Malta, Romania and Africa come to Brussels

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Bonjour,

I’ve been reading through the blog, and I’ve realized that I haven’t said much about my general life in Brussels recently so I will try to give you a scintillating version of things over the last couple of weeks.

There has been quite the transition in the house I am living in. At the end of June, many people moved out including Claire, Malou, Christina, Natalia and Lucia. Monica stayed here though, so the transition was a little easier because we each knew someone. We had some cake. Well, let me rephrase that. We had one cake and one mess. Natalia, although usually a fantastic baker, forgot the little necessity of sugar that is fundamental to a cake. That and it was undercooked. So, imagine if you will a raw, doughy mass of baking. We enjoyed the cake and then went out to a restaurant for dinner and drinks afterwards. It was sad to say goodbye as they were great room mates. More people have moved in (Gerlinde and Kerstin are aides with the MEP’s from Austria), (Emiliano and Daniella were Italian students who have already left) and (Bertrand, who was here for 2 weeks and I saw him once).

I’ve done a decent amount of sight-seeing in town as well. I went to the Musée des Beaux Arts as well as the Musée Margritte. Margritte was a Belgian surrealist who did many paintings, most famously “The Faceless Businessman” of The Thomas Crown Affair fame. The museums were both cool, but Margritte was definitely the more interesting of the two as many of the best Flemish works of art are in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

I’ve also had some interesting coincidences in town. I was wandering around with Christine and Laura one night, and we happened to take a right at a random street and we came across a little English Bar where a man was playing music acoustically. His name is Nige Bray and I thoroughly recommend you listen to him. I actually talked to him through the window of the bar for a bit between a couple of songs, as I think the crowd was a little shy inside, and then I bought a CD of his when I went it. He’s a good songwriter and the EP has some decent tracks on it. Random surprises are great.

I don’t know if everyone knows, but July 1st marks the start of the sales in Brussels. Everything that didn’t sell earlier in the year is available at significant discounts. Rue Neuve is the main shopping street in Brussels, much like Robson Street is in Vancouver, but it is narrower and pedestrianized. Some people think that only crap is left, but it’s basically anything that doesn’t sell, such as XXL clothes which don’t fit the little Belgians but fit me perfectly. I knew what I wanted to get, so we got to it. It took us about 2 hours so walk the 2 km or so, and I got everything I needed. Two t-shirts, two button up shirts and a pair of jeans for $130 Canadian. I was pretty psyched, considering if I had bought them before they went on sale they would have cost me about $60 more. On the way home, I decided that I hadn't wandered enough and detoured north of Ambriorix, a big park, to see what was in that direction. It turns out that it was a beautiful neighbourhood with some cool sculptures and parks, as well as a street that was lined with cedar trees. I hadn't seen cedars since I left Vancouver so I was quite happy. I took some of the needles off and sniffed them as I walked, but then I realized that I probably resembled someone with a bit of a drug problem to the Belgians who must have had no idea what I was actually doing so I stopped!

I even went to church. Christine and I went to mass at the Cathedral of Sts Michel and Gudule. The service was in French, which is becoming less of a problem for me but I still missed bits. I went more for the atmosphere than anything else, as it’s quite something going to mass in a 650 year old building!

I got to attend a really cool conference as well. It was called the “Conference on the Health of Young People”. Now before you roll your eyes and skip down later in the blog post, hear me out. There were 150 participants, who came from all over Europe and were all under the age of 30. When you have that many young people in the room, the energy is electric and it is hard not to have a good time. The first day of the conference was actually a Youth Camp. Taylor, a fellow Canadian intern who works for the European Commission, and I met up at Botanique Metro and we arrived at part of the university campus where the first part of the conference was to be held. On arrival, I promptly learned that they did not have me registered. I found this ridiculous as I was holding a copy of my confirmation of registration, but that did not seem to help the situation. The plus side of everything is they always just register you on the spot anyways so it always worked out on the end. Taylor and I had lunch where we talked to a bit of a strange fellow from Serbia who had, let’s say an alternative view on life. We went to a couple of workshops before leaving the camp and heading home We didn’t get that far before deciding that free food and booze on a boat in the canal would be a great way to end the evening so we headed to Taylor’s place and then we got to the boat just before the skies opened. On the boat, they were serving healthy food such as beer, fries, hot dogs and hamburgers. Seriously!?!?!? At a Health Conference!?!?!? Anyways, we ended up socializing with some of the people that we had met earlier including two Romanian girls (Catalina and Denisa) and a Moldovan girl named Viorica. We hung out for a while and then I ended up giving an interview for either a TV company or a video about the conference. I’m still not entirely sure but if anyone sees me on TV somewhere, please let me know. When we left the bar, we ran into a group of people including Stefan, Christabel and Anthia (Maltese), as well as George (a Greek). Anthia was dead-set on going to Delerium (the place with 2000 beers) despite the fact that I’m still fairly certain that I remember her saying she didn’t like beer. We got there and ordered and it was smoky as usual but it is a fun place for people who have never been there before. The bar is generally included on my, what must now be considered...wait for it...legendary tour of Brussels. Seriously, it’s making the rounds and I think I should start charging for it!

