Quirks of Living in Belgium

Although we'd noticed long ago that Belgians will close off a lane of a road at the drop of a hat, we've noticed some pretty unusual cases lately. It's not unusual to see lanes diverted because a barn has collapsed or they're putting in sewers, but one day last week, on the way to work, we had to dodge a big pile of gravel dumped in the right lane in front of a house being rehab-ed. The next day the gravel was gone but there was an equally big pile of sand in its place.

Yesterday we got in a huge long line of cars leaving work and assumed there was an accident further down the road. Nope. The lane was closed off - by a couple little orange cones - because one half of two different crosswalks had been repainted. Never mind that it was rush hour. We halfway expected to see the cones there again today, for the other half of the crosswalks, but it rained so I guess they couldn't paint.

Given situations like those above, imagine our surprise upon seeing a crane perched on side of the street in Saint-Ghislain with its bucket hanging over a house on the other side of the street - and traffic streaming underneath.

Only in Belgium!

Mark the date

For my birthday Rita gave me Julia Child's memoirs of her time in France in the late 40s, early 50s. I didn't get around to starting it (an Atlantic Monthly arrived) until last night. But when I did, I noticed that Julia Child first set foot on French soil 60 years ago today. I should go cook something.

Oktoberfest 2008 SHAPE style

I know y'all have been reading with great interest about our Big Central European Adventure, but what you really want to know is, Did David and Rita go to Oktoberfest at SHAPE again this year? Yes, we did. We went a couple of nights before we left on the BCEA, which sort of distracted us, which is why I'm only now telling you about it.

In Munich the President of Bavaria or the Mayor of Munich or some such official taps the first ceremonial keg at Oktoberfest. Here at SHAPE the man wielding the hammer is the Chief of Staff. SACEUR (pronounced "sack your") is always an American, his deputy (D/SACEUR, pronounced "dee sack your") is a Brit, and the Chief of Staff (pronounced "chief of staff") is always a German. Because we need someone who knows how to tap a keg the old-fashioned way: with a hammer.

Budapest: OMG

This is Saint Stephan's Basilica in Budapest. It's not a terribly old church, as you can tell from the style. In fact, it doesn't look like much from the outside. But on the inside it's all marble and gilt. It's gorgeous. We went to Sunday evening Mass there. It was in Hungarian. If you've ever read anything about Hungarian, you know it's nothing like the Romance or Germanic or Slavic languages. It's in its own little Finno-Ugric language family. Which means about the only word we picked up during the entire service was Jesus.



Imagine our surprise when we walked in and one of the first things we saw was a statue of Szent Rita. (Click...) We turned, and there across the way, was ...


Szent Terez.

We kid you not.

(I inadvertently saved some changes to this picture, which accounts for the over-dramatic presentation. But it really is Szent Terez!)

Impressions of Bratislava

The main square in Bratislava, where the music festivals were going on. This is where David heard his newest favorite chanteuse, Jana Kirschner. Check her out on YouTube.


I think this is the old town hall. Double click to see the detail on the green roof.


The blue church. Blue on the outside, blue on the inside.

And here are my general impressions:

- There weren't nearly as many tourists as in Prague but just give it a few years...

- Everything is already priced in euros and you can use euros to buy anything. That's because Slovakia will join the euro zone on 1 January 2009.

- We heard lots of German. Given Bratislava's proximity to Vienna (about 30-45 minutes down the Danube), we assume they were mostly Austrians.

- Slovak seems to be closer to Russian than Czech, or else I was just getting used to it, because I could pick up a little more of what was going on around me.

- Traffic never seemed to stop outside our hotel, even though we were on a semi-residential street.

- Even though most restaurants close up tight early, there must be some night spots open late - really late - because inebriated Brits kept waking us up as they said good-bye to their new Slovakian girlfriends outside our hotel.

- Slovakians are meat eaters. The menus all feature pork, poultry, and beef dishes and some have duck; there was also lots of goose because it was goose season.

- What impressed me the most was the perception that Slovakia is terribly excited and enthused about being in the EU and NATO, about the promise of a bright future with the West. They're working hard to rehab the city and restore it to its former glory as the coronation city of the Hapsburgs. So our advice is to visit now, before the rest of the world discovers it and it becomes the next Prague!

