The French supermarket chain Carrefour announced Tuesday it was closing 21 stores and laying off some 1600 people in Belgium. The grocery store GB is part of the Carrefour family. And our GB on SHAPE is one of 5 stores in Wallonia slated to close by June. This is pretty disturbing news to those of us who shop there regularly - and to those of you who benefit regularly from the benefits of our shopping there. No more tax-free beer, chocolate, or speculoos.

I suspect there is some kind of agreement between SHAPE and the Belgian government to provide us with tax-free shopping but have little hope that if that is the case, a contract can be arranged with a new grocery store and the new tenant take possession of the space in anything less than 6 months, if even that quickly. Change happens at glacial speed on SHAPE. Correction: good change happens at glacial speed; bad change seems to move much more quickly.

We don't know when the GB will close definitively but it may be sooner than June. Rumors are flying that it will close as of 1 March. The employees have been on strike for 2 days. We heard the store would open back up tomorrow, but Carrefour employees have called for a general strike Saturday, with some stores closed starting tomorrow. So we may have shopped our last in our favorite place to shop.