An American in Paris

My son was over for the holidays and we travelled. He took a break in Rodin's gardens...

Tin Tin is EveryEvery Where Where

 This is the Stockel Metro stop in Brussels. Tin (and company) are moving along the walls.

Parking

 

This is the way the Bruxellois park. On the sidewalk. It's less expensive than building a bigger parking lot.

Daily Life in Brussels

Met my friend Paul (in from London last night). He's stayng at le Chatelaine, in Ixelles. Lovely area, lots of shops and restaurants and bistros and bars.
Grotere kaart weergeven

This was the area, which is maybe more Chatelaine, which I've never heard of as a separate area. But even though it is not in the downtown area, I recommend it as a place to stay.

Snow in Brussels

It was snowing in Brussels last week. Our two younger kids, who are visiting their father in the states and already out of school, are probably disappointed that they missed an opportunity for school to be closed. C'est. as we say around here, la vie.

There was also enough snow for bonhomme neige, snow guys, though I didn't get any pictures.

Also, look at how the insulation on that house in the back marks the difference between the two parts of the structure. On one the snow is melted, and on the other it is sitting there.

London shower

OK, this is a silly post. A shower in London with a light in it. I have just never seen anything like it before. I had to turn on the water to make sure it was a shower.

Happy Thanksgiving from a bunch of Molly's Pilgrims

 

In a galaxy long ago and far away I helped make a movie called Molly's Pilgrim. It went on to win an Acadmey Award. My great niece (in second grade) just read the book and watched the movie. Melanie Jane (and all the other second graders at Our Lady of the Valley school, along with their teacher Mrs. Mann) made their own Pilgrims this year. "It takes all kinds of Pilgrims to make Thanksgiving." Happy Thanksgiving!

NYU Pillow

 
I don't know if there are copyright issues involved, but my University is worth copying for a pillow for sale in a market in Gouda.

Gouda Town Hall - Clock Face

 
A clock face and a couple of sun dials.

Gouda Town Hall - in profile

Gouda - Town Hall

 

It is always surprising how these things rise like a fairy tale, not out of the mist in a remote spot, but on a bright clear morning above a busy market.

Gouda - Sint Janskerk

 

I was surprised by how close the neighboring buildings - there's no square or plaza from which to get a view of the church. That's Sint Jans on the right.

Gouda - Sint Janskerk

 

Gouda - Church Streetscape

 
This is looking down the length of the church on one side.

Gouda

 

This is Gouda, home of the cheese. We took a day trip yesterday, with the whole family, and we all enjoyed it. But I was struck by the quiet reflective canal, and grabbed this picture, and I'm thinking of a watercolor. But this is a city which 150 years ago was synonymous with beggar, that is to say someone from Gouda was a beggar, because the city had been so poor for so long.

In the 40s they started to fill in the canals, but the city fathers changed direction.

Pajamas and the weather

 

This is a week old now, just a week. Liz had two friends stay over, making a movie about polio for their science course. They dramatized the life, and death, of someone with polio. They also giggled a lot. The next morning, Kathy and I put together a spread for them. I walked to the boulangerie and picked up croissants and choclate croissants. We had Greek yoghurt (with honey), Kathy sliced up a banana and an apple: they had lots to eat. After their meal, they went out on our little back porch, and realized it was a beautiful, warm day(for Brussels), and decided to do their homework together in the sun, on the grass, in their pajamas. That's when I took this picture.
It is difficult to believe that we are so much farther north than New Jersey, than any part of the continental United States, or should I say the 48 contiguous states. Which formulation suggests the two non-contiguous states, Hawaii and Alaska. Which, 3 days from the election, suggests Obama and Palin. Rarely do we get national politicians from these two more remote outposts of the US. Right now Obama seems to be in the lead. Has the weather influenced their views, is it responsible for their (right-thinking) liberalism and conservatism respectively?

How to put on a tile roof

 

Down the street an older house has been under renovation for a few months now, and is looking, from the outside at least, very good. They are putting on a new roof, tiled as is one local custom. and I took this photograph at that moment when you can see the finished version, as well as what's underneath.

Metal rails are extended across the roof for each row of tiles, and then the tiles are hung on the rails, and otherwise attached. Watching these four guys put the roof up, though, there was only one person 'supplying' the tiles, and custom cutting them. The three 'tile-hangers' up on the roof, only one was busy and the others were waiting for tiles, I suppose.

Cat

 
I can't confess to an overwhelming love for cats. I have mainly been a dog person, but I ave had cats before. This is Scarlet, our family cat. She is quiet, lives mainly on the second floor, takes no crap from Oscar our Korean dog, and is quietly friendly to me. Seeing her cat bottom in our bread basket, has nearly put me our freshed baked baguettes.

Clubbing...

These days the only bar I ever see
Has got lettuce and tomatoes
John Hiatt

Well, it''s not a bar, but a club, and the four of us went last night to work out. (http://www.sports-valley.be/) And it felt good, better than a drink. And I didn't listen to John Hiatt, but I did listen to Lightnin' Hopkins, Come Go With Me. It was great, and kicked off my exercise with a bang.

License Plates - If anybody cared...

For the last week or so, we haven't been able to use one of our cars (which has not been that much of a pain) because we needed to get the license plate renewed - in practical terms, that meant getting a new sticker on the plate. However, becaue we were so late getting it done, we had to get new plates. So this morning I was going to put the new plates on the car. Because the car is an American car, the holes are in the wrong places for the Belgian plates. As I tried to attach things I realized that the old plate which I still had had extra holes drilled in it. Hmmm. I have recently purchased a drill, but it was a used drill, and I've been waiting to go to Carrefour to buy new drill bits, waiting until I had the new plates so the car will be legal, or driving the car will be legal.