General Observations About Prague

Double click on this to see it in all its magnificence: it's the astonomical clock on the town hall. I really, really wanted to bring one of these home for Becky but the astonomical part on the souvenir models doesn't turn like the real thing. But that's not one of my general obserations. Here they are:

- There are way too many Russians in Prague.

- The two items you're supposed to buy in Prague are garnets and crystal. We didn't find any real bargains on either. Souvenirs, as well as garnet jewelry and crystal items, are expensive in Prague. (But that didn't stop us from buying some...)

- The sales clerks in the garnet jewelry stores (check out www.granat.eu for a co-op that mines garnets and makes jewelry with the stones) were fluent and very comfortable in Russian. They were much less so in English. I later realized that because these were women d'un certain age, they probably grew up speaking Russian, given history and all.

- Sidewalks are made up of little paving stones, about 2.5 inches square, with flat surfaces. These paving stones are pretty and much easier to walk on than the big, rounded ones we have in Belgium.

- English is most definitely the common language. I realized at some point on the trip that sales clerks and waiters and tour guides and everyone else dealing with tourists in Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary are doing so not just to deal with Americans but to deal with tourists from all over the world. We saw Asians, Frenchmen, Scandanavians, Spaniards, Brits, Canadians, Italians all using English because that's the one language everyone has. It made me feel less conspicuous as an American. We were just another couple English speakers.

- Prague is beautiful: a grande dame of city, stately in and proud of its architecture. But it's full of tourists! I can't imagine what it's like there in the summer.

Impressions of Budapest

Our apologies for not reporting on Budapest while we there, but our hotel was stingy with the internet. Now that we're home, though, here's what we were observing while we were there.

Budapest is something else! I'm not sure what we expected, but probably not that. I guess it's most like Paris or New York: huge, congested, and full of things to see spread out all over the place; grimy, gritty, noisy, and absolutely lovely. The whole city seems to be under construction, and they appear to be doing everything all at the same time: adding a subway line, repairing tram tracks, laying pipe and electric wires, gutting and rehabbing whole buildings, cleaning facades...you name it. And they make almost no provisions for people or traffic while they're working. When we walked the broad boulevards south and west of our hotel we were essentially walking through a big ol' construction site. One morning a bunch of guys were tearing up the sidewalk, without bothering to close it. Pedestrians were being forced to walk past the jackhammer spraying bits of concrete everywhere. Part of that is just the European sense of personal responsibility (Don't want concrete chips in your eye? Then don't stare at the jackhammer bit, buddy); but the Hungarians seem to take it to an extreme. There are also lots of vacant storefronts in really prime locations, interspersed with expensive, stylish clothing and antique stores. But if they ever finish all this work, its going to be one of the greatest cities in the world.

We seemed to see more Hungarians there than we did Czechs in Prague or Slovaks in Bratislava. That may be because the sites are more spread out in Budapest, so there's less of a tourist "ghetto." It's also--especially in comparison with Bratislava--probably a reflection of the relative size of the cities: over 5 million for Budapest (one in ever five Hungarians lives in Budapest) versus a little over 400,000 for Bratislava. You gotta put 5 million Hungarians somewhere, I guess. But Prague is a big town, and all we saw there was foreigners (lots of Russians).

After a week of trying to convince Rita to take in one of the many touristy "greatest hits" concerts on offer in every city we've visited, she finally busted out in Budapest. We spent about a gazillion bucks (roughly 200 gazillion forints) to see some Hungarian folk dancin' one night (real good) and a bunch of Ave Mariae, gloriae, and panes angelici in St. Stephen's Basilica the next (okay).

I had the impression it was easier to get vegetables in Budapest than in some european countries, though you pay a little extra for them. The main ones are the Hungarian triad of tomatoes, peppers (in all colors and varieties), and cucumbers. But there's also cabbage (though less of it than in Germany or Czechia or Slovakia), potatoes (of course), onions, mushrooms, giant fava beans, radishes (both white and enourmous red ones), all kinds or root vegetables, and salads of various types:
• tomatoes with grated cabbage
• tomatoes with diced red onion
• cucumbers in a sweet-sour marinade, napped with yoghurt.