street itself. We surveyed the street scene and listened to the roving musicians from our perch. The restaurant featured cuisine from the Southwest of France, and we both got the fixed price 3-course menu. Our waitress spoke decent English, but for some reason my brain couldn't take that much switching back and forth so I continued to address her in bad French while she replied in English. My salad featured what I think was supposed to be pate, but it smelled exactly like Fancy Feast and didn't taste like anything special, so hid most of it under a piece of lettuce. My lamb was good, but not terribly exciting. Jack decided his rump steak was not a cut of meat he'd order again, given its toughness. All in all, a rather pedestrian meal but a good time hanging out. The wine was good, too.

We decided to end the evening with a visit to the Eiffel Tower, so we got to the metro just in time to see a young woman about to be married being paraded around by her friends in order to, as far as I could tell by the large poster around her neck, be kissed by strangers. (We had seen something similar at the Parthenon earlier: a young man being dragged around, his friends announcing his impending marriage and, inexplicably, lifting up his t-shirt to expose his chest. If these two getting married to each other, then I must say their friends are made for one another.) After procuring tickets (it was somewhat of an ordeal since they didn't take paper money and we didn't have change, so we now have a 2.80 charge on the credit card), we hopped on the train and made our way across town.

I'm sure you all are familiar with the Eiffel Tower so I will forgo a description. There were a bunch of lines snaking up to the ticket booths, where they were charging some god awful amount to go up to the top. It was rather like being at an amusement park in high summer--motorized carriages that would occasionally take on a handful of people, causing the people in line to shuffle forward a few feet. There was even a sign telling us how long it would be from a certain point in line, and one of those sandwich boards with a funny pelican in a hat saying "you must be this tall to enter -->" (fortunately the line was a couple inches off the ground--probably trying to prevent birds and preemies from going in ). They were also nice enough to tell us, in English, that the 3rd level could close unexpectedly at any time. Surely they wouldn't do this unless there were some strong winds or something, right? Wrong. They probably close it when they're just tired of it being open, or someone gives them guff so they want to punish those waiting in line, or whatever. Needless to say it shut down after we had been in line for about 15 minutes, so we left.

Jack had the misfortune of taking an interest in how much the light-up Eiffel Towers were being hawked for, and was told 8 euros. As he walked off, the guy went down to 6, and Jack then reluctantly offered 5, to which he was told there was no way. So he walked off again and, lo and behold, it turns out the guy was willing to accept 5 after all. Go figure. Somehow the thing he was given wasn't as cool as the ones they were carrying around, but that should surprise no one. I'll probably give it to my parents so they can add it to their collection of light-up monuments, which currently consists of one lonely item.

We returned to the hotel by way of the UNESCO building, where they had a large illuminated sphere. As we were pondering that, we looked back in the direction we came and the Eiffel Tower was sparkling all over, as if it had just come out of the dryer and was full of crackly staticyness that needed to be discharged. It was quite a sight to behold, and behold we did.

When we got back we were fortunate enough to catch the weekly Daily Show that's shown on CNN International and features the best bits from the previous days, and then settled in for a deep sleep that was aided by a good bed and total exhaustion from lots of walking. The periodic vibrations of the trains passing 3 floors below were faint and somehow comforting.

The Carpet of Flowers, an event that occurs every other year in the main square and consists of lots of begonias placed in a pattern on the ground, opened this past Saturday. This is a big-time tourist event, with busloads of flower lovers coming from all over. Since Saturday was cool and drizzly, we figured it would be a good time to check it out as most people would opt for a day of better weather. As per usual we went by a back way, visiting a huge 4-storey flea market with hugely inflated prices, among other things. Eventually we ended up at the square and, by this time, it had grown sunny and pleasant. Naturally the crowds accompanied the better weather. I was somewhat disappointed because it was less a carpet of flowers and more a carpet of grass, woodchips and flowers. There were also dahlias in addition to the much-ballyhooed begonias. Sure, the latter flower's color palette is somewhat limited, but I say work within the confines of your chosen medium. We decided to save the 3 euro trip up the town hall's tower for another day when the crowds had thinned and the carpet was gone.

Nominally in search of someplace to get refreshment, we ended up going to Place St. Gery and resting a bit there. This Place, rather than being an open-air plaza, contained an enclosed market building, complete with historical exhibits, pamphlets about optimizing energy conservation in the home, and a large obelisk rescued from a church being torn down. After chilling for a while, we looked at one of the exhibits that described the area's history. The one thing that particularly caught our eye in the scale models from modern day was a section of the Senne River, heretofore believed by us to be completely paved over as it passed through the city, that was open to the air. And it was right around the corner!

After ascertaining its location with some certainty, we lit out for the spot. It was in a courtyard of some buildings, for once easily accessible from the street. We got there and...discovered it was fake. It was in the spot where the Senne used to flow, but it was a shallow pond in the shape of a channelized river, capped at each end. There were a couple of large koi floating languidly around along with a brood of their young-uns. Argh! I just don't get it. I honestly don't. Sure, they enclosed them back when flooding and the threat of disease were problematic, but don't they have a handle on that now?

So, we headed back out towards the bar, which I knew was right around there somewhere. We ended up at a carnival midway. It was very exciting to be in the midst of what I am probably incorrectly assuming is an American tradition: the overwhelming smells of fried food, carneys trying to get your money (although no calling to the crowd--they're so demure here), and various rides featuring characters ripped off from your favorite animated films. There was a great one for little kids on a track that went around in an oval, illustrated with the entire cast of every Disney movie, that had rubber balls suspended from the ceiling at eye level. The very young children had to watch out for them as they came around the track, as the big bully-ish kid who really shouldn't have been on the ride had bashed them to swing as far out as possible. Their non-litigiousness makes this possible. God bless 'em. The also had a "ride" in which real ponies were lashed to a central hub and trotted around in a tight circle, their noses forced into the behinds of the horses in front of them. It was pretty horrifying.

We managed to resist the terrible allure of the fried treats (no funnel cake, but they did have donuts and candied grapes on a stick) and continue our meandering way. We eventually found ourselves at a spot by the elevator that takes you from one section of town to another that had a good amount of outdoor seating, so we landed there. Every five minutes or so another tour group would arrive, either coming from or going to either the elevator or the Carpet of Flowers, and would pause for a minute in the square. I think I ended up in a few photos of the elevator. Given our successful overcoming of the midway food, I decided to try the sweet crepe. Many restaurants carry them but I had never had a strong desire for them, not being much in the way of a dessert eater. But it was midafternoon and a long way till dinner, and I got the one with the apples, so it wasn't all bad. Although the crepe was pretty good, I was disturbed by the amount of oil between the crepe and the plate, which was a bit of a turnoff. The thing almost slid off onto the pavement when the waitress put the plate down, and would have if weren't for some World Cup-class goal save action by the three of us; it was a wonder we didn't end up butting heads. I wouldn't mind trying them elsewhere at some distant future point.

