Experienced travelers will recognize the two-level euro flusher on our master bath toilet. There's a little flush for "number one" and a bigger flush for "number two." You can't really see them, but these two buttons even have one bump and two bumps for the "one" and "two" functions. All Europeans worry about saving water, even though Belgium is basically one big flood plain.

Now, you'll notice that I said it's on our master bath toilet. The other two toilets have different models. We also have eight (I counted) different brands and styles of heater or radiator and about a gazillion different kinds of light bulbs. Every danged room has a different kind of bulb, sometimes two. This is all because of the way houses are built here: with lots of sweat equity. We have yet to see a house built entirely by a builder that somebody just moves in to. They all seem to be built to one stage of incompleteness or another, then the new owners take over and work on it as they have time until it's done enough to occupy, which is often before it's actually what we would call "done." Part of this has to do with money, but I think somehow it has to do with taxes, which are complex and high here. And nobody loves getting away with a scam like an overtaxed European.

Overheard

Two guys discussing their Afghanistan deployments:  "Oh, I loved Khost. Except for the rocket attacks."

Scenes from Paris

I can think of worse places to spend one's birthday than looking across the Seine at night.




From the wheel in the Tuileries we could see the Rue de Rivoli, where the Tour was going to come through. (We didn't actually get on the ferris wheel until Sunday but the night view sure makes a better picture!) And of course the batteries had died in the camera by the time we got up to the top and had magnificent views of Sacre Coeur, the Eiffel Tower, and the Invalides - not to mention the Tour de France publicity caravan that came by as we were moving back to the hotel to pick up our bags and head to the train station, before the riders came through.


So where were we again? I thought we went to Paris. Sure looks German to me!

This is a section of street in the Butte aux Cailles neighborhood, not far from the Place d'Italie (where we strolled through an excellent open air market).



Me when I get hungry...actually finding restaurants willing to serve before 8:00PM wasn't so difficult this time. We had a couple really good meals (ask David for the details) and a couple really good lunches.

The one thing that didn't work out as well as it could have was the hotel. Although it was cute and ideally located, it wasn't air-conditioned. And the weather was hot. Being Belgians, anything over 80F feels really hot to us. And it was over 80. Had to be.

Lies they tell us about Europe - Installment 1

On the autobahn in Germany you can drive as fast as you want.

Not exactly true. The speed limit on the autobahn is 130 kph (about 80 mph), just like it is almost everywhere in Europe except Belgium, where it's 120. There are sections of the autobahn where you see
the "end of all previous prohibitions and restrictions" sign. Then you can drive as fast as conditions permit. But those stretches tend to be not all that long in many parts of the country. And "conditions" include traffic. The autobahn in much of Germany is just unbelievably congested. It's like one gigantic Capital Beltway (NC readers, think I-40 between Durham and Raleigh) all the time. In more rural areas, like down south, you can actually get up some speed; but in many areas, you can't even go the speed limit because of another phenomenon: every German man thinks he's the fastest thing on the road. So what winds up happening is that everybody gets in the left lane, and you wind up driving 100. Why the left lane? Because unlike in the US, you do not pass on the right here. Europeans (well, at least Northern Europeans) are very strict about this. You drive in the right lane except when passing and always pass on the left. Passing on the right can get you a fine of several hundred euros and a chance to learn lots of quaint local gestures, some of which we also use.

End result: you don't drive as fast in Germany as we always heard you could.

Hautrage Happenings

Observations and musings on goings-on in and around the village:

We realized last week that we are in the middle of the summer church season. What that means is that some of the village churches in our commune (Saint-Ghislain) which normally remain shuttered most of the year get to host Mass for a month in the summer. July is Hautrage's turn, so today I attended Mass at Saint-Sulpice in our very own village. It was only the second time I'd seen the interior of the church. That's a shame because it's a very pretty church - stained glass windows, beautiful wooden altar, tasteful statues, and a working pipe organ.

On a different subject, we had noticed earlier in the week a hotel barge, called L'Embrun, moored at the quai down the street from us. After googling it, we learned that it sails out of Liege and one can rent a cabin or two or the entire barge for various periods of time. That was intriguing. Then yesterday we started seeing signs reading "'Seven' boot" pointing toward the canal. [Boot is German and Dutch for boat.] We tucked that one away in the back of our minds as we headed down to the village to drink a beer in the tent erected for the Belgian national day celebration.

Today we exercised different exercise options, David opting for a bike ride and me for a walk. I headed toward the canal and walked past L'Embrun, which was teaming with people, including one fellow with a large video camera. Hmm...I returned from a different direction and saw what looked like a film crew shooting a scene down the street from our house (for those of you who have been here, at the corner house, where the goats live). Turns out as David was coming back from his bike ride he had to wait for them to finish a scene before he could go past to get home. We speculate it's a university project or perhaps an indie film being made.

