But does it count as a White Christmas?

We've had cold weather for the last couple of weeks: lows around -5 or -6 degrees Celsius (low 20s Fahrenheit) and highs barely above freezing. Because it's so damp here, we have really heavy frosts. And since the sun is so low in the sky, much of that frost never melts; it just sits there and accumulates. we have about half an inch on the shady side of the canal bridge, for example. And then there's the field up the street. No that's not snow. It's frost.

The Pyramid

Being technologically challenged, I couldn't figure out how to post all these pictures in a series in one posting. So scroll down five pictures until you get to our bobo Christmas tree and read up.


The Pyramid is one of my acquisitions from the Cologne Christmas market. It's not exactly what I wanted (I wanted red!!!). I'll keep looking. I have two more Christmas seasons and many markets to go.

The Christmas Crane

A different kind of Christmas tree, around the corner from us at the heavy equipment company.

Bigger and better

Here's the tree at SHAPE. A little bigger than ours, n'est-ce pas?

More Christmas sights

Here's our bobo tree all dressed up.

Christmas sights

This is our bobo Belgian Christmas tree. We went to a local nursery to buy a tree and found that they had two sizes: about 4-foot high and about 12-foot high. Although our ceilings are higher here than at home, we went for the shorter version. Only when they cut the bottom off, they leveled it with the branches. So some of the lower branches had to come off too in order to have enough trunk to fit into our stand. Our tree is now a good deal shorter than we expected. And it had two leaders, so it looked really crooked when we got it set up.

Christmas markets

I still remember the Christkindlmarkt in Munich I went to in 1977 - the hand-made ornaments, the lights, the Gluhwein. Our trip to the Christmas market in Brussels two years ago didn't quite live up to my expectations, so I've been looking forward to visiting the German Christmas markets ever since we got here. This past week I went with a friend from work to the Christmas market in Cologne. The bus dropped us off about 10:00 and we didn't leave until 7:30 that evening, so we had the whole day to investigate the 6 different markets. While I don't remember my first Christmas market, the one in Munich, featuring so many non-Christmasy items, at least some of the vendors in Cologne had the kind of things I'd been hoping to get: small typically German ornaments, a Christmas-patterned Mitteldecke (that small tablecloth that sits catty-cornered in the middle of your dining table), and a Pyramid (one of those wooden things with figures in the middle that spin when you light the candles). The Pyramid wasn't exactly what I was looking for but I figure this is a down payment on the one I have yet to find. Several of the markets had a theme: one was an "antiques" market but looked mostly like a flea market, and another was a medieval market featuring handmade soaps, candles, jewelry, a juggler, and that sort of thing. The picture above is the market on the square outside the famous Cologne cathedral.

Several of the local villages here in our commune are also doing Christmas markets, so yesterday we went to the one on the Grand' Place in Tertre. We almost missed it because the entrance was through a tent that looked like something that wasn't set up yet. But inside there were lots of vendors selling a lot of handmade craft items, lots of handmade chocolate truffles, and several booths where you could get things like long links of sausages or other kinds of meats I don't want to know what they were. We bought white chocolate truffles from a couple and could only guess at what they were saying to us; they had a REALLY different accent.

Next year I may be able to get David to go with me to one of the other German markets. The greasy mass of grated deep fried potatoes I had for lunch may be the lure to get him there.

But did it really count?

This is a catching-up post, since we never mentioned it when it happened.

We drove back from our Romantic Rhine River Weekend (RRRW) on a Sunday morning, so we went to mass at the collégiale in Mons Sunday evening. We got there real early so were among the first to arrive. A lady who seemed to be the ramrod for that service approached and asked if either of us would like to do the Epistle reading. Those of you who know us will not be surprised to hear that Rita responded, "En français? Non non non non non!" and that I said, "I'll do it!" (only in French). Since I'd never read it in French, I did ask for a chance to practice, so Ramrod took me up to the lectern and let me read through it silently twice. I didn't make any really bad mistakes, except maybe with a liaison or two.

Don't tell them I'm not Catholic or everybody may be required to repeat that mass.

Behind already

We found something new (to us) on our trip to Denmark: an Advent candle. It's a little hard to see, even on our big monitor, but if you click on the photo it'll pop up the full-sized photo, and you can see that it's numbered with the days remaining until Christmas. You're supposed to burn it 2 hours a day, and it will count down (melt down?) a day. So far though, we've been burning it morning and night and almost can't keep up. We may have to take some time off work to maintain the pace of Advent.

Gives new meaning to al dente

A few weeks ago an office mate ("Gunner," a retired Navy warrant officer whom our commander says never really left the Navy and who's been here since Belgium was founded) gave Rita the business card of his dentist. She passed it to me, and I left it sitting on my desk, periodically looking at it and thinking that I should call and make us appointments for checkups. But since it's the dentist and I'm a human being, I never did. (To my credit, I did have it displayed in a prominent place so that I'd see it often. If I'm going to be bad I at least wanted to feel guilty about it.)

Then today after lunch (spaghetti) I felt like I had something really big stuck in my teeth. After going through a bunch of dental floss (it kept severing), several toothpicks, and a lot of worrying at it, I finally dislodged...a piece of tooth. No choice but to call the dentist, who just happened to have an opening. He was close by, a nice guy, and very competent. Turns out I had a cavity under an old filling. He had to do a three-surface amalgam, meaning he essentially rebuilt the tooth with filling stuff.

This was probably the most French I've spoken at one time since I got here, mostly because we had a nice long chat while we waited for the local anesthesia to take effect. No, he didn't run off to another patient; I was the only patient. And he has no receptionists, hygienists, or business managers. What he did have was thoroughly modern equipment. It was a very pleasant experience, even if he's not as cute as my regular dentist.

It was really tough spaghetti.

Cook 'im, Dano!

We don't often see the police in our neighborhood. Ours is a pretty quiet corner of the world. So it was a little unusual to see a police vehicle on our street as we left for our evening walk. It seemed to be just driving up and down the road, and as we came abreast of them, the two officers inside rolled down the window and asked if we lived on the street. We said we did (no use trying to lie to the fuzz), so they asked, "Avez-vous vu un cochon sur la voie publique?" "Have you see a pig on the road?" Thinking we were having a language problem, we responded, as we would have even if we were native French speakers, "Huh?" But no, we had heard correctly: they were looking for a pig. We've barely seen pigs at all in Belgium, much less on our street. But we'll keep our eyes open. And if we find him, we'll be sure to tell him not to leave town.

How we spent Thanksgiving

Ha ha, gotcha!

Actually, I'm going to direct you to Nathaniel and Felicity's blogsite (click the link from our blog) for some great pictures of how we spent the holiday. It was a lot of fun pretending to be grandparents (no pressure, girls!). We even cleaned the carpets in anticipation of William's crawling. (Good thing, 'cause the water that got sucked out by the carpet cleaner was REALLY nagsty.)

Anyway, we didn't get to show them a lot of Belgium because they weren't here long enough. But we did go shopping in Mons on Thanksgiving because, hey, it wasn't a Belgian holiday and the stores were open! We decided we have to go back to Ghent/Gent/Gand (pick your spelling) and stay longer next time.

Army-Navy from the inside

If you've ever watched any of the Army-Navy football game, you've seen a few of those often elaborate "Go Navy! Beat Army" and "Go Army! Beat Navy!" spots. Turns out that on Armed Forces Network (AFN) they start waaaay before game day; we've been seeing them for at least a week already. The ones on AFN are also sometimes a bit less...well, subtle than what they'll show on network TV. And every danged unit in the world seems to want to make one. We just watched one made by an Army detachment in Romania (who knew?). It featured Bill the talking goat and cluster munitions. They did not specify that no animals were harmed blah blah blah, so I wonder.

The game is Saturday. Dollars to donuts they don't show Bill the Goat getting waxed.