That night we heaved ourselves out of our evening stupor to go to Flagey for a movie. Flagey is an art-deco building that once housed a radio station which has been converted into an arts center. We had actually been inside once before, to see what I had translated as an exhibit of outsider art but in reality was just one guy's stuff, homemade guns made out of reclaimed materials. The small display was pretty disappointing compared to Baltimore's AVAM. (We've got a line on an outsider museum up in Antwerp or Gent that is in an old sanitarium, so we'll see some good crazy stuff yet.) But they have musical events and a movie theater where they show films organized around some theme that I can never discern. Most of the current ones were Italian classics (with subtitles in French and Dutch, naturally), but they had one film called "The Traveler Girl" in English. The synopsis said that the film was about an Irish Traveler family. Not knowing much about the Traveler population residing in the UK, my only real concern was that they would all talk like Brad Pitt did when he was playing one of them in the movie "Snatch", in which his dialogue was largely incomprehensible. It turns out only one person spoke in a thick accent, and it sounded like Pitt did a pretty good job of replicating it. The movie was an extremely bleak portrait of a family living on the margins of society and the 10 year old daughter's attempts to cope. Depressing, but good. Amazingly, all the lead roles of the cast are played by non-actors from the Traveler community, and further research indicates the family with 10 kids that the star comes from really does live on the verge of a road in a trailer, and has to go across the street buzzing with semis to get water from a tap.

Sunday, after breakfasting on my failed yet still tasty attempt at an omelet, we went to the English-language Sunday-open bookstore in the center of town. Our goal was to get stuff related to our vigorous travel agenda consisting of a trip to Rome and the Amalfi coast, perhaps with a quick jaunt down to Paris beforehand. Having procured an embarrassing amount of books and other resources, we left to see what other kind of nonsense we could find ourselves in.

Our first stop was the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. This is the church where the royals all get married, and it was appropriately large and gothic. My favorite part is that they were having choir practice up on the altar, and the sound was what you want from a church choir: clear, pure voices, singing in a different language, resonating spectacularly throughout the building. If I ever go to church, I'm going there.

Exiting the church we discovered that the National Bank of Belgium had free entry to their money museum for July and August. Good thing, too, because I don't think they would have been able to attract any of the eight people who were in there otherwise. Perhaps it's popular with school groups. At any rate, we didn't get much out of it (partially because of the language barrier and partially because of the boring nature of the exhibits) except the price of coal was higher in the 1860s than in the 1890s. Go figure. Jack said the bathroom was primo, though.

As per usual we had to stop for refreshment, this time happening across A La Mort Subite, a small cafe with beers of the same name. We sat outside, had our beers and croque madames, and enjoyed watching a nice cross-section of Brussels life pass by us.

Shout-out to C for the package and photos of baby A!

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.

weather.

10:30 a.m. Friday. Raining and 60 degrees. It's been cool and periodically precipitating all week. I'm in a sweater and thinking about soup. Just so you know.

Sunday was threatening rain, so we decided to stick close to home and visit some sites that were relatively close together, allowing us to duck into various places in the event of an outburst. We walked over to the Etangs, where the Saturday-Sunday market is held. This market has a good variety of items: produce, meats, cheeses, wines, homemade yogurt, jams, honey, bread. Additionally there's a number of vendors of plants and cut flowers and, surprisingly, one gentleman selling mattresses. We got a waffle from the waffle guy, and he poked two holes in the side and inserted two chocolate tubes, which melted on contact with the hot waffle. I had a tiny piece, just to see if it was better than the last. It was about the same. The addition of chocolate was a bit over the top, I was reliably informed. They did, however, provide us an insight into the creation of what J referred to as "pig snouts", blunt-ended croissants with two choclatey tunnels burrowed in them.

We then went to the Ixelles museum. There were two things I knew about the well-regarded art museum: (1) had a complete set of Toulouse-Lautrec posters and (2) it was free. The latter notion was immediately dispelled, as it is only free when they don't have a temporary exhibition, in this case one featuring a not-very-interesting architect. Fortunately the woman at the desk sized us up as students and gave us a discount. Because it was a relatively large museum with a good number of interesting pieces, it took a while longer for us to discover that the entire Toulouse-Lautrec collection was also missing. Since the temporary exhibit wasn't all that, I might have to go back when it's free and find out what they put in the large main gallery when nothing else is going on--probably let cats roam around in there.

The museum was unusual in that it had a staff that was not very interested in being inside the building. J had to leave her backpack with the coatcheck guy yet he was nowhere to be found when it came time to retrieve it. She had to go behind the counter and get it herself, for which she left a 50 cent tip. The woman at the admission counter where the gift shop was located had also abandoned her post, and Jack had to go get her from outside to buy a poster. There also wasn't the level of security to be found at most museums, and we figured (after O touched a ceramic figurine affixed to the wall will no ill effects) that we could at least get the art off the wall before the staff made their way through the building to see what had set off the alarm. With their lackadaisical attitude, though, we might just have been able to make off with a Magritte.

Lunchtime arrived and we made our way back towards our house in the direction of a pita place so they could try this Brussels staple. There's a place not too far from us that has table service and back patio with a number of figurines perched in nooks and crannies, both somewhat unusual for a pita joint. We found a table outside and ordered our selections, Jack and J both choosing the gyro sandwich, which came in a split-open loaf of french bread. O and I got our selections with durum (wrapped in a tortilla-like flatbread) and pili-pili sauce. It started to rain as we began eating our meals, so we high-tailed it into the glassed-in porch (suitable for receptions and baptisms, the menu informed us) to finish. The food was all good, and the fries, which were nestled inside our breads, were tasty. Jack thought the sandwich had an unsatisfactory bread-to-filling ratio, so it seems like the durum is the way to go (the pita breads here are tiny and don't come with fries so have already been discarded as a viable option). The pili-pili sauce was a little spicy and a little creamy, but it went well with my falafel. I really need to do a more rigorous survey of all the sauces to appropriately compare and contrast.

Later that day we went and saw Superman, which met our expectations. This was preceded by a light dinner which, for O, was a salami sandwich laced with Oreos with chocolate filling, for which he received one euro.

