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July 01, 2002 : brussels again
I don't have much to say about today except that we went to Brussels to look at an apartment which is on the cusp of our price-range, gorgeous, and with a view of the city that is breathtaking. Post looking we went for a drink with Agnes and it turned into a most-of-the-night affair. Eva and I took the last train back to Antwerp and crawled directly into bed. I suppose it would have been nice of me to help her take out the trash, but she didn't seem to want my help. And now, for my reasoning behind this posting. The news. Several events happened today (or will happen tonight, seeing as how I am writing this tomorrow...which only makes sense in theory.) IN THE NEWS: Did you notice that it said more that 30 times the length of the Earth's diameter? Just another one of those kick-in-the-pants about the world being minuscule and me being even more minuscule. AND At least 70 people--including 52 children-- were feared dead after a Russian plane traveling from Moscow to Barcelona ignored warnings from ground control and collided with a cargo plane over southern Germany late July 1. I don't know what it is about planes that fascinate me. And then to think of the night sky as being so vast and expansive and that two airplanes in all of that space are on the same route to hit each other. Not only do they have miles of airspace around them, but quite a bit below as well. It's just an amazing tragedy. And I hope that it's understood that I mean 'amazing' in an unbelieving sense of the word, not a trifle-bit interesting one
July 02, 2002 : summer fever
I know when the sun starts peeking out from winter clouds and kids are roudy and businessmen restless it spells out Spring Fever. Well I've got the summer version. I've got the out-of-school, first completely-free-day-for-4-months fever. I've got a huge expanse of time stretching out in front of me and a TO DO list already 7 lines long. (on a good day, I could do them all) So what's with all of the confusion and/or disorientation? Where have all the entries gone? (this is my first one in 4 days, though I've stared 2 of the 4) I'll tell you where they've gone. They are rotting in my brain. They are rotting in my brain because I can't bare to make myself use the computer right now. Forget that it's a unassuming laptop, it doesn't help. I can't even email. It makes me shudder. I'm working on it. I'll get over it soon. Maybe with some strong drink (coffee) and some reading time (finishing Boating for Beginners) I'll be forced into my TO DO list and my fingers will start flowing over the letters again. It's not that I can't type, it's that I can't sit down long enough TO type. And I guess it's not that either, it's that I'll sit in front of the keyboard and then blank out. Is it because we've had good weather (save yesterday) and our "office" is situated right next to a window? Maybe I should just take a much needed shower, start chopping off my hair, go out and buy a new second-hand shirt...get back to the real me. I'm wearing a nightie for christ's sake. (I actually love the nightie, it was more about a frame of mind) Oh my god, we're making progress. I was even thinking of convincing Eva and I to find a scarily cool skirt and top to wear in Italy. (I'm shaking my head as we speak.) Whatever happened to chain-wallet comfy-corderoyed, bed-headed, music-blaring Andrea?!?! What happened when I turned 26 and is it possible to get her back?!?! And do I want her back? I like my hair, even though no one else seems to and yes, of course, I'm sick of wearing the 5 t-shirts I've been wearing for the last 8 months. I'll have to get back to you on this. It's all a mystery. These questions might just be looming overhead because I still have a day of jet-lag to kick in the ass and because we're contemplating moving to Brussels, and that will mean a whole NEW language...and I'm just getting used to Flemish. I'm actually doing pretty well...yesterday we were riding the slow train from Brussels and I wrote poetry (in humorous Dutch, of course) for 3 of the cities we passed through; Villevoorde, Epegem, and Mechelen. So I guess we'll see. It's the first day of Summer for me, and I'll see what the summer brings. By the time it is over it will be November already and we'll be figuring out how to pay for Christmas flights or why the EURO is worth more than the DOLLAR and we'll be talking about how we still love our tiny little place or how we still love our new apartment. I might even be talking about French lessons and how I miss saying kaas broodje and how I have to now say pain fromage. We'll see. Stay patient. Oh, and it's raining again. IN THE NEWS: Thank you for Leila via Eva bringing this to my attention. Does anyone else see a problem with this? Get this quote... "The new court's main targets are the future...Adolf Hitlers of the world, but the United States fears the court could go after Americans in frivolous political prosecutions because of its status as the global superpower." Enough said.
July 03, 2002 : the 3rd
It's a funny thing. Yesterday I got an e-greeting from my mother for the 4th of July. I panniked a bit. Was it the 4th? Had I completely lost my sense of time? Thankfully it sent it a couple of days early. And, in case it would have been a more festive day I had prepared a special meal. I made the most wonderful enchiladas I've ever made. All I have to say is, "Never underestimate Pork." I think the American Pork Council (if that is the name by which they go) would be proud. Eva's brother, over to burn some music cds, said three times, "Man, these are good, did you make these?" Yes I did. It's a far cry from the version that my mother and I used to make back when I wanted the cheese-only variety. Like I said, I'm up to stuffing them with peppers, corn, pork, rice...you name it. Back to today. Nothing much happened as far as the day went. Things got interesting when Eva came home and we went out to go for a driving lesson with her dad. Not only is Eva up to driving with a gear-shift, she has nearly mastered the art of reversing. Someday soon I'll have to take her out myself and we'll spend a whole afternoon doing 3-point turns, star shapes, pulling into parking spaces, alertness, mirror adjusting, shifting while the car is slowing down, using the clutch as a break... I was very proud. I know I didn't show it, but I was beaming back there in the blind-spotted little white Citroen Berlingo. And then we started talking about apartments. 90 Euros being the difference between new/bigger and current space. I'm all for it. If we end up staying for more than one more year then it will be well worth it. It's more home-like. It has a tub. It has several rooms. It has a terrace for god's sake. (a very small one) I truly think we'd go mad here in this little apartment if we stay longer than the schoolyear. But who knows. So we went back and forth about it. Eva was the pro-change person yesterday and I was the lets-think-more-about-it person...and then today it's completely in reverse. The night had us deciding that we should take it, I should get a job (any kind...postal worker to designer to pizza maker) and we should plan on staying in Belgium till we figure out exactly what we are going to do next. We should plan on staying here until Belgium becomes our legal safe-haven, as in we become registered legal partners. Doesn't that sound ultra-formal? So sitting around having a Russian beer (having a beer not being something that is in our daily ritual at all) Eva and I sorted things out. It started with the apartment and ended up being a night of discussing plans and futures. It moved on to her job and prospects of others. It did whirlwinds with us making a pact that we would be better people. She's going to try to be less stressed, and I'm going to try to be more organized. :) We made a pact that we wouldn't lose ourselves in daily humdrums or beneath loads of temporarily-important-looking nonsense. That we'd both try to be the people we knew before we hitched ourselves together, and tonight it seemed like the friend I used to visit in Belgium was sitting across from me telling me stories. It was a beautiful thing. IN THE NEWS: What I didn't know before they mentioned it on the BBC World Service...was that some europeans consider(ed) the Euro as the way Germany would take over the continent. If they can't do it by force, as they tried to several times in the last century, then why not do it by economic means. Hm. Interesting. Parinoid, but interesting. But then again, we don't really understand all of those deep-seeded feelings against the Germans that still exist here. After all, the history really isn't that old.