Back to the celebration in the village: tonight is the bal sous les lampions (ball under the lanterns or something like that) with music by an orchestra. The ball is preceded by a barbecue, which here means an aperitif, a slab of meat and frites. We thought about going but couldn't scare up anyone to go with us. Next year for sure.

Tomorrow the celebrations continue, as 21 July is Belgian independence day. At 11:00 there will be national aperitif and the laying of a wreath at the war memorial in Hautrage. Although it's a SHAPE holiday, as US civilians we still have to go to work, but we're toying with the idea of saying we have to leave in time for the ceremony.

It's Thursday and ...

guess what the weather's doing: it's raining! Yup, can you believe that? Rain in Belgium? Whoda thunk???

How many horses do you see?

Here's another game we've been playing lately. These guys (or gals) live in one of the pastures around the corner from us. They are always no more than 6 feet away from each other. And they're frequently even closer than that. The other day we drove by and they were all reclining in the grass facing each other like they were having a good gossip.

La chasse aux taupes

We're playing a new games these days. Whack-a-mole proved spectacularly unsuccessful so we took the neighbor's advice and invested in some sonic mole chasing devices. They're long thin tubes with 4 D-cell batteries each; they produce a noise at irregular intervals that irritates the moles so they move on. We know just how irritating this noise is after having worked in the garden in the proximity of one of these devices for about three hours yesterday afternoon. 

The instructions warn that you may get more molehills initially as the moles try to escape the noise; you're supposed to move the devices after 3 or 4 days to keep chasing them out of your yard (and into the neighbors', one supposes). Looking at the new mole hills this morning it appears our devices are working well - so well, in fact, that David repositioned them today to keep the moles moving toward the cornfield beyond the tree line that borders our yard. (We're purposely aiming them toward the cornfield rather than our neighbor's yard - although his efforts are probably why WE have so many this year!)

Time will tell whether our new strategy will be successful. We'll keep you posted!

Midterm review

We're nearing the halfway point of our overseas tour, so this seems like an appropriate time to take stock of our cultural experiences and see what we like about life in Belgium. One of the advantages to living somewhere, as opposed to visiting, is that you have time to sort out what you really like and don't like. We miss many things from home--especially friends and stores that are open past 6 PM--and tons of things annoy us about living here--like stores that don't stay open past 6 PM. But we also realize that we're going to miss much of what we've come to take for granted here. So with apologizes to Mandy, who was the impetus for this and has already seen much of it, here, in no order other than the one in which these items came to me, is what we like about being here:

We like being able to have a beer at nine in the morning (or nine at night for that matter) without anyone thinking you're going to hell. We like Belgian coffee. We like going to cafes to drink the coffee. We like being served that coffee in crockery instead of paper. We like drinking our beer and our coffee out of doors. We like greeting the staff and patrons and being greeted by them when we arrive at or leave a restaurant or cafe. We like saying bon appétit to total strangers when their food arrives. We like seeing jobs in food service and housecleaning and gardening, and any number of other fields, viewed as respectable, living-wage careers, not as a place to park ex-cons, future cons, and misfits. We like summer when it stays light until 11 PM. We like the way people drive here (most of the time). I like not having people try to kill me just because I'm on that weird communist bicycle contraption. We like diesel cars. We like poppies, either springing up on the edge of a path or growing in whole fields. We like window boxes overflowing with geraniums. We like bakeries. We like that every village still commemorates, invariably by name, the men killed in the Great War. We like that every town square in all of Belgium is named the Grand' Place (Grote Markt in Flanders). We love chocolate shops and trying them all to decide which brand is our favorite. We like doing the same for beer. We like being able to walk on sparsely traveled country roads. We like being able to drive fast. We like trains. We actually do like cool summers. We like French doors and tile floors and separate toilet rooms. We like the way there's no traffic on Sunday afternoon because everyone is at Grandma's eating themselves comatose (it's basically Thanksgiving every week). We like having a specific glass for every beer or soft drink or water. We like seeing little old ladies and couples who celebrated their 50th anniversary long ago drinking beer (yes, sometimes at 9 AM). We like the religious shrines and chapels scattered all over--and they're still building them--though it makes us wonder why the churches are empty.

Like I said, there's a lot we'll miss.

Rain, rain, go away

Today marks our fourth day in a row of rain. Not just a light Belgian sprinkling, but a real downpour, with lightning and thunder. 

We were lulled into complacency during our several weeks of mostly sunny weather. God has come back to remind us that Belgium is a rainy country and we should not expect otherwise. Or maybe that we should cherish those rare sunny days (which we do) - but never leave home without our raincoats!

Cue Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

Because it's like a heat wave! Or...it was yesterday. It got up to about 84, 15 degrees above normal. It was already a little cooler today, and tomorrow it's supposed to be rainy and 65. And for this our office is air conditioned, proving once again that what they're really worried about is keeping the machines comfortable.