Monday O and J went out for more clothes shopping and I attempted to catch up on grocery shopping and some work. O came back alone, claiming to have eaten J in a fit of ravenous hunger. It was later revealed that she was, in fact, still alive, and they had gone to the Quick Burger for lunch. This fast food restaurant is more prevalent than any other in Brussels (although there still aren't that many), but we haven't been. They said it was better than the food at American chains.

For dinner that night we had a feast of salmon, big salad, and bread at home. O baked the salmon with lemon and sea salt, a pretty plain rendition but I was impressed nonetheless, having never seen him cook before. To me he was still our paperboy from 1989. How on earth had he acquired such skills in the intervening 17 years? I hadn't gotten fish at the grocery before and was pleased with the freshness and flavor. O managed to polish off a half loaf of the bread all by himself, stating that a meal without that much starch is no meal at all.

Tuesday, another day of intermittent showers, was their last before heading home. I wanted them to try the Breton savory crepes and designed our itinerary so we'd arrive in the vicinity of the restaurant around lunchtime. First we went to the Royal Palace, which is open to the public for a few weeks in the summer following the Belgian national holiday. The palace is where the king conducts most of his business, although the family lives in the house out by the Atomium. It is most notable for being a fairly dull-looking building taking up some prime real estate in the center of the city. We entered and, having been relieved of our bags, cameras and umbrellas, alighted the staircase to the grand rooms.

Virtually the entire place was empty of furniture, with portraits of various nobles hanging on the walls and the occasional side chair. The throne room was completely bare aside from an area rug. Some of the items that I managed to find interest in under these difficult circumstances were: the parquet floors, elaborately inlaid; a Louis XVI chair owned by Louis XVI; and portraits of Leopold II as a child, before he ascended the throne and depleted the wealth of the Congo. The thing that one couldn't help but find interesting (except perhaps if you were blind) in these barely-furnished rooms was "Heaven of Delight" by Jan Fabre, an installation in which most of the ceiling of one room was covered in millions of jewel beetle carapaces. Commissioned by the queen a couple years back (probably after thinking to herself, "hey, this place really sucks!"), it is amazing. Due to its reliance on iridescence photos don't do it justice. I haven't seen any good photos of it on the web anyhow, although there are sites with other, smaller works of his in this style. You all will just have to come here in August and see it for yourselves.

Then it was off to the Breton crepes. I swear we had the same waitress as we did in March when Jack and I stumbled across the tiny restaurant, but she pretended not to remember me so I couldn't impress her with my marginally-improved French. My crepe had a mound of delicious sauteed onions on it with gorgonzola cheese and pieces of thick-sliced bacon. Magnifique! I had a coffee for dessert so I could give the speculoos cookie that always accompanies it to J so she could try it and determine whether to buy some as gifts.

We then headed over to the Parc du Cinquantenaire so I could show them Brussels' triumphal arch. The buildings flanking either side house museums, and during the summer weekends the side of one building is used for a drive-in movie screen. The arch was appropriately majestic, and we ambled towards it while keeping an eye on the sky. It started spitting after we passed under it to the other side, so we went in the auto museum to check out the lofty building interior and get out of the wet. At 6 euros we couldn't summon the requisite interest to actually pay for it, but we did go to the gift shop. I got a lovely postcard.

Before going home we hit the Neuhaus and Marcolini chocolate shops so they could get obscene quantities of sweets for all their pals. What good people. I also got the Marcolini sampler, which contained "at least" 33 pieces of deliciousness (or at least 31; it turns out the earl grey tea flavor is pretty odd). J had already bought 4 jars of fancy mayonnaise to take back, but I think that was mostly for personal consumption on the flight home.

That evening we attempted to go to what was billed as the best ramen noodle restaurant outside of Japan by one anonymous reviewer, but they were closed for their summer holidays. We ended up at a hipper, smokier place where I got the tuna steak followed by lemon meringue pie. The pie was not really up to my standards, as the meringue had a gritty texture like the sugar hadn't completely dissolved before the egg whites set. The lemon custard was nice and tart, though, and the crust was okay. O and J got a milkshake (actually two), and it turns out that they don't actually use ice cream in them, so that they're just frothy milk with some kind of flavored syrup. Not sure if this was a one-off deal, but it definitely requires further investigation.

Wednesday morning they got up at the crack of dawn (pretty early, considering when the sun rises here), caught the tram and began the long journey home. It was good to see people and speak English for long stretches of time. I asked them to fill out a comment card and drop it in the mail to us so we could further improve our services to our guests, but they declined. They did, however, follow up rather rapidly with a large box of assorted stuff from Trader Joe's, for which we are eternally grateful. Hopefully this indicates that they had a good time as well.

Last Friday, the 28th, O. and J. (hereafter referred to as "O" and "J" for the sake of expediency) arrived. There was some confusion at the train station, because I gave them directions and then later told them I'd meet them. O had intermittent email access that came with a sandwich on the Spanish island he was staying at, but he didn't get the last message so they ended up taking the metro without my assistance (but with my excellent directions). After waiting at the station for about a half hour, I took the metro myself and ended up getting home a couple minutes before them, even though we took the same route save the last turn.

After brief pleasantries, Jack, who was home for lunch, went back to work and the rest of us went to eat. It was a pretty basic meal, O and I having sandwiches and J getting some sort of pasta-y thing, but I did get to show off my broken French a bit and it was fun having both of them and the waitress/cook/owner person deferring to me for translation. We went back to the house so they could avail themselves of our fine laundry facilities, and then, having been warned that it was the last week of the sales and most likely going to be a madhouse, we went out to look for shoes for O.

It started pouring as we made our way back home empty-handed, aside from a package of paper napkins I had scored for 69 cents. We ducked into a pedestrian underpass which was far too stinky to keep us there for long and then slogged it back the rest of the way. Soon after we arrived home it stopped, of course.

Later we went to dinner at De Ultieme Hallucinatie, which is known for its Belgian cooking and its art nouveau interior. We ate on their patio, which had a very large statue of a bull and a wall made to look as if it was the interior of a cave. There wasn't much art nouveau-y about the patio, but it certainly was unusual. I had bangers and mash and Jack had the opportunity to order his steak "a point", or medium, which we had learned the previous day. We made our way back home via the regular touristic attractions, the Grand Place and Mannekin Pis.

Saturday, after a stop at the train station to reserve their seats for their return trip to Paris to catch their flight, we went over to the large outdoor junk market in Marolles. After astonishing them with the types of things people will try to sell, we settled in for lunch at a nearby spot to nourish us for the day's remaining travels. Jack finally got an opportunity to try the croque madame sandwich, differentiated from the croque monsieur by the addition of a fried egg. Placed on top of the sandwich, outside of the bread.

