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Monday, January 30, 2012

Europeans Don't Drink Enough

By which I mean, that they drink drink plenty, but they have evidently evolved beyond (or not yet to?) a need for simple water.

I have no idea how they survive - really, I don't.  Anyone would think they would dry up and blow away.  Everyone from the restaurants to my well-meaning host family sets the table with tiny, short little glasses.  Menus offer beer and wine by the page, or at least the paragraph, sodas in a small list in the corner, and anything not carbonated is demoted to the leftover lines below the soda list.  There is no such thing as free water, let alone free refills of any drink.  Even if you order a soda, you get one rather slender, modestly-sized glass, which is apparently intended to last you the whole meal.

At dinner here, my host-parents usually drink wine.  I am always offered some, but if I take any, I feel bad, because they can make a three-and-a-half inch tall glass last for forty-five minutes, and, when it's the only thing I've been given to drink, I just can't.  So, I've taken to drinking water, which they handily place on the table in a large glass pitcher.  I feel it is less evident if a person glugs three or four glasses of water than if they do the same of wine.  I'm certain I notice the difference...

But even the nicest restaurants our program provider has payed for suffer from the same mysterious assumption that human hydration is a marginal need.  Ask for a glass of water to accompany your wine, and you get a fancy, minuscule glass bottle of mineral water.  It's no wonder they charge for the stuff, when they insist on serving it that way, I suppose.  But, you only get one.  Your fee only payed for two drinks each, and you just used it in a vain attempt to slake your thirst on not quite enough liquid to drown a mouse.

Also, did you know they will carbonate iced tea, over here?  They do!  Sitting in a little Italian pizzeria on Sunday, I saw "Ice-Tea" crammed in the corner, and I practically lept for joy.  Thank heavens!  A Southern girl saved!  Nectar of life, once again on a menu.  It arrived in a singularly large glass, for Belgium, and I was quite halfway through swallowing before I realized that it was...fizzy.  I despise most bubbling liquids.  And of all things, tea?  I'm not saying they're crazy, or anything, but, seriously?

Well, that's alright, I thought.  I'll just ask for wa... oh.  Right.

The restaurants mostly serve coffee after dessert, but that's not peculiarly thirst-quenching.  I also have yet to observe a European dragging a massive, reusable water bottle around, which, while mystifying, does have the pleasant effect of meaning that there are somewhat fewer to trip over in the classroom aisles.  But it all dos leave me wondering if they ever drink enough to support the mouse that we were intent on drowning earlier.  What must Belgian mice drink - a raindrop a day?  Goodness knows they could get at least one every hour, if they took a notion to.

Of course, if they continue to keep me in splendid desserts over here, I won't be complaining too loudly about much of anything...

Such are the vagaries of foreign life.

"Tlot-tlot, in the Frosty Silence!"

It snowed in Brussels, today, white and wet and quiet as I walked to school.

A city, you say, quiet, at any time of day or condition of the weather?  Well, yes - remarkably so, actually, because they had what I believe they call a national strike, today, the chief visible effect of which was that no public transportation of any sort was in operation all day.  I must say, when I woke up this morning, I rolled over and groaned at the thought of the inconvenience it would be to have to walk to the one class I have on Mondays, and, an hour later, coming downstairs with my bags, I more-than-groaned at the sight of snow slithering down the big hall window.  I can never accustom myself to the idea that that strange, fluffy white stuff that looks so pretty can so shortly become so miserably wet and cold and sloggy.


But it didn't snow enough, here, to lead to inconvenient slush, later, and I was also pleasantly surprised, as I stood on my toes to twist the tall lock in our blue front door, that it wasn't peculiarly cold outside, either.  Still, figuring that by the end of the walk I wouldn't be able to feel my fingers or toes, I steeled myself for what I expected would be about a half-hour's walk.  Did Belgians use umbrellas in the snow, or would I look silly if I did that?  This question fortunately was not very troublesome for very long, as a woman walked by with a large blue umbrella very much in evidence.  If she was carrying one, then surely I could, too.  (Of course, if one actually analyzes the situation, I happen to carry a riotously polka-dotted umbrella, and all the other people I have seen here seem to carry sedately solid-colored ones, but it's a perfect good umbrella, if you don't mind its habit of turning inside out every minute in a strong wind, and I like the dancing dots.  Why shouldn't they polka, if they feel like it?)

