topotales

AKA, the post wherein it is revealed that living half one’s life abroad does not make one cool.  But in fact does encourage one to think about the strangest nuances in life.  And wherein I prove once and for all that - alas -I am not eurochic.

Here are some mental readjustments and silly anecdotes from the last month as we adjust to life in America and I experience the prickling sense that I no longer belong.

1A.   Eating and restaurants.  Yesterday, I ordered steak.  Pnut said “Remember when we first used to go to dinner, how you’d cut the the steak up into tiny pieces first, then eat?”.  Yes, like a little child.  Because American diners do this thing that makes them immediately recognizable anywhere: we cut with fork in left hand, knife in right hand.  Then, we lay the knife down and put the fork (tongs up) in our right hand and pick up our food.  Europeans keep the fork (tongs down) in their left hand, knife in right at all times.  They spear the meat and then somehow push veggies, potatoes, or whatever else is on their plate on top of the meat and balance the whole lot to the mouth.  This is a skill that takes several years to master.  However, it is a skill that will allow you to eat dinner peacefully with your European friends, so that they don’t feel compelled to stare, hypnotized, as you juggle your fork from hand to hand.  Fuck.  Do I have to unlearn it now?

1B.  Thank you, god, I will no longer have to act like cutting up a sandwich or hamburger is normal!!!

1C.  Free coffee refills? (Ok, it’s not real coffee, but still, it’s free?).  Free soda refills?  Are you kidding me?  Perhaps I’ve died and gone to caffeine heaven.  And free water?  Really, it’s free?!

1D.  Yes please, a doggie bag.  And you won’t give me the evil eyes?  Even better.

2.  Banking.  I went to the bank.  On a Saturday.  Without an appointment.  They took my money in a friendly fashion.  Belgian bankers, take note!  If you are nice, you get more money.  If somebody wants to give you money, they shouldn’t need an appointment to do so.  And if you are open on Saturdays, it gives you a chance to get even MORE money!

2B.  Uh, somebody please remind me how to write a check so I can teach Pnut?

3.  Social Decorum.  I stand walk down a quiet street, a passerby says “Hiya”.  I stand in a queue and a fellow queuee starts up a conversation about the weather.  I sit at a bar and the guy next to me says “howya doin’”.  Pnut and I go hiking and people we pass say “goodmornin’”.  We go to stores, restaurants, businesses and get friendly service.  I feel like taking all of these strangers faces in my hands and kissing them on the lips.  Thank you Americans, for being NICE.  It may be fake, but it’s just NICE to be NICE.

4.  Language.  Two weeks ago, we went to Burger King.  Paolo looked at the menu, and and asked the woman behind the register: “Uh, yes madam, could I please have a whooper?”.  “You mean a Whopper?” she replied.  “Yes madam, a whooper”.  Then she looked at me, I looked at her, and we both cracked up.  Why does whooper sound like something sexual when an Italian says it?  What is a whooper, anyway?

4B.  My mom and dad took a short holiday from Nashville, where they currently live, and went to Chatanooga for a weekend.  I tried to call my mom’s mobile a few times, but she didn’t pick up.  Paolo’s analysis?  “They must be doing plenty of Yankee-panky”.  When I finally reached my mom, she said “Tell him this is the South, no Yankee-panky here, just hanky-panky”.  “Oh,” said Paolo, “did I say it wrong?”.

5.  Fashion.  At the Grand Place in Brussels, Americans can generally be spotted by their flip-flop wearing ways.  The white-sneakers, of course, are a true give-away as well, but no self-respecting European would dream to wear flip-flops in public.  There being snow on the ground here in Jersey, I haven’t seen any flip-flops yet.  But I have noticed the new fashion in wearing house-slippers in public.  Finally, fashion has caught up to me.  I fully intend to parade around Venice in my houseslippers when we go back for a visit this year.