J kept mentioning how cute the trams were, so we decided to take one out to the end of the line to visit the Atomium. Although it wasn't as hot as my first tram ride, it was in the 80s that day and the sun beating on the ventilation-challenged cars made them rethink their desire to use them as a primary mode of transport. There was a bawling baby a few seats away, and we concluded that it was because her mother had dressed her inappropriately for the weather in a sweater.

We finally got to the Atomium and everyone marveled at its shiny newness. Although the admission charge was 9 euros and the line was long, the thought of going up and down and through the tubes to the balls, much like a giant version of a hamster maze, and seeing the views was pretty exciting. Also they have the fastest elevator in Belgium. And the girls on staff all wear '50s-era-atomic-age-inspired circle skirts. And the ticket has an icon indicating visitors to watch out for pickpockets, but it looks like the guy in the drawing is stealing his neighbor's kidney. All for just 9 euros!

We took the elevator to the top. Our guide explained to us in French how impressive it all was, but the four of us mostly focused on the glass ceiling above our heads, watching all the elevator innards rush by. The Atomium is right next to Mini-Europe, which has scale models of various European sites as well as a high admission charge. Fortunately there was a good view of the park from the top ball, so I feel can rightfully check that off the list. There was a restaurant at the top so we bought some drinks and hung out up in the sky for a while.

We took the elevator back down having only seen the one ball, which was a bit disappointing. Where were the exhibits described in the pamphlet? The children's area? The hotel, conference center and day spa? The Anti-atomium, exactly the same structure but buried 200 feet underground to protect the royal family in the event of a nuclear strike? While waiting in line earlier we noticed that a few people, after a discussion with the staff person guarding it, were using an escalator that seemed to go somewhere else within the structure. When she was distracted by helping someone else, we took our chance and got on the escalator. Finally, our ticket to unsupervised freedom! In reality, it was just the rest of the tour we had not yet seen, leading to the exhibits (including one black light art exhibit--hamsters love that kind of stuff) and the other areas. These balls were less densely populated, suggesting that many people paid the admission fee to go up to the top, came back down and left. There were more nice views, this time not as high off the ground, and some cool rocking chairs in the children's area as well as an unguarded restroom (the one in the top ball had an attendant). We loitered, trying to stretch our money as far as we could, and then left. We walked back past Leopold II's monument to himself and saw the royal residence.

We took the metro to an area that had a variety of restaurants and ended up eating at a North African one. I had a wonderful tagine with chicken and figs in some kind of honey sauce, to which one added the very al dente couscous. The sauce was absorbed by the couscous, which softened as it soaked up all the deliciousness. It really hit the spot. J ordered an iced tea, and out came a can of Lipton that was carbonated! We discovered this to be the norm over the next few days.

Following breakfast on Sunday, we went to engage in our vacation tradition: doing something underground. We probably would have gotten around to this already had not everything been securely locked up, I assume as a defense against jerks who spoil it for the rest of us. This time it was a network of tunnels (casemates) built into the side of a fingerlike projection of land, called the Bock, that overlooked the valley below. Because the tunnels had openings on both sides, there were great views of the Grund district and Alzette valley. Also it was nice and cool deep within the rock.

Fortunately, the maintenance of the site seemed to be of a low caliber, so there was some element of excitement when going down a 300 year old slippery spiral staircase built into the rock, descending into darkness because of burnt out bulbs, and when climbing out over precipices because bars protecting us were missing. Hey--we take it where we can get it. Apparently the tunnels were used a number of times throughout history, most recently during WWII. One field marshal had three rooms to himself during a siege in the late 18th century: study, antechamber and bedroom, each with an exterior hole overlooking the valley. On the one hand, good for him for sticking to his guns about taking up half the liveable space in there (most of the tunnels dead-ended in blind walls, and those with views were mostly for cannons). On the other, he was still living in a cave. The 17 km network below the city was maxed out when 35,000 inhabitants occupied the tunnels during WWII shelling. I wish they had put in some period furniture in there so we could see how they made a go of it. I guess you do what you have to in times like those.

We decided to take the climate-controlled train during the hottest part of the day, so after a pasta lunch we lit out for the station. They had an interesting art installation in the plaza in front of the station: 6 artists making sculptures in full view of the curious public. Unfortunately, it being the day of rest and all, they weren't there. But we did get to see their works in progress.

The train was waiting for us at the station when we arrived. We hopped on and enjoyed a peaceful ride home. After getting our tickets stamped, I discovered that the envelope they put the tickets in contained the phrase "have a nice trip" in several languages. In German it is apparently "gute fahrt". And here I was thinking that Germans were all just rude, constantly commenting on their gas passing.

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I urge you all to lay your hands on some buffalo milk mozzarella if you can, a perfectly ripe tomato and some fresh basil and make yourself a summer treat. Buffalo milk mozzarella is delicious and the regular version pales in comparison. Eat in moderation, however, since it has something like twice the fat of regular. Two Amys restaurant in DC puts it on their pizzas, which are excellent.

Next up, our first American visitors...

In the morning, having awakened unrefreshed due to the constant stream of cars with diesel engines puttering by our window all night, I was very happy to receive coffee with a pot of steamed milk that came with a breakfast of rolls. Since we had taken the high road the previous day, this time we were starting in the valley outside of the fortified walls and visiting some of the other sights ringing the city.

We took the street our hotel was on, which had quieted down from the night before, to the entry point to one of the parks. On a bridge overlooking the narrow Petrusse, there was parkland in one direction and a desolate concrete channel framed by high walls in the other. Since the map showed the headwaters of the Petrusse nearby, we decided to follow the concrete ditch up a ways to see if we could find it.

Aside from the fact that a concrete channel isn't a very vibrant habitat for life, it was obvious pretty quickly that there were some serious problems here. Even before the odor of untreated wastewater reached us, there was a clearly demarcated dead zone in which no aquatic life could be sustained and everything was grey. We continued up until we found the source, above which was a vibrant, scummy green. It was like the Streeter-Phelps model being demonstrated before me, in real time. If only one of my professors had been there! This pattern was repeated several times as we continued up. Once the Petrusse entered an inky black tunnel and we had gone far beyond the point on the map where the river was supposed to start, we turned around and headed downstream. Arriving at our starting point, we noticed a couple people occupying a fold-out couch under the bridge. The guy who was awake turned at the sound of our voice, clearly not expecting any other inhabitants at that hour of the day. Jack wondered whether he was going to put the bed away and arrange the cushions on the sofa after his companion woke up.

