Would the English people please stop dancing

While I have no time for money spiders or being pooed on by passing birds, I now ascribe to my own good-luck superstition that Friends From England Bring Good Weather: this weekend the sun came out again as we were joined by ma collègue for an action-packed weekend in Brussels. We began the weekend at Club Havana, a heaving local dancerie, where, after warming up with some bizarre cocktails, we proceeded to dance like madmen to obscure 90s pop songs, not letting ourselves be put off by the fact that the Belgian clubbers didn’t seem to share in our delight. The club also happens to be perfectly placed for stumbling home, which was very welcome at 2am.

We managed to resist the lure of a Saturday lie-in, and steeled ourselves for a mini-tour of all the obligatory sights (Grand Place, Mannekin Pis and female counterpart, Parc, Sablon etc.). We also took a closer look at the Palais de Justice, which has an impressive entranceway behind the current cocoon of scaffolding.
In the afternoon we headed to Heyzel (home of the Atomium) to explore the Parc de Laeken, the greenery surrounding the Belgian Royal Family’s private residence. It is a cruel trick of perspective indeed, when, thinking you have reached the widest point of the perimeter wall that you’re walking round, you find that the boundary that separates you from your goal bows out with renewed vigour. Hence it took a good couple of hours of walking in baking sunshine to find the Chinese Pavilion and Japanese Tour – follies built to amuse the Royals when it was still ok for them to go in for such extravagances.

After a bit of lazing around in the sun, we came back via Stuyvenbergh metro station, which gave us the opportunity to take a closer look at the wonderfully creepy statues of the afore-mentioned Royals. Our own Elizabeth II should count herself lucky that the worst she had to suffer was Rolf Harris’s Very Dodgy Portrait. Here’s the full line up for tonight’s match:

No less strange is the new statue that appeared in Parc d’Egmont over night:

I won't even attempt to offer an explanation.

So, after our busy day out, we opted for a more sedate Saturday night with dinner in and Drinks in Silly Glasses at Delirium Café:

Drinking from a conical flask is enough to make anyone feel faintly silly but rather special. It also helps that the contents (Kwak) is pushing 10%.

So that's the round up from our weekend! Here's hoping that maman et papa bring some more sunshine next weekend...

Le Bois de la Cambre

Given the beautiful weather this weekend, we decided to pay a visit to Brussels' premier open space, the Bois de la Cambre - part of the much larger Forêt de Soignes, conveniently carved off to provide a great place for family picnics, days out, walking of dogs, etc. The visit strengthened our resolve to one day hire some bikes and fully explore the wider forest, which promises to be a veritable sanctuary from the stresses and strains of la vie quotidienne. The Bois is also less than 10 minutes away from our flat by tram!

La bière bruxelloise

Yesterday saw a visit from one of our best English friends, and a visit to Brussels premier (in fact only) brewery of traditional lambic beer - fermented using yeasts naturally occurring in the very air. It was an interesting tour, not least for the free samples of gueze (a popular Brussels beer made from three different lambics) and kriek, a cherry beer very popular with Tintin. However, the traditional nature of the brewing process gives these particular beers a slightly sour flavour, which proved unpopular with some members of our party. I personally found that after the first two or so gulps, the gueze in particular became very agreeable indeed!

Joyeuses Pâques!

From our friends les lapins rouges, who can inexplicably be found dotted around Brussels in unlikely urban settings such as the above, on Avenue Louise.

La sécurité routière

I think the picture above, of a fairly typical Belgian voiture (typical in the sense that it is smashed-up) illustrates perfectly the subject of today's blog entry: that's right, kids, today we're going to be talking about Road Safety.

Hands up who remembers the Green Cross Code? Yes, that's right - stop, look, and listen. Except this does not technically apply on the roads in Brussels. Should you wish to cross the street here, you must first find a suitable crossing point, always indicated by zebra stripes across the road. To cross at any other point could attract a hefty 50 Euro fine. The second rule is that whilst you must certainly look before crossing, it is helpful to not look as if you are looking, as if you look as if you are looking the driver of the oncoming car will notice that you are looking and will thus not bother to stop. So you need to strike a balance between brazenly striding out into the traffic, and standing meekly by the side of the road as the cars race by.

