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:
This is a tidbit that Eva told me over breakfast. Belgium (if not the whole of Europe itself) is big into scouting. Kids stay in it for decades and on Sundays you almost always see lines of khaki clad children and their leaders romping through the streets of Antwerp. Well apparently last week in a pre-camping retreat preparation scuffle, one camp leader (all of 20 something) stabbed and kicked another camp leader to death over a girl.