After passing under the bridge we entered the verdant parkland, and the bridges we had crossed the day before soared overhead. There was, inexplicably, a row of private homes and their vegetable gardens in an enclave within the park. There were various other access points that would take you up the hillside into town consisting of stairways cut into the rock. Most had overlooks for interesting vantage points halfway between the valley floor and the top of the walls. There were also a number of doors leading to tunnels in the rock. One such door had a small port in it at about eye level, and cool air was rushing out of it, cold enough to make the door itself sweat with condensation. I paused there for a bit, blasting my forehead and drying out my eyes. So nice.

Rounding another curve, we came across the recreational area, which included a mini-golf course occupied solely by adults who seemed to have brought special shoes and their own clubs with them, a miniature train track (sans train), a tiny church built into the cliffside, and an automatic toilet. Jack took advantage of the latter, and when he put his 50 cents in and the door shut behind him, I wasn't sure I would see him again. Fortunately he came out in one piece, but he said he wouldn't recommend it for the ladies.

Once the Petrusse flows into the much more natural-looking Alzette, one enters the Grund district of town, built into the valley. Another charming area, with buildings constructed just short of the river's walls so that you could sit at a cafe overlooking the river and see the neighbor's window box arrangement of red geraniums reflected in the water below. Did we do this? No, because at the only occupied table at that particular place there was a guy who was at the table next to us at the corner pub the evening before, and that's just too weird. We went to the Oscar Wilde and had the local lager and panini sandwiches with a side of fries with curry sauce, hot and delicious.

Afterwards we climbed up the hillside across from the old city to go visit some towers. At the top we discovered that they were inaccessible, and that the whole hilltop was occupied by a giant old folks' compound surrounded by a high wall. It looked like a great place to spend one's infirm years, and I might have considered it were I not already planning to retire to the Philippines.

We left that particular scenic hilltop and as we began descending back into the valley it began to rain chats et chiens. We took shelter on what appeared to be the back porch of one of the houses cut into the hillside. Luckily no one came out to shoo us away, although a cat seemed to be incredibly miffed that we had stolen his dry spot, and he retreated to a small evergreen across the way. After the rain let up and we started off again we found out that in addition to being a back porch, it was also the roof of the home below.

The area surrounding the main portion of the city is a bunch of natural promontories formed by the action of the rivers, and many of them are not connected to one another so you're forced to do a lot of hill climbing to get from one spot to another. We were interested in seeing 'les trois glands' (the three acorns), which was another defensive fortification up the hill that had the good fortune of a silly name, causing us to go there. The first and second points of entry up the hillside were dead ends, the latter one being the correct road but for some reason crossing the train tracks at grade, with no continuation on the other side, so there was a lot of confusion and back-tracking. The third route we tried also looked bad, as it ended in a dirt trail halfway up the hill, but we forged ahead. The trail seemed to be separated from where we wanted to go by a deep ravine, but we were now in a densely forested natural area, and it was nice in spite of its apparent wrongness. We ended at another road at the top of the hill, turned in the direction of the glands, followed some paper arrows posted on cyclone fencing and...ended up at the brand-new I.M. Pei modern art museum (MUDAM), which they had constructed right behind the glands.

Although somewhat disappointing in that we still hadn't gotten a glimpse of the glands themselves, we did go in the museum due primarily to the fact that we were there, it looked like a cool building, and they had the air conditioning going. There was very little art in it, although the pieces they had were all gigantic and took up like 2 to a room. Jack suspected that they had spent all of their budget on the building and didn't have anything left over for art. The two I found most interesting were one with hundreds of different-colored bottles cascading down from a skylight, and one in which someone had constructed an elaborate church interior with x-rays standing in for stained glass windows. We wandered around the whole thing in a short period of time, and consulted the map desperately to see if we had missed anything. There was, apparently, art in rooms that didn't seem to have any art, for example one in which there were 4 benches and the sound of trickling water, but I'm just a simpleton when it comes to art. After spotting the glands through the windows (the landscaping was still a work in progress and therefore the fortifications were inaccessible), we left.

We decided that after taking in the 'three glands' it would be appropriate to view the 'Bon Maladies' which were another set of old fortifications overlooking the valley below. We cut back through the woods, and after passing a tranquil looking picnic table that was next to some stone steps that lead into a sadly gated-off tunnel into the hill, we came to the spot. The Good Illnesses were completely abandoned and we marveled that we had such as spot to ourselves with a spectacular view of the valley below and the old city on the other side.

We passed back through the valley and deigned to enter the city proper to have a beer at the first bar we came across, called Cuba Libre. Our foray into the city ended in disappointment after determining that we had arrived minutes too late to get an ice cream at a place the guidebook recommended. So we retreated back into a more conventional park (benches, fountains and winding paths) that completed our circuit around the city.

We took a back route to our hotel, passing a hospital on the way. There were numerous patients and visitors hanging around outside, including one gentleman who sat on a stoop opposite, smoking with his IV drip. A few steps beyond we came across our dinner destination: a Tibetan restaurant.

We briefly stopped back at the hotel to rest up and discuss other possible evening options, but I was intrigued by the Tibetan place so that's where we ended up. I got the cheese with chili sauce dish, which would be more aptly named the cheese with cheese sauce dish. It was good, but a little over-taxing in the lactose department, and not at all spicy. All in all, a recommended cuisine--the appetizers and Jack's main dish were all delightful. The restaurant had some electrical issues, and the lights on the ceiling would periodically shut off, leaving us bathed in warm candlelight.

Having had a long day already, we then went back to the hotel to doze fitfully again. For some reason it never occurred to us to change rooms, although that probably would have been wise.

Thursday we went to Rick’s American Café with the other students after class. We all got to relax and didn’t have to attempt to speak to each other in broken French. The Irish woman revealed that she never had a Guinness until she became an adult, since that was the beer kids associate with fathers skipping church to go to the pub and other bad habits. She also said that it was what the monks would drink during Lent when they were “fasting”. Personally, I think that’s bending the rules a bit too far, what with all the calories in a pint. Plus having Guinness on an empty stomach will probably make you tipsy pretty quick, and not given to thoughts of godliness. For her benefit, we four Americans (and in particular the three Ohioans) tried not to spend too much time reminiscing about the Old Country, but I’m not sure how successful we were. On the way home we saw four prostitutes loitering on the main thoroughfare. I was surprised I hadn't seen any before, but we aren't usually in that area at that time of the evening. I looked forward to the confusion on my teacher's face when I told her "Je vois quatre femmes de la nuit".