So here is an email I lurked out from under the hansosan this morning.  I post it here because it’s almost exactly how I feel about IKEA (everything except the part about trying to build my own stuff… because even being half a lesbian doesn’t mean my limbs are safe from power tools).  The sad part is, most of the furtniture Pnut and I own comes from IKEA, because (disclaimer!!) it’s the only stuff that broke down into small enough pieces to fit up our hamster-sized elevator.  It’s a matter of hell vs. 8 flights of a (spiral) staircase.  Perhaps the only time IKEA wins, in my book.  If you wish to nay-say, you first need to come over and try moving some shit up our stairs without puking.

Anyway, here’s the ’san’s response to this article by David Pierson; I couldn’t have said it any better:

I HATE IKEA SHOPPING. [The boss] would buy half the store if I let her, and all I can think of in there is how I am going to have to spend the rest of the weekend deciphering Swedish cartoon instructions, yelling to disappearing family members while trying to hold electric screwdrivers
into awkward angles after dropping essential tiny bits into dark corners, just to build something I should have made myself in real wood, if I would have had time to figure out what it was I really wanted and cleaned up my garage to make space to do it… I hate screwing into lousy particle board that will emit carcinogen PU vapors for the next decade, cardboard backs that will sack out of their nail fasteners in just one season, the unrepairable cigarette-paper thin printed fake veneer, drawers that I know will rack apart and lose their bottoms no matter how much extra glue I squeeze into their joints. The most insidious part comes after you’ve put them finally together: the
doors weigh more than the whole cabinet, which requires me to screw the humongous front-heavy blocks (zero fasteners provided for that part of the job!) to my crappy walls if you don’t want to find a family member crushed to death underneath it one day.

The only spot in the shop I liked was the left-over bargain corner where I occasionally picked up some wood to chew up into something else. That cooled a bit after I once picked up a 2 meter long mirror there, and only remembered just in time at the check-out that I came driving our super short and tiny Lupo car, which would have made for some great candid camera shots in the parking lot.

None of this livid aversion has had any effect on what really ends up into our house, because there is not one room left uninvaded. Not a year goes by without another batch making its way into our already overstuffed rooms. From the bunker-like units with sliding glass doors ((heavy!!!) in the bedroom to the fake-leather cardboard boxes on the shelves in the privvy, they’re all silent testimonials of the unwritten conspiracy between the marketing moguls and the real decision power in our home.

Sigh.

GUESTPOST BY HANSOSAN

I don’t remember when I first tasted grappa.  I must have been just twenty, when a bunch of my high school friends travelled to Italy, all squashed into a white Nissan belonging to  Koen’s mom.  I remember my clothes slowly getting wet driving home as the soaked tent dripped through the back seat cushion from the trunk, after breaking up from a flooded Austrian campsite.  That poor car took quite a beating on that trip, but Koen’s mom, who still had a fish store at the time, was very nice and forgiving.  We all came from families where eating and drinking well was very appreciated, and you can see how we took those traditions into our own lives.  At the time I was experimenting with cocktails, and I still see me drinking my first sidecar, on a metal terrace table near Pisa.  Courageous as we were, we also ordered octopus.  A big plate filled with soft, big, pink chunks of fibrous meat with the round feet still attached arrived.  All garlic oil and wine, it was delicious.   I have ordered a lot of disappointing or even horrible octopus dishes since, knowing that somehow, it can be fantastic.  Did we finish that meal with espresso, and a grappa ?  I’ll have to ask the others.

Koen later married a lively girl from Rosheim in Alsace – also a fine cook and a great source of delicious wines from some small viticulteurs like Maetz from the same village.  But as after-dinner drink, the huge bottle of Italian grappa was always on offer too.  After their divorce, we tried to stay friends with both of them, but I now wonder whether that isn’t the most likely course to lose them both.  When we helped her move out, back to her family in France, she left us a whole box of bottles – also the grappa.  I felt embarrassed – I could hardly put that bottle back on the table next time friends would be eating with us.  So I brought the whole box to the small cabin my parents had in the forests of the Ardens.  That cabin had no electricity, so the dark evening by candle light were a great place to sample nice drinks, and the freeze proof  grappa wouldn’t mind overwintering in a place without heating.

