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.

Homeless...sort of

We're all set to move into our almost-a-chateau on Thursday: three trucks will arrive to deliver 1) our unaccompanied baggage (which finally arrived last week); 2) our temporary furniture (which, after some "persuasion" from our command in Stuttgart, the Army has grudgingly allowed us); and 3) our appliances, also from the Army. Yesterday we met the landlord and the previous occupants at the house to take possession of the keys and get some last-minute info about the house. So last night we stopped by the hotel reception to tell them we were leaving on Thursday, only to learn that they had already booked our room, as of Wednesday night, to someone else. David was speechless, if you can imagine that. It was a misunderstanding on both sides but what could we do? They're complet. So...we'll be moving into Le Maisières (commonly called Le Misery by long-term occupants), the hotel right across the street from SHAPE, for one night before actually taking possession of our house. Having accummulated such stuff as a coffee maker, toaster, several bottles of spirits, and a lot of beer--along with everything we mailed ourselves and brought with us--we foresee many trips in our little BMW to move it all out of the Infotel and into our house.

The good news is that our car arrived in Bremerhaven on Saturday and could be here in Belgium as early as Wednesday or Thursday. Or not...

Kriek in a can

Today we drove through Laurel, Belgium. It was actually the N51, not US 1, but it was similarly jammed on either side with big box stores and strip malls, many of them a bit worse for wear. We visited the Colruyt (a Big Lots kind of place with concrete floors where they won't let you break singles out of a six-pack--highly unusual for Belgium) and the Cora, which is similar to Wal-Mart. We saw kriek (black cherry-flavored beer) in a can, which is a little like finding Sam Adams in a can. We also saw 5-liter boxes of appéllation contrôlée (meaning good) French wine.

The weather has turned nice here in le Lac du Woebegone (Woobegonesmeer) and the Grand Place is chockablock with cafe tables. So we too bundled up and sat outside with a glass, reading for an hour or so.

Now we're watching goose catchers on the Dutch channel. I love Europe.

Rodents and Tax-Free Cigs - odds and ends from the Kingdom of the Belgians

All Belgium appears to be infested with moles, and not just any moles. These things dig up whole fields and yards, making mounds that look like prairie dog villages. They must be either big or industrious to do the kind of damage we see. The French word for mole is taupe, whence we get the word for the color of moleskin. The guy who specializes in exterminating them is called a taupier. I guess we'd call him a molist. It must be a lucrative profession here. Perhaps the moles and the molists are in cahoots, like the not-so-secret alliance between the Baptists and the moonshiners. Our landlord told us that the first time he had the taupier come out, the molist apparently wanted the landlord to know he was doing his job, so he hung a bag full of dead moles on the front door knob. The landlord was mortified because he didn't want his tenants coming home and thinking the house was some kind of cat mafia target.

Since we work in an international setting, the bathrooms in our spaces have the little man and woman silhouettes on the doors instead of "boys" and "girls." Only since it's Europe, the silhouettes are not our utilitarian stick figures but are elegant. The lady is tall and slender and has her hip cocked and her head turned at a stylish angle. I think they modeled her on Jackie Kennedy. The man is poised in a similar, albeit more manly, fashion. I swear he is holding a pipe. I'm thinking Sean Connery as James Bond.

We get ration cards. We're entitled to 200 gallons of gas or diesel a month tax-free and limited amounts of untaxed alcohol and tobacco. Specifically, we get four alcohol purchases a month. Doesn't make any difference how much: one bottle of wine or one case of beer is the same. We can of course buy as much taxed stuff as we want. The RIS (rationed items store) at SHAPE has a better selection than the PXtra at Chièvres. Rita insists on calling the RIS by its name, but I like to refer to it as the packaged goods store.

One of our majors got promoted recently. Turns out he has his doctorate in philosophy and cognitive development. He's taught at the Air Force Academy for several years. Plus he just might be the nicest guy I've ever met. In the other room, where Rita and I sit, is a Navy lieutenant commander who happens to be an amateur theologian. Then there's the reservist who also has a political consulting firm with his brothers. Seems like everybody we run into has some surprising back story. In short, the people defending you are a pretty interesting bunch.

Bayern Munich scored the fastest goal in Champions' League history a few minutes ago and now leads Real Madrid 1-0. That's roughly equivalent to scoring six runs in the bottom of the first.

Perfect Draft

The First Sergeant and our security sergeant called me into Top's office Friday with a "Psst, psst, hey, David, come here!" to tell me about a product I just have to buy. It turns out you can get three brands of beer in 6-liter kegs: (in ascending order of quality) Jupiler, Stella Artois, and Leffe. And word on the street is that Hoegaarden and others will follow. But wait! There's more. To dispense these you have to have a little home draft system, made by Philips, called "Perfect Draft." That's what Top and Nick wanted to tell me about. This thing chills and dispenses beer and is just further proof of how much God loves us. Rita and I plan to buy ourselves one as a house-warming present. I can hardly wait!

This just might make up for what the damned Dutchmen have done to my Giant.

Pictures!

After a couple of frustrating weeks dealing with Evil Steve Jobs and our inability to get photos off the camera, I finally remembered that Rachel had once used a Mac utility called Preview to look at photos. So finally I can say...here's our new home! Plus Rita, our rental car, and the cars of the current tenants.

And this is the back. On the left is the spiral staircase leading to the room where we lock up princesses who misbehave.

Pretty cool, huh?

Sugar Pie

In French, tarte sucre. Today we did laundry at Chièvres (pronounced shevr-us by most of our colleagues). This is the US base north of Mons that is probably closure proof since it's essentially SACEUR's private airstrip. It's the closest place for us to find a PX and commissary. They're both small but reasonably well stocked. The PX has Polish pottery, so Rita is happy as a clam; she buys a piece every time we go. I try to keep us from going. Anyways, as we were leaving today we went looking for a wood-fired bakery we saw advertised on a hand-made sign. When we found it, of course we bought a loaf of the gnarly-lookin' bread baked in the wood-fired oven, but we also picked up a tarte sucre, which seems to be their specialty. And what it is is a double-crust sugar pie. For the Southerners, sugar pie is the New England version of chess pie. And for those of you who know neither product, it's eggs, sugar, and butter. Now imagine that between two flaky European-style pastry crusts, with the filling oozing out and bubbling up through the top crust like a little volcano of fat and sugar, and you've got tarte sucre. Can't-miss goodness.

We haven't touched the bread, but the tarte sucre is almost gone.

The advantages of working in a military environment

Yes, there are some...like the fact that nobody noticed when I wore the same pair of pants two days in a row because the rest of my clothes haven't arrived yet. And then there's the fact that we "outrank" everyone in the office except the boss. That earns us a lot of respect - but we're working on getting everyone to call us by our first names instead of Ma'am and Sir. ... We were invited to witness a re-upping for one of our colleagues and a promotion ceremony for another. We feel privileged to be working with such a bright, professional, and friendly group of folks.