We've got a house!

And it's big gorgeous. Sarah, we almost got your château. It has marble, tile, and wood floors, a huge kitchen with tons of cabinets and a built-in marble table. The master bedroom has closets!! Those who have lived in Europe will understand how huge that is. The master bath has one of those walk-in spray-you-from-all-sides showers. I may never make it to work. The village of Hautrage is across the canal, maybe a 10 minute walk away. Hautrage doesn't have much, but it does have a patisserie and a restaurant called Chez Coco. We don't have pictures of the house yet because of our software woes (suffice it to say that Steve Jobs hates freedom), but we hope to soon. Meanwhile, anyone who wants to MapQuest or GoogleEarth it can look for rue Delbory 10, 7334 Hautrage.

We're pretty stoked. We sign the lease on the 6th and should be able to move in on the 15th. The guy renting it now is willing to leave his AFN and SkyNet satellites for us. I get to buy a new mower (Donald, I'm thinking this is my chance to get a Honda) because I'll be taking care of lawn maintenance myself. I may regret it because I've been told that between the rain and the 18 hours of sunlight you get in midsummer, grass grows like a m...grass grows fast.

La Vie est belle

It's also the name of a new restaurant about two steps from the hotel where we're staying. They opened just a couple of days before we arrived, and since it's their first month we got an aperitif on the house. We were the only customers for the first half hour we were there, so we chatted a bit with the husband half of the owners. He's from just 25 km north of here, and his wife is from about the same distance in the other direction, which happens to be in France, so they split the difference and opened in Mons pour ne pas trop se disputer--so that they wouldn't argue too much. I asked about the music he was playing (Dylan, the Platters, Elvis, u/i Motown, bunch of 60ish French stuff) and got a long dissertation on how he loves anything that's useless (the place is decorated with marionettes and a French version of the Shoney's Big Boy) and how a lot of people don't step away from the serious side of life long enough to appreciate life. But this is where the French and the Belgians differ. Our restaurateur at least realized that he had given me more answer than I had asked for and made a wry little joke at his own expense. A Frenchman in the same situation might well have assumed that his long digression was the answer I wanted.

A thing I like about restaurants here: diners acknowledge each other's presence. They speak when they sit next to you, wish you bon appétit, and say goodbye when you leave.

After-action report, Sunday 2

David went to church twice today: once with Rita and once with the Anglicans while Rita went to the gym (the two services are back to back). I tell you, just when you think you've heard everything, the Catholics go and sing "Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling." Boy, was I ever shocked. And pleased. They kind of countrified it and dumbed it down (no parts to sing in the refrain), but it was still nice. Then the Anglicans opened with a Charles Wesley hymn, albeit one I did not know. There were only 22 people in the Anglo-Episcopal service, but they were throwing a Belgian out of the bullpen and it's still the school holiday. Between the Communion and the small crowd I felt like I was at the 0730 service at home, except for the preacher's accent.

Two Couples

Last night we ate dinner at a restaurant on the Grand' Place, one we've been to a couple times already, so Pascal the waiter recognizes us. We got there about 6:45 but apparently that is pretty early on a Friday night because there was only one other group in the back dining room, and they were having their pre-prandial beers. An older couple came in then and ordered coffee and cake. Being the superb analysts we are, we devined that they had eaten dinner at home and had come in for dessert. (On the other hand, maybe they were on a fixed income and that was dinner...). Then a young, college-aged couple came in for cokes. Dame 1 (the older woman - and I do mean older, even older than me!) was sedate and very much in her own space, conversing in low tones with her man. Dame 2 (the young woman) was alternately in her fella's lap and then laced around his neck, apparently resting quite comfortably and possibly even catching a cat-nap. Not much room for the Holy Spirit between those two! Fella 2 sat there smugly enjoying his lady's attentions, while Fella 1 kept checking his watch and reporting back to his boss. We just thought it was interesting observing these two very different generations.

But why is it called Mons?

I didn't realize where the name came from until I saw the Dutch (Flemish) version: Bergen. Mons is plain ol' Latin for mount, and the city really is built on a little hill. The terrain around here is flat as a pancake--or flat as Kansas, if you prefer, which a bunch of Texas geography profs have proven is in effect flatter than a pancake--but Mons is on an itty bitty hill in the midst of all those Kansas-flat beet fields.

We passed

We took the class and passed the test for our SHAPE drivers' licenses today. Now all we need is a car before we can actually go get the license. We had to know all 146 traffic signs and to react to 50 traffic situations flashed on the screen for 30 seconds; several of them dealt with the dreaded "priority to the right" rule. Former Belgian drivers will be interested to learn that the rule is being altered as of 1 March: no longer will you lose your priority simply because you hesitate when approaching an intersection. Somehow in Belgium this is considered progress. For those who have never driven in a priority-to-the-right country, suffice it to say that this is the situation for which the expression "accident waiting to happen" was invented.

We're #1!