A couple years after I started work, I ended up spending a lot of time in Tokyo, fixing one of those impossible  joint-ventures that were en vogue then.  The Australian head of the office, left it up to his secretary and a friend of her to rescue us occasionally from the obligatory under the bridge after-work drinking, and take us to something more sophisticated.  That often translated into very expensive but fantastic Italian cuisine, way above the low end of the market standards I was used to with my friends and family.  One funny difference was that although the dishes were traditional, the eating style was very Asian communal, everyone reaching with their chopsticks into each other plates, sampling all the fare and ordering more of the ones liked best.  And I still think that, as long as you’re not eating in one of those places where every dish becomes a piece of art, that is a lot more enjoyable.  In one of those places, where the girls were clearly familiar with the staff, we got a special grappa at the end.  It made such and impression that ever since I have been trying to find it back – a quest not really helped by my only recollection being the scrambled up name “lepertone torte”.  For long I wasn’t entirely sure it even existed in Italy – Japanese are notorious for relabeling drinks – and probably the memory of that evening is better than whatever I could find.  But I now think it must have been a grappa from “Le Pergole Torte”, from Tuscany.

When Paolo & topo started to show up at our place, it didn’t take much to find out Paolo likes a good grappa.  As with anything remotely Italian, he is also convinced that the only really good ones can only be found in Italy, preferably somewhere close to Venice.    Mussels, pasta, fish, whatever… the Belgian variety just isn’t up to standard – and who are we to argue with his memories ?  But it is certainly fun to take up the challenge – especially the time when we battled in the kitchen during the great Carbonara Contest !  (I almost creamed him there…)  I did find a very good grappa di moscato from Alba locally – but it has one drawback : the cork must be deficient because the bottle is always emptier each time I check… .   It’s good competition for that fantastic Grappa Ruta - rue flavoured - he brought along. He did not give us the full background though - here is what I found on the net : “In homeopathy, rue is sometimes used as a fever suppressant, but according to Italian folk-lore it not only increases male potency but assists women to relax. A fairly useful combination.”  I couldn’t have said it any better.

Yesterday we were back at my parents cabin.  We had come in early, driving in breakfast for the 20-ish relatives my Mom annually invited, and it had been a full day with a little bit of hiking and an awful lot of barbecuing.  After surviving war famine, my Mom doesn’t believe there is such a thing as too much food.  Most people had left before dark fell and I was sitting with my dad outside as the day cooled off, chatting about work, spilling my guts about all the crap that I was going through lately.  Somehow these conversations occur so much easier there, amid the quiet of the trees.  Still stuffed, I didn’t care for the usual evening tea and chocolate, but when that old brown grappa bottle surfaced, I couldn’t refuse.  My dad claimed the taste remained as great as when we brought it years ago, but of course there is no way to prove that.  But the memories that come with it, apparently have gotten richer over the years too.

GUESTPOST BY Toca la pared

Due to my ‘ocassional’ fainting, I have not been able to go to school anymore.  So I found myself alone with my grandmother with lots and lots of time. After I slept for a week (or two) it dawned on me that I should try to do something with my days. When I was younger, my grandmother already attempted to get me into knitting, but that did not catch on.  Things have changed.  I’m still as impatient as I was back then, but the moments that I’m desperately looking for something productive to do are way more frequent. So I picked the knitting back up, attempting to make something for myself.  At first that  resulted in a lot of frustration for both me and my grandmother.  Luckily we’re both (ahum) stubborn, so in a few weeks the top I had been struggling on, got completed.  Everyone tells me it looks smashing, so this was a good start.