A different kind of worship

We had bagpipes at church yesterday. And a bugler. It was 11 November, so for the British and Canadians it was Remembrance Sunday. It was the biggest crowd I've ever seen there, and was probably especially big since this is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele. The place was packed with UK and Canadian troops, all in dress uniforms; that alone was worth the price of admission (okay, so they don't charge admission...even if they are Anglicans). Linda, you would have just fainted dead away. During the part of service set aside for the actually remembering, the piper played a lament as he crossed from one end of the chapel to the other, the bugler played "The Last Post," and after a time of silence the bugler sounded "The Reveille" (not the one we're used to). It was quite moving. There was also some actual worship in there, and at the end they sang "God Save the Queen" and "O Canada!" I refrained from doing anything obnoxiously colonial, like singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" at the top of my lungs during "God Save the Queen," but I was singing it in my head. I did sing along with the Canadians, though, in sort of in a spirt of continental solidarity.

Bikes in Denmark

Copenhagen is bicycle-friendly. Bikes have their own - wide- lanes on the roads. People go to work on their bikes: people in suits, skirts, jeans, stretch pants, billowing coats. All on bikes, despite the cold, rain, and wind. Because this city is set up for bike travel. I've never seen so many people riding bikes (except in the Tour, of course).

But what does that have to do with this picture? Well, these are the guards who guard the royal palace. They march from the Rosenborg Slot (that means castle) in one part of the city to the royal palace in another part of the city. They march on the city streets. In the bike lane. We snapped this photo while they waited at a red light, along with the cars beside them.

Come to Daddy

Big Daddy Deer next door is in rut. We know this because he's spent the last two days emitting this weird call that sounds more like a belch than anything else. So far nothing seems to be happening. However, this evening as I watched from our bedroom window, Big Daddy ran wildly over into a corner of the neighbor's year where I couldn't see him. A small brown deer ran in the opposite direction. After a few seconds, Big Daddy ran into another section of yard and stood there, bewildered. (Presumably it doesn't take much to bewilder a deer.) Soon thereafter, I saw the brown deer run away again. Big Daddy may be on to something here.

Fortunately it's too cool to keep the windows open at night; otherwise we might hear something rather private going on over there tonight.

Halloween in Hautrage

Pumpkin Man came to Hautrage even though there were no girls to be scared.

We had no idea what would happen on Halloween, since this is our first year here. We had our pumpkin carved and illuminated. We passed the word at work that we would welcome trick-or-treaters, and one of our colleagues, who lives in the next village over, brought his kids and their Belgian friends by. We asked the Belgians what they say when they trick or treat and one replied, with a puzzled look, "Merci." So we had to rephrase by asking what they say when they knock on the door. We got two answers: "bonbons ou mort" (candy or death) or bonbons ou sort (we're guessing this means "give us candy or be prepared to meet your fate").

We were rather disappointed that these were our only trick-or-treaters, but you know, that's only a few less than what we normally get at home in Columbia. Next year we'll make sure the neighbors know we're ready and willing to hand out American treats.

Walking in the dark

We meant to post this entry a couple nights ago.

One evening this week - maybe Wednesday - we stayed a little late at work to finish up some things. That meant we got home as it was getting dark and we had to go for our walk in the dark. We chose to walk along the canal, figuring that was safer. We took two flashlights because the entire path we planned to walk isn't lit. Well, walking along the canal kept us out of the range of cars. We hadn't reckoned, however, on one of the flashlights dying on us less than a kilometer out. By then we had discovered the dangers of walking the canal path: horse hooey. Big piles of it. Nevertheless we soldiered on, past the parts of the path that are lighted, saving the battery on our remaining flashlight. We encountered Mama cow and three calves OUTSIDE the pasture, grazing by the path along the canal. This was the second time I'd met Mama so I guess she figured we were harmless and she ignored us. (The first time she and the calfs ran along the path in front of me until I gave up and turned around.) Anyway, meeting up with Mama wasn't scarey; not knowing where she and the babies had been, if you know what I mean, was. We eventually got to our turning around point and headed home, racing the waning battery in our remaining flashlight and trying to remember exactly where we'd seen those big piles. Fortunately we guessed right and the light lasted.

The next day we walked at work.

Traveling with the kids

Sunday David, Rachel, Steve and I took advantage of the continuing sunny (but cold) weather and went to Ypres, where we had lunch, checked out their collegiale (big church that's not a cathedral), and wandered the streets gazing at the architecture of buildings rebuilt in the old style after being destroyed in the war. We didn't run across any lost wallets so we moved on to Oostende, which, as you might have guessed, is at the end of Belgium. Only not the east end. Go figure. Anyway, it being October, there wasn't anyone swimming at what must be one heck of a crowded beach during the summer. It was just a wide expanse of beautiful beach and the Atlantic Ocean out there, a gorgeous sight on a sunny day. But one can imagine how threatening it must appear on a rainy, gray day. We'll attach a picture when we get around to downloading them.

Today we're playing hooky from work to take Rachel and Steve to Aachen, Germany. It's been on my list of places to visit since we got here and it's only about two hours away from us. More to come...

We solve a mystery

Yesterday Rachel and Stephen and Rita and I took Grandmother to the airport (sad face about the end of a nice, long visit) then went into Brussels for the day. As we explored a side street that led to a section of the old city wall, Rachel discovered a pile of credit cards and IDs, obviously the contents of a wallet--no wallet. We gathered up all the bits and pieces and deduced that they belonged to an American student at a Brussels branch of a US university. Once we realized we were dealing with a countryman, we decided we didn't trust the police to return the contents. Plus we had no idea where to find the police. Nor did we trust the embassy. So we called a Brussels number from a business card of what was apparently a university official, got the student's phone number from her, called him, left a message, continued our tour, and went to lunch. He finally called back while we were at Chez Léon waiting to order mussels. (I had curry flavor, Rachel had the regular--yummy! Stephen had stoemp and sausages, also yummy; and Rita had...well, it was fried salad: bacon, green beans, and potatoes all sautéed in butter; it may have been the best of all.) The guy wasn't far away, so he came down to meet us. He was grateful. Turns out he had left his wallet on the counter when he stopped in a store to buy something to drink. He was hoping to go back and reclaim it once the store opened, so he was holding off on canceling his credit cards. So even that part had a happy ending. It was pretty satisfying to have an adventure, solve a mystery, and do a good deed all at the same time.

We're still here

It occurred to us the other day that we hadn't posted lately. That's because we've been busy. With what, we couldn't say, except that the days seem to be getting shorter. Maybe it's because they are; it's dark now by 7:30 at night (or sooner - I've lost track), which means we're going to bed earlier, despite having the same workday and the same errands to run after work.

Today we hurried to get our walk in before darkness fell. As we rounded the corner about halfway through one of our usual routes, I squinted at a sight down the road and wondered, is that a big dog or a calf meandering down the sidewalk? We had just about decided it was a calf when we saw a second cow, this one definitely a bovine of some sort, in the same vicinity. Were they lost? Were they out for a stroll? Were they refugees? We'll never know because they took off across the street before we got close and then we turned to go home. Life in the Belgian countryside.

In other news, we went to France the weekend before last to visit a friend who lives near Tours. We had a great time eating, drinking, visiting, drinking, touring, drinking. Wait, did I mention that we sampled a lot of sparkling wines? Of course the trip included the obligatory visit to a cave, where we bought more...sparkling wine! Bet you couldn't see that one coming!

A Moveable Fest

This is what Oktoberfest looks like if you're really doing it right. It's getting to be a regular thing for us: last year we went to the real Oktoberfest in Munich; this year Oktoberfest came to us. Each year for the past 38 years the German NCOs Association has put on their own 2-day version at SHAPE. We'd been hearing for months that they do a good job, and we were not disappointed. It's a huge deal for the SHAPE community: two of the kids Sarah met this summer even came home from their colleges in London and Paris so that they wouldn't miss it. Of course our version of the fest is a little different from Munich's. Besides being smaller (1 tent instead of 14), they served black beer (schwartzbier) instead of märzen. One of the beer guys told me that it's a specialty of Saxony. The food was a little different (spätzle seems to be beyond their capabilities) but was still very good, and the band did all the stuff you'd expect a German oompah band to do, including bawdy skits with men dressed as women. And they had the whip-cracking guys. Now I have to buy myself one of those hats my friend Curtis has.