Thus shielded from the brunt of the snow, I passed my usual tram stop and continued along the sidewalk, the metal ribbons where the tram usually runs snaking along at my left, in the silent street.  The snow doesn't stick to the tram tracks, for some reason.  Rather ahead of me, there was one woman walking, without an umbrella, and on the other side of the street, two of the little, grey, nondescript European hatchbacks passed, the muffled whirring of their wheels the most strident sound to be heard in all the long street.  Snow, I have learned, always has a curiously beautiful silencing effect - there is an audible silence of snow falling.  But, as I walked along, I realized how much noise the tram usually makes, all of its bendy joints between the cars squeaking, its wheels rattling along the track, doors beeping, bell ringing at street crossings.  Cars honk at each other, piling up behind it, and people talk as they pass the stop or answer their cell phone as they recline across two of its seats or get thrown around roughly if they haven't grabbed a handle before take-off.  This morning, all of that was gone.

As I came further along my usual tram route, even the big, multi-street, multi-tram intersections were uncommonly sedate.  By this time, the snow was only barely brushing things on its way down, but it had coated the rooftops with a light layer, and settled into the decorative carvings of all the tall row houses, from the time of Leopold II.  I hardly see the better parts of these houses from the tram, but today I noticed stained glass windows with art nouveau lilies and two funny little cubist angels carved into the stone and all kinds of soft fringes of tress and shrubbery that I'd never noticed before.  With the soft stillness and the empty tram lines and the newly seen details and the snow that rendered everything a little more picturesque, it felt just a bit as if I had slipped into a Victorian Christmas card.  No - not that festive and extravagant and snowy, yet.  Maybe a bit of early December, some hundred-and-twenty-or-thirty years ago, before the Yuletide excitement had quite got under way, but when daily duties were starting to quiet down.  Or maybe just late January, on a snowy day...


As I drew closer to school, I tried to imagine what the street would have looked like on January 30th, 1880-or-90 something.  Those buildings would look the same, tall along both sides of the street.  Would they be less austere, then?  Or would their fresher colors be as softened in the snow as their faded greyness was illuminated and colored now, in comparison with the fresh white stuff?  The tram wires stretching overhead might or might not have been there...trolleys, perhaps?  I imagined the streets would be closer to today than to any other modern day, but maybe they would be more busy, since more people walked then, anyway.  I peopled the sidewalks with a doctor, hurrying along hunched over his black bag, several women in colorful capes over drab, serviceable woolen dresses, and a gentleman crossing the street, holding his top hat against the wind and wearing one of those fantastic old coats, with the delightfully dramatic short capes around the shoulders.  There would be perhaps a few automobiles - I let one nice, elegant car pass - but mostly there would be horses.  A brewer's dray over there, palomino draft horse waiting patiently, blinking his blonde eyelashes against the snow.  A milkman's cart, rattling along, all of the bottles clinking and clanking.  Those road-maintenance men up there might have a horse-and-cart, too, full of paving stones, parked just where that white van was now.  And coming up behind me on the left, passing me, now, would be a carriage, drawn by a - a horse trailer?  Pulling past me on the left was a truck that drew a small, white trailer.  Blue letters proclaimed "Politie" and "Police" - Flemish and French.  Inside, one dark horse stood comfortably with his back toward me, but another raised his head and looked over his shoulder, tossed his mane a bit.  As his little, mobile shelter rounded the bend out of sight, he was briefly silhouetted, but I could have sworn I saw him wink.

Walking to school and imagining a nineteenth-century street, I actually saw a horse pass by, over the cobblestones, though not exactly in the way I had expected.

With a laughing return to normal time, I wondered if I was still on-time to class.  Coming around the final corner, it occurred to me that I have never in my memory walked to school before, or at least, never from an off-campus residence.  I felt a little like I imagine a kindergartener feels the first time she realizes she's done it alone and isn't lost, after all, and can even feel her toes and most of her fingertips!  All told, my long morning walk through the snow was to date the most pleasant morning I have yet enjoyed in Brussels, either in life or fancy.  There's something about snow, and maybe even the occasional tram strike, that isn't so bad, after all.  It gave me the chance to see the city to a different soundtrack, set to a slower, gentler metronome.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Several Thousand Words

It has been said, of course, millions of times over, that a picture is worth a thousand words.  While I just so happen to think that it's ever so much more fun to write the thousand words, I keep hearing a clamouring for pictures.  And so, I acquiesce, seeing as I am not the world's worst photographer.  (I think that particular honor belonged to a relation of mine, who was famous for taking pictures of people at just such an angle as to cut off the head, every time.)