One quirk Topo forgot to mention on her very incomplete list of “freaky little neurosis” is her obsession with hats. It’s not the first time we have to stop the car in the middle of traffic so she can rescue something out of the gutter !  I needed a new project and so when she asked me for a hat I bought the wool and got started:

Then I decided to do something else before the next knitting project : crochet! My first crochet pieces were two sorry potholders. No amount of ironing could get the poor things squared up. It was smart to start with two easy pieces. Ever since, I’ve been hooked on crochet and everything related.  In stead of my flea market hunt for old clocks, I’m now picking up whole suitcases with abandoned yarn and shoeboxes full of buttons for next to nothing. My intended project list keeps getting longer. I love it when people ask me to make something for them, it means that they like what I do. Crochet gives me results very quickly so there’s no time to get bored. My hats still have a lot of flaws in them, but the more people tell me that they can’t see them, the more confident I get. I figured that I would just have to keep practicing and trying out new techniques in order to get better.

I started out with other people’s patterns, but now that I have found out how to make my own patterns (my own designs, not just something that turns out nice by accident), I like it even better. This baret is the first hat that was actually planned to look the way it does:

I'm cute on black

doll in-a wol

A couple days ago, I also started making dolls clothes for my niece. It’s all very amateurish, but I think she’ll enjoy it anyway.

I love to see other people with my hats. If you see Topo, P. or anyone else around me hiding underneath a special/weird/funny contraption then now you know where they got it from. I also have one for myself, plus the hats that haven’t found a head yet. Below you can see proof that people start acting real funny with their heads in my hats !

Heads in my hats

GUEST POST BY HANSOSAN

After turning 45 a few weeks ago, my guarantee must have expired, and like with any household appliance, suddenly everything started to fail unfix-ably.  In the middle of the night I wake up with a small, red balloon shape on my left elbow, hurting whenever it touches something slightly more solid than air.  No big deal, according to the doctor - 3 months before it will be fully gone.  I still have no clue how I got it - too much elbow work at the office ? (nah, I’m the last one)  Too much reading on one side in bed ? (nah, impossible after a life’s training), so the mystery remains.  Pills, rest and ointment.  Soon the skin starts to blister off, the balloon shrinks and the pain stays.

Then my abdomen decides to turn itself into a double eight knot and perform inside-out acupuncture with rusty nails (or so it feels).   A couple nights and days of trembling, sweating and having crazy fever dreams convince me this isn’t going away by itself - back to the doctor.  After trying to punch me at the right spot to maximise the pain, dear doctor starts to look a bit more worried.  Casual questions quickly evolve from “Where did you eat last weekend ?”  to  ”Any stomach cancers in the family ?”.  Immediately stop pills #1 (elbow), take pills #2 (antibiotics) & #3.  Echo  immediately required.  This triggers strange memories of pregnant bellies, but this analyst assures me that 95% of the echoes he does are for sports injuries.  Unfortunately he doesn’t have time to look at my elbow… .  Echo only reveals that my liver is in perfect condition - once I get off the pills, I look forward to a continued life of beer sampling !  Off to a hospital scan - drinking a liter of foul marker fluid, getting stabbed with needles in the remaining functional arm and pipes in places that should never see traffic in that direction, I get cooked in a giant microwave. “This will feel hot, this is normal”.  I bet that’s what that woman said to the poodle as well.  She finishes me off with a few tight turns of irremovable tape over my hairy arm.