Fascinating discovery

The other blogspot.com users have no doubt already seen this, but for the rest, you can watch in real time the photos people are uploading to their blogs. Not only is it mesmerizing, but once in a while a real gem of a photo like this one rolls by. You can stop, back up, and resume. I bet this guy does well. Be aware that the pictures are frequently stupid and occasionally pornographic, but the overall effect of seeing what people post is just enthralling.

On the Belgian adventure front, my mother arrived Friday for a month-long visit. We haven't done much of anything yet, but it's nice just to have her around. We've set her up with email, so friends and family can contact her at her regular address.

Liverwurst for breakfast

In case you didn't figure it out from Rita's last post, we were in Germany. We had week-long TDYs (business trips, for you private-sector types) in separate cites, but we joined up at the end of the week and spent a couple of nights on the Rhine in St. Goar, where we saw the fireworks Rita described and sampled some nice local German wines. The morning we left we took a long walk along the river. It was cold, foggy, and beautiful.

My second favorite part of Germany is breakfast. German breakfasts include lots of cold cuts, cheese, fruits, grainy granola cereals, yoghurts, and really great grainy breads. One morning on my trip it was still pretty dark, so the staff had set up a candlelight breakfast for us. Too bad I had to go to work afterward.

The river aglow

David counted about 30 boats of various types idling on the Rhein between St. Goar and St. Goarshausen for Saturday's fireworks display. The whole show last over 30 minutes and was yet another spectacular display of German fireworks prowess. Most of the firepower came from a barge right on the river but the castles above St. Goarshausen and St. Goar alternated with the barge. It was a fitting end to a fun day of sightseeing and shopping.

Us vs the weeds

It was barely light out and the fog hovered over the ground but David was out there spreading weed killer to try to best the nasties that are taking over our lawn. We suspect his efforts will produce nothing but faster-growing grass, since this weed killer, alas, was mixed with fertilizer. However, on a more positive note, the planted beds I weeded this afternoon surrended far more quickly today than in past weedings. I've taken on the challenge: me against the weeds. Could it b that I am scoring small but significant victories?

Wine tasting and fireworks

Saturday we took our first SHAPE trips and tours adventure, to the Mosel Valley in Germany for a wine tasting. They took us to Weingut am Rosenberg in the town of Osana, where we had lunch and tasted 13 different wines produced by the family-owned business while getting a very informative seminar on wine. After we worked our way through the wines we went down into the cellars, where we saw the oak casks they use for the very best wines as well as the ultra modern wine press. Then we tasted a peach liqueur (yum) and something the owner called "moonshine" (a grappa-like drink) that was pretty powerful. We trooped back upstairs to find their "cream," a Baileys-like drink, waiting for us. We came away with a bottle of the peach liqueur, the cream, and some of the semi-dry red, which David took a liking too.

Note that during the wine tasting, the older folks among us - us and two other couples at our end of the table - filled up our waste pitcher pouring out the wine we couldn't finish with each tasting and the water we used to rinse our glasses. The younger folk at the other end of the table didn't splash a drop in their pitcher, so we ended up using theirs too. Those girls had a REALLY good time.

After the wine tasting and seminar, as if that weren't a full enough day, they took us to Bernkastel-Kues, an extremely picturesque village on the Mosel, which was celebrating its wine festival. There was a carnival spread along the river bank on one side of town, and various wineries had booths offering their wares on both sides of the river. We saw many, many people walking around town carrying an open bottle of wine, some swigging right out of the bottle. An interesting cultural experience... At 9:00 PM the fireworks started, from a spot down on the river and from up on the hill at the old castle. It was a spectacular show. We got back to SHAPE in the wee hours and dragged our weary selves home to bed.

59ers: A French cultural lesson

In her last post Rita referred to "59ers" from France. No, that's not the folks who showed up 10 years late for the California Gold Rush. You can tell where a French car is by the last two digits of its license plate. France is divided into 95 "metropolitan" departments and four overseas departments. These are more like counties than states because they're small and don't have a lot of independence. They cannot, for example, issue their own license plates, enact laws, or run schools. All that's done from Paris.

Each department has a two-digit number that goes at the end of its plates and is used for a bunch of other stuff (the first two digits of a department's zip code start with it, for example). They're basically in alphabetical order. Thus, Ain is 01; Bouches-du-Rhône, at the mouth of the Rhone river where Marseilles sits, is 13; Hérault, where I spent my junior year abroad, is 34; Paris is 75; Var, Toulon's location, is 87; and so on. But anyone who has ever studied French knows that there are always exceptions. Terrain-feature-based names go together: Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin are 67 and 68, being filed under R; Savioe and Haute-Savoie are 73 and 74, under S. And exceptions to the exceptions: Bouches-du-Rhône is 13, while Rhône is 69. Possibly because they're Johnny-come-latelys, the departments around Paris are 91 though 95, regardless of their initial letter. Then there's the Territoire de Belfort, which is 90, between Yonne (89)and the first Parisian suburb of Essonne (91).

Anyways, the people across the border from us are in the department of Nord (French for north) and have a 59 on their plates. 59ers.

Bulk trash day

Today was Hautrage's pickup day for les encombrants, all those bulky trash items you can't fit into your flimsy little commune-required plastic trash bag, like sinks, couches, old containers and so on. As we walked one of our usual routes through and around town last evening, we noticed a large flat-bed truck full of junk coming down the street and wondered whether the commune was already picking up trash. Then we saw another truck cruising. And then we saw a car from France - one of those 59ers who live right across the border and clog our local roads - whose occupants jumped out with flashlights (because by this time it was dusk) to examine the pile of trash outside someone's house to see what was worth taking. This is like right outside the house - because it was one of those houses with only aa three-foot sidewalk separating it from the road. Pretty cheeky.

Oh, our pile was still there in the morning. Nobody wanted our dead bicycle tires or broken pizza stone. Next year we'll have to come up with something better for the scavengers.

Animal Mascots

While my friend Travis works on the cutting edge of physics where high frequency meets thermodynamics, I am content to putter along in the field of entomology.

The official mascot of Flanders is the lion, of Wallonia, the cock. I think they should be the spider and the slug because those are the most common forms of wildlife around here. I have never seen such a spidery country. We have one who insists on building a web on our mailbox. After we knocked it down a dozen times and she rebuilt it within a couple of hours, we gave up. Bad move: now there are about four webs there. Although now that she's got a web partially covering the mail slot itself, it's easier to tell if the mailman has actually put anything in there. And the other day I swear that one started a web between the brake levers on my bike while I was riding it. I'm slow, but not that slow.

Tanks in Town

We have Civil War reenactors, Belgium has WW II reenactors. This is an annual event in Mons where a bunch of people dress up in surplus uniforms, have an exhibition, then on Sunday evening drive their surplus vehicles (armor, jeeps, trucks, motorcylces) down to the Grand'Place. It seemed to be a mixed bag of Belgians, Americans, and Dutchmen. everyone was either a colonel or a tech sergeant. A band, dressed in 8th Air Force (I think) uniforms, played a bunch of Glen Miller stuff. Yet another cultural experience.

A new taste sensation

Among Europeans, Americans have the reputation of eating meat overdone, which is why it strikes me as odd that the Belgian "filet américan" or "steack américain" is raw ground beef--with seasoning of course. And a raw egg on top. It's our steak tartare. I've eaten carpaccio, the Italian dish made of transparently thin slices of raw beef, and loved it, but the idea of eating what looks like uncooked hamburger (not really--the cut of meat is better) has never appealed to me. So I ordered it today...kind of by mistake. Rita and I stopped at the Pain Quotidien to have lunch and buy bread, and the basil-beef openfaced sandwich looked good. The waitress warned me that the beef was uncooked, but I was thinking it'd be like carpaccio. And I got to thinking that one day before we leave I should try filet américain just to say I'd done it. Then the sandwich arrived: triangles of bread spread with raw ground beef, topped with shavings of parmesan. It was good. And now I've eaten it.

