La Vie Quotidienne

What do I do every day in Brussels, when I’m not on fabulous expeditions, you might wonder?  Well, it’s an interesting question, with varied answers.

I have any number of tales of strange and varied lands to regale you, my lovely readership, with, but as they will take some time to assemble and to select photos for, let me tell you first that Holland is so beautiful, second that Antwerp is pretty cool, third that Mardi Gras in Binche is quite the experience, and fourth, the answer to the question posed above, to keep you busy until I can elaborate on one, two, and three.

Sometimes, I explore the Belgian and Francophone views on things American.  They are clearly sometimes very wise people.  (More often, I disagree with them strongly, but that's another matter...)  Below, you can see the cover of a magazine that arrived at my host-house and was sitting on the entry-hall table when I came in one afternoon, causing me to convulse with laughter.  The title says, "Who Can Beat Obama?: The Republicans and the Search for the Ideal Candidate."  The captions read, counterclockwise from top left: "Radiant Optimism of Reagan,""Oratorical Talents of Lincoln," "Muscles of Schwarzenegger," "Compassionate Conservative Heart," then an idiom I have difficulty translating, but it's something along the lines of "Guts of Teddy Roosevelt," followed by the startlingly clear Cojones de Palin, "World-Travelling (Feet) of Kissinger," then Libido de Cain flung unceremoniously into the trashcan, "Iron Fist of Thatcher," "Hardware (indicating the war medals) of Eisenhower," "Intellectualism of Buckley," and something like "Brain of Nixon - without the less worthy instances."  The tattoo reads "Free Enterprise," and the book is by Milton Friedman.

Isn't it remarkable how slim some language barriers can be?

 

Sometimes, I make calendars.  Or rather, I decide that 6 or 7 euros for a calendar, in the middle of February, is perfectly ridiculous.  Graph paper and large paper clips are wondrous things.

As are random wires poking out of the ceiling.

Sometimes, I make art.  I call this “View From My Window – Brussels.” It is an interpretation of design motifs seen through, and a bit of the snow seen on, my actual window, with a heavy dose of homage to Art Nouveau design, which is characteristic here.  Someday, when I haven’t left all my colored pencils on a different continent, I hope to add color to it.

(This is the actual view from my window, though the details don't show.)

Very often, I get my lunch at a little green-and-purple café called “The Breakfast Club,” just ‘round the corner from school, and which so satisfyingly sells peach iced-tea in a can.  It’s only Lipton, but rarely was a southern heart happier than on finding not only iced-tea in Belgium, but iced-tea that wasn’t fizzy, and not only iced-tea that wasn’t fizzy, but peach iced-tea that wasn’t fizzy.  And at that, not only peach iced-tea that wasn’t fizzy, but peach iced-tea that wasn’t fizzy and that was cheap!  And the café plays eighties music suitable to the name most days.  How could you possibly go wrong at a place that plays Tears for Fears and serves you French-bread paninis and peach iced-tea?

Sometimes (although several weeks agone, now) I go to Super Bowl Parties with the young crowd of St. Andrew’s Church of Scotland.  Sometimes, (it’s not gambling if you don’t lose stuff, you only win stuff, right?) we guess the scores at the end of every quarter by filling in a grid with our initials.  And sometimes, as evidenced by the two large chocolate bars and the nice sampler of Leonidas “pralines” (we would call them truffles) that rested on top of my desk next to the antique saint for nearly two weeks, I manage to correctly predict the halftime, third-quarter, and ending scores correctly, all the while without being quite sure what is going on or why I should care.  I just guessed combinations of the numbers in my birthdate, personally…and then copiously enjoyed my (Providential) chocolate.

Sometimes, I read – so far, I have finished P.D. James’ Cover Her Face, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, and Gene Stratton-Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlost.  (Kindle is a fabulous thing, in its way, though it is not quite so satisfying as turning tangible pages.  Chocolatey fingerprints do clean off of it better, though, on the upside.)  I spent a week debating what of several works I should read next, and have solved the issue by reading about Nazis and murder at the same time.  (I know, how cheery!)  But the murder is Death on the Nile, of course by the venerable Dame Agatha Christie, so it really is highly amusing and enjoyable.  As to the Nazis, I was in Amsterdam with the Art class this weekend, and one of the places we went was the Anne Frank museum.  It occurred to me in the train on the way there that I had never actually read Anne Frank’s diary, so it was Kindle-to-the-rescue, and my downloaded copy of the tales from the Secret Annex came flying through cyberspace onto a moving train en route to the Netherlands.  Modernity does occasionally have its wonders.  I made up for this by reading the Christie on the way back, though, and I have determined that nothing can quite compare with the classic romance of reading a real-book detective story on an evening  train speeding somewhere through Europe.

Oh, and sometimes, I do homework.  Actually, who am I kidding.  I do a lot of homework.  But I enjoy most of it, and the stack of books looks so impressive atop my little blue bookcase with the bears.  I am sure that they, the bears, must think that I am quite the academic.  More credit to the bears!