April 26, 2003 : trips to brussels and in brussels

It's good when we have to do something "early" on Saturday mornings. Today we had to meet with Joris to get their application started for their British passports. We picked up Joris and headed to the Lunch Garden for their steal-of-a-breakfast before heading to get their passport photos taken.

While they busied themselves with papers, I went to kick-some-tires in Carrefours. (yes, I was just there yesterday!) I knew there wasn't anything I wanted to look at in particular, so I spent more time looking over the flowers. I love it when there are flowers for a Euro. Not just flowers, but the potted version. There seemed to be scads of 1 and 2 Euro flowers and as I had only a couple of Euros in my pocket, and as Eva and I are doing fairly well with keeping our current plants alive, well I figured I'd buy her some flowers. Both are a sort of Mum (more difficult to keep alive and healthy than ivy and cacti!) with one being a dark reddish brown and the other being a greenish-yellow/orange. Both for only 2 Euro. One has to love that.

After an afternoon cat-nap, we headed into Brussels. Our first stop was supposed to be the house of the people with Eva's stereo. After keeping it in their closet for 6 months, we're finally getting it back and will be happy to have Eva's treasure from her confirmation at 12 into the Catholic church. (At least she got something out of it!)

We were also headed to Brussels to stop by an event co-sponsored by the Transmedia program and put together by the first-year Transmedia students. We headed into Brussels on the highway of death (A12) and everything was going fine up until we started following the sign for "centrum". At one point it veers off to the right and then a minute later the sign points straight on. I chose the latter one in which I should have chose the first one and though we weren't lost, we were no longer on our mapquest street-by-street itinerary. In an effort to correct this, I maneuvered back to the correct street and by this time Eva had given up all hope of getting there and all hope of knowing were we were. This ended in a phone call from the radio people (Pieter) and his saying that he'd simply throw it in the truck and bring it to the exhibition because they were going there anyway. Then Eva and I had to sit along the street and cool off a bit. Where had we gone wrong? Why was it ok for Jess and I to be lost in Germany and for Eva and I to have a crisis because we're sort-of-lost in Brussels?

We decided that we'd do better next time, and in an effort to make her laugh I mentioned that we'd maybe have to have MapQuest send us to a random address and for the next couple of Saturdays we'd simply have to perfect/work-on our map/direction/driving cooperation skills. :)

Of course I also didn't have the address to the actual place where the exhibition was taking place. We parked our car in an area we were familiar with and headed into the very familiar cafe and had a coffee to settle down. We were pretty settled by this point, and consequently starving, and then Eva started looking as if the world has suddenly dawned on her. We talked about being 27 and how next year it was going to be 28 and then after that 29 and soon we'd be 35 without jobs, with no place to call home, with a baby on the way and not enough money to buy a washing-machine. Is it society that tells us that we're supposed to be settled in the next 12 months and starting "life" or is it ourselves somehow telling us to quick mucking around.

I tried to assure her that these past two years were not "mucking around" for me and that they are a necessary part of my educational career and that the next year would have to be the same sort of thing for both of us. We can still not be on the "normal path" and still be heading in a good direction, right? She wanted to get a round of beers and talk over it further, but as our night was approaching more nightly, we had to get to the exhibition, meet the radio people, make the exchange, chat a bit with fellow transmedians, and then head to Eva's ex-coworkers party in Heist-op-de-Berg.

Ok, so we were totally lost at this point too. I thought I knew where it was from the Bours square, but I didn't. I had forgotten that the one time I had gone to the place (the second day of Transmedia back in 2001) that we had actually walked quite a distance to get to it. I only knew that the street name started with K in Dutch and C in French. Ha, ha, ha!

After walking around for another hour, we made it there and did our talking and drinking (for me it was simply one beer and a grapefruit juice) before heading back to our car, returning to the place, getting the radio, and heading out of Brussels.