Still about the farming

Rita's bath-tub-horse-trough post demonstrates, as we've mentioned a couple of times in passing, that we live in what in the States we would call a farming community. But land use in Europe is so intensive that pretty much everything that's not city is farm (even the woods across the street is a small plantation of poplars), so really we just live in the not-city, which makes it farm. As Rita said, they've finished the haymaking, and they've also recently harvested the wheat and baled the straw from that. Besides corn, they also raise lots of beets and potatoes. Then yesterday we went to the commissary and say a trailer (an 18-wheeler sized trailer) full of green beans; it was on the air base because the farm itself is inside the fence. I hadn't even noticed the beans until then. They raise all manner of livestock: horses, cattle (dairy and beef), sheep, donkeys, deer, and goats, which seem to be kept mostly as pets. Oddly enough, though, we haven't seen any pigs, so I'm guessing that's a regional product, possibly raised in the west in the Ardennes.

Livestock and bathtubs

Those of you who grew up in the country might not think this unusual but it's a curiosity to me. Many of the small farms around us have found a great way to recycle bathtubs: they use them as drinking troughs for their animals. Other large receptacles can be found as well: what looks like old oil drums split in half, and maybe even large water heaters. On second thought, they're probably not water heaters because the water heaters around here tend to be small. Electricity is expensive so you don't want to use too much of it at one time.

A few other tidbits on the farm theme:

- We watched close up as one of the locals used his tractor (and some kind of attachment) to roll his cut and raked hay into large balls.

- The captive deer families next door and on our walking route are enjoying a population explosion (and who is surprised about that???). The daddy next door has an impressive set of antlers.

- The sheep, the new crop, are getting fatter - either because their wool is growing or because they're eating so well or maybe for both reasons.

- We will unfortunately miss the local draft horse competition this weekend. But a couple nights ago we saw two large draft horses - one exceedingly large and actually unmatched size-wise to his partner - pulling a wagon, bells tinkling gently, through the streets of Hautrage. All we were missing was the snow.

So now we've witnessed planting the crops. They've harvested the hay. The corn is still standing, not quite mature. We will follow the farm seasons with interest as we work our way through the rest of this year and into the next.

Going to the doctor

We use the clinic at SHAPE for our basic health care, but for specialists we have to see host nation doctors. Given my family and personal history, there are a few screenings I need to get regularly. It turns out that many, many Belgians go to the hospital to see the doctor. That doesn't mean they use the emergency room; doctors actually have their offices in and practice out of the hospital. My new doctors are located at Ambroise Pare (pronounced by most non-Belgians as "Ambrose") in Mons. We had been warned about the check-in system but it was still a little bit of a shock: you have to take a number, just like at the MVA in Maryland. But wait: there are two numbering systems. One is for people who have an appointment, and the other is for people who need an appointment. You wait for your number to be called, and you check in at the appropriate guichet, which apparently also functions as the cashier (we haven't received any bills yet, so that's another cultural experience yet to happen). After you check in, you proceed to your doctor's office, which is along any one of a number of long hallways. The waiting area for some doctors is a row of chairs in the hallway; in others, it's a regular waiting room. You put your paperwork in the plastic box outside the doctor's office and wait to be called. The office serves as both an office and examining room. And no need to make an appointment for some tests or treatment - it's all considered part of the "consultation" and gets done right there.

There are, however, doctors who practice out of offices or their homes. The local newspapers - weekly except during the summer, when they get published every two weeks - publish a list of all the doctors, dentists, pharmacies, and veterinarians on call each weekend for each commune. These are always local doctors. For instance, in our area the doctor on call could be located in Hautrage, Pommereul, Baudour, or Sirault (and probably several other villages).

We may have more to report once we start getting bills for my medical visits...

Some kid must be really mad

We ran down to Paris today to meet up with friends from home. One of the new things we saw was the basilica of St Clothilde. This was one of the statues on the front. Some little French kid is missing a soccer ball.

The Cyclism

Our buddy Matt says it's because I can't get any baseball or football news over here, but I've become a cycling fan. I even took Monday off work to watch the Tour of Wallonia pass by. Twice. I watched at a hairpin turn a little north of us, then right over the canal in the afternoon, which is when I took this picture. It's the peleton about 4 hours into the race trying to chase down a four-man breakaway.

What I wasn't expecting was all the noise from the caravan. First off, there was the publicity caravan that had musical horns to get everyone's attention. This was followed about 20 minutes later by a variety of cars and motorcycles running up and down the route. When the actual race arrived, first there was the timing car, which was blasting a four-note horn and a speaker spewing out ro-di-ni-a. Over and over and over. Rodinia is the official timer of the Tour of Wallonia. Never heard of 'em? Me neither. Then there was the announcer car shouting, "The leaders are 6'15" ahead of the peleton. The leaders are 6'15" ahead of the peleton. The leaders are 6'15" ahead of the peleton. The leaders are 6'15" ahead of the peleton." If I were a racer, that and the Rodinia car would drive me crazy. Finally the rest of the peleton came. the actual bikes-riding-past part lasted about 30 seconds, and that was because we had a good long view down the road.

I've also become a bit of a riding nut too. I bought a road bike so far back in the 90s that I can't even remember when it was (it still had the old-fashioned strap pedals), but I had used it only about a dozen times. About 2 months ago I spent $300 on gear--clipless pedals, shoes, tires, tubes, clothing, new helmet--and started riding. I love it. And I'm getting spoiled because Belgium is a great place to bike, mostly because it's such a huge sport here. When Tom Boonen won two Tour de France stages this year, it was the 453rd and 454th Belgian stage wins (mostly by Flems), second only to France itself.

Cyclists get away with murder here, and drivers let them. Traffic laws essentially don't apply. There are signs posted officially allowing cyclists to go the wrong way down one way streets (they even have an acronym and a name for this--SUL, which stands for limited one way). If your tires are 25mm or less wide, which is where "serious" road bikes begin, safety equipment rules don't apply. You are officially permitted not to signal turns if, in your opinion, doing so would endanger you. Like, "I was afraid I would slip on that gravel there, officer," even though 2 minutes before you were riding with no hands, eating a candy bar. There's one stretch of nasty cobble stones where I ride down the wrong side of the road to avoid them, and cars just move for me. There are bike lanes all over, but they're often really rough, so you don't have to use them. You run stop signs, and cars with the right of way stop for you. Guys riding in groups never go single file but spread out all over the road, and the cars wait patiently for a chance to pass. Drivers understand because they're cyclists, too.

I've already fallen off once...in the stupidest way possible. About the third day I went out, I finished in front of the house, came to a dead stop, couldn't kick my foot free of the pedals, and just tipped over. This is apparently something everybody who gets clipless pedals has to go through. Don't worry: the bike was unhurt.

2045 and the mowing is done

We engaged in a marathon mowing session this afternoon, the first time we've managed to do the whole yard in one day. In an ironic twist of fate - or just a weird role reversal - David mowed while I fixed supper. Fortunately supper consisted of leftover Belgian beer stew and its accompaniements or we'd still be hungry. As for the yard, you gotta strike while the iron is hot or at least while the sun is shining!

National Day

Tomorrow is Belgian National Day. It's kind of hard to tell how big a deal it is because when we mention it to Belgians, they go, "Oh yeah, I guess it is the 21st." Yet stores will be closed, and our village is having a 2-day do. Tomorrow noon is the National aperatif, and tonight is le bal aux lampions - the ball under the lanterns. Sounds romantic doesn't? Rita and I walked by a little while ago, and, except that it was 8:30 and still broad daylight, it was pretty much exactly what I had imagined it would be: a huge tent on the town square, a dance floor, tables, waiters, food, beer, wine, and a band playing in the band stand. The band was a keyboard, a horn, and an accordian, and they were in the middle of an entrancing piece that I know but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Maybe "Spanish Rose"? After a day of rain, it has turned gorgeous and cool, so it was a nearly perfect moment. It was like the first night we went downtown when I was a student in France and we smelled the smells and heard concertina music coming from an open window, and I thought, "Damn! I'm in France!" This wasn't a revelation, but it was that nice.