We've moved up to number 1 on the list for the house we haven't seen yet. Turns out the guy who was ahead of us on the list took the house we looked at Saturday, so now we're first for this one. Today after work we drove over there and peered in all the windows. I'm surprised the neighbors didn't call the cops. Apparently the realtor isn't showing the house yet because there's still some renovation work going on. We're hoping to be able to see it next week, before our option runs out. In the meantime, we continue to stack things up in the hotel room - and our express shipment hasn't even arrived yet!

La bise montoise

For those who follow things French, we've noticed that people in Mons (les Montois) greet each other with only one kiss on the cheek, which seems simple and straightforward. In Tournai we saw at least one guy giving a cute girl four, which is interesting, though given the prettiness of the girl, not a carefully controlled observation.

We found the mall!

A couple people had mentioned this big mall to us, and today we finally found it. It's just outside of town but probably within walking distance for those of us who like to walk for exercise. As we entered we saw saw brasseries (casual, beer-serving restaurants) with seating outside. So you can get the whole people-watching experience of sitting at a cafe without getting wet or cold. A definite plus in Belgium. There are tons of small stores, mostly European; I think the only US store we saw was Esprit. We happened upon a bookstore, so of course we had to spend some money... Downside to the mall: the parking lot is unpaved - in fact, it's like sand - and full of potholes. Made for quite a bumpy ride in. However, the free navette that drives around Mons makes a stop at the mall...

Later we went to Tournai just to see what was there. It's a slightly larger town than Mons and is almost all the way to Lille, France. There is a huge cathedral that is undergoing 5 different types of restoration/work (stabilization of the existing building and archeological dig among them). Basically after a tornado in 1999, when they started to fix the storm damage, they discovered a whole bunch of other problems that had been accumulating over the years. For instance, different parts of the building were settling* at different rates due to the composition of the soil and the water table. They also discovered Bishop Baudouin's tomb during the excavations, as well as an 11th century church underneath the current edifice. When they dug through the 11th century layer they found a Carolingian structure. And so on. It will be interesting to monitor the progress of the work, as it will continue over several years.

We put an option on another house today and went out to look at it from the outside. The landlady is out of town and took the key with her. Don't know whether that's a warning sign or not...the house itself looks good from the outside and is quite close to SHAPE - it'd be about a 5 minute commute to work. We're number 2 on the list for this one. We're hoping Number 1 gets disgusted because he can't look at it or he finds something else so we get up to number 1.

We are working our way through the Belgian beer list. Not all restaurants have all types but we've managed to sample quite a few so far. I guess we'll have to sober up soon, since we start work in earnest this week.

*We've learned another word: tassement means settling.

David goes to church

Okay, so I do that all the time, but today I went to the SHAPE chapel to worship with the mixed Anglican-Episcopal crowd. It was actually pretty nice. I felt like I had worshipped. The priest, "Padre Bob," is a British Army chaplain. He's no Andy Lunt, but he's got the British thing going, and he was relaxed and as informal as a guy with that accent and wearing those robes can be. I think the pianist was an American. She's no Eric Sayers, but she was good and did a nice medley of "Amazing Grace" and another old favorite that I forget now. We sang "Morning Has Broken" and three praise hymns, albeit the kind with actual theology in them. And we sang all the verses. The hymnal is the British thing with no music printed. No choir, but I heard a couple of good male voices in the crowd, including the pianist's husband.

There were only two or three dozen people there, but it's "half term" at the schools. It was also Family Sunday, so the kids were all in worship instead of SS, the liturgy had been toned down a bit, and the sermon was pitched pretty much at the kids (inspired by my dear, departed Uncle Dan, I timed it: 13 minutes). We had coffee afterwards, and about a half dozen people went out of their way to speak to me, including the "sidesman." (No, not a jazz dummer; that's a sideman. This is an usher.) They have a little laity participation: a lay reader did the OT, and a British airman and his Catholic wife did the prayers of petition. It seems to be a reasonably active parish. I think I could handle 3 years here.

Pigeons in the bathroom

Bits and pieces from the DRBBA.

When we stand in our bathroom, we can hear pigeons cooing. Of course, as people always do in these cases, we spent the first couple of days each of us wondering to ourselves what it was that sounded like pigeons cooing in the bathroom; then we asked aloud, "Do you hear pigeons cooing in the bathroom?" Then we saw the pigeons on the roof. Another mystery solved.

On Valentines Day we went to a good Italian restaurant a few doors up the street from the hotel. It was crowded, of course, since V-Day is a big holiday for florists, chocolate shops, and jewelers in Belgium just like at home. We sat next to--and when I say "next to," I mean his elbow and mine were almost touching (it was an Italian restaurant after all)--a really loud, obnoxious, yet oddly lovable guy about my age. He had a great moustache, too. He started off by asking me if I like jokes. Then he asked if I play cards; he wanted to talk about the poker tournament he had seen where a guy won a million dollars. It went like that all evening. On the other side of him was a young couple containing a pretty girl with...umm...a striking figure. While the young couple was eating their pizzas, my new best friend looked over at them and said, "Wow, that's making me drool. Not the pizza. Her!" Pretty girl laughed it off, as European girls always do, partly because it all sounded cute and nonthreatening in French. And after all, my pal was with his wife, who was amused by the whole performance. In the US he would probably have been arrested for misdemeanor sexual assault, which is why the Brits refer to the States as the "irony-free zone."