En route out of Brussels, we wound our way to a section of the city where I knew how to get out. It's true that one sign pointed us in the other direction, but I knew that the motorway/ring existed just over the canal and down the street past the church, palace, atomium, Chinese gardens, and around a roundabout. To be fair, I took Eva's option...the sign.

If you've ever played a Nintendo or Sega racing game, you're familiar with the tunneled city scenes, well that's what we got ourselves into. We wound up and down through the heart of Brussels, under embassies and major streets before landing ourselves exactly where we had started off to begin with. The sign we had been following had flaked out somewhere along the way and to this we laughed whole-heartedly. Signage in Belgium sucks. We went the other route, which consequently had us following the canal for several kilometers of cobblestone in which Eva was sure her turntable would not survive.

Once on the ring, we decided to follow the E19 to Antwerp/Mechelen in route to Heist-Op-De-Berg. Once again, we see a sign that points to Mechelen besides the sign that points to the E19. Once we take the exit we realize it's actually to Machelen instead of Mechelen...and to this we laugh even harder. What a mistake due to only one letter!

Finally we're on the motorway and following signs to the city we're headed toward. It's already 1 something in the morning, and instead of being on a well-lit regional highway, we're hurling ourselves on very bumpy roads trying to find our way. Sometimes we had signs, and sometimes we didn't. We get to a small little town with an open frituur and Eva went in to inquire and buy me a viandel and the frituur-man tells her we're on the right track.

We finally made it to Wendy's party which has died down significantly. In fact, only a handful remained of which one member was Jenneke. We hang out for a couple of hours until it's 3:30 in the morning and the three of us decide to head home. Jenneke says that she'll follow us to Antwerp and when we go outside we realize she's driving a beast of an Audi. While backing out of Wendy's driveway, Jenneke takes out a plastic trash bin and reduces it to trash and mashed barrel. (quite funny)

One of her front headlights is out, and the combination of the steady-but-slower Micra driven by myself and directioned by Eva followed by the massive Audi driven by a petite Jenneke, well it was quite the sight. We headed to Lier, as that was the only point of reference we recognized and where we knew we'd be close to a motorway. In Lier we stumble upon a car hurling at us without headlights that does a U-turn, runs a red-light, passes us, and then runs another. I tell Eva to man her cellphone, and we get out of Lier as quickly as possible.

Finally, this is the most hilarious part of the story. Outside of Lier we see a sign that points to Antwerp and another sign that points to the motorway. Which do we chose? Eva goes for the motorway. She's Belgian, she's lived here most of her life. Besides, since we're so close to Antwerp, it's Eva's home-region, where we are never more than a 30 minute drive to her house. We head to the motorway. 20 minutes later, after a call from Jenneke in the car behind us asking us if we "know where we're going" and after realizing that we should have headed in the direction of Antwerp sign instead of the motorway, we pass a sign headed in the direction of Eva's hometown. We laugh again. We laughed so hard that it became more and more funny the more we thought about it.

Finally, there was the motorway, with the direction of Antwerp and the amount of kilometers to Antwerp the same that was given when we were in Lier. Eva calls Jenneka to tell her to turn on her headlights because her lamp is out, assures here that she's recognize where she is soon enough, and shortly thereafter we part ways--lil' Debbie taking us home and Jenneke and her beast-of-an-Audi taking her home as well.

In the words of a disco hit, "oh what a night."

IN THE NEWS:
A U.S.-Russian crew blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on Saturday in a mission to keep the International Space Station operating despite the U.S. space shuttle disaster. A Russian rocket lifted the Soyuz capsule and its crew of two into a partly cloudy sky at 11:53 p.m. EDT Friday amid a cloud of orange smoke. It was the first manned flight to the ISS since Columbia broke up on re-entry in February. Space officials said the craft had entered Earth orbit without incident. Preparations were under way for the Soyuz to dock with the ISS on Monday, after orbiting Earth 33 times.