(Needless to say, I reserve the copyright to all photos. Please never reuse them without my express permission and appropriate citation).

Let us begin with what I am calling the fairylights shot, of Grand Place:
Next, I shall favor you with a second Grand Place Shot, because there's a horse in it; followed by Jardin Botanique, where you can see a typical Brussels melange - the old garden, the pavilion which  is now generally used as a concert hall, and some of what I believe are the EU buildings in the background:

I've no idea what the following is - it may be one of the Royal Palaces - in any case, it's near the Atomium - but I think it's the most beautiful picture I've taken here so far:
A quick welcome to Europe, as state:
Looks a little 50's-futuristic, yes?
Now, in the category, "and you wonder why I chose Belgium:"
(That's frozen mousse. Note also the waffle.)
By day, it's a museum, by night it's a bar, in 1881, it was a train station:
Belgium is big on comic books...
Reeeeeally big.  That'd be a real tree at the bottom, of a real building.
And these are just pretty:
Flanders lace...in Flanders.

In other news, when I got on the tram on the way home today, there was a street performer playing the accordion.  I took a video to capture the sound, but unfortunately the screen is mostly a close-up of my umbrella, and I kept sticking my fingers over the camera's microphone by accident, so it's really a very bad video.  But imagine all of this accompanied by Francophone cafe music, and being seen by a girl who is almost accustomed to the idea of staying in this place for a while.

Post Scriptum: Pictures of the bear with the copper pot are coming.  My mother suggests it is a honey pot, making him the Belgian relation of Winnie the Pooh.  I've named him Herge.

PPS: Uploading pictures takes far too long.  Enjoy them, because next post, it's back to writing.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

News from the Garret

Just call me Cara of Green Garret.  Or maybe Princess of the Attic.  Because, you see, I really do live in the attic room of a nineteenth-century row house, which is every bit as romantic and a great deal nicer than it sounds.  I feel a bit like Sara Crewe would if Miss Minchin had ushered her up to the attic and it had been decorated by the Indian man from the very beginning.  And (to borrow the inspiration of a friend), if Jo March wrote in a garret, then so can I.

I live in a rather spacious garret, which is, indeed, painted apple green, which I find terribly satisfying because Marie Antoinette had her rooms at Petite Trianon done with apple green satin wall hangings.  That and it happens to be a lovely color.  I have four perfectly useless and adorable miniature chairs, one of which has a African doll in it and another of which has a tiny, blue-flowered pillow.  I have a short, sky blue bookcase with a great variety of books and bears on it - figurines of a bear holding a harp, a bear with a working thermometer, a bear with a Santa hat, a very large, fierce-looking wooden bear that doubles as a book end (maybe he's irritated because the books are too heavy?), and a slightly smaller wooden bear who appears, inexplicably, to be sitting in a chair with a comparatively enormous copper pot in his lap.  I'd think it was a candle-holder, except his wooden paws curve too protectively over the pot, and I'm sure a candle would catch him on fire.  If my garret is as enchanted as most good ones seem to be, then one night he should accordingly wake up and tell me what on earth he's doing gloating protectively over that copper basin.  If he doesn't, it will bug me but amuse me until the end of my days.

I have a full-length mirror in my closet, with a brown, crackly, speckle-y finish that makes every outfit look more vintage and chic and French - or at least, French-speaking Belgian.  I have three deliciously mismatched lamps that appear to span the twentieth century, several charming paintings, and a very short blue cabinet to match the bookcase with the bears.  My bed has an apple green and sunshine yellow and sky blue plaid cover, with several pillows to match, and is actually two twin beds pushed together, so I use one side as a bed and the other side as a couch, with all the pillows behind me for reading.  During the day, my reading is illuminated by my two sky light windows, one in either side of the white ceiling that starts very low on the sides and slopes up to a point.  Three wooden stairs inside my room lead down to my door, which is white and has a large, four-pane window, like the door of a quaint little farmhouse.