Now God really gets going : over the weekend I develop an eye infection.  Eye drops from the cupboard.  It gets worse.  Ointment from the night pharmacy.  It gets worse.  By Monday I’m willing to perform a diy head transplant.  Right now, please !   (No donors or takers found).  Doctor prescribes stronger drops.  It gets worse.  Can’t really drive anymore, can’t read, can’t watch TV.  Seppuku looks more and more appealing by the hour, if I didn’t already knew how that felt from last week, and I’m not even allowed to drink my two sips of sake.  Doctor now looks really worried, and sends me off to the hospital with an emergency appointment in 10 minutes.  The hospital is 15 minutes away.  If you know the way.  And you can at least see.  Not my safest trip.  Once in the hospital, I get the “pick your number and stand in line” treatment.  My number is 609.  After 6 other people and now half an hour too late, they start on number 610.  I politely approach the receptionist - ready for that impromptu head transplant - she only got away because hers looked so horribly empty.  I finally get sent off into the caverns of the hospital.  The sadist architect of course enjoyed hiding the opthamologist 6 corners, 3 turns and 5 doors away from the entrance.  All well indicated for people with excellent eye-sight, no doubt.

The opthamologist (a gem - she possesses this rude directness that Flemish people love from each other, but fail to grasp why others are offended by it) drips a few things in the eye, scratches it with something that looks to my other eye like a 20cm needle, then calls in her assistant to marvel at the unique sight of a well developed tree-shaped infection.  Immediately stop the eye drops, now go get a gel… .  Come back in the evening for a pressure pad on the eye.  I perform the reverse journey home mainly by following my own tear drop scent trail.  I suddenly wonder why we make heroes out of healthy athletes ?  Anyone dealing with a serious handicap (no, not my chicken shit) faces way tougher battles.   The pressure pad feels like somebody called Cassius applies pressure on your wounded eye.  And I get to stay home for 3 more days, because clearly I’m exhausted, otherwise all these infections wouldn’t show up, I’m told… .

In the morning, I decide this justifies recording for posterity.  Hence the patch pic.  It only took me 22 tries to get it fairly sharp in the mirror, aiming the camera from below.  Thanks, my eye is getting better - I managed a whole day of work today !  Which my boss saw as the perfect moment to give my job to someone else.  But by now I can take the elbow pills again, so with a bit of luck I may still survive till Topo’s next wedding party !

Okay, I know this may be cheating a bit, but I have loads of writing tucked away and it’s always fun (in a self-humiliating, masochistic kind of way) to go back and rediscover the past.  So I’m going to try and do these two (years) and one (month) specials every now and then.

Two years and a month ago I wrote:

Today is reflective, romantic, melancholy, and hopeful.  Watched Henry and June, finally.  Had been on my list for a long time.  But was reading up on Anais Nin a couple of months ago - led there by a surrealist/erotica search for an abstract painting I loved but can’t remember the name of, nor the artist.  Saw it today and picked it up.  The Left Bank in that time period is an obsession for me.  I missed my time, you see - I should have been there!  I should have been young there!  I should have made love there!  Henry Miller, strangely enough, I have never read.  Started Tropic of Cancer once, quite a while ago, but couldn’t get through it.  Maybe I should try it again now that I’m older.

–

What did I do this afternoon?  First, the dentist.  Yuck.  He didn’t wear gloves.  Is that normal?  Freaked me out.  But decent guy, explained before he touched, which I like.  Of course I marched in with my records from my last dentist, knowing what I wanted, ready to fight.  But it was okay.  Medicine is much more human here.  I like it more.  Then again, you’re walking into somebody’s house, which is always a little strange.  Paolo had part 1 of a root canal long over-due (I saw that tooth a couple of years ago and said so).  Yes, I know everything.

Then what?  Bank, to take care of some things.  Unusually hot in the lobby with the sun shining through.  Sweating and grimacing while transferring “large” amounts of money.  Then inside to set up some automatic transfers.  Charmed the guy behind the desk; had him laughing. Good-looking black guy, young, gave me some free stuff and a new password for my CD-banking thing.  Funny conversation about why I’ve had it for two years and not used it… basically, week 2 after arriving here, I understood “vous… madame… banque…transferer… ” and they handed me the CD.  “Oui, oui”.  That was the end of that.  Not to mention, I didn’t have a computer until this past September.