It is not only the pedestrians who are in danger on Belgian roads. Tintin and I have witnessed on several occasions the peculiarly Bruxellois method of parallel parking, which involves reversing until you can hear your car crunch against the car behind, then driving forward until you hear your car crunching against the car in front. It is only when this process has been repeated several times that you can assume you have safely wedged yourself in.

Bus drivers are also reasonably liberal with the laws of the road, and will think nothing of driving on the pavement, squeezing through inappropriate "gaps" in the traffic, and stopping in the middle of a roundabout to let passengers disembark. The upside of this is that it makes my commute to work slightly quicker, and adds an exciting element of danger to my otherwise humdrum daily routine.

Everything but the pissing boy

I must add my apologies for not updating the blog recently. As explained by Tintin, the daily grind has started to take it's toll and it feels a lot less like being on an extended holiday now that I have been working for over a month. That said, with occasional visits to various European committees of important people discussing important things, my sense of excitement at being here has not really diminished.

Re. haircuts, I too patronised R. Factory ce weekend - my contribution in French consisted of a brief "vous parlez anglais?" before reverting to my mother tongue. There is a lot to be said for continental language tuition! It is also worth noting that me and Tintin came back quite independently with exactly the same asymmetrical haircut, and also discovered that we'd had exactly the same conversation with the coiffeur - albeit with me speaking in English, and Tintin speaking in French.

I've been somewhat malade this weekend, so to aid my recovery Tintin took me down Rue Haute to the antiques shops where we started planning our fabulous 60s interior for our inevitable return to the Big Smoke. It is becoming clear that, just as when we moved to Greenwich, we have quite accidentally ended up living in an area favoured by gays. All I can say is, we all have very good taste.

PS The picture above has merely been used as an excuse for me to post some unrelated random musings, and I do not intend to make any comment on the pissing boy.

La vie quotidienne

The fact that our blog posts are getting more sporadic is a sign that the tourist lifestyle is gradually being replaced with something that more closely resembles normal life in London. This past week we had guests over on no fewer than three occasions. I got round to finishing the painting that I started weeks ago. And Yann got a cold.

Having slipped into a comfortable routine, some things become painfully unavoidable, such as getting a haircut. You can prepare yourself with the necessary vocab, but the risk remains that you'll come out looking like a kid from the French exchange you did in Year 9. Hence the relief that I have officially passed the hairdressing vocab test, and the style test, with my new, deliberately asymmetrical haircut from R.Factory. Admittedly, the succesful result was more a matter of chance than design, reflecting the few words of French that I'd armed myself with: 'Je le laisse a vous.'

Monks, Rain, Lunch, Rain, Horta, Rain, Tumble dryer

Today we braved the inclement weather to visit Victor Horta's House. This being Belgium, the house was closed, even at 1pm on a Saturday, so we were left with an hour to kill before the 2pm opening time. We amused ourselves with a walk through the pretty streets of Ixelles to the Abbaye de la Cambre. No monks these days, but charming nonetheless.


At this point, the heavens opened, and we were forced to seek refuge. The choice that presented itself was between a kebab shop and a smokey cafe. Somewhat surprisingly, we chose the latter. After eating, we did some serious trudging in the rain back to Horta. Not much to look at from the outside, but the Art Nouveau interior was absolutely spectacular, and definitely worth a visit.

The final surpise of the day was the sight of a giant tumble dryer with the Belgian flag spinning in the drum. Why not!

Spreek u nederlands?

Brussels lies within the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, but is, for official purposes, bi-lingual: all advertisements, written notices and street signs are in French and Dutch. That said, French is by far the most widely used language in the city, and it's rare to hear Dutch spoken, except when you're pretending you didn't understand the French-speaking shop assistant when she said, 'the shop is closing and you have to leave'. Even in that case she tried English before resorting to Dutch. When you've been told in three different languages to get out, then it's probably wise not to push your luck.