Friday it was off to sunny Luxembourg City, in the heart of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg! We got the train schedule on-line and got to the station within 10 minutes of departure of our chosen train and…we couldn’t use the automatic ticket machine for international service. We had to wait in line to speak to an actual person, although the end result was the same: told the dude what we wanted and he gave it to us. He didn’t ask us for ID or anything. So then we had to wait an hour for the next train, which wasn’t so bad since it allowed us to stock up on reading material and water.

The train was about 1/2 full after it passed through the 5 Brussels stations. One guy, apparently knowing that they wouldn’t check tickets until we left the city, was hustling for money, and exited before we got out of town. As soon as we were out of the capital region and into Wallonia, they dropped the Dutch translation when making announcements. Many of the travelers were members of children’s groups of various ages that were going off on adventures, the young ones singing and shouting camp anthems to pass the time while the older ones practiced being nonchalant in close proximity to the opposite sex. There was a group of teens that was forced to occupy a train car’s entryway as they were tethered together by a length red and white plastic chain. At first they were pretty adamant about keeping the chain on, so they all had to crouch near the floor each time someone wanted pass over it. Later I noticed that one young woman kept slipping out of her bracelet so she wouldn’t have to change position to accommodate passers by. Lazy cuss.

The countryside was scenic, with fields of crops and rolling foothills thick with trees, interspersed with the occasional picturesque little town. One passenger kept distracting me from my window gazing by periodically getting out of her seat and begging for food. The first ones she hit up were a family of Italians who offered her a Capri Sun-type drink. She accepted it, went back to her seat behind them, and then couldn’t figure out how to open it. She had to enlist the assistance of the guy across from her. A few minutes later she got up again and asked the chained-together kids for something without success. She sat back down. A few minutes later she came up to us. I had three apricots in a plastic bag on the seat between us so I offered her one, she accepted, she went and sat back down. A few minutes later she got up again and approached us a second time! I told her we needed the last two apricots for ourselves. She sat back down. A few minutes later she went to beg from someone else and returned empty-handed. She sat back down. A few minutes later…it went on like this until she finally exited the train near the Belgian border.

Once the last stop in Belgium had passed, the conductor came around to ensure that we had all planned on going on to Luxembourg (I think that’s what he was asking at any rate). Then the train crossed the border, and after a time we rolled into a gritty industrial area (including a warehouse for a company called Maryland, specializing in tobacco products), and we were there. I didn’t even have a chance to pack my bag and rushed off the train with several items flapping about me so I wouldn’t accidentally get stuck riding back.

The hotel was near the train station so we went there to check in first. We stayed at the Italia, which had been recommended by the guidebooks as a cheap and interesting place to stay, as it had once been a private apartment building. The restaurant was also supposed to be good. Our room had two single beds and faced the street. An accordion door led to the small bath, although they managed to fit a bidet in there in spite of the size. It was pretty airless in the room, which did not bode well for sleeping given the temperatures in the upper 80s.

Armed with a handful of brochures from the front desk, we made our way into the center of the city. No one really ever has much to say about Luxembourg aside from comments on its size (and occasional cracks at its title as a “Grand Duchy”). The capital is pretty tiny as well, but it really is somewhat attractive, especially coming from an urban landscape that doesn’t have much to offer in terms of nearby green space to break up the swaths of pavement. The fortified old city sits on a rise at the confluence of two rivers that have dug deep gorges around it over time. Although I don’t know whether it was always thus, the city planners have decided to keep much of this surrounding area as parkland, creating a verdant ring around a lot of the city. Old stone bridges with soaring arches connect the area we were staying in with the inner district. One of the major surprises was the Petrusse River. On the map it looks about half as wide as the Alzette. In reality, it is a pencil-thin stream in a concrete channel for as much of its length as we could see--definitely not shown to scale.

After stopping for lunch at a health and wellness store that featured yoga videos and a menu of 5 items (including, fortunately, tasty gazpacho [many places were no longer serving lunch at 3:30]) and watching people across the square exit city hall after having been married, we went on a walking tour of the city. The main square featured a variety of restaurants, including McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Chi-Chis, among other, lesser stars. There were also a handful of people offering their services, including a Victorian-looking woman you could get your picture taken with and two portraitists. A band consisting of high-school-age kids was playing such popular tunes as the theme from the James Bond movies in a gazebo.

We walked along the city walls overlooking the landscape below. We wandered in and out of cool churches (where the first photo was taken). We whiffed the most odoriferous eternal flame ever--what were they using as fuel, we wondered, rotten vegetables? We marveled at the houses below that were built into the cliff face, which we imagine not only saves the cost of having to build a back wall, but also keeps the indoor climate temperate year-round. Some of the back yards were accessible from the second floor or roof, because the rocks receded away from the building and there was space to create a small flat patch of land to garden in. The views reminded me of nothing so much as a 5,000-piece puzzle. Eventually, after having walked around for a good while, we stopped for a beer at a small corner bar with outside tables. We agreed that a good time was being had by all, and after a decent interval went to dinner at an Italian place that had been recommended by the guidebook (not the one at our hotel, though, which seemed to be empty everytime we went by). I had a pizza and Jack had pasta with fresh porcini mushrooms, and we expressed our mutual disgust over the ceramic wine carafe, which had been stained with the sediment of many years’ worth of red wines.

Later, we returned to the main square to hear a few songs performed by a much more professional band. There was a young woman on percussion in the back, nearest to us, who seemed to enjoy the cowbell more than anything, her waist-length blond hair bobbing in time with the beat as she got into it. Before heading back we stopped off to check out a few minutes of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, which was being shown in a courtyard of a playhouse. After a few more photos in the waning evening light, it was back to the hotel for a night of restless dozing.

Our French teacher always asks us on Thursday what we'll be doing over the weekend. Since we only know the present tense at this point I'm sure our responses sound pretty bizarre, but we can't tell. Jack, ever philosophical (and knowing that we didn't have any firm plans) tried to say that he couldn't think past Friday, but it ended in confusion. I wanted to say that I was going to make my fantastically delicious onion bread. Turns out "make" is the same as "do", so I ended up saying "I do the bread of onions". She said that sounded strange and asked why I was making it, and I told her I had bought 2 kilos at the grocery. Why? Because the other onions looked bad (except everyone heard "old" instead of "bad"). So this devolved into a misunderstanding about how the bread could possibly be good with 2 kilos of onions in it, and due to my limited skills I couldn't respond that, no, it actually only takes a few.

Friday we celebrated Bastille day by eating Thai food and staring at other people celebrating Bastille day. Those French can really let loose.