–

SO, after the bank, to the climbing shop.  Was supposed to be a brief walk-through.  Couldn’t resist, bought a new crashpad.  My other one is so small it starts to look like a postage stamp from just a couple of feet off the ground.  Good for extra padding, but not for motivation.  Also got new pants - on sale, “the ugliest things I”ve ever seen” according to Paolo.  But I like ugly.

After that, haircut.  Got the weird gay guy.  But I’ll look for him again next year - put my head in the little tank and he washed my hair.  I love my hair touched, and my head.  He scratched my scalp a bit under the warm water; I closed my eyes, it felt so good.  He did it for a couple of minutes.  I almost fell asleep right there.  He was very gentle the whole time, but never too gentle - knew also when to pull, and how to dry my hair so my scalp felt good.  Heaven in 6 minutes.  Then groceries, then home.  Long afternoon.  Hair smells nice - he sprayed some stuff in it, sweet, like smelling the wind come off an orchard of fruit… apples and lemons and peaches together?

–

I need to break the awful habit of using smiley-face emoticons, non-words like ”lol’ and “imho”.  If I can’t express those emotions creatively in words, then I shouldn’t be trying to write at all.  It’s bad for writing well, and writing expressively.  At least to an audience who you know is intelligent and capable of subtlety.

–

I’m enjoying the Venice book immensely, but it’s incredibly distracting.  I need to look up and explore every character I come across.  So I’m only half way through.  Finished the Missouri Review in one night.  Still shitting myself over the quality of work, and the (lack of) quantity.  Interview in there with David Sedaris, one of my heroes of pulp literature.  Oxymoron in that phrase, I know, but you know what I mean if you’ve ever read Sedaris.

The dog and I have our every-other-morning walk routine.  It generally involves a couple of spins around the leafy and grassy area out front until she deposits a steaming pile of poo in the grass.  When I say grassy area I mean a few square feet of curbside grass stretching along one of the busiest streets in Brussels.  Inevitably, it’s raining (yes, you can picture that whenever you picture anything I write here-again, Brussels!).

Fancy Paws is what I like to call the main event of the morning walk, when Scapi balances herself, paw in front of paw, along tiny European curbsides and the minuscule deltas between rain rivulets.  She can trot along on her half-pads like this for the whole walk just to keep her precious toes from getting mildly muddy.  If somebody could make it rain in a tent, she’d be a great circus act.  When it’s time to poo, Fancy Paws gets down to business.  Scapi balances all four paws on the curb closest to the street, sticks her nose out into oncoming traffic while dropping her load in the grass behind.  It’s just not as exciting to take a crap if twenty hubcaps don’t go by three inches from her nose while mom tugs on the leash and yelps nervously at every green light until the deed is done.  I like to call this EXTREME SHITTING.  It’s like those ironing people… only… you know, with dogs and shit.

Lately, though, there has been a third act added to the Cirque du Fancy Paws.  It has involved a little obsession with the bushes.  The dog who refuses to moisten her foothairs has been gleefully dragging me over to the bushes that border the grassy-area.  There, she runs full power under the bushes as far as her leash will take her, whipping the branches sideways and upwards as she runs and soaking me with the ensuing waterfall.  Why, dog, why?  She, too, comes out soaked from nose to tail and - what’s this!? - quite pleased with herself?

I kept wondering why this sudden change in my dog?  Why this sudden willingness to come into contact with water?  Sweet puppy!  Finally, she enjoys playing in the rain!  Finally, something dog-like about my dog!

So one day, when I could see that this was a habit that would stick… one day, after a gleeful romp under the bushes, I laughed - “Bwah ha, owners of dogs who chase sticks!  Bwah ha, owners of dogs who wrestle and tussle with other friendly dogs!  See how my dog too can be … dog-ish!  … Whatever, just see!”.