July 04, 2002 : french or flemish
So now it looks as if we have two options again. An apartment in Brussels or one up the street in Antwerp. I don't know what to do. Both affordable, both sizable and bigger than our current situation...one we still consider 'home.' When faced with the proposition, I consider Steven DeLandtsher, someone I worked on a freelance project with. He told me of having to serve in the Belgian army, and that he enlisted in the French side so he could master French and get a year knocked off of his time. Certainly he went into it with several years of the language to his advantage, but he still did it. He took himself out of his comfort zone, and for that, I respect him. It's admirable. So French. Eva insists that I will return from Italy with the desire to return. Italian. We'll go to Paraguay, eventually, and start it off as a holiday with the intention of staying. Spanish. 3 romance languages to my dusty Germanic one. English. And the one I am learning to appreciate, Dutch. How much I enjoy seeing 'k's and double 'ee's and 'aa's after spending too much time in in the world of accented 'e's. (I don't know where the accent mark is.) And today is Independance Day, of all days. And I see myself as the most independant I have ever been. (not figuring in the comfortable binding union to Eva) It is not that I was constrained before, it is just now the world is bigger or smaller, depending on how you look at it. So a poem, now. Written while I listed to the BBC's Radio 4 in the background. News bits from around the world. I can't help but want to pack a bag and then I realize how different I am now than this time last year. Comfy in a great paying job, though I lose it on Friday the 13th 9 days from now last year.
July 07, 2002 : decent and worst
It has been one of the worst weekends ever. It's not like I really want to write that, it just seems fair. Friday seemed good enough, we road with Eva's friend Ann to Amsterdam and I got to be navigator for the evening. Actually, Friday shouldn't even be lumped into an entry entitled "worst" because it was actually a great night. Their other friend Elke lives in Amsterdam and just got her Masters diploma that day. She lives in an MTV's Real World-like living arrangement atop a suburban-Amsterdam apartment complex with no elevator. It's 6 stories high with a million concrete stairs. Why they would build a new building without an elevator seems crazy to me. What about old-lady grandmas or baby strollers or gimpy roommates that break their legs? So Friday was spent in Amsterdam in a party setting. Her parents and grandma were there, here roommates, her colleagues, her ex-boyfriend, and 2 long-time friends from Belgium. And me. It went on until 1 in the morning. By this time I was completely knackered (Eva word) and ready for bed. You can only take so much of picking up every 100th word of conversations for so long. Earlier in the evening I had managed to break out of my shell and visit...joking about my Dutch and then even having a couple of real conversations. But the later the evening got, the more let's-sit-around-the-coffee-table-and-pow-wow it got. So Saturday. Nice. If you haven't gone to Amsterdam, go. Not for the coffee-shops that sell weed or the tour of the Heineken facilities, not for the red-light district or for the windmills. Just go. It's heaving with cool-town vibes. It's heaving with leaning buildings and bicyclists. If you live in Belgium, it makes you want to live there. Not for the Dutch (they speak like they are clearing their throats) but for the vibe. The Netherlands in general have a great vibe. Great feel. I guess it wouldn't have to be Amsterdam specifically, as the other bits I've seen seem just as vibe-filled...but you get the point. So now the "worst." The worst weekend in quite a long time. In fact I can't think of a worse weekend off of the top of my head. On Friday I had left the apartment in a bit of a mess. I had worked all day trying to get some stuff together for Elke for a present and nothing seemed to work out. I literally ran to the train station practically wet-headed in order to meet Eva and Ann in Mechelen at the appropriate time. I knew it was a tip. (Eva's word.) I told her it was devastated. I had planned on cleaning up but had simply ran out of time. (keep this in mind) So we move rapidly from good time in Amsterdam (why we left mid-afternoon, I'll never know) to bad time in Antwerp. We had planned to come home and keep the momentum going...maybe see a movie, maybe rent one and see it at her brother's place, go out for Thai food, celebrate something, maybe go out dancing since we haven't been in 3 months...something. This is a paraphrase of the events... Me? I'm outta there. Now that may sound pretty ridiculous. Granted, after letting it rest for a day it does sound really stupid. But this is why I'm writing it down. Eva can vent all she wants in a little blue book, but I'm doing it here. It's fair. We make amends several hours later, after I've already realized I have the keys to her brothers' house (they are on vacation), and after I've already walked all over town to find a cash machine that will take my card. We eat at Grillhouse 77 and stuff ourselves silly. We make up. We watch a could-have-been-a-bit-more-decent movie called the Straight Story and then go to bed. We've already decided by this time that Sunday morning we should go to the market. I'm in a new frame of mind to start saving money for our new place. I've already promised her that I'll do a better job. More Aldi and less Vergo. I'll start going to the Moroccan store on the corner and start buying my veggies at the big market on the weekends. We get out of bed at 1:30. We head into town and make the most of it. All of the cash machines are messed up and there are literally Dutch people and Antwerpenaars going nuts trying to find Euros. I don't know what happened exactly, but something was wrong with the network or something. No money. We digress to the Proton (utilizing the smart-chip on our bank cards) and head to a phone-booth where we can transfer funds from our bank account to our Proton account and use that at the Quick. I get a Long Chicken Meal and Eva gets pigeon shit. She actually got a Maxi burger or something? But when we brought our stuff outside to eat, I realize that a bird has shit on her coat sleeve. Then we realize there are pigeons everywhere. This is a little un-nerving. And then we realize how pretty they seem (I'm a defender of pigeons) and then how gross they are. Some were missing toes, some had fungi-looking things hanging form their toenails, some had string stuck to their feet, some hobbled when they walked...very unappetizing. We finished our dinner and went to catch the tram. We would have gone for coffee but the no-cash problem was holding us back. We made a plan to go home, grab writing material and head to the Pink House so we could check off some of our "To Do" list. We're having fun, if you couldn't tell. We plan to continue having fun. This is a paraphrase of the events... She's outta there. So you see how this is becoming the label of worst. We make amends later on but it's not like you can just get-over two identical "situations" in two consecutive days. And then there is the whole issue of the apartment. The apartment that Eva and I both want. The difference between the places is literally only 85 Euros. (that's like 87 USD) I'd gladly pay 20 bucks a month extra for a terrace on which to walk out of occasionally. I'd gladly not eat Indian once a month if that meant we'd have a bed-room separate from the "office" or the "living room." I'd gladly drop another 20 on the fact that it has a tub and even another 20 for enough room to invite people over. I'm talking over for dinner and even to spend the night. No more whispers through the curtain to our guests on the couches... They'd have their own space. And I didn't even mention the fact that our two bicycles and our 1 scooter would have plenty of breathing room down in the bike-room which is not to be confused with the hallway. :) I am sure it will get better once I become less slobby, but she has to give me time to show her that I"m less slobby. I am sure it will get better once I get a job, but it will take time to get a job. I am sure it will get better once I speak Dutch, but that's a long way off. I am sure it will get better once I start shopping at the market and at Aldi...but that will take a couple of weeks to show her that its not a fluke. I am sure it will get better once we get back from Italy, if only I get some money before we go. If not, then we'll be eating ramen noodles every night and you can only eat so many packets of ramen while you're in Italy. No way! So as far as bickering goes, we've had our share this weekend and we're through with it. No more for quite awhile. Now I know how important an empty kitchen sink is to Eva and now she knows that I'm going to start on a whole new project, me. funny how that's what the point of my dossier is...getting to know myself a little bit better. It's always a good thing, isn't it? And she's going to do the same. As far as the apartment goes...we're going to give it a go. We're going to try to get it. We're going to make it our new home. Hopefully it will be more of a home than a shelter...this current place has been a bit of half and half. I think we've done a great job of making it cozy, labeling corners as "rooms" and our bed as "heaven." It's fun regardless. New places are just that, new. I don't know if it's because I like packing and repacking or if it's because I like new scenery. I'm voting for new scenery...it'll be great to watch the sun rise over a hospital...and having a terrace that looks out on the backsides of other buildings as well as grass. Grass and trees! I guess the bickering was worth it...because it's the one thing we ended up agreeing on in the end. The apartment will be a new adventure, and we consider ourselves adventurers. IN THE NEWS: Asia's typhoon and monsoon seasons claimed more victims as heavy rains and high winds swelled rivers and whipped up seas in different corners of the region, where floods have made around a million people homeless. Yes, it says a million. Pakistani police said on Monday they had arrested two more men accused of gang-raping a woman on the orders of a village jury, bringing to four the total held so far, but a fifth suspect was still at large. The case has caused a sensation in Pakistan after a traditional village jury, or panchayat, ordered the rape as punishment for the woman's brother allegedly having an affair with a girl from a higher-caste tribe. Yes, it says, "as punishment for the woman's brother having an affair."