On Wednesday, however, I was approached by a lady at a zebra crossing who asked me something in Dutch. My somewhat paradoxical response was: 'Ik spreek geen nederlands'. Fortunately, being told in one language was enough for her and she headed on her way.

Men of Meat

The Belgians have truly mastered the art of mixing meat types to achieve particularly noxious results.

Exhibit A: Slavink

A Flemish delicacy, whose name literally means 'beat the finch' (also a masturbatory euphemism I believe). Each slavink consists of a melange of flesh bound in bacon. Like a sausage, but about double the diameter. They are, admittedly, rather tasty.


Exhibit B: Salade de viande

Don't ask what kind of viande - it contains them all; porc, poulet and boeuf all live happily together in this offensive gastronomic offering. Too much even for a seasoned lover of all things processed like myself.

I bet you can't wait for us to throw a Belgian-themed dinner party when we get home...

It's behind you...

Apologies for the overload of blog entries - we have had an eventful day of sightseeing! My last post of the day concerns the very reason we left the house this morning: to go to see the Atomium, another collossal Brussels structure, built in 1958 for the World Fair. It's surprisingly cool and well worth going to see. The area is also home to a rather good kebab shop called Titi's, where we stopped for our lunch.

PS Would you believe me if I told you that it was actually sunny when we left the flat this morning?!

Basilique du Sacré Coeur

On our way home from today's excursion, I suggested to Tintin that we hop off the Métro at Simonis to take a look at a church I had seen from a distance that I thought might be interesting. That church turned out to be the absolutely enormous Basilique du Sacré Coeur; commissioned by that famous Belgian "size queen" Léopold II (he is also the man responsible for the Palais de la Justice, which is at the end of our road). Construction began in 1905 but it was not finished until 1969.

From the outside it is impressive enough, a collossal art deco construction (indeed, wikipedia lists it as the largest art deco building in the world) that bears more than a passing resemblance to our beloved Cambridge University Library, but it was only on entering the Basilica that we realised quite how awesome it was. The pictures I have included unfortunately do not do it justice - both in terms of the scale of the place, and in terms of the rather spooky atmosphere (aided by dark corners and crannies and creepy tannoy music) - but will hopefully give you an idea of the general style of the interior. Probably the most spectacular sight we have seen since coming to Brussels.

Alas, nothing in life is perfect. It was only after paying our €10 each to go up to the top of the Basilica (which supposedly has some of the best views in Brussels) that we realised it was closed, and we had actually paid the entrance fee for the orchid show that was being held on the upper floors of the church:

EDIT: We have recently found out that the Basilique has its own bar in the basement, and so have decided that a return visit is most certainly in order.

Comic Book Brussels

This morning we walked through the Marolles, one-time working-class neighbour turned ghetto chic quarter. As you wander the narrow streets, you come across a series of haphazardly placed murals, one of which bore an uncanny resemblence to my nan.

At the heart of the Marolles lies Place au Jeu de Balle, home to Brussels's premier flea market. Surveying the expanse of toot, I felt like Howard Carter discovering Tutankhamun's tomb: "Wonderful things!"

Anyone for apple sauce?

Thursday evening saw a visit to Skievelat, a local resto described by one of Yann's colleagues as "super cool". The restaurant offers tasty, unpretentious food, served by a gang of rather good-looking guys, with a trendy atmosphere to match. We also discovered the joys of roast petit poulet served with apple sauce. Mmmmmmm.

Land of the Lilliputians

No, I'm not that short - the above photo merely illustrates one of the more intruiging design features of our flat, i.e. a giant door that opens up half the wall between the living room and the bedroom. We haven't quite figured out how this door could be used, other than as inspiration for blog entries.

We've had an eventful weekend with two guests from the Netherlands. I'll try to convince Tintin to post more soon, but for tonight we're both exhausted!