Summer

Summer arrived this past weekend. It got up into the mid to high 20s (Celcius). You all back in the States are going to laugh at such summer temperatures, but we have gotten so used to the cool weather here that it actually felt hot. But the rain was back yesterday and last night, so all is back to normal. The days are getting shorter; last night it was dark at 10:30. Bedtime in broad daylight at 11:00 PM took some getting used to, but I'm already dreading the very short days of winter to come. In the meantime, the grass grows, the cows moo, and we cherish each hour of sunshine we get.

The Tour in France

I'm home with the electrician and watching the Tour de France. It's bigger than normal here in Belgium this year because the second stage ended in Ghent, and the third stage started in Waregem (Belgian towns). You can find Tour coverage on at least four channels: a French channel, Eurosport, and Dutch and French Belgian channels. I have chosen the Francophone Belgian coverage. The riders are in a corner of Champagne today headed for Burgundy, so the announcers just spent 10 minutes discussing the wines of these regions and the unusually high number of Michelin starred restaurants in the exact spot the peleton was riding. Now they're going on ad nauseum about the prospects for African cycling. They have lots of time because there aren't too many commercials.

Les Soldes and cider

Well, David stole my thunder by mentioning the semi-annual sales in his last posting. You have to have been here for a while (like longer than a week) to understand what a big deal the semi-annual sale event is. The sales themselves don't seem to be too much to write home about - seems to be the kind of clearance sales we see in the Target or Kohls every day - but what is a really big deal is the fact that the stores were open until 10:00 PM on Saturday!! - and the two malls in our area were open today, a Sunday!!! Sarah and I took advantage of this exraordinary happening to go to the Cora Shopping Center in Quaregnon today. We didn't buy much but we sated our American commercial souls knowing we were shopping on a Sunday in Belgium!

Now for the cider part. I think David promised to tell you more about our trip to Normandy. I'll let him describe our visits to the various battle fields, cemetaries, and museums. But in keeping with our quest to build up our wine cellar, we took advantage of the artisanal offerings in Normandy by bringing home various bottles of cider, eaux de vie, and Calvados. He opened a bottle of cider just a few minutes ago that was obviously ripe for opening, as it delivered a very satisfying "pop" along with about a cup of cider on the kitchen table. We continue to be awestruck by the many alcoholic blessings God has bestowed on us in Europe.

Bunny ears, T-shirts, and byte counts--more Europhenalia

It's starting to look like the guy in the devil costume got off easy (see our long-winded posting "Beer with Satan"). Last night we were in downtown Mons because the semiannual sales were starting and stores were staying open until 10 pm, and we saw a couple of brides-to-be. One had on a modified Playboy bunny costume and was wearing a sign on her back that said, "I'm getting married on 14 July, so I'm not responsible for my look." She seemed to be going around town making speeches and collecting signatures. At one point we saw her in the Chi-Chi's (yes, the US-based Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant) wearing a sombrero and dancing with the mariachi band.

The Francophones will be interested to know that the sign the girl was wearing used the English word "look." And Europe observers should know that T-shirts with meaningless English are still rampant. My favorite so far has been the one with the fake city seal for "Carson City, Hawaii." It had a picture of a buffalo in the middle. But since we have the mirror phenomenon in the US--T-shirts with meaningless French words--I guess it's all good.

I've complained a couple of times about our slow ADSL connection. I discovered the problem: we hit the limit on our monthly ration of 12 megabytes of transmission. It's because they're socialists and think that the world has a limited supply of electrons.

Summer in Belgium

It's been raining for several days. Tuesday the high temperature was about 13C (55F). Today it got up to around 17. Woo hoo!

Beer with Satan

Yesterday we got back from a 2-day trip to Normandy, France. Last weekend we went to Darmstadt, Germany. Both trips were really nice, and we plan to post some stuff about our adventures (if our stupid Belgacom ADSL connection ever stops moving at a snail's pace. For now, I'll start at the beginning, with our very first adventure.

When we got to Darmstadt Friday night we asked the hotel desk clerk for a place to eat, and she recommended a bunch of ethnic restaurants. Germans seem to have a huge inferiority complex about their country and can't imagine foreigners actually wanting to eat German food. But we finally pried a couple of places, and a city map, out of her and went to the Ratskeller, which really is in the old city hall, on a lovely square, in a cute little pedestrian area. They had good beer and good food. Sarah hated it. In fact, she had decided that she hated all of Germany (it may have had something to do with us walking to the restuarant; she changed her mind later), so we left as soon as we ate. But Rita and I went back for a late-night beer. We sat outside. It was a lovely evening and very cool. Now, Germans believe that no one should be denied the pleasure of drinking a beer out of doors just because the weather is bad, which it frequently is in Northern Europe, so they put up huge umbrellas to protect you from either sun or rain, and they have a stack of blankets you can borrow if it gets cold. One of the first things we had noticed when we arrived was a small group of guys, one of whom was dressed in a devil costume, complete with tail and pointy ears. And we thought, "Oh, it's a guy dressed in a devil costume." We don't even understand all that goes on in the US, so we don't waste too much time wondering about euromysteries. A little later, though, the devil guy came over to our table with several of the blankets and started talking to us. Switching to passable English after Rita told him, in passable German, that we didn't speak German, devil boy explained, "This is the last night I am not married," and he was having to "sell" the blankets to earn money to buy his beer. It was apparently a German version of the bachelor party; we've since heard other stories about brides and grooms having to wear strange costumes the night before their wedding.

Anyways, we didn't "buy" a blanket, but I felt kinda bad about that, especially after the sales pitch the devil gave us: "Feel how soft is the decke" (he didn't know the word for blanket, but Rita did, and I backformed it from my rapidly dwindling Dutch). So when the waiter stopped by our table to ask about refills, I bought the Devil a beer. That was a big hit with him and his buddies. He even came over and had his picture taken with us. I came this close (image my thumb and index finger about a quarter inch (6.3 mm) apart) to giving his photographer buddy my email address so that we could have had a picture and shared it with you. But I didn't. Which I still regret. Stupid OPSEC indoctrination.

And the trip got even better.

Diesel rocks!

We just tanked up the Corsa ("Chugging Thunder") for the first time and used a tad over 4.7 liters/100 km, which is how we Europeans measure fuel consumption. That works out to right at 50 mpg driving mostly highways and secondary roads. This is why the Man is keeping diesel down in the US.

Planters

Of all our flower plantings, I think this is my favorite: a window box in the stairwell window. Every time you go up or down stairs you get a little flash of color from the petunias. They're just beginning to trail over the front edge of the planter. In a few weeks they should be even prettier. By the way, the picture was taken at almost 9 pm. I love living at high latitudes...in the summer.

We bought a car

An Opel Corsa. Opel is GM's Euro brand. This one is smaller than anything they make in the US, though next year they're going to start selling the Astra wagon, which is our car's big sister and the best-selling car in all of Europe. Ours is a diesel. We can expect up to 50 mpg on the highway. It has zero pickup and a crappy ride, but it's kinda cute, dontcha think? We bought it from Garage Dufour right here in Hautrage and got what I think is a pretty good deal. It was an Opel company car, is a year old, and has 25,000 km on it. A/C, power front windows, CD player, ABS, alloy wheels. Sarah approves.

Al Fresco - famous Italian landscape painter

People complain a lot about the Belgian weather, but we do have some nice days. Sarah and Dad enjoy one. Sarah perhaps more than Dad.

Rita and David Meet the Mayor

Our village of Hautrage used to be a commune in its own right, but in 1977 Belgium merged seven of them into the commune of Saint Ghislain. Since the town of Saint Ghislain was founded about 650, the 1970s are considered almost current events, which is why they're still talking about the merger and the history of our commune. We learned a little about this history when we went to a presentation for new residents of the commune Thursday evening. The mayor, Bourgmestre as he's called in Belgium, spoke first, then a guy who must be kind of like the town manager did a powerpoint on the commune, its services, its opportunities, and its strategic plan. Then we had drinks and a chance to mingle with all the elected officials. And we talked to the Bourgmestre. That's it.