July 08, 2002 : humid evenings
Tonight it's humid. Humid like taffy that's set in the sun or syrup on the stem of your fork and you can't wash your hands. It's a nice blend of cool humidity that makes is bareable. The coolness is negating the lack of breeze, as I don't recall ever being able to open our front windows and our back windows without having a slight breeze. Our curtains are completely limp. Eva remarked on San Francisco. How can a city be so warm in the daytime and then so cool in the night? My very first mistake in SF (along with Bobbie too) was that I didn't pack a jacket with my summer-outfits for our month-long stay in a furnished apartment in Sunnyvale. We were definately tourists in our new home. We were easy to spot goose-pimpled after the sun went down in khaki shorts and fake birkenstocks. But tonight it was beautiful. Before heading in for the night we opted to take a stroll around the neighborhood. We stopped at the Russian night shop and grabed two small Jupiler beers. (75 Euro cent apiece) and found a bench in front of the Anglican church Eva's father attends. We sat there in the humidity and talked. Something we need to do more often. Not just the talking, but the walking. The placing ourselves on benches at 11:30 for no reason whatsoever. That's getting back to our roots. :) Back when no hour seemed like a bad hour to do something random. Here's to sweltering windless humid nights in Antwerp, and to the re-beginning of what has been the most wonderful thing to happen to us. The fact that we found each other...her here, and me there and somehow it's working. IN THE NEWS: Researchers say that a vaccine that offers at least partial protection against HIV could be available within a decade, but poor countries will be left without access for years longer unless manufacturing and distribution capacity is built into the plan for action.
July 09, 2002 : agnostic-powerful-thinking
Eva often makes fun of me because I love water. There are times when water is seemingly the only thing I can think of that can possibly quench my thirst. There is nothing better in all of the world than having free-refills on tap water or coming home to a nice liter of refrigerated water. Call it the country girl in me that still loves going to the well and drinking it straight from the ground unfiltered and naturlly cool. Or maybe it's because my parents are water drinkers. :) Well water can ruin a computer. Eva had prepared herself a drink (it very well could have been me) yesterday and sat it next to the seen-more-of-its-share-of-work laptop and climbed into bed. During the day I had started reading, in bed, the lonely planet guide to Italy that Eva's mother had give us. When I finished my entry last night I readied the house for sleep. I turned off the lights, moved the chair under the desk and climbed into bed...where I situated the book at my feet as to not have it fall off the bed during the night. I'm just settling in when Eva says, "Honey, can you check the mosquito poison plugin to make sure nothing is sitting on top of it?" Sure. I climb back out of bed and take hte guide to Italy with me. Since it is dark I set the book on top of the glass which spills the water directly onto the keyboard. Shit. So anway, we dry it off the best we can and mourn the morning when we will most likely find out that we've just ruined the best free computer a laid off person can ever hope for. So this morning I try it over and over again and it only starts up the very first time and then freezes like macs freeze. I dont' think I've ever had a PC do the mouse-freeze on me (think god!) and so I was a little alarmed. Then the computer started doing this non-power-up thing without starting the hard-drive whir. Then it would do the hard-drive whir and no screen. I was devestated. I kept calling Eva to update her on the patients health, but she finally said, "It's too hard on me...don't let me know anything more about it." Did I mention that I also took it completely apart. No so apart that pieces of computer were scattered on the desktop, but apart enough that it woudln't work right unless you put it back together. No water in sight. I put it back together and then it goes into absolute silence. Green light but no sound. Nothing. I'm completely grieved. I start thinking about prayer and how I'm not about to attempt it, but how there should be an alternative for non-believers. The agnostic-powerful-thinking prayer-type thought in a particular direction. So I'm doing the postitive-thoughts in the direction of the computer and then I give up. I even managed to have the computer give me what computer tech people call the "blue screen of death." I call eva and ask her out for dinner because niether one of us needed to stare at our gem of a worthless computer. We run all sorts of errands and then have Indian food, where the people genuinely like it when we show up and greet us in mixed verbage...him with his decent Flemish, me with my broken version, and Eva with her mother tongue. It's fun. We return home and Eva is pleased with the state of the apartment and it's cleanliness. The dishes are done, the floor picked up, the trash collected, the table cleared...I could go on and on. (for obvious reasons, right? I want to make myself sound better) I go directly to the computer...where I start it up and no joke, it works. First thing. The keyboard doesn't work anymore, but maybe that was my fault. I might not have reconnected the keyboard ribbon right or something "underneath the hood." But it works! And since I was once so faith-based, I guess the agnostic-powerful-thinking prayer-type thought really worked! ;)
July 10, 2002 : the burden of the holocaust
Every year the Flemish celebrate their Flemishness by having the Flanderen Feest. Today every museum in Flanders was for free and open until midnight. I hopped the train to Mechelen and picked up Eva from Lu's Paragraph (her work) and we walked around Mechelen. Apparently Mechelen has a bad reputation that isn't easily shaken. It's got a sizable crime rate (apparently) and has an immigrant 'problem'. But let me tell you, it's beautiful. It's got canals (which Antwerp used to have) that twist and turn through the city, and small little streets lined with old homes. Everywhere you turn there are 3 pristinely kept 15th century homes sitting next to 2 dilapidated ones. They have a huge cathedral on the city square and little cafes tucked behind main thoroughfares. We ambled through the city and lost ourselves. It was a day with drizzle which meant that hordes of museum-goers were not out on the town. We entered a small museum courtyard and took our place on a parkbench under an umbrella and listed to a 5 piece brass band play from beneath the awnings of a terrace. Us and 5 other people. We were headed to the Jewish Museum. That was our goal. Mechelen was a center for deportation back after the Germans took over Belgium in three days. We finally made it to the museum and waited for the tour in front of us to exit. We decided to do it sans-guide because the guide would be in Flemish and the details for all of the exhibit were in Dutch, French and English. So I could manage. Eva had been there when she was a kid. I don't know what "a kid" means, but I doubt it was an age of appreciation. WWII has always been a far-off war which happened in a far-off place. Yes of course I realized that it was real and that millions of people died senselessly, but it never happened in MY town. Well now it has. Forgive me for saying this, because it may sound very harsh, but as a graphic designer, WWII propaganda posters are the cream of the crop and nearly every Nazi symbol is a well designed icon. I don't actually know if I've ever even seen a Nazi flag in person. Well now I have. And the posters? Now I've seen posters that say "Join the 'SS'" and an address where-to in Brussels. Brussels. I go to school in Brussels. We went on and it gets even more personal when a photograph shows a train bridge I have gone under many times. It's right next to a synagogue where in the picture a group of people are burning anything they can get their hands on from within the synagogue. There is a man running around with a scroll under his arm. En mijn nu stad. (In my new city.) This is 60 years ago. There are people that live in the Jewish old-folks home that were survived concentration camps and have tattoos of numbers on their forearms. There were pictures of people, no younger than me, who helped to smuggle Jewish children to places of safety. There were newspaper clippings that showed "what made a person Jewish." Just one Jew in your family a generation back made you blacklisted. Signs in Antwerp trams saying that Jews couldn't ride public transport. En mijn nu stad. (In my new city.) And what would I do? There is always the consideration of what I would do in that situation. Would I be willing to risk my life for my next door neighbor? Or would I be willing to join