Then, I came inside and went to lovingly hug my Scapi.  And that’s when it dawned on me.  This obsession with bush… it was really an obsession with penis.  Actually, what dawned on me was the horrible smell of dog-piss.  My dog, you see, had been using the rain + bush to = wash all the boy-dog pee onto her hairy body.  That’s right, people.  My dog was PERFUMING herself with PISS from the bushes.  And then I remembered how after these bush-romps my dog had been enjoying jumping up onto my bed.

Now we call Act III of the Cirque “Le Tug-o-war”.  Scapi tugs me towards the bushes, and I yank her back towards the curb.

Ahhh, well.  At least one of us has learned to enjoy the rain.

I saw this menu posted outside of a restaurant in Belgium and it immediately forced me to re-think my entire “Belgium Food” post.  …I think I’ll have (2)! 

Fille Mignon, for the non-French speakers, means “Hot chick”.  Whereas what they were probably going for was Fillet Mignon, or …steak.  Either way, sounds better than frogs and snails!

GUEST POST BY HANSOSAN.

Do you know that beer used to be just an alternative way to store grain, and make drinkable liquid available in an environment that got more and more polluted ?  The stronger beers were only developed later as a way to evade the taxes on spirits.  As always, we have a historic background - more lies and falsifications than facts, still - enough years to accumulate the myriad of details that builds up the fractal richness you taste now.  But indeed - in the open-sewer industrializing cities like Gent, the clergy advised women to give their kids beer rather than the horrible water.  It was sound advice then - and profitable too for all those brewer-monks.  Figuring out how to control the yeast and bacterial processes involved came only very late - so don’t believe for a second that our current beers with the ancient sounding names like “Vieux-temps” and “Emperor Charles”, taste anything like the acid stuff our ancestors drank out of the stone jugs while working in the fields.

Beer drinking is learned young here.  My pregnant wife was still advised to drink lots of fortifying stout, my small kids got to stick their fingers in the foam at parties - I drank my first glass way before I needed my first razor, in the youth house in the old converted city hall of Werken.  Low-alcohol “table” beer was present everywhere, often instead of fancy waters, cola or wine.  Somehow I suspect this led to a more mature use of alcohol later on.  It wasn’t the forbidden fruit, or less the macho-potion or the oblivion drug it often is in more ‘regulated’ area’s.

One way I survive boring family parties is to go sit next to the oldest person alive and ask them to tell stories about beer when they were young.  Those were the days that brewers were more common than bakers - in the tiny village my dad grew up in, there were already 7 pubs.  There is one left now.  The only brewery in the neighbourhood (Esen) almost closed, if a bunch of independent louts hadn’t stepped in and revived it all (the Dolle Brouwers, or Mad Brewers).  They now brew some of the most creative concoctions around - I suggest you start with Dulle Teve (Mad Bitch).  That brewery visit guided by their Mom I consider one of the best tourist trips you can take here.  And this is the scale that seems to fit us : a small firm, making a living, and a unique, rich product.  Whenever we try to grow beyond that (look at Hoegaarden), often the uniqueness disappears, the magic is gone.  It’s this special link, me knowing someone that is related to the brewer, or knowing the order of the abbey, or weird facts that celts developed coopering for their beers while the romans were still using amphora’s for their wines, that makes beers special to me - not just something filtered out of the chemical industry, pushed on me by a marketing bureau.

I realised student life was over while slowly getting dizzy from the second or third Grimbergen Triple, under the jade shade of Ginkgo leaves in the garden of the Blauwe Schuit in Leuven, chatting to an old teacher friend.  How long this beer culture will survive, I don’t know.  Economics for slow food are all wrong - no wonder Interbrew is Brasillian now.  Belgians evidently suck at protecting what’s theirs.  The orchards producing the cherries in Schaarbeek, essential for the real Kriek taste - are all swallowed by the sprawling city.  They are now coming from Pepingen or Gooik - if not from Hungary - if at all from a cherry tree… .