The next day of the Conference was at the Charlemagne building in the EU area. We met up and got into small groups where I happened to be with Anthia again. She is the same age as me and a law student at the university in Malta. We did some group work, and she was selected as the raporteur for the roundtable discussion the next morning but more on that later. At noon the main conference started. In attendance were the EU Commissioner on Health, Androulla Vassiliou, who I must say has the most perfectly coiffed hair I think I’ve ever seen, and H.R.H. Princess Laruentien of The Netherlands. I’ve never been in the same room as royalty so it was quite a feeling being in there. The rest of the afternoon consisted of conferences, roundtables and talks and Anthia, Claude (another intern from the study tour; we are everywhere!!!) and I stayed together for most of the rest of the day. The afternoon roundtable had a raporteur who I must say is the spitting image of a friend of mine from back home name Allison. Seriously, I called her Allison numerous times in conversations with her and I’m fairly certain she was not pleased with me for doing so! After the conference Claude and I hopped on the bus because, despite the fact that it was a health conference, walking is for suckers, which took us to the Belgian Natural History Museum which would be the venue for the evening’s reception. I love receptions! The Museum was absolutely full of dinosaur skeletons!!! For those of you who don’t know, and as my parents would surely attest, I wanted to be a palaeontologist until I was 8. I ate slept and breathed dinosaurs when I was younger. Apparently, I still remember a lot of stuff about them. Claude and I walked around the museum and I was pointing out the names of most of them and then talking about what kind of habitat they lived in and when they lived. I even did it for Bob, my boss, and Randy, a member of the Public Health Agency of Canada who was attending the conference. The skeletons included a Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Diplodocus and several Iguanodon skeletons that had been found together near Brussels. Commissioner Vassiliou arrived, presented the prizes and then there was a mass, pseudo-dash for the food. Imagine 150 hungry students rapidly moving in unison while still attempting to maintain the dignity of the event. It was comical to say the least! If there is one thing that I’ve learned from these conferences it’s too always walk to the end of the room as they are probably giving out food and wine there and it is where the shortest line-up will be. I was right once again. Some people went to the first table and were stuck waiting for 20 minutes for their food whereas I was in and out. It also meant that I was able to get some of the fantastic chocolate mousse that was being served before it was all snapped up. Bob introduced Taylor and I to Commissioner Vassiliou and we got a photo with her. She’s the highest ranking official I have personally met so far and she has quite a presence to her which just added to the moment. After a while, I left the place with Denisa, Catalina and Anthia and we walked through Parc Leopold back to Schuman.

The morning started with a bit of turmoil as I was about 10 seconds away from having to be the raporteur on the roundtable in front of 400 people. I would not have been so worried about it save for the fact that I had been notified approximately 4 minutes beforehand that I would have to be the raporteur because Anthia was not there yet. Fortunately, she showed up as I was on the way up to the podium and my heart could reacquaint itself with the inside of my chest after taking a small vacation out of it! The morning consisted of more plenary sessions and roundtables. Now, I have a little bit of a bone to pick with some of the people in the audience who ask “questions”. I put it in quotation marks because sometimes they are not so much questions as a brief summary of what the person professes to know. I’ll keep it short: NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU KNOW OR DO NOT KNOW. ASK A QUESTION AND LET THE EXPERT GIVE YOU AN ANSWER!!! There are also some other people who like to get on their soapbox and preach when they are asking a “question”. For them, I say Speakers Corner is in London. Bon Chance. There was one woman in particular who seemed to be following me around who represented an NGO which had nothing to do with the conference and had no place being there. But I digress. The Conference was closed and the main message that came out of it was that youth should be involved in decisions that affect youth. Lunch was next and, once again, I found the table that had less people. The food was healthier this time with a lot of rice, fish, pasta and chicken. However, there were also some fantastic deserts there and I must admit my desert plate was as large as my main course plate. I talked to some cool people at lunch including Paul and Gemma, both from Northern Ireland. Gemma was particularly intriguing as I could completely understand her. That may sound odd but the 3 previous people that I had met on my trip from Northern Ireland had thick accents but Germma’s was minimal. I hung around for a while and then the Maltese contingent on Jacob, Stefan, Christabel and Anthia, and a token Slovene named Jan wanted me to come into town and see some sites. I tagged along and gave them a tour of some of the main sites. We went to get some waffles, where I learned that Christabel has to be one of the slower eaters in existence, before visiting the Cathedral, Galerie St. Hubert, Grand Place, Mannekin Pis, Bours, De Broukere and my favourite view point in the city. I said goodbye to them and they all went back to their hotels as they were leaving town that night. I spent a lot of time with them, particularly Anthia, and they were all very interesting people.