Moon over Hautrage

Euronews has a segment called "No Comment" during which they show camera footage with no voiceover. Seems appropriate.

Nashville sur Sambre

Where do you start describing last night's experience? I guess you start by explaining that our nephew Emmett is the drummer for The Ranchhands, a hard-driving country band out of Nashville, and that we took a half-hour trip on the E42 to see them play just this side of Namur. Not only did the band put on a great show (amazing drummer), but the crowd was a show in its own right. The Ranchhands were the feature act at the "Exceptionel Country Day," which was held in the Velaine sur Sambre community center. And lemme tell ya, for a certain segment of Belgium, American country music is huge. There were roughly 400-500 people there, and Rita, Sarah, and I might have been the only Americans other than the band. We were also the only spectators without some kind of "country" gittup on. Almost everyone had on at least a cowboy hat or an American flag bandanna (for sale in the side room) or boots or a fringed sumpthinerother or a gingham shirt or skirt. Some outfits were really elaborate, all the way up to a couple of "pros." One was decked out as a marshal, complete with badge, vest, and six-shooter hung for a crossdraw. He even had sideburns, which is why I considered him a pro: you don't decide the day of the show that you want sideburns, so this guy must wear these things year round. Same with the Trapper, who had long hair, a raccoon tail so big it couldn't exist in nature, and a revolver hung low on his hip. Lots of good-looking mustaches, too, which Belgian men seem to be able to grow at will. The most authentically American-lookin' guys, though, were probably the two young men who were were wearing, not cowboy boots, but Timbs. I, of course, wore the true American headgear: a ball cap. So did Emmett.
Emmett setting up before the show.


Then there were the line dancers. This must be what middle-aged Belgian women do while their out-of-shape husbands go off to have heart attacks on their bicycles every weekend. We noted several different troupes, including Roxy Line Dance (cowgirl boots and jean skirts with a flouncy ruffle), Indiana Ranch (bucking bronco logo on the back of a denim shirt), Country Planet (sequined logo on a black shirt), and a whole passel of freelancers. A Francophone band called "Country Cooking" played first, and the gaps were filled in by a country DJ. Many of the line dancers danced through the whole afternoon and evening, leaving only to go out front for smoke breaks. (I've found my retirement career: Country Cooking's lead singer was good, but he needs a diction coach.)

And bikers. We're not sure what brought the Eagle Brothers out from Dinant, home of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, and site of the bridge on which Charles de Gaulle was wounded in the Great War. Perhaps it was a general appreciation of the American arts. Or maybe it was just the chance to drink a whole bunch of beer and not have to get up and go to work the next day. But they were there too.

Wendy, Debbie, we can report that Emmett is fine. He's being well cared for, is having a good time, and always wears proper hearing protection and dark glasses to shield his eyes from the light shows (the shades also add a jazzy element to the band). And he assured us that he wouldn't autograph anyone's breasts, Chris Tedesco's offer to the crowd notwithstanding.

Our digital camera continues to be a bit hinky, so we didn't get a lot of shots to document all the weirdness; but here's one of a couple of Belgian cowpokes. Or bikers. We're not sure which. Apparently, neither are they. They can afford to spend a whole evening listening to The Ranchhands because Belgian cows ain't goin' nowhere: they just lie down all day.

In closing, special thanks to everyone in The Ranchhands for a great show and for bringing us a little piece of home. May you be successful but remember these European days fondly. Dear reader, know this: While the world may disagree with US foreign policy, it still loves American culture and the whole idea of America. Heck, even French intellectuals like jazz and Jerry Lewis.

En grève

The Belgian Post Office, and most likely a bunch of other offices, went on strike yesterday. I didn't hear any news coverage of it, but they most certainly had an announced reason for the strike. The real reason, though, was that Monday is a holiday, so they were tyring to grab a 4-day weekend. It's not Memorial Day for the Europeans but Whitmonday--Pentacost Monday. It's a big weekend for us, too: Sarah arrives Sunday morning; then Sunday evening we're going to see the Ranchhands, widely considered to have the best drummer in all of country music (our nephew Emmett). We also have a choice of city fairs to attend.

Language note for the Francophones: ducasse is the northern French word for the annual celebration of the local patron saint's day, which quickly devolves into the decidedly unsaintly. I didn't know where it came from. But you know who does know? Google knows! Ducasse is a corruption of dédicace. Google also tells us that the Occitan word is voto, from fête votive.

In France they have wine cellars

In Belgium we have beer cellars. Beer for home consumption can be had by the individual beer (people are free to break open a pack and take one or two), by the four-, six-, or eight-pack (seems to depend on quality and size), or by the case. The surprising thing for us is that the price is almost exactly the same. In other words, the price of a case is 24 times the price of a single beer. And sometimes they even round up! I guess they don't want anyone to be punished for wanting only one beer. All bottles are refillables. You see a couple of the throw-away kind, but very few. Those really nice, heavy Chimay bottles that in the States we toss in the recycling? Those would fetch 10 centimes each at the bottle return counter here in Belgium.

The yellow one on the top left, obscured by the shipping label, is Saint Feuillien, an abby style beer brewed not 20 miles from here in the town of Le Roeulx (pronounced luh roo and often called "le rolex" because it's a swanky place). It's our favorite everyday Belgian beer. We also like Chimay with the white cap. And I (David) like the Chimay blue. Leffe and Grimbergen are by US standards astonishingly good beers but by Belgian standards merely good, solid, mass-produced beers.

The flower market comes to town

As part of the Ascension holiday festivities in Saint-Ghislain, the flower market came to town on Saturday. We had just the spot picked out for impatiens, and a decorative wheelbarrow just waiting to be filled with "a riot of colors," as David put it. You can't quite see the riot of colors in this picture but it's there. We're going to go back to the big weekly flower market in Mons today to see what else we can get.

We miss our girls

We must because we keep seeing things that remind us of them. This is a town not terribly far from the US air base at Chièvres.

Things that have changed in 35 years

Mobylettes. They're almost all gone. You see the classic version every now and then, and you see some Vespa-like scooters, but the old 20-inch bike with a weed whacker engine mounted on the front wheel has gone the way of the 5¢ stamp. And all the scooters and bicycles combined are nothing like the fleets of two-wheelers that clogged the streets of Montpellier in the afternoon when university and lycée classes let out. You don't see people on bikes getting a free ride by holding onto the shoulder of a powered friend. You don't see gaggles of high school girls or gangs of teenaged tough guy wannabes on them. You don't see old ladies going shopping or old guys going to the pétanque game on them. You pretty much don't see anybody, in fact, because they wear helmets now. And most of them are in cars. No wonder we got global warming.

Mother's Day

A rose we bought at the Mons flower market today. And it smells great, too. The market was packed with Mother's Day shoppers. We went to Le Pain quotidien for lunch. Regular readers will remember this as our favorite little whole foods bakery/sandwich shop. When we commented on how empty the place was, they explained that they had had a big rush for breakfast but that people tend to go to fancy restaurants for Mother's Day lunch. I told them we were there precisely because it was Mother's Day. The guy who works there said ,"Enfin quelqu'un a compris!"At last someone understands!

David gets the night shift

Actually, he volunteered for it, the 4:30 AM shift for the Make-a-Wish 24-hourathon at SHAPE. It's a huge deal, with various departments and organizations at SHAPE putting teams together to keep at least one person on the track the whole 24 hours. We're not sure exactly how it works but it's a fundraiser, and the winning team seems to be the one that does the most laps.

Each group pitches a tent, some larger than others, for those spending the night or just chilling. Most notable of the tents: the Brits' fish and chips concession, the Germans' Bitburger on draft (gotta carb load, you know), and the Canadians' moose milk - along with their about 6-foot high ginormous statue of a moose. Folks - including kids and dogs - turn out in droves to walk or run, despite the on-again, off-again rain. It is Belgium, you know. To finish things off tonight, we have Gary Sinese and his Lt Dan band playing live.

Oh, I signed up for the more civilized hour of 6:30 AM!