If this house has...perhaps not flaws, exactly, but certainly difficult quirks, they are these: 1.) It has altogether too many stairs.  If one begins in the basement, say, by washing one's clothes, to get to my garret one must climb the flight of stairs from the basement to the main floor, then climb the stairs from the main floor to the landing with the guest bathroom, then stairs to the TV room floor, more stairs to the landing with the large back window, followed by the stairs to my host sister's room and our bathroom, and finally proceed up the garret stairs to my room, where, I might mention, one immediately encounters the three previously noted wooden stairs inside my door.  This is all quite a nuisance when you realize you have left your umbrella upstairs or your phone downstairs.  Never shall I complain (much) about living in a mere two-story again.  But the really fun part is the stairway from my host-sister's floor up to my floor.  Unlike the other stairs in the house, which are all straight, these begin as a spiral staircase, for five steps, just enough to make a quarter-turn to the left, so that you go from facing a wall on the first stair to parallel with the wall by the fifth.  Then, you encounter seven straight stairs, which make up for being two or three inches taller than normal by being the same amount shorter than normal, meaning that I have to balance my toes on a space about five inches deep.  This is practically impossible to do, especially when in a hurry, and means that I usually slip off one somewhere in the middle and scramble up the rest on all fours, not unlike my bears might do.  This works well enough until the final step into my room, which is just enough taller than the rest that it is visually imperceptible and absolutely guaranteed to trip me, no matter what I do or how many limbs I try climbing the stairs with.  Going down is nominally easier, except I have a bad habit of missing the last spiral stair and catapulting onto the landing from two feet above it at one fell, ungraceful swoop.  This is especially easy in the dark, which is when I discovered great challenge two of this house -

2.) I can't find the light switches!  Most of them are after-market, though some look as if, if not original, they are certainly close to it.  First of all, there must be half a dozen different kinds - ordinary switches, ones with a little rocker, large button switches mounted horizontally, a smaller button switch mounted vertically, and I'm sure that's not all.  Second, apparently no one though it necessary to put all of the switches in corresponding places.  Some are just inside a room, some are just outside a room, and the hallway lights can be turned on or off from several random switches, which are invariably placed near enough to other switches that you never remember which is which, and always flip the wrong one first.  But my favorite is the one for our bathroom.  The bathroom door has a handle on the left, and opens to the right, outwards.  The light switch is placed just past the right edge of the door frame, abutting the middle door hinge.  This means that, in the middle of the night, it is entirely possible to head for the light switch, right arm outstretched behind the door, left arm outstretched inside the door, nose banged smack into the edge of the door...and it isn't pleasant.  But, I personally have got three light switches, one outside my room, one inside, and one more by the head of my bed, so that I can journal or read Paul and then turn the light off without having to get out of bed.

I take one tram for ten minutes to get to school, and, incidentally, in case you have ever wondered if it is possible, when you are running late in Belgium, to stick your hands into the closing tram door, trip it's safety sensors, and wrench it back open before you're late to school, the answer is yes.  Highly possible.  Especially good when raining.  And heavens, does it rain here!  Thankfully, though, the rain held off this morning, long enough for me to walk not quite ten minutes down the street to St. Andrew's Church of Scotland, sermons given in English, if you don't mind a slight brogue.  (Who does?)  I have met the group pf people my age, and I must say, Brussels is a fascinating mecca.  I feel like only here would you have a Sunday school group composed, today, of five Americans, each from different states, three of them preparing to head off to three different countries, an Indonesian, a girl from Madagascar, a guy who I believe was from somewhere in Africa, a Northern Irish girl, a Russian, I think it was, and a pastor from Scotland!  That's not just international; it's intercontinental!  Why, we're practically global.  Give us a South American and we're set, though we'd welcome anyone, I'm sure.

Classes start tomorrow, which I am excited about, because I strangely miss homework, and I only brought so many English books to read with me - although my host-mom kindly left me a few Tintin books, some in English and others in French.  That and I can't wait to learn the history of this place, which is quite as convergent as my Sunday school class.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Suburban Girl Meets City

Well, the very first day I arrived in Brussels, I hated it.  My only possible reservation was the knowledge that I had only seen a little bit of it around the hostel, really, and that I was hideously jet-lagged, which seemed to render my hasty, emotional judgment more hasty and emotional than usual.

