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and last updated June 18th.,1998.
MECHELEN....
My friend Luc met me as planned..no waiting at all on my part but the plane was seriously late. HE said he recognized me at once...but I think my having ICQ'd him details of exactly what I'd be wearing,and exactly what suitcases I'd be pushing might have helped.
He said I looked tired, which I suspect might be a synonym for
Worried me more though, when Luc started to DRIVE!!
But he checked me into the hotel he had selected, and I had my first earful of the Flemish language....*grin*,(we have ducks on the Belmont Common that speak it , I think!!).....and found out that Belgian toilet buttons pull up instead of push down, and that a three-section wardrobe might have one sliding door for all three sections, so that one must choose which one of the three sections to cover and which to have all hanging out....
and then we worked at setting up the computer, which meant a trip to three shops for Luc, because noone had warned me that the Belgian plugs work two thirds like ours and one third in reverse
And something happened I hadn't expected.....
Now remember, folks, I hadn't seen a car driving on THAT side of the road before,
and I had already tried to get in the wrong side of Luc's car...
But nothing could have prepared me for the way Belgians DRIVE......
Their freeways have a MINIMUM speed,below which you get escorted off, and the maxiumum is SUPPOSED to be 120kph..
And a Belgian drives onehanded, gesturing animatedly, maintaining a conversation AND rolling a cigarette....
Think Luc noticed my discomfort, since he remarked that I seemed even more frightened than his American netfriend who had visited recently..
and that one square Belgian window in the centre of a round Belgian window can open vertically inwards like a book cover..or horizontally inwards like an upside down casement...
and that the pillows are small and square....
and that the teamaking facilities we Ozzies take for granted are quite foreign here....
...but it all came together and we were soon talking to the husband in Australia, and the sister-in-law, and the sister,and everyone else interested.... and I unpacked in between messages....and then went for a walk to case the place...
Well, two things actually..I was spoken to in Flemish, and had to answer in French...and was understood!!
And I was walking by a canal behind the hotel and I saw....red poppies growing wild, and I thought:
and suddenly I realised where I WAS!!!
And then I saw the signpost for Waterloo!
Luc came to collect me to eat with his family, and his mother in law had prepared typically Belgian dishes..a beef in beer goulash-type cassserole, followed by a seriously decadent iced dessert-cake..oh and Belgian fries, not to be confused, I am told, with French Fries, wich were invented in Belgium!!
And they were asking what I ate for breakfast, usually, and I explained about the Australian predilection for toast, and they told me noone eats toast in Belgium unless they are sick...and how the normal Belgian breakfast is bread of different shapes with cheese and cold cuts...oh..and Belgian pastries...
And Luc and Mieke took me shopping and sightseeing the second day....
Then there was sightseeing on Wednesday with Luc's father-in-law, Jan, who is an official Guide for the City of Mechelen, and a very proud one!
So next morning I went down to the dining room here at the hotel and served myself from plates of......bread of different types and cheese and cold cuts.....
but everything was so incredibly fresh that it was really quite delicious..
There was one iced pastry left but I decided I was not yet enough of a Flambard to eat iced chocollate eclair for breakfast, but the second morning morning I was quite acclimatized enough, and it was very nice!!...
The third morning there were no pastries so perhaps it was a bakers' holiday!
I bought an exquisite pink Belgian velour jumpsuit to post home for the sixth grandchild-to-be, and I saw a pump so old that it was being built while they were planning the expedition to send all these convicts to the New South Land which that fellow Cook had assured them was there..he with his strange ideas about serving grapefruit juice to his sailors...
..and I saw a a fourteenth century building still in use...
And that night we ate horse-steaks...I must admit, the horse meat doesn't LOOK any different from beef steak, and apparently it is cooked the same, and I'm quite sure I couldn't have told the difference between it and free-range Australian beef, except it is perhaps, more tender.....
I would happily eat it several times a week!!!
And I had slipped a bottle of tonic water into Mieke's supermarket trolley...I had a tiny bit of Gordon's Gin left from Britain, and had given it to Luc to keep cool in his 'frig, and I was going to drink it the first night....but I was assured that Belgians have really no tradition of diluting drinks....
well, this Antipodean knows what will happen if she DOESN'T dilute her drinks...so next evening I demonstrated the art of mixed drinks,Oz--style...but I don't think I convinced anyone to change their drinking ways!!!!
In streets so peaceful after Britain's bustle, he showed me a cathedral whose paintings and statuary I used to teach about but never dreamed of really seeing.. and a City Hall so old and richly carved it scarcely looks real....and when I confessed that I