But, I once learned in a winecellar in Alsace, from the daughter of a long line of winemakers making the unique Rouge d’Ottrot: it does not matter that unique knowledge might disappear - it is the now that counts - so live to the fullest now.  That is the only obligation we have.  So I will open my 3 different bottles of geuze, taste each next to the other and compare.  I’ll let my kids try them all, and ask their opinion too: so they may learn that details matter, that there is a level of quality you cannot measure with a stick, but that is perfectly noticeable with a bit of experience and openness to all your senses (yes, cheers to Christopher Alexander).  Why don’t you pull up a chair and try it - there is still enough for all !

Some pointers on eating and food consumption in general, here in Belgium…

1.  Milk: Refrigerate!?  Have you gone mad? Keep it in your cupboard until it turns green, then move it to the fridge as cheese.

2.  Fries (Fritjes or frites):  Invented in Belgium, not France (wink, wink), so it’s really nationalism to have them with every meal.

3.  Asparagus:  Why buy it green when you can starve the plants in the dark underground and then eat them with a clammy, sickly-white glossy sheen?

4.  “Haute Cuisine”: Requires nothing more than a trip to your garden, where you may find rabbits, frogs, snails, slugs and any other manner of creature to trap.  Throw it in some butter, garnish with garnish, and charge a ridiculous price.  Goooood eatin’!

5.  Mussels: Jean Claude Van Damme is from Brussels, did you know that? Yep, they call him the “Mussels from Brussels”.  Don’t let that scare you off, though.  Just remember, mussels are best eaten in months ending in “R”.  Van Damme ends in “E’.

6.  Chocolate: Some places in the center of Brussels, you can see it in shop windows for hundreds of Euros per muffin-size cake.  Lots of small chocolate boutiques with yummy (free!) stuff to try.  If you live here, you’d better scope out the nearest shop to your house because you’ll need to bring a box to every damn occasion, including your own birthday.  And this is a Catholic country.  That’s a lot of chocolates.

7.  Waffles (gaufres): Only the tourists eat the (delicious, warm, melty, sweet) loaded ones with Nutella, whipped cream, strawberries, banana, chocolate sauce, … hold on… funny feelings happening… ahhhhh yes!  Real Belgians eat them out of the converted ice-cream trucks, plain.  Still good, I guess, … just not orgasmic.

8.  “Ethnic” stuff: Oh, you mean like a late-night Pita?  They can also be plonked on cous cous.  ‘Cause that makes it - you know - exotic.

9.  Breakfast: War rations of the business age, apparently - you are allowed one croissant (this could maybe be replaced by a brioche if you ask real nice) + a coffee.  And NO YOU CANNOT TAKE THE COFFEE WITH YOU.  You have to drink it right here because we have never heard of carry-out cups. [I'm not bitter, really!  But if anyone wants advice on how to open a Starbucks - I used to hate Starbucks- in my building, let me know!]

10.  Beer: Helloooo.  This requires its own special list, and vocabulary, which is why I will let a real, live Belgian guest-post on the subject (if they don’t all hate me by now).  Plus, this is the one positive point regarding nourishment in Belgium but since I’m almost entirely a (cheap, shitty) wine person it’s totally wasted on me.

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In case you actually wanted to know what to eat that’s “really Belgian” while you’re here (it’s pretty obvious what you’ll be drinking), I recommend waffles, chocolates and mussels as listed above.  Also, the following dishes: Carbonnades a la Flammande (Flemish beef stew cooked in beer), Stoemp (mashed potatoes and sausage), and Waterzooi (creamy chicken). Really, considering the high concentration of Michelin-star-rated restaurants and great chefs in Belgium, it’s a disappointment that a common man on a budget can’t easily find excellent food.  Excellent food - for me - means something more interesting than meat and potatoes with the occasional side of that nasty white asparagus.  I know somebody who will argue this point with me, and I welcome it (hansosan)!  So if you have a suggestion for a great place in Brussels to eat for under €20 per person (that includes my two glasses of wine), I promise to try it out and then write what I thought.