Champagne

The morning after our wine-buying binge in Mons we got up and left for Champagne. If you read really fast, some of you may have seen that we were going...before we decided to take it down off the web site in case someone was waiting for us to be away so that they could come steal all the worthless junk you taxpayers shipped to Europe for us. (Thanks, by the way.) Of course we've bought more worthless junk since we got here, too.

But I digress. As always. We went to Épernay and visited three different champagne houses. We went from the humongous (Mercier) to the miniscule (Pierre Gobillard) to the merely small (J-M Gobillard). The lady at Pierre Gobillard explained that the two Gobillard houses were unrelated. Her outfit was so small that she had to unlock the door to the tasting room for us, and we had a private session. The other Gobillard house is across from the church where Dom Perignon is buried. Or where his tombstone is. There seems to be some confusion. If the guide book writers were tasting as much of the local product as we were, it's no danged wonder. Anyways, we bought some more wine.

This is the little village outside Épernay where we stayed, in what was essentially a French Motel 6. We took the picture because the town name reminded us of one of our daughters. Can you guess which one? From here we could look across the vineyards and up the hill and see the luxury hotel where we stayed during our 20th anniversary trip to the same region.

Here is it, off in the hazy distance. If you click on the photo and make it huge, you can maybe see it up near the brow of the hill. Oh, and that hill is the Montagne de Reims. And yes, all the green stuff on the slopes is vineyards.

David gets even for the jewelry show

Last night we went to the 19th Mons Wine Expo. While not quite reaching the level of our officemate who spent €2,000 one year, we did our bit to keep the French economy afloat. And yes, they were almost all French vendors, with one Romanian and a couple of South American countries also represented. But the poor Chileans were getting pretty much ignored in favor of the Burgundians and the Bordelais. It was a surprisingly small event--maybe three or four dozen vendors--and very uncrowded at first because we deliberately went early. But the smallness made it more manageable, unlike those monster jewelry shows where women just freeze in the entranceway as soon as they see all the sparkly things, with their hearts racing, unable to even breathe.

We both relived bits of our youth by loading up on wines from the Loire Valley (Rita) and Languedoc-Roussillon (David). Robin, Bob, Lynn, Thom, if you're reading, I got me some Corbières, which is now an appellation controlée! I had fun chatting with the vintner; I told him I hadn't had any in 35 years. Then there was the olive girl from Bandol, which is right next door to Toulon, where I spent the school year 77-78. We walked away with a few months worth of olives, dried tomatoes, and what she termed "Provençal candy": pickled garlic cloves. Putain! Elles sont bonnes!

Mosquito netting

Rachel is nagging us to offer you something new, so I'll tell you about the most exciting thing going these days: mosquito netting. With our four weeks of absolutely gorgeous weather have come the buzzing insects, so much so that we've opted to sleep with our portes-fenetres (French doors) and all the other windows closed the last couple nights. We managed to get to a hardware store this afternoon to buy screening and velcro; now we just have to figure out how to put it up and still get the windows and doors open. (All the windows and doors open in, and some of the windows swivel, so it's not just a matter of putting the screening on the outside).

Last Saturday we felt like real grownups: we took the train up to Brussels in the late afternoon to meet up with the younger brother of one of Becky's former soccer teammates, who was on a study trip to Brussels. I took advantage of the opportunty to go to the FNAC (bookstore) and buy a bunch of polars (mysteries) while David enjoyed a few beers down on the Grand' Place. Having gotten used to Mons, I was a little overwhelmed by the crowds on the rue Neuve (the main pedestrian shopping street in Brussels) - and by the price of beer on the Grand' Place. Made little ole Mons look good. We took a 10:00 PM train home and were exhausted the next day from staying out so late. We are old.

Food Finds

One of the coolest things about working in an international environment like SHAPE is that the local GB (a kind of mini-mega-mart) stocks food from all 26 member states. Yesterday I discovered bulgur. I know we're 30 or 40 years behind the rest of our hippi-granola cohort, but the product we were getting in Carrboro was not the same. This is the good stuff. Turkish! There's also Greek yogurt, real feta, tons of pastas, and Dutch peanut butter. If we want German stuff, we go to the US commissary.

La convocation

Tuesday afternoon David found a little note from the police in our part of Saint Ghislain commune summoning us to show up at the police station the next morning at 0830. No indication as to what it pertained to. It was addressed to Madame and Monsieur (although since the Monsieur was a little difficult to read, David tried to pretend that they were after just me). With a little analysis we devined that because they didn't address us by name, it didn't have anything to do with the car (like a speeding ticket). The agent had added the notes "Could you please contact me" and "urgent," so we figured we'd best show up even though it meant juggling a meeting at work. So we presented ourselves Wednesday morning at the police station, whereupon our agent de quartier (beat cop) exclaimed, "Oh, you could have just called..." Turns out he was trying to locate someone who had lived in the house two tenants ago. But it wasn't a wasted trip because he gave us a booklet listing the rules and regulations of the commune, including the new regulation that prohibits mowing on Sunday.

Another interesting cultural adventure...

Cuckoo d'Hautrage

The Francophiles among our readers will recognize this as a play on words.

I was sitting out on the patio doing Sudoku this evening when I heard a cuckoo calling. Yes, a real, live cuckoo. I'd never heard one before but it was instantly recognizable by its distinctive call. How cool is that? Horses, goats, sheep, huge magpies, pheasants, and cuckoos. We do indeed live in the country. Now if only we could tame that wild European washer...

Things you thought you'd never see this side of Heaven

You can keep your 72 virgins. Give me a woman who mows the lawn any day! (And guys, check out what she's using. Self-propelled, mulching adapter kit installed, central height adjustor, 53 cm cut, and a 5.5 hp Honda engine. Sweet!)

Not exactly Wyoming but still...

Our neighbors have deer. Little ones. They're apparently confined to the yard. We've both seen them, so it's not the beer talking. No idea if they're for food (not at all unlikely) or for fun. The people up the street have a couple of really scruffy-looking sheep (they used to have three, but one disappeared right before Easter) and a goat. Almost everyone seems to have horses, both draft and riding, and there are lots of small herds of cattle and dairy cows scattered about. There are also lots of healthier sheep. This afternoon while we were eating dinner, a pheasant walked through the side yard then flew away into the woods. And on Easter I had to bury a cat that had died in our tool shed. Life is tough out here on the frontier.

Long days and longer nights

While David scampers down the autobahn in his zippy little VW Polo, I'm back at the Hautrage Hotel getting ready for our next batch of guests. We discovered long ago that entertaining is the best incentive for cleaning, and that axiom still holds true. The downstairs is shaping up and the upstairs will be fine as soon as the parquet guy gets done with the floor in the master bedroom. He made remarkable progress today - replaced the rotten floorboards and sanded the entire room (except for the alcove - guess the insurance won't pay for that...). The process is supposed to take 3 days so I'm hoping to start moving stuff in that room before David gets back with our guests.

It's staying light here until well after 8:00 PM. Tonight I opened all the doors in the kitchen while I did the dishes. I did not, however open the bedroom window. Because last night I opened it and thought I'd never get it closed again. And flying things kept buzzing me all night. Hence the long night. No knight in shining armor to ward off the evil spirits because he's up there in Germany doing obscene speeds in his VW Fiesta...

David gets his comeupppance

I'm being punished for bragging about our sweet ride while we had the rented BMW. For my TDY I have a VW Polo: 1200 cc of three-cylinder German muscle. On the autobahn I had it up to 172 kph. Downhill. And only for a few seconds. It was turning 5500 rpm. Red line is 5800. Paige, it's the VW version of that Fiesta you had. A guy cut me off going uphill, and I thought I'd never get it back to 130.

Girl version: I have a silver rental car.

The Hautrage "Flyer"

Our local weekly newspaper in Columbia, for you non-Howard County residents, is the Columbia Flyer. Since we moved to Hautrage we've been receiving the passe-partout, which covers our area of southern Belgium and northern France. It seems to be a combination of ads and local news stories.