While this blog seems to have devolved in a retelling of our weekend adventures, I'm still attempting to highlight aspects of Belgian/Eurpean culture that I find interesting. One of these is the amount of money that they seem to spend on cultural events. Even though there's always something free (or nearly so) going on in DC, you usually have to know where to look and to do your homework before setting out. Here, there's posters all over the place trumpeting this or that event for weeks in advance. One such happening is Bruxelles Les Bains, where they turn a street next to the canal into a beach for a month, with tons of sand, live musical performances, yoga, grassy patches surrounded by tropical plants and waterfalls, and dozens of closet-sized cabanas selling all your beachy needs, from feijoada to milkshakes to bikinis. Why anyone would want feijoada on a sultry day is beyond me, but it's good to know there's a restaurant nearby selling it so I can get some during the colder months (actually Jack makes a tasty version of it, too).

On Saturday, after accomplishing some clothes shopping, we went over to the beach and sauntered amongst the people frying in the mid-afternoon sun. The cabana that stood out a mile from all the others was that of the bar Jesus Paradise, which, instead of going au naturel with the bundled stick walls like everyone else, they had enrobed their booth in hot pink fur. Naturally we had to stop there for a drink.

(One thing I think I failed to mention previously about Belgium and many other European countries is they just don't seem to get cold beverages, even though the hot summer days cry out for extra refreshment, and you'd think they'd have the hang of it by now. You can expect that your beer will be served at a reasonable temperature, but that's about it. Your soda may or may not come with ice, which is unfortunate because I only find soda refreshing if it's cold and watered down a bit from ice melting. If there is ice, it's usually just two or three small pieces floating forlornly around, gone before you know it. If you order a mixed drink in which sugar and ice are both key ingredients, you can be assured that the sugar will form a grainy, unincorporated layer at the bottom of your drink. How can you have a bar and not know about simple syrup?)

I got a Cuba Libre Especial, which featured green tea, mint and sugar instead of the normal cola, and Jack had something that had sugar in it as well. Mine was especially well-stratified: sugar layer followed by huge and impermeable fresh mint layer followed by ice layer, with the liquid portion residing upper and lower reservoirs on either side of the mint. So I take a sip from the straw and get a mouthful of granulated sugar. Mmmm. There is no way that the sugar can dissolve now with the mint preventing full interaction with the liquid after I sucked out the bottom aquifer. The best I can do is mash the mint down and try to drink from the top reservoir. On the upside, we managed to stake out a spot under an umbrella, so we sat for a while and watched as people promenaded by and expressed their delighted astonishment over the pink booth.

Later we hit some shops on the other side of the canal, going on the assumption that they were on the wrong side of the water and therefore would be cheaper. Not so, unfortunately. However, we did come across a fascinating store full of bolts of cloth called Le Chien du Chien, and though I felt weird about being in there knowing there wasn't much I could afford, it was still very interesting wandering around. The rich and colorful fabrics were strung from the ceiling, so 6 or so bolts would be situated one on top of the other. There were various floors and mezzanines, and the theme of the shop (aside from "expensive") was nautical life, with full-size boats bursting through brick walls and a free-standing ship's cabin serving as someone's office. We spent a while in there wandering around. The other nice thing about the place was that the sales staff left us alone, given that there was very little that ruffians like us could steal. There's some photos of their various stores here: http://www.chienvert.com/galerie/index.htm.

We did come across one reasonably priced store, a kind of paper goods/bulk restaurant supply store at which we bought a packet of cloth dye. I selected "apricot", an intense orange that looked more like "carrot" to me, for the purpose of dyeing the white slipcover for one of our couches in order to continue the process of coloring up the house.

Lastly we went to a furniture shop that I had noted on my peregrinations some time ago. It was in a warehouse-sized building and contained a good amount of reasonably priced (although not by any stretch of imagination cheap) furniture. Jack was mesmerized by a panel hung on a wall that contained many illuminated squares that would change colors. The nicest thing about the store (aside from its size, which allowed one to escape from the heat for an extended period without appearing to loiter) was that the patio furniture was situated on the roof. This store also didn't have sales staff asking a lot of pesky questions like "can I help you?", so you and a friend could probably get yourselves a couple of forties (or "118,2941s" as they're known here [they use commas and decimal points in the opposite way here as they do in the US]) and spend some quality time up there, watching the traffic on the canal float past, keeping an eye on the Petit Palace immigrant detention center, and occasionally interspersing your conversation with comments such as "I really prefer the faux wicker over the hard plastic, although the fabric covering is also a comfortable option" so as to keep the Man from harshing your buzz.

We wandered back home by way of some of the major buildings of the Molenbeek commune, including a strange Art Deco church that I wish we could have seen from the inside. We crossed the canal and visited two other churches, one that had recently opened back up to the public and was conducting a service presided over by Karl Marx when we arrived (a sad little circle of about 12 people in this enourmous building), and the other containing a statue referred to as the Black Madonna that was rescued from a pile of floating debris in the river some time ago after the Protestants chucked it in the water. Protestants hate idolatry.

Saturday night we camped out in the kitchen to try out the spare bed and make sure it is adequately comfortable for our imminently arriving guests. We rented a Dutch romantic comedy called "Rent-a-Friend" and watched it from our culinary perch. It was pretty good, as far as romantic comedies go. Turns out the bed is more comfortable than our own, but since the one in the kitchen converts to a couch when not in use, we can't swap it for the one in our room.

The highlight of Sunday was the onion bread, which was remarkably delicious given the fact that the batter looked too thick going in and it came out of the oven with a strangely glossy top. Such are the vagaries of the European baking experience, I suppose. We rented the Peter Sellers film "The Mouse That Roared", a very funny movie about a tiny nation declaring war on the US so that they can lose and use the generous American reconstruction funds to get them out of bankruptcy. Sellers plays 3 parts: the (female) royal who rules the nation, the prime minister, and the head of the military. Definitely recommended.

The dyeing commenced Monday with an almost uninterrupted day of washing to properly clean and color the slip cover. Each regular cycle on the machine takes over two hours, and it first had to be washed for the dye to adhere properly. The second cycle was the actual dyeing. The third and last wash was to remove the excess color and fix it in. I was uncertain how it would turn out given that the front-loading washer was just barely big enough to fit the slip cover and the machine doesn't use much water to convey the dye to the crammed-in cloth. It actually turned out quite well, a slightly faded version of the expected color.

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.

The Ommegang has come and gone. This is a pageant that has been going on since the 13th century, with a break for a couple centuries in the middle and starting up again in the 1930s. The whole point of the parade originally was to trot out the statue from the Notre Dame du Sablon that Jack took a picture of and...well, that's about it, as far as I can tell. The nobility were involved and everyone sauntered around town with this statue. There was a painting of it in the museum we went to a few weeks ago: the royals all decked out with a large train of less special people behind them and the statue. Now, they still have the statue (or at least a cheap-looking replica of it) but it seems to be more focused on the traditional trades and handicrafts of the Brussels people. There were archers, crossbow-ers, spear-carriers, musicians, puppeteers, brewers and so on. Trams carrying late-evening commuters occasionally interrupted the slow procession.