After I left them I whipped back home via the Cinquantenaire as I usally do. Now, there is a large Belgian flag hanging from it in preparation of the Belgian National Day, which is next week. On the other side of the arch, I saw some tourists as per usual. However, I looked at them more closely and realized that they were all wearing white square hats with gold embroidery. They were Kazakhs! In Brussels! Not the standard tour group nationality but compendable never the less. I got home and had dinner before going over to Mark and Taylor’s because we were having a party that night. Jini was moving to Strasbourg and we were also Laura’s and Viktoria’s birthdays. We had drinks and cake and then wandered over to the Asturias Bar in the Marolles. En route, there was an elephant on the sidewalk. You read correctly, and no I was not drunk. A man was walking around with an elephant trying to promote a club. Only in Brussels. I also met a really cool girl named Chloe and she is the first person I have met who loves Santiago Calatrava’s architecture as much as I do! The drinks were cheap, but it is extremely smoky in there! I ran into Thorfinn and his sister there, so that was quite a coincidence. I left the bar after a while with Edith, Louis, Claude and Laura but since we were all going in different directions, I decided to walk home. It took me about an hour and I didn’t get home until about 4am.

I had a bit of a lie in on Saturday, before meeting up with Catalina, Denisa and Daniel (all Romanians) so I could take them on a tour of town. We started at Palais Justice, and headed through the Sablon to Église Notre Dame before seeing a wedding where they had Excalibur cars waiting outside. We then went past the Old England Building and into Grand Place before heading to St. Gery for a beer at a typical Belgian bar. We then went to Eglise St. Catherine, which had a Romanian Orthodox section in it for some strange reason. This was quite exciting to the Romanians for obvious reasons. We then saw one of the few remaining towers from the old city walls. It is now surrounded on 3 sides by a modern hotel. It looks very out of place, and would be much more attractive if it was a solitary structure. We then headed to the great viewpoint overlooking Brussels and I then left the Romanians to mingle and shop along Rue Neuve.

I was planning on having a quiet evening at home, maybe watching a movie or something like that when Monica, my Spanish roomy, asked if I wanted to go out for a bit with her and some of her friends.

Me:“Sounds like fun. Just as long as we’re not out too late because I’m really tired.”
Monica: “Don’t worry; it will be early, probably 12 or 1am”.

And thus, my quiet night ended. I caught a tram with her and we went to Sylvia’s place which is near the Université Libre de Bruxelles. I met Sylvia, Elisa and Brian and we hung out for a while before heading to a student bar. There was a nice patio outside and we hung out there for a bit but then Brussels weather struck so we headed inside. They have awesome chairs in bars here! These were low-slung, high-backed leather chairs that were ridiculously comfortable. We hung out there for a while, got the requisite early morning durum (see Kif, it would do well in Canada), and then we headed back to Sylvia’s place where a few of us ended up crashing at the early hour of 5am!

The next morning, who am I kidding afternoon, I was to meet Claude and Edith at Montgomery. Beforehand, I went to my favourite durum place, Snack Gerarde. To my horror, there was a sign on the door saying that it was closed for summer vacation until August 12th. It was almost as if a close friend had died. I’m only slightly exaggerating. Feeling dejected and hungry, and went and met Claude and Edith and we took little old Tram 44 trundling along all the way past the pretty Fôret des Soignes to the town of Tervueren. The town is only 15km away from Brussels, but it is very quiet, wooded and pastoral. We weren’t really there for the scenery though. Rather, we were there to visit the Africa Museum. It is housed in lush grounds in one of Leopold II’s sumptuous palaces. The museum is full of artefacts, history, stuffed animals (including a coelacanth) and objets d’art from the period when Belgium rules the Congo. Included were two fascinating temporary displays: one was on African masks and the other was a photography exhibit on a group of people who live in a valley in southern Ethiopia. As an art museum, I must admit it was quite interesting. However, my moral fibre did not appreciate it. Virtually everything in that museum was pillaged from the Congo, which Leopold II used as his own private treasure trove. Anything that he wanted he took, including both artefacts and natural resources. As far as colonies go, the Congo suffered tremendously. There is a monument dedicated to the 1508 Belgians who never returned from the Congo. There is no sign to the estimated 10 million Congolese who were killed during Leopold’s maniacal quest for ivory, rubber and other commodities. Families were destroyed, countless people were maimed (there are photos of Congolese without any hands because their hands were severed from their bodies) and a way of life was destroyed. This all happened between 1885 and 1908 when the Belgian government kicked Leopold out of power and stripped the Congo from him along with many of his other possessions. In Japan, there is little mention of what atrocities they visited upon the Chinese before and during World War II. The same is the case in Belgium regarding the Congo. The past cannot be undone, but more needs to be done to acknowledge what happened.

Bye for now,
Peter


Things I’ve learned in Brussels:
-Some Belgians tend to be oblivious to their surroundings at the following times: in the train station, on the train, on the sidewalk, in the grocery store, on the road, in a museum, in a store, do you catch my drift?
-I had a Westvletern the other day. It is supposed to be the best beer in the world. I’m going to have to disagree.
-Viktoria and I have developed a fun game. It’s called “Let’s pretend to be engaged in order to save each other at the bar as well as confuse drunk people.” It’s a surprising amount of fun!

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Photos

A Coelacanth
A species of fish that was around during the dinosaurs!