In this week's edition, which I started reading over breakfast - because we don't get a real newspaper anymore - the first story I read was about Al Gore buying 107 hectares (about 264 acres) of forest called the Bois d'Angre to save it from development. Now, you might ask how Al Gore knew about this little parcel of land in remotest Belgium threatened by malicious exploitation. Well, the article foresaw your question and provided an answer. It admits that this is only rumor ("badly informed sources") but supposedly Al Gore has a cousin working at SHAPE who informed him about it. There was a good play on words in the article for us Francophiles, but I won't bore you with it here. In any case, Al is going to leave the land as is because, as the article says, he likes to remind us that "Trees cut down to be burned contribute to global warming."

The next article I found interesting was about the motocycle club from Quievrain called "Les Esquimaux" (The Eskimos) who have been engaging in "intelligent cycling" for 7 years. Seems this group of mature gentlemen get together on Sundays and during the summer to travel to "cultural destinations" - such as Chimay, Maredsous, and Orval. Anyone who has been to Belgium (and even some who haven't) will appreciate the fine culture these gentlemen are partaking of.

That's just a sample of what awaits me when I get back to the passe-partout...

A little bit about where we live:

Hautrage is in the commune of St. Ghislain, which is in the province of Hainault. That means we have to buy trash bags and recycling bags valid for St. Ghislain, because the sale of the bags contributes to the cost of trash pickup (a hidden tax).

Hautrage is a little bigger than we initially thought but seems to consist mainly of homes, many of which are really pretty. There are, as far as we can tell - and we've walked most of the village - exactly two stores: the patisserie and a toy/newspaper and magazine store (librairie). The church does not appear to offer Sunday Mass, since there is no schedule posted. It seems that in these small villages the Mass rotates, so we might get it here only once a month or so. But since there is no schedule posted, I'll never know... Oh, and then there's the hair dresser and the pharmacy that operate out of the proprietors' homes.

There is a Maison communale across the Grand' Place from the bakery but we haven't figured out the secret to being allowed in. It seems to be mostly older folks gathering for meetings or poker - we can't tell which.

Unfortunately we have yet to find a bar or cafe in Hautrage, Chez Coco apparently being closed for good. We find it hard to believe that all these Hautrageois are drinking at home, so we'll continue to search diligently for that hidden bar.

Boxes and more boxes

Everyone warned us about this but I guess it's one of those experiences you just have to have for yourself - the "why the heck did we bring this crap?" experience. Even though we brought "only" 9200 pounds of stuff and have a huge house, we're still wondering where to put it all. (While we don't seem to have shipped a bag of garbage, like some folks warned us about, I did find a rusty razor blade carefully wrapped in paper...)

The living and dining rooms are pretty much done, if you ignore the boxes of stuff we don't have room for (table linens, candles). Sarah's room is almost done and looks good enough to sleep in. Wait, Becky already has, so I guess it must be OK...the guest room needs just a few more things as well. The rest of the house, though, is pretty much a mess. I scored a moral victory this afternoon when I unpacked the box that held my desk calendar - now I can go to work tomorrow and start making my to-do list and listing my meetings where I'll actually be able to find them again. ...

David will be on a business trip next week, so I'll have some long evenings to try to get the house in order for our next batch of company coming in for Easter.

Most of our possessions arrived intact. All of my china and glasses came through fine. One of our dining room chairs, however, is busted - and not the one Rachel broke a spindle out of years ago. The rest of the broken stuff is just minor, so far. But there are many boxes to go...

Other news:

We now have SHAPE license plates on our car and SHAPE driver's licenses, so we are bona fide Shapians.

We finally found a decent little grocery store not too far from Hautrage, and it's even open Sunday mornings.

The European washer is a demon with a mind of its own. We have to be careful how we load it so it doesn't tear itself away from its connections and spew water all over the garage. (No, that hasn't happened yet ...)

The floor guy will be here next week to repair the damaged floor in the master bedroom. We're hoping it doesn't take too long because right now we're sleeping in what will eventually be the study.

Still waiting for the humongo TV to come in. I'm suffering from Law and Order withdrawal.

We can sit in our living room and watch barges sail along the canal.

Catching up

David is fixing blanquette de veau (veal stew) in our enormous kitchen, so it falls to me to try to catch you up since our last posting. We went dark on Thursday when we moved out of the hotel and into the house on rue Delbory. We got three deliveries that day: our "express baggage" (sarcasm intended), our appliances, and our loaner furniture. We have a US dryer (which means it's what we consider a normal size) and a European washer (which means you can put about 3 pairs of underwear or one pillowcase in; OK, I'm exaggerating, but only a little). Because the frigo in the house doesn't have a freezer, we also have a US fridge. We were lucky, though, because in contrast to most Belgian homes, our kitchen came equipped with an oven, dishwasher, microwave, and lots of cabinets. We also have overhead lights in every room, another big plus.

The car also came in, so we picked it up on Friday but not in time to get it registered because it being Friday and Belgium, the registration office closed at 1:00. So we went over there today, after picking Becky up at the airport, to do that. Turns out it's only sort of registered - we did all the paperwork but have to go back Thursday, after 3:30, to pick up our plates. Then we went over to get our SHAPE driver's licenses, but of course we can't do that until we get our plates. And apparently that happens in the same office where we registered the car, only our friendly registration agent (who wasn't friendly) neglected to tell us that. We also can't get our Belgian driver's licenses until we get both our SHAPE licenses and our Belgian ID cards, which will come in sometime within a month or so. (The advantage to having a Belgian license is that it's valid anywhere in Europe and never expires!)

So...while we were doing all this Becky was back at the house recovering from her journey, which entailed driving from Nashville to Dulles to catch her overseas flight because all flights from Nashville were cancelled on account of the weather. (We had to hear about the bad weather from the local patisserière because we had neither TV nor internet nor newspapers to know what was going on.) We took Becky back to SHAPE for lunch because 1) the food is pretty good, and 2) families are allowed on the campus, so that was an interesting experience for her.

Our household goods are being delivered Wednesday, which means we will finally have furniture to put in these big empty rooms. We should also have a TV by then so it will truly be home. (David finally gave up on the idea of the 58" screen but we are getting something big and flat and dual voltage and multisystem that we can bring home with us.)

One peculiarity about houses here: if you have a septic system, you can't use bleach in your laundry or to clean anything because it will kill the good germs in the system and produce a noxious odor in your bathrooms. This is going to just kill me because I like my whites white and I hate mold in the bathroom. The combination of an exuberant shower and damp weather makes for a propitious mold-growing environment, so I am going to have to ask Delia the cleaning lady at work how Belgians combat mold.

Other musings: going to work on our last day at the hotel we got behind both the garbage truck and the street cleaners. Picture being stuck behind two vehicles moving at the pace of a ruminating cow down a narrow street wide enough only for two small European cars. The street cleaners and cleaning personnel seem to be part of the Belgian full employment act - or you could think of them as the antithesis of the theory of personal responsibility that seems to be so prevalent here in Belgium, as in: why bother throwing trash in a trashcan when someone will come and pick it up later? ??

Time for a stroll into the village to see if there are any signs of life.

It's better now

The regular ladies who run the hotel desk "found a solution," so we get to stay in the Infotel our last night. The gal who told us we had to leave was an interloper. I suspect she was just a prankstress who came in off the street to harrass us. We started moving stuff to the house today anyways. After our second load, we did some driving around. It was another gorgeous day after several weeks of rain. We found what may prove to be a nice little restaurant de terroir (down home cookin'), and an icky little grocery store we won't go back to. Then we headed back to Mons and bought trash bags. The way you pay for trash pickup here is that you have to put it in special bags that cost more than a buck a piece. They won't pick it up if it's not. The recycling bags are much cheaper, but you still have to have special ones. To get either one you go to a grocery store and ask the cashier for them. Reminds of how you used to have to buy rubbers. That's what other guys tell me. After buying trash bags, we went to a brew pub! It looked just like every brew pub I've ever been in in the States. Even our waitress looked like she had been plucked out of Oliver's. The food and the beer were both good. The background music was way too young for us, though.

In other beer news, today I bought my Perfect Draft and a keg of Leffe. We're ready to roll. If you get here in the next...oh, 48 hours, there might be some left.