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.