Now, I had been driving the car for 6 weeks with the old out of date plates on it - so I wasn't too worried about whether this was illegal or not. But once it was made an issue, I didn't want to drive the car - after all it would be illegal. Hmm. I made some compromises and with one old plate on the front of the car, and one new plate on the back of the car, I drove to Carrefour, and bought a new drill set. In the parking lot of Carrefour, I drilled holes in one plate (portable drill). I started drilling the holes in the other plate, but then I ran out of power in the drill. Urgh. Nasty words. So I drove home with the plates the same as they had been before, only one of the new plates was fully attached in the right spot. None of the Politie cars stopped me, although one appeared in my neighborhood as I was returning, and I thought, well, I can explain this, and point to the plates which I had in the car. Although I am sure it's as illegal as hell to drill holes in the plates in the first place. If anybody cared.

Entrepreneur bonus

A couple of the speakers.

Seminar "How to start your own business in Belgium?"

A few weeks ago I attended this seminar given by ING and expats.com and here's a link:
http://www.ing.be/independent.

It was interesting, useful and friendly, filled with 'foreigners' like myself, part of a government initiative to increase invest in the country, or at least it allowed for that.

There also seeemed to be a lot of support for starting up or incubating a business.

 
OK, so I published the same picture two days in a row. Not a sign of CRS. Just loved the picture so much.

This is my brother Fred and his lovely wife Kay who came for a visit two weeks ago. One midday, we went to Leuven and wandered around the church, and I grabbed this photo of the two of them in front of the beautiful City Hall. A thing of beauty in and of itself, and a wonder that it is still standing hundreds of years later. Was the appropriation of building things for a thousand years by Hitler a cue for architects to work in temporary modes, or maybe just the 20th centuries fascination with the new. New materials, new modes, new everything. Then again, Newe York as the city without history - knock down the old to put up the new. Again and again and again.

anyway, we had a nice visit, going downtown during a beer festival and the day without cars, going to Tervuren, on a very quiet Monday. Didn't get enough pictures. Kept forgetting my camera.

A Day in London

 

I was in London the other, and took a picture from someone's office of the city's sky and some rooftops.

An American in London

 

Visiting a friend in London yesterday, I was taken by the view from his window.

A Sunday Walk in the Park V

 

There were walkers, and bicyclists, people carrying Razors, even people on horseback.

Sunday Walk in the Park IV

 

A Sunday Walk in the Park III

 

A Sunday Walk in the Park II

 

A Sunday Walk in the Park

 

Prevent...What?

 
This is a sign that I see when I wlk to the club to work out. Isn't that a slightly overweight Batman running? Prevent him from doing what? I think I have good reason to be confused

Bruxelles a respiré sans voiture

Brussels breathed without cars, yesterday. And it seemed like everyone who normally would be home on Sunday went downtown by bike and by (free) Metro and public transportation, to prove a point.
http://www.lesoir.be/actualite/belgique/ce-dimanche-sans-voiture-a-2008-09-21-640857.shtml
Our first hint of how crowded it was going to be was arriving at Kraainem train station, and there were more cars parked then there are on a Monday morning. It was fun, we took my brother and his wife into the city and we wandered around, buying gifts, and enjoying it.

Try it - a day without cars.

Burn After Reading

OK, we enjoyed it. There were embarassing moments, like when George clooney's characters secret project was revealed in its 'true glory', but still we laughed at this silly movie.

Men's fashions...

I have been holding off on this comment, because, I couldn't believe it. We joined a gym, and as happens when you join a health club, you check everyone out. And there is a new fashion of an old fashion.
Capri pants for men - not stretch, but 3/4 length, with dark socks underneath (I suppose to call attention to one's slender ankles. Don't have a picture, but it would be worth a thousand or so words.

And the club wasn't the first place I saw a man wearing this in public. We were shopping at a Carrefour's, a box store, and there was a pear-shaped man there, wearing the same outfit, with the dark socks. It is a kind of plus-four, but without the extra material at the bottom of the leg. Very stocking...

Things I have noticed, thought, that I want to make a note about...

And pictures I want to take. We live in suburban Brussels, capital of the European Union, the world's largest trading block. People have been living here for centuries. But I walk by cornfields and beet fields every morning, down lanes, noticing the snails and slugs, the little lean tos and sheds that the farmers have made out of bits and pieces of material that are in little fenced in areas between the fields. The kids walking to school eery morning, the people riding bikes to work, men and women, the bike trails that seem to be a part of all the road construction that goes on. The backed up traffic on the highway that I have been walking over each morning, looking down on their red lights. And then I come back and post this on the Internet, probably on a server in the States somewhere. Hmmm...

Brussels Movie Days

Bought tickets today for some movies showing as part of Brussels Movie Days (http://site.voila.fr/brusselsmoviedays/main_fr.html). Hellboy 2, which opened in the summer. Also, Burn After Reading. Kathy is not going to Hellboy 2. She has this habit of falling asleep during fantasy movies. I think it might just have to do with her sitting still for too long. Anyway, there are some previews and others - "Avant-premieres".

Car Care in Belgium

This is who we use:
Carrosserie Wilikens A BVBA op goudengids.be
Takes care of our VW and our Opel. We stopped in yesterday needing a fuse, and he replaced it immediately and charged us a Euro.

Sullivan has a feature called The View From Your Window (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/the-view-from-7.html) which I like. This is a view from our kitchen window.