This was the most desultory parade I've ever seen. I love parades. I'll go out of my way to find a spot from which to leisurely watch a stream of people pass by doing their darndest to entertain me. Brownie troops, grinning politicians in fancy cars with their sullen children at their side, dogs dressed as superman, guys playing George Washington riding a fiberglass horse on the back of an old truck: allllllll good. This time, there were no crowds lining the sidewalks, cheering, clapping, waving to people they knew. In general there was little chitchat amonst the spectators, who seemed to be mostly alone or in small groups, and only a couple of intermittently playing bands, so it was strangely quiet. There was a thin band of people on either side, not even enough to form an unbroken chain should we have decided to engage in an impromptu game of Red Rover. There was an Asian woman next to us who would indicate by hand gestures that she wanted to take pictures of her and the various participants, but that was pretty much it in terms of the action. The parade participants generally ignored the spectators and talked amongst themselves, aside from two dirty guys with crutches and short dresses who appeared to be beggars and/or lepers and who were working the crowd. I imagine this is pretty similar to how it was in olden times: the nobility snubbing the merchants snubbing the soldiers snubbing the carpenters, everyone snubbing those on the sidelines and ogling the busty milkmaids. The very last thing was a giant cask of beer pulled by a couple of horses. They filled pitchers from it and poured tiny cups for us. That was the best part by far. [Photo from a much better parade, the annual Drag Race in DC, where this guy was hitting on Jack and dropped a Hershey's kiss down his shirt. We unfortunately forgot to bring cameras to the Ommegang.]

Turns out the main action occurs in the Grand Place, where you spend some serious bucks to watch a floor show from bleachers they've set up. There was a crack between the stands where all the cheap people were watching, but I'm sure there was much more to it than what we got a glimpse of: some horses marching around and then a choreographed flag tossing show. Next year, we're making reservations and going to the Place.

The key to the Stratego game, created by Jack after researching on the internet. Apparently the American game has the numbers printed on the pieces, but not the one we got. The sergeant is a pretty good likeness. The scout looks like a guy with a saddle on his head made out of the wooly hide of a sheep, hence the shorthand scribble.

Monday, sunny and in the mid-eighties without a breath of a breeze, I went to the American Embassy to get my passport renewed. I figured this was a good day for it since they're only open in the afternoons when I'm working, but my office was closed that day due to it being the Fourth of July Eve. I needed to get a new one before the slow, creaking wheels of the commune's bureaucracy granted me resident alien status, because the passport expired in January and I think they will only issue me an ID if there is more than 3 months left on it. This gave me plenty of time to get it renewed, because the residency process takes like 6 months (we just got a letter acknowledging our application last week, about 1.5 months after it had been submitted). However, I also wanted a valid passport for any cross-border trips we might decide to undertake at the spur of the moment, and, not being sure how long the renewal would take, I wanted to err on the side of caution.

The whole process was bizarre for a variety of reasons. They had the entire sidewalk plus the parking lane blocked off in front of the American compound, with barbed wire and jersey barriers funneling visitors to the first security checkpoint. After gaining permission to pass through, I was directed to a second one, which was housed in a temporary building that led into the actual building. There was a note on the door saying that you were to ring the doorbell and wait for the green light to come on before entering, one person at a time. There was a note on the doorbell saying "doorbell". Three people were ahead of me. The first guy in line waited and waited, peered through the reinforced and distorting glass window in the door, tried to peek in the door when deliveries were made, pressed the green light in case it was another button, and all the while we were all frying in the heat and I just wanted to shout "just ring the damn bell again!" Finally, after about 10 minutes of waiting, he somehow got the green light and went through. Next up were a father and son and, based on the experience of the guy in front of them, they also DID NOT RING THE BELL. What is wrong with these people? I'm pretty sure all of them spoke at least basic English. As soon as the guy in front of me went in I immediately rang the bell and it was no more than 30 seconds before I gained entry. They took my cell phone at the door and gave me a receipt for it, searched my bag and let me through.

Then: more line standing, this time in the airless interior (no A/C here, unless they were somehow confining it behind the glass partition). This line was longer but moved more briskly, each person only taking a few minutes. Fortunately, even though the web site was curiously silent on whether you could use the mail-in passport renewal form, I had the foresight to fill it out anyway or I would have had to stand in line twice. There were a number of more interesting cases than mine, a man who needed to renew his passport before traveling on July 18th, an elderly British woman who had purchased property in Colorado and had to have her documents notarized at the embassy, a young lady in standard-issue college wear (t-shirt and short sweatshorts) whose passport had been lost or stolen, a snappily-dressed gentleman who had run out of pages in his passport and who had to cancel a trip because of it. The woman who had lost her passport had to go in a phone booth-sized room to discuss the matter privately with one of the staff members on the other side of the glass--I was reminded of those visitor's rooms in prison movies. After waiting about a half hour, during which time the menu from the DVD "Johnny English" played the same snippet of sound and footage over and over, I got my receipt and was free to go. My exchange was notable because I learned that (a) you don't have to turn in your old passport when renewing it abroad and (b) you get expedited service for free--they said I could pick it up in 16 days. I recommend this to anyone who plans to take a 3-week trip that originates in a major European capital, as long as you have some time to kill in your itinerary. The whole process took about an hour.

After finishing "The Great Stink", a novel about a crazy engineer working on the sewers of London in the 1850s prior to the advent of any type of treatment (which is a good book if you don't mind repeated references to vomiting, excrement, noxious fogs, and the Thames being one giant cesspool), I've now started on David Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty One Day". The stories towards the end are about his struggles learning French while living in Paris and Normandy, and while normally when reading his books I just think about what a wacky life he leads, in this case it's enough to make me weep with joy at the familiarity of what he's describing: the desire to wrap yourself in a comforting blanket of English sometimes, knowing that everytime you open your mouth in French you sound like a fool. Fortunately I'm not nearly as reflective as he is, so I go blithely on my way, saying the few words I know badly, picking up some more from my various daily exchanges, usually without major embarrassment. Also fortunately, our French teacher is not a total jerk like his was.

Tuesday two of the three shades came down in the bedroom. We discussed alternatives, including the expensive and therefore dreaded installation-by-someone-else option, but I managed to find some bigger hooks with anchors at the hardware store, so we're going to try that before abandoning all hope.