the hatred to save my own life. Would I turn a blind eye like so many did? Or would I do something? And it wasn't just the Hasidic in their black 18th century garb with tassels hanging out from beneath their waistcoats. It was everyday-looking people. Entire families ushered from their homes and escorted by train to Mechelen. Further on in the display there were pictures of people that were on each convoy into Mechelen with the card stating the person's birthplace and address. Addresses like 309 Lange Leemstraat which is just around the corner. The street where I catch Tram 8 to head into the city center. It's daunting and overwhelming. It bristles the hairs on my head. I moved from exhibit to exhibit...making myself aware of the fact that I should not allow myself to treat each new face and photograph differently that I had the first few. I should not become more and more used to the fact that these were people. It's so easy to let a museum overtake you and make you less and less affected. Each new fact and figure, each new family, and each new story added weight to my shoulders. En mijn nu stad. (In my new city.) This happened. And children. And men. And women. And sisters. And brothers. Naked mothers holding infants to their chests, walking in mass to their death. A man standing on the edge of a grave awaiting the bullet to their grave. Yellow stars of David. Gaunt faces, the ones we are so familiar with, wearing the striped prisoner clothes. Pictures of the building I was walking in, now a gorgeous apartment building, the check-in point for departure to eminent death. Literally only handfuls survived their next destination. So the war. The Jews. A simple museum in the basement of a deportation center. A place where people left even more of their belongings and boarded the trains we know so much about. Eva and I left burdened by our own history and walked along the canal back to the trainstation...mostly in silence, dropping tidbits of shock and our being reacquainted with knowledge. And I know we all say, "never again." And I know that the most of us that call ourselves "humans" wish for a world where this would, in fact, never happen again. But it does, and it will, and it seemingly goes on forever in a vicious cycle. What can we do except love our children, be kind to others, treat people with respect, give up our seats to our elders, learn from our mistakes, educate, acknowledge, and be aware of the world around us? IN THE NEWS: For what it's worth, I am offering this link. The internet is alive with truth and lies. We know this, urban myths about people hiding under cars and cutting ankles to missing girls. But this, regardless of whether it is true or false, is something to think about. If you are an American, you should consider trying to get your news from a non-American source. It can change the way you feel about the world. Eva found this on a newsite today, and I consider it an appropriate ending to today's entry:
July 11, 2002 : gratis bus en tram
Once again the Flanderen Feest, in its second day, was welcomed by rain. Eva had previously told me about today being a free-ride day, so I had plans of gallivanting all over town and riding every tram. Instead, clad in t-shirt and jeans, I rode a couple of buses to the outskirts of town. Antwerp seemingly sprawls out in every direction. It sprawls like the suburbia of any city, with cars becoming more and more necessary the further you get out of town. By the time my journey ended up back in the city center, it was pouring rain and I was freezing. I headed home, stopping just long enough to buy Eva some flowers. Gorgeous home-grown bright orange colored African daisies. They were beautiful. She's been treated to a surprise every evening when she comes home. Any or all of the following: no dishes in the sink, the clothes picked up, dinner made, stocked fridge, trash out, living-room spotless, water bottles filled, working computer, and now flowers. What can I say, I'm trying. If there is anything I've realized in the last couple of weeks, it's that I need to be in the continuous-woo mode. It's relatively easy enough, and it's fun to do. It's not that I'm trying to convince her to stay, I just want her that I am just as crazy about her now as I was almost two years ago. Completely bonkers...her being always on my mind. If she's not at the forefront when I'm actually being productive and working on a project or reading, then she runs a close second, always about to overtake the first. For the second time in two days, I rode the train to meet her in Mechelen. We had fritjes (fries) with curry ketchup and tried a new deep-fried treat called a Kraker. She tried it. I took one look at it and ate my Viendel. (a rolled-in-batter deep-friend sausage-type thing.) While standing in line (lines at a frituur usually signify frit quality) a pigeon flew in the window of the frituur. (which is basically a small little trailer with an awning.) Panic ensued. The bird was stuck between the glass of the window and the angled glass protecting the food. Our food was safe, but the bird was helpless. Enter an innocent customer who walks into the cooking space, takes charge, asks the people to pull out the food-viewing refrigerated part, and there goes the bird. I have already mentioned a couple of days ago about the status of pidgeons...but this girl made them seem birds with dignity. It flew out like a bat out of hell and perched on top of a building across the street. So worn out, I guess, it stayed there until we hopped our bus. We decided to take the buses to anywhere. All of Flanders was free. We hopped the bus to Lier and enjoyed the scenery. All of Flanders is seemingly connected by a well-planned-out bus system. If you are the patient kind, you can ride a bus almost anywhere. Not ever living in a place catered to by bus, I appreciate this. It's a novel concept. little old ladies can visit their childhood friends who live three little dorps (towns) over. Lier is beautiful. We've heard it call our names many times. Every arrow always seems to point there, and so it was great to end up there at the end of a 45 minute bus ride. People were walking along the canals and even jogging. I can list the number of joggers I've seen since being in Belgium on one hand. One hand. After living in Healthville, California, it was a pleasant site to see an older man in running shorts running on the footpath. Families with their all-terrain baby buggies and packs of just-graduated-two-weeks-ago boys out for an evening bike ride. In Lier we caught a bus to Herentals. We've almost been there before. On a night earlier this year, Elka had her father's car for the night and we went on a joyride. We ended up in the same places and the same roads that we were on this evening--passing the very same restaurant called "Plane Crash" that has a 1950s plane half-sticking out of it's second story. I remember passing it that night with Elke. Just seeing a plane sticking out of a building made us weak-kneed. So there it was in broad daylight on a free bus from Lier to Herentals. The same road has brothel after brothel. It's unexplainable. It's not really close to the highway, and it's not a road really big enough for truckers, so we're still wondering about all of the seedy brothels that line the road between the highway and Herentals. You might think that I'm exaggerating a bit, but I'm not. Literally on a stretch of road that takes 5-10 minutes to drive (off of the highway) there are maybe 15 bar/sauna/rooms by the hour/girls girls girls places. It's strange. Here next to homes that cost millions of euros are sex shops. We don't get it. I'm waiting for an explanation. There has to be a good one. After Herentals we head back to Antwerp. We had a good discussion over coffee about our future and the plans and actions we have to take...and we made some headway. We mentioned things like grad school, the US, South America, 3-month holidays, teaching jobs, agency work, etc. Eva kept saying, "I know that I don't show it, but I'm excited...so excited I feel like i have diarrhea." I guess that's a good sign. :) And for what it's worth, I have diarrhea then too, Eva. So I didn't mention the countryside. If you are ever coming to Europe and you want to see what 99 percent of the tourists don't see, simply go to the bus depot and catch a bus out of town. As long as you aren't leaving at 10 o'clock at night, there will certainly be a way back, and you'll go over countryside and through little towns and stop at random bus stops alongside the road in the middle of nowhere...as long as there is someone waiting for a ride. This is definitely something on my list for my parents to do. We're going to ride a bus. You don't have to talk much, but just take in the scenery. Brick house after brick house, shetland ponies in a field without grass, greenhouses, wildflowers, muscled cows, perfectly manicured gardens and lawns, bicyclists sharing the road with the bus, scooter boys passing us on the left, and the sunsetting behind a thundercloud. We came back home at 11. I wanted to see the apartment one last time and so we headed to Sint Vincentsraat just to be sure. I took pen and paper as to write any of the obvious faults down: sea-scene mural in bathroom, scratches already on floor (thank god), unpainted wall in bedroom, etc. After having someone blame a rewiring job on me back in Cincinnati, it's alway best to take a look around and get it all down on paper. :) By the time we got home we were knackered (Eva's word) and we hit the hay (American verbage) IN THE NEWS:
July 12, 2002 : tapas fridays
Weekends are great. They are moments of rest. This week as been a hard week because not only did it start off with water splashing all over the computer, but because it ended with us getting the apartment. But Fridays are over days. Eva hurried home and we headed to the apartment place and signed our lives away. Not exactly, of course, but close enough. Gelezen en goedgekeurd and our signature. Read and approved. Something like 5 times apiece. The lady had a stamp for her bit of writing, but we had to struggle. At least I did. It’s not that I can’t read and copy Dutch, it’s that the handwriting wasn’t the best. I should have looked at the stamp I guess…but hindsight is always 20/20. So it’s official. We’ve got a new apartment. A huge apartment with a mural in the bathroom with will be transformed into a different mural. (at least those are my plans.) We headed to Pablo’s, a Mexican restaurant with great guacamole and crappy service, to celebrate. From our outdoor table we watched a group of children (just friends for the moment, having met because parents and grandparents were finishing up meals and the children were bored) playing next to the KNS, a large arts theater. One of the boys had a silver gun, and though I grew up in a generation where guns were still cool, the older I get the more inappropriate guns seem for little kids. Fake guns that look real. Cap guns that come with holsters. Squirt guns are different, but metallic play guns pointed in the direction of other people are never cool. Little did we know what the entire night had in store for us. Lu’s Paragraph (where Eva works) decided to have an employee gathering at a tapas restaurant. I had never eaten tapas. It’s Spanish. Not Mexican like the food we associate with the word Spanish, but Spanish as in Spain. Tapas are assortments of finger food on a grand scale. Spanish tortilla (not the Mexican version) but the potato omelet variety, octopus, garlic chicken legs, cheeses, olives, potatoes with spicy toppings, sardines well-cooked peppers, and bread. The sort of things you can pile on a large plate and serve to friends pre-meal but this is the meal. I wasn’t crazy about the concept until it seemed to work. It’s a friendly sort of thing. How can people not get along when you have to reach and send plates around? It was really great. For most of the meal I was in a slight state of panic about the bottom line. When 15+ people get together at a restaurant the tendencies are to divide the bill across the board. Back home it’s much easier to simply say, "separate checks" and then you struggle to group yourselves into 4s. The wine started flowing as soon as the last people arrived. This gorgeous lightly colored stuff in blue bottles. So faint a flavor that it could have been watered down Clearly Canadian. (Once a very popular thing to get on youth-group trips along with IBC rootbeer in little brown bottles on youth group spring break trips because we thought they looked like wine coolers and beer bottles respectively.) At any rate, the wine flowed the entire night. Not enough to make you tipsy, but enough to make my mind blur for the cost. Not only did it flow along with a red variety, but at the other end of the table a couple of guys were getting their fill of the expensive imported Corona’s and lime. My mind was spinning. I should have asked for steak tapas or something. I should have asked for my own bottle of non-sparkling water which would have been just as extravagant as the coronas because it would be the bottled water variety, and we seldom splurge for something I can just get out of the tap. It was great to go. The night was a mostly Flemish evening (to be expected) but it was great to be able to match face to name. No longer will the people in Eva’s nightly work-stories be faceless…now they are real people. By the time we are on desert (the worst crepe I’ve ever eaten) I’m thinking that we’ve all easily racked up a bill for around 40 bucks a person. When the check arrives I am waiting for the damage when I realize that the boss is going to pick up the tab. Having not expected this, we were both relieved and alarmed. It was one of those uncomfortable situations where all of the employees start squirming in their seats. Just as soon as the check came it was gone and all paid for just like that. What can you say except thank you. We definitely said thank you. And the money that we would have spent will probably last us the rest of the weekend. Tapas are great, but nothing is as great as an extra 80 Euros in your pocket when you just signed for an 85 Euro more a month apartment and you’re headed to Italy in 4 days. Yes, we definitely said thank you, and maybe they’ll even get a postcard from Italy. But the night was still young. I’m ready to head home, but Eva wants to spend more quality outside-of-the-office time with her coworkers. I understand this and they seem ok people, so we all head to a far off (not in the direction of our house café) at Eva’s suggestion. It’s the same bar we always end up leaving 5 hours later, and this was no exception. By the time we left, it was after 4 in the morning. There were only 6 other people left and two of them worked there. I can’t recall what we talked about for the time span, but it was a good half-English half-Flemish time. (always a welcome treat.) ;) So we’re headed out the door (the 6 of us) and Eva has pre-arranged that we are going to escort one of the girls to her car with is a 20 minute walk away. (not in the direction of our house) I don’t mind this at all. It’s 4 something in the morning, and no matter how safe a female feels in her own city at night, she shouldn’t be on foot alone. Sometimes Eva and I, at a distance, even follow women who are walking alone at night…just to make sure they are in the proper state of mind. So here comes one of those, "I’m obviously living in Belgium" sort of instances. We escort this girl all the way to her car in the center of town, completely out of our way, and she just thanks us, gets in her car, and drives off. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t care WHERE she lived in respect to the car. Whatever direction it was, it couldn’t have been more out of her way that it was for us to take her to her car. It’s just not something people think about here. Unless it somehow comes up in conversation, you are not going to get a ride. Unless it is pre-planned somewhere earlier in the evening, no one is going to offer. It’s not like they are mean about it, like she didn’t want to mention it because she didn’t want to offer, it’s just that she didn’t even think about it. I was thinking about it as soon as she saw her car and said, "That’s it." I was in shock. When we started walking our 20+ minute walk home at now almost 5 in the morning Eva knew exactly what I was going to say. "I know," she said before I could even get in a word, "she didn’t even think about it. That’s just Belgium for you." So I guess cars are not an extension of the home like they are back home. I know fuel is more expensive, and distances are qualified and quantified in such a different relation to the distances back home. I thought nothing of traveling an hour and a half with a car full of friends to go out dancing until the club closed at 1:30 and we headed back the same route, a carload of sleeping danced-out friends and the driver sleepy-eyed and the person in the passenger-seat attempting to stay awake to be co-pilot. I did know this about Belgium to a certain extent. Whereas I would always offer friends rides to and from airports 30 minutes to 3 hours away (in one direction) at the drop of a hat or rides home when they’ve had too much to drink and I’m already dead asleep…people just asked, or just called, or it was just expected. Oh, you’re coming in at what time? You need a ride? No, dear Belgian friends who will read this, I am not commenting on anyone or anything. I’m talking about the relation of this particular evening and comparing it with previous experiences. Yes, I have had a pick ups and drops off since I’ve been here in Belgium. It’s just different, that’s all. By the time we ended up in front of our street, we were exhausted, I was convinced I was going to have a bout of diarrhea from sheer exhaustion, and the sky was turning a lighter shade of blue with every step.