Last night we had couscous. Yum! There are a ton of ethic restaurants here in Mons. So far we've seen Chinese, Italian, Tunisian, Greek, Vietnamese, French, Danish, one place specializing in Alsatian cuisine, and a couple of Provençal places. Then there's the Chi-Chi's and the four-story McDonald's on the Grand Place. The one thing we have yet to find is a Belgian restaurant.

For the Francophones among you who may be wondering about noun-adjective agreement in "La Grand Place," yes it should be "La Grande Place." All I can say is that it's a Belgian thing.

Another Belgian--or northern European--thing is that it got up into the 50s yesterday, so all the restaurants and cafés on the Grand Place set up their outdoor tables. And they were well populated!

Our rental car

We had to switch cars today (they sell them after X days, and our first one's time was up), so this photo even matches our color. It was pretty much fun while I got to drive it, but now Mom has taken over, and I'll probably never set butt in the driver's seat again.

We found our dream house, but...

It's an hour from work. (About now my brother is saying, "Oh, I see: a short ride!) Seriously, it was gorgeous: beautiful kitchen, large rooms, lots of architectural interest, a southern exposure, very quiet and private, a lovely setting on a huge parcel of land overlooking a little vale. We could even hear school children at recess in the picturesque little village, whose church steeple we could see from the terrace.

After seeing that, we figured we were spoiled forever, but today we saw another house that was at least "nice." The rooms in this one are kind of small, but it's got great open spaces, and a nice yard and kitchen. The husband's dad is an Italian stone worker, so it has granite countertops. Sarah, we would put you in what they're using as the study. The bad news on this one is that we're fourth in line. Whoever signs up first has right of refusal, and the second person can't do anything until number one rejects the house or his option expires. The first two options expire Tuesday, and the third one the same day as ours. But the owners were encouraging, pointing out that one of those ahead of us didn't even show up for the appointment. We're hooking up with a realtor to expand our search because those two houses were about it for the SHAPE board.

There are lots of individual houses here, and they all seem to have different looks and different floor plans, lots of tile, and tile roofs. And growing grass here is a snap because it's generally cool and wet year round. We'll keep you posted.

Triple threat bureaucracies

Because I'm essentially lazy, this posting is bits and pieces of what I've already sent to several of you.

We have arrived in Belgium and are staying in a pretty nice, if somewhat spartan, hotel a few meters from the town square in Mons, a small city southwest of Brussels not far from SHAPE. This square is called the Grand Place, too, just like the real Grand Place in Brussels, and it's near 'bout as big as the real one. The whole town seems kind of nice. Since we have only rudimentary cooking arrangements, we're eating out pretty much every meal, but Mons offers zillions (give or take an oodle) of choices.

We got to our office for the first time Thursday and plowed through part of the bureaucracy. As I've mentioned to some of you, we have to work our way through three of them: the Belgian one, the SHAPE one, and the US one. It seems we'll be carrying about 2,000 ID cards while we're here, and we have to show different ones at different times. I've been watching what the guy in line in front of me pulls out to show the clerk/cashier/guard/whatever and doing the same thing. It's all going fairly well for us, actually, because we speak French. Many "Shapians" (the semi-official term for the folks from NATO's 26 member countries) don't speak French (they've all spent too much time learning their excellent English), so the Belgians are very helpful to the people who do. (One of the fun things about being there--well, fun for a linguist--is watching a Slovak and a Lithuanian carry on a conversation in good solid English.) When we bought our pay-as-you-go cell phones yesterday, for example, the salesmen took us to the front of the electronics department line, then personally escorted us past the regular cashiers to make sure we got where we needed to be. And we had a great time chatting with the lady who opened our Belgian bank account.

We have a rental car: a BMW 118d. It's a little 6-speed hatchback with a funky push-button starter. And it will get up and go, too--at least enough for the city/suburban roads we've been driving on. It's sort of Mazda 3 meets the autobahn. Alas, it's too small and (relatively) inexpensive to ever be exported to the US, though, because it would probably spoil BMW's image; so don't look for it on a showroom floor near you soon.

Next on our list is finding a house, which we have to do to get our Belgian national ID card. We saw one (a house, not an ID card) on the board at SHAPE that looked really, really nice. And we were first on the list for it! Then we got home and realized why: it's an hour from work. Blast and tarnation! But we're going to drive out there today to take a look anyways, because we figure we'll see some countryside and might discover something else.

Now it's time to go to breakfast.