"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.