July 13, 2002 : Ani Difranco and repetitive evenings
Little did I know that the diarrhea was going to present itself on through the night. It wasn’t even diarrhea, but gas disguising itself as the nervous pangs of diarrhea. We climbed into bed last night with great urgency, as we were literally exhausted. We drew the curtains and prepared to hibernate for the morning. Before I climbed into bed I drank as much water as my body could hold without filling myself so full it comes brims somewhere in my throat. I had been drinking at a steady pace since dinner. Like I said, it was no where in the region of drunkenness. My mother would be pleased to know that dinnertime finds me preferring a nice cold bottomless cup of nature’s best to the finest wine, and so I was parched. As my father would say, "So thirsty I’m spitting dust." I climbed into bed and soon retreated to the toilet. Just gas. I climbed back into bed and soon retreated to the same effect. I was concerned for the nerves of Eva and decided to sleep on the couch. I don’t know if it was a placebo, my deciding on the couch, but it seemed that the ready availability of the bathroom being easily accessible that calmed my stomach, because I soon found it to be 6 hours later. I woke to Eva’s desperate cries of alarm at my missing from the bed. She usually wakes up and reaches back just to poke me in the back to make sure I’m there. It’s not that she thinks I’m going to disappear somewhere in the night (as I seemingly did on this occasion) it’s just reassuring to know that I’m there. J And this time I wasn’t. J With a night as long as last night, this day was proving to be a short day. We had planned on making it a huge day in town. We were going to go summer sale shopping. (every store is doing it’s annual 20, 30, 40, 50% off sales. We had planned to buy me a Dutch workbook for my trip to Italy. We had planned to return library books and pick up the scooter. We didn’t leave the house until it was time to meet people for the Ani Difranco concert. I busied myself with a delicious dinner and Eva did manage to leave the house for a few minutes to grab some spicy olives for me to snack on. This was the extent of our Saturday. Everyone deserves to have a nothing Saturday on occasion, and so this was our allotment which we intent to never repeat. What we had intended on doing today, we have now put off until Monday. We thought we were leaving for Italy on Monday but it’s actually Tuesday. Thank god for our mis-remembering. What can I say about Ani Difranco except that she is amazing. I didn’t know she was amazing until a couple of years ago. Ani is one of the people I should have been following all along. I guess I would have never finished University (european-lingo and usage) if Kathleen and I had followed her too. Between soccer, art, school, Books A Million (my last college job) and the Indigo Girls I made a eeked through my last semester of Spanish with a D. (My first and last D ever!) I can’t imagine what Ani would have done to my higher education career. But Ani. Why was I such a late bloomer? When I was 18, way back in 1994, Ani Difranco would have been last person I would have listened to. (big exaggeration.) It would have been a natural progression, in all honesty. I loved chics and guitars. I loved singer-songwriter stuff. But I couldn’t stomach her style. I was mad about the Indigo Girls and their sound. Blisteringly perfect songs (the last great one was Swamp Ophelia circa de 1994) and I couldn’t make the switch to Ani’s then-breathy sound. Shame shame. It would have been a good thing for me, great break-up get-over songs. Great empowering and earth-shattering prods into action songs. But she was too different for me then. I didn’t give her lyrics a chance, I admit that. And so I missed out on Ani until a few years back and now I’m making up for lost time. I’ve seen her twice now. Once with Eva last fall in Oklahoma City after September 11th. (a nervous and obvious connection with the OKC bombing and the world trade center) and now in a very small amphitheater in Antwerp Belgium. I can say nothing more than two things about her, to which Eva will be saddened by the fact that I can’t go on and on about her. I’ll let Eva do that. Two things about Ani Difranco: 1. An Ani Difranco concert is an amazing experience. I always leave shaken and weak-knee-ed. I end up feeling like a passionless and spineless creature that wants to change the world. I feel prodded to do something. I feel like I have been provoked. I sit there listening to words penned for no one except all of us. Every emotion imaginable flashing in front of my face and penetrating my ears with verbage second to none. It’s truly amazing, the art so obvious in the experience. Masterpieces of every European museum on the level of scrawls on napkins. I feel empty, like the next second holds the moment that I can change into a better person. You have to love music that can sum up the world and tattoo it on your innards. 2. An Ani Difranco concert makes me think that if the world loses Ani Difranco to some sort of tragedy, that it would be one of the biggest losses of the modern world. I can’t really explain it. I can think of no other artist than can manipulate and stretch in the way that she pulls and sticks it in your ribs. And yet I didn’t get "into" her until a few years ago because I thought she was too "breathy." It makes no sense. She’s not mainstream, and yet, you come away thinking that "what the world needs now…" is a compilation CD of Ani’s greatest hits. Because you can’t help but be affected. So this sums up my night. Eva, and our friend Heleen, left our group after the first song to make their way a few rows closer. I was stuck between a recently heartbroken, long-term relationship-gone-awry gay boy and Eva’s ex girlfriend. That’s what I like about Ani Difranco. What a strange situation. Post concert we made our way into town and it ended up being just Heleen, Eva and I. Eva and I were unprepared for another long night and Heleen was prepared to spend the night in all of her old stomping grounds, catching up on old gossip and seeing old acquaintances. I know how she feels. I’ve been in the same situation where you want nothing more than to re-feel like home, and so Eva and I did our best to keep up. 4 hours later, after hitting the Zaal Jacob club for the younger-set of Antwerpen’s gay scene (Eva and I waited for Heleen to run in and check it out) and a one-drink stint at Poppi (a trendy café for the slightly older likeminded crowd) we headed home. Heleen wasn’t so sad to go, as she had seen the people she wanted to see. We made our way back across town in the same manner and in the same state of mind and at nearly the same hour as hour night before--the sky was turning a lighter shade of blue with every step. But this time the sleep came relatively easy and our couch was no longer my bed, it was filled by a tall Belgian Dutch girl reading Michele Tea’s Valencia Street on into the night while us older girls drifted off into sleep.