You know how Texas is a really big state?  Well, I assumed this meant that Dallas and Houston were really big cities, and indeed, they are, but they are not real "big cities," as in, the sort with subways and graffiti and very, very tall buildings for miles.  I have always figured that I would probably like to live in a city.  It would be full of the arts and constant art events, there would be a pleasant drone of human energy, and the people-watching from some secluded little cafe with mismatched chairs would be utterly fantastic.  Alas, I forgot that cities also have dirt and underground tunnels and very confusing transportation schedules and a detestable paucity of trees.  (Though admittedly, finding a decent tree anywhere in January is tough, since the best of them recede into the background and become singularly lackluster).

So the very first thing I discovered on arrival in Brussels was that I am not meant to be a cave-dweller.  Being drug along the streets with the group in my sleepless stupor, I felt like the grey buildings were leaning in on me, blocking out the sun and about to topple down to meet the grimy, grey street, squishing me in the middle somewhere.  It was really remarkably unpleasant.  Of course, someone did explain to me that the street cleaners do not work weekends, so it would be better come Monday morning, but apparently sleep deprivation induces an extreme skepticism in me, because I was decidedly down on the whole idea of study abroad at all by the end of that interminable day.

To paraphrase Jane Austen, my beloved quote notebook being at home, and the internet being unwieldy and refusing to find what I want, there is little that troubles youth that a good night's sleep will not fix by the morning.  By Monday, I was still uncertain, but much more ready to explore the city and see if I could find bits I liked - meaning the bits with grass and trees and as little graffiti as possible.  It took me until the Tuesday bus tour, but I found them, and they very fortunately include the places where I am A.) Living, and B.) Going to school.  They also include, among other things, the lovely park near the EU buildings, which are quite imposing, if not entirely the world's prettiest buildings.  They are rather futuristic, with mirrored glass, and all the 27 flags and (I believe) 24 languages make everything look quite official.  Funny enough, though, the European complex is partly housed inside what was once the Brussels Zoo - a location which some people say was not quite a coincidence!

I have also, among other things, discovered the merits of the public transportation system - as well as how to read most of its maps. I still hate being trapped in its claustrophobic cars in tiny, dark tunnels, and I still have no idea when I get off at any given stop how on earth the Belgians know which identical concrete staircase leads back to the upper world, but it must be confessed that, besides these issues, it is rather convenient.  I have my official card to wave in the general direction of the machine, now, and this means that when it is cold or raining, both of which it is very often here, I can get just about anywhere inside something that I do not have to drive or fill up with gas or park.  Rather ingenious, if only it wasn't based in the bowels of middle earth somewhere.  Fortunately, I get to take a tram, which stays above ground (and no, they don't all do that, here), to school, which may save me from public-transport-induced SAD (as in, seasonal affective disorder).

And so, it has been decided at great length that not only do I not despise Brussels, but I may actually be beginning to like it.  Actually, my housing has much to do with this, but...

...I shall let this post cover the last few days, and then I will begin chronicling my experiences in earnest, starting with my absolutely fabulous host-house and host-family.  I hardly dare hope for something humorous to happen, since humor almost always includes a component of embarrassment, but it would make such good reading, wouldn't it, if something would?







Thursday, January 12, 2012

Just Keep Packing, Packing, Packing...

I feel a little like Dory, actually.  That is, I suffer from short-term memory loss - I forget things almost instantly - or at least I think I do, anyway.  Every time I start trying to put sweaters in one pile, I find a pair of jeans and get distracted, and start trying to organize a pants pile.  Then I mix up which pile is "to pack" and which pile is "not to pack."  Then it occurs to me that there are several things I really should get done before I leave, and they might require some things being unpacked.  All this to say that I don't know much about packing for international travel, but this I can advise:  Don't do it how I do it.  Done.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Bonjour, Buenos Dias, Guten Morgen...Good Mornin' to You!

With any luck, this shall be the first post to my new publishing space.  What, exactly, this blog shall become in the long term is still predominantly a concept, but it shall begin as a travel blog recounting my semester in Belgium, where I may hope that the beauties and oddities and stories of history and culture may at the very least entertain my friends and family.