July 14, 2002 : thai food sundays
Sometimes you have close friends who live at the end of a 20 minute walk and yet it seems you see them only every-so-often. In the grand scheme of things, the grand scheme including moving far, far from here, we should take advantage of our relative closeness. And yet it remains to be seen whether or not we will ever see Tom and Ilse more than once a month. If that. They are the sort of friends we can manage to see rarely but then when we do, it's like we haven't missed a beat. This doesn't mean either of us couples are downright boring, it just means that we're pretty good friends. There will forever be 15 minutes of catchings up, and then we move on to normal conversation. I like friends like these. Un-needy and yet at the same time full of companionship. We're both extremely grateful. Of course it is downright shameful that we didn't know Tom was learning how to drive (just like Eva) but it's good to know they are still around whenever the friendship feeling hits. The friendship feeling is always waiting to pop up unexpectedly, and they come up in conversation more often they they probably expect, but at the same time, we didn't ask them over for dinner last week after we talked about it for nearly a week. And it's not like we can ask them over during the month of August, because they are going to Thailand, so I guess September will be the month we get together again...although we would like to see them before they leave and after we get back. Besides, we need them in September because we'll be moving...and I'm sure they not only will lend a trunk of my dream car, Ilse's Twingo (if need be) but they would definately make a dreary moving day a conversation friendly one even if all they did was hold open the front door of the apartment and chat with us as we brought up the boxes. Originally (a word I tend to use quite often in respect to plans) we had intended of hopping into the aforementioned Twingo and heading to the Netherlands for the afternoon. We would have been even closer to being on time had our tram not taken a detour and had we not escorted an older English tourist to the Museum as well as an almost deaf and blind man. She had inquired, way back at our stop, where the museum was, and we surmised that she must have simply gotten on the right tram going the wrong direction. And since the tram had to take a different route due to a car blocking the tracks, we decided to go easy on her and walk her there instead of pointing and hand gestures. She was a retired English and French teacher out on her holiday in Belgium. It's funny how many teachers there are in the world, whether they be retired or current, and it seems to me that teachers, though universally underpaid, tend to be the travelling type. Is it the summer vacations or their desire to learn that keeps them going? Back to our afternoon. Instead of Holland we did the livingroom chat. Eva remarked on the roofline of the building across the street and how she must have always been in their house after dark because she had never noticed the intricate spires. I certainly had never been in their house outside of dinnertime and late-night discussions with seemingly always-good music going on in the background. They were recoving from a late night just as we were so we were on the same level. After mowing down on Doritos Dippas (both chips and dip) we decided on Thai. If Tom and Ilse were headed to Thailand for a month, then we might as well do the next best thing to crawling into their suitcases. Eva seems to think I have always been dead-set against traveling anywhere in Asia. Though I must admit it was once a place pretty low on my list of destinations, living in one of my former 'top destinations' has bumped everything up a bit. And since I am learning to eat a wider variety of things...well one never knows where we might show up. So once again it was a short day filled with few monumental happenings, but a good day nontheless. When we got back to our little apartment we were both pretty much overcome with the fact that this little house/big room is as cozy as a place can be. Did we have little pangs of regret about getting the new place? Yes, of course. Two girls attached to dark orange curtains, the layout of two second hand couches stuck together in the shape of an 'L', the opening of windows causing a direct draft which cleans then air in a matter of seconds, and the bakery up the street with cheap croisants and hours of opperation we can't seem to get straight...two girls in love with the first place we picked out ourselves can't help but get a bit mushy over moving to a new place. But all in all we're still pleased. Just wait until we post pictures of our new digs. Three months and it will be all over. We'll be adjusting to the occasional sirens of abulances and the faint sound of Jewish hymns. (not hymns, but you know what I mean.) Here's to passing the moving stress-test and the more pressing event of packing for a two week adventure in Italy. IN THE NEWS:
July 15, 2002 : wijnegem shopping center
It's the mall. Wijnegm Shopping Center is to Antwerp what the Battlefield Mall is to Springfield, Missouri. Though I am no fan of digressing from the downtown scene, as malls have always been the death, the absolute DEATH of downtown America, WSC was a nice change. It had everything the Meir has to offer only it's all on under one building including a permanent every-mall fixture, Sbarro's pizza. As I've previously mentioned, Beligium is in the midst of their summer sales. Eva and I had intended on purchasing new pants for our trip but we ended up going crazy in Hema and I got a new notebook for my journal entries of the handwritten variety while in Italy. Eva scored by getting a new pair of work pants and though I tried on a couple of pants, most I simply held up to my waistline and said, "Uh uhhh." (No.) We've decided that after we get back I'm going on an Eva diet. Not that she's ever gone on one in her entire life, but she's going to give it a shot with me as her guinea pig. I imagine it will entail cutting out my camembert moldy cheese and my favorite salt and pepper chips, but the result will be rewarding. Already, since living here for 8 months, my cheekbones are at least visible. :) Now if only I can lose that thigh-rubbing business! Certainly the pasta, gelato, wine and bread won't help the case while we are running around Italy. It will only be offset slightly by the amount of walking around old cities and even older old city ruins. So in preperation for our leaving tomorrow we decided to sort our dirty clothes into two piles, the "dirty and we don't care and we're not taking them" pile and the "got to love clean underwear and can't live in Italy without them" pile. We headed up the street around 9 (the usual closing time for laundrymats) and found our destination closed. Just up the street we found another one that closed at 10. We were in the green. Good to go. After enjoying the pleasant sounding whir, click, spin, water washing bit (we always stare for minutes on end at our clothes flopping around in brown water at high speeds) we put them into the dryer. 10 minutes later, much to our alarm (which is a totaly well-deserved pun) the lights go dim, the dryers stop and an alarm sounds. Most laundrymats here close here at 9, but if you are still inside of the place doing laundry, you can finish up your business and then let yourself out, letting the door lock behind you. Not here. Our trip-precious clothes were still damp. Though it was quite a disappointment to me, I found it sort of funny. Every 3 minutes, for 2 minutes, an ear piercing shrill alarm sounded. Not a car-alarm sound, but a shrill get-the-hell-out-of-our-laundrymat sound. Much like the shoplifting alarms that sound off when you exit a store and the ink-filled security tag hasn't been removed...only this one was non stop. Eva was quite peeved. We hurridly jammed our damp clothes into our bags and exited the place. One thing I am learning about Eva is the down-time required for her to regain her composure. :) It's all of 10 minutes, but for these 10 minutes I didn't want to bring up the fact that it was sort of funny that we were headed home with slightly misted clean clothing. I was over it as soon as it began. One of my two wearable bras had been eaten by the dryer (the underwire stuck between the metal round-and-round part and the door) and the alarm was hysterical. It's a laundrymat, not a got-to-protect money-bagged casino. :) So now it's late and what was our cute little house/big room last night has now been reduced to a clothesline. Jeans are hanging in the open windows, the stair to our loft is filled with socks and underwear, shirts are on every radiator and hanging beneath the loft on hangers...it's worse than a mess, it's like any Wijnegem mall clothes rack. Small jeans and Large ones. Nothing for the average size left for as far as the eye can see...underwear marked 40 percent off and tossed around in a big bin. So yes, we'll get up early in the morning and pack up the hopefully dry clothes in a rush and get to the station just in time. Eva will be stressed out and I'll think it's all slightly funny...and 10 minutes later, after we have safely made it onto the train and we are going full steam in the direction of Charleroi she'll think it's all funny too. Though I doubt there will be a new entry for at least 2 weeks, I promise to keep it up in long-hand to be transferred on our arrival back in Belgium. Slowly but surely. And evey more surely and more slowly, pictures will follow. In the meantime go out and rent Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and think of us sitting out there on the Spanish steps...and sometime next week rent the Sound of Music and think of us out on the grand tour of Salzburg. IN THE NEWS:
July 29, 2002 : the Real World
It's a story of 2 people from different backgrounds forced to live together under one roof...and here I was going to pseudo-duplicate a Belgian and American living together under the guise of MTV's Real World. I just spent 15 minutes surfing for the opening lines of the show to no avail. The point being, today marked our return to the real world. Eva's return is, of course, more drastic, whereas mine only necessitates removing myself from the bed and taking a shower and working a bit on some freelance work. Poor Eva. Nose to the grind after 2 weeks in paradise. Paradise. A bit of rain here and there, a big cozy tent, and meanderings around cities 5 times as old as the US is a country. I can't go into much detail, as I will be adding entries from the past couple of weeks and post-date them, but it was a great time. Eva and I have not only decided that we should remain friends (one couldn't be so sure with the prospect of sleeping in a tent for 2 weeks) but we should remain girlfriends for as long as humanly possible. This is no proposal, as my friend Kathleen proposed to her girlfriend last week, this will just be something that happens. Maybe one of us will have a proposal up our sleeves...but as for now, we are content with our $7.95 silver rings that we exchange at random intervals; over coffee, next to burning catholic candles, in bed, in the car, and even more obviously over a nice meal. On our trip I even did the "drop the ring in the wine glass" trick. Only I didn't know it was supposed to be champagne and we soon rescued it and returned it to it's rightful place though we don't ever really know who the rightful owner is. Like I said, they're exactly the same. Just like sharing shoes i guess. Enough of this verbal bit. I only meant to drop a bit about Kathleen and Rochelle, for which the modern world should be very pleased at their promised union. "What the world needs now" is more of the two of them, and the two of us, and some Bobbies and Erins, and some Nicholes and Jennifers, some Almas and Julies, some Susan and Leilas, some Colleens and Janets...and speaking of which, I just found an email from Colleen in my junk mail folder (don't ask me why it was there) letting me know that she just had her baby a month early. I can't wait to go to the store on Saturday and pick out some baby stuff to send. Eva and I are truly mad with baby nonsense in our heads. We don't know if it is that the world is producing more babies or that we are getting more needy of having one, because it seems we cannot go through a day without seeing adorable little babies in SUV mountain-bike baby strollers or a little blonde headed, bob-haired little tyke holding it's parent's index finger. And we say, "Awwwwwww..." And our hearts go ba-boom, ba-boom...and we get all misty eyed. We're not even on our periods. Obviously I haven't typed in awhile because I am finding that I am ever so wordy this evening. It's stifling in Antwerp. The air is completely stagnant and hot. It's midnight almost, and still no different than this afternoon. It is sooo warm that just having my laptop on my lap leaves sweat marks on my legs. No, I'm not kidding. 33 degrees Celsius. I'm not in the mood to figure out the exchange rate. The dollar is the same as the Euro, a yard is about the same as a meter, but a degree is completely different. I think it's multiply by 2 and add 30 or there about. At any rate it is hot. Really hot. Rumor has it (or rather it's an inside joke) that Antwerp is hot 5 days a year. Well we've only got 3 left then. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain. Go figure. :) And mosquitoes. The flying syringes. The high pitched buzz in your ear insect. They are seemingly everywhere. I think I remember a children’s story how a man killed several flies with one swat. Well we aren’t as fortunate as several in one go, but we’ve been lucky enough to swat a few. The citronellas are burning, the electric poison is plugged in, and us with our ready stretched palms. (the slapping and clapping version of swatting) Oh, finally, a faint breeze. So the whole point is that I'm back. Back in time to remark on the subtleties of life in Antwerp. Back to the real world where we are already planning our next trip. Will it be England or a small camping trip to the Ardens? Will life prove to be different with a motorized form of transportation? (aka: Scooter) Will I manage to stick to concept of eating no Camembert moldy cheese and no salt and pepper chips? Will Eva prove to be less stressed now that she has gone on her long-awaited vacation? Will I actually paint a mural in our new place? Will I find a steady part-time job? Will I learn to make Thai sauces? Wait and see. IN THE NEWS:
July 30, 2002 : the Flemish word for Fan.
I spent most of the day dodging sun rays that poked through my well-curtained window. As there was little breeze for the 3rd straight day, I had every window open, hoping to catch air movement from swooping birds or restless butterflies, even the slight jostling of air from city buses passing outside. One window I had curtained as to convince me to start working on my computer--the curtains providing me with ample shade to actually see the laptop screen. A word to young designers. Never alter images (such as photos) in bright light. You'll think they look good and then once the sun goes down you'll realize they are completely out of whack. Yes of course I've done this before in my life. Numerous times...hence the curtain. So curtain aside, literally, the house beckoned me to be cleaned. "I'm trashed" it told me. And it was quite true. Sleeping bags originally set in the sun to air out and dry out from any 2 week old dampness were definitely dry. They'd been dry for a couple of days now. Piles pulled from backpacks and bags had been sorted into very dirty and very clean. Shoes had somehow managed to end up in every "room" of the house. Something had to be done. And like I mentioned before out trip. I'm a changed person. I'm into this cleanliness business. I'm in to domesticality now. I'm the 1950's housewife and Eva's the "Honey I'm home" bring-home-the-bacon provider. And so, without delay I proceeded to pick up, sort, pile, repile, stack, move, sweep, wash, dry, scrub, and listen to the BBC. Actually I listened to the news on the BBC and then once it went into it's cycle of the same news told slightly differently, with sudden breaking news bits like a new suicide bombing in Jerusalem, I switched to KQED, the NPR station from San Francisco. And like I mentioned earlier. It was hot. I had this great idea to buy a fan somewhere and stick it in the middle of the room to pull air from one set of windows to the next. Jessica and Eric were headed down for the night because Eric leaves tomorrow to go back to the states and I didn't want them to suffer in the ways of sleeping as I had suffered. (all stretched out with barely an inch of skin touching my loved one) So off I was to buy a fan. No fan. By the time Eric and Jessica got here, I had already scoured the neighborhood winkles for fans. Nothing. We hopped on a tram and searched for a fan in the main shopping district. Finally, in a grand realization of utter defeat, the sky clouded over, it started to drizzle, and Eric came up with a hypothesis that there wasn't even a word for 'fan' in Dutch. We were wrong, of course, because Eva spouted a certain word for it when she got home, but we were certain there wasn't a fan in a 20 km radius. And the clouds explained why. I suppose anyone can suffer through a couple days of heat if they know that breezes and overcast are due any day now. Smart...these Belgians. Very smart. IN THE NEWS: WHAT I ATE TODAY: - 4 small biscuits made from my last packet of Bisquick. (I'm talking small here, less that the fork scrape they mention on the box, virtually a little more than a bite a piece) In Defense Of My Intake: The beers seem somewhat excessive on a Tuesday night, but it was Eric's last night in Belgium, and I drank them over a period of about 4 and a half hours or more and the bread that I ate was Gratis with the meal.
July 31, 2002 : gretta vs. the new
Old gretta has been on my mind for quite some time. We bought her under the impression that she had 3 working gears, just like we bought the cool 80's zwart en wit tv under the impression that he would be able to receive the Belgian public tv channels. Duds. In used car lingo, lemons. Similar to people exiting a casino only to realize they've somehow spent/lost all of their money..."We've been had." But Gretta is a great bike. I've wanted to replace her, but didn't have the money or the heart. I've gathered tools in a pile in my living-room several times with great intentions of fixing both Gretta and Eva's bike. (I dont' know that it has a name.) And weeks later, in a cleaning frenzy, the tools go back to their original resting place and the bikes remain unfixed. All of this craze started in the back of my head when I saw a Jewish boy on a mountain bike too large for him, but a decent bike. On further inspection we noticed that it was propaganda-ed with decals from a electronics store around the corner (fridges, freezers, irons, tvs, computers, stereos and cellphones.) I vaguely remember thinking that the bike must have come with a freezer or something or he entered for a drawing and ended up with it. Not until the fan-need yesterday did I find out that the store was selling them for 75 Euros a piece. And so, after finding such a great deal on a mountain bike much like a mountain bike I would have dreamed of owning back in 1998 before I got my Giant (which I moved from the walkout basement deck to the garage when I was home) and after Eric too recommended the bike as a sound investment for 75 Euros, the bike is mine. Jessica said I asked Eva what she thought about the bike at least 5 times last night, and after a quick phone call to her again this afternoon, we went to get it. I said, "I would like a bike." And the guy said, "How many?" (Were people literally buying 5 at a time or something?) And I said, "een fiets, a.u.b." A typical promotional item, with stickers saying Megapool (the name of the store) and Megagoed (Megagood) plastered all over it. But under all of the silliness is a nice dark blue bike frame. I'm utterly pleased. I peeled the stickers and added one. A Righteous Babes sticker. The day was complete with the addition of a fabulous meal. To celebrate such a wonderfully frugal purchase, I fixed a "mess of beans" and cornbread, and they just might have been the best beans I, myself, have ever created. Not to be confused with "the best I've ever eaten" because that would include my mother's...and anything cooked my a mom is better than a concoction created by her offspring. :) For a test run, the three of us headed to a movie on the outskirts of town via bike. Eva was first with her great CatEye halogen bike light, me in the middle without any sort of reflective bit or light, and Jessica in the rear riding Gretta in all of her glory, little air in the tires, 1 gear, but the best set of lights one could want. Now Gretta has been put out to pasture. She's locked to a pipe outside of our house, susceptible to sun and rain. (More rain than sun...) But before she gets sold or gifted to some shop to be refurbed I'll take some of her with me, the seat, the rack in the back, so though my new bike is so shiny and new that it refuses to have a pet name (I'll manage to come up with one over time) I'll take bits of Gretta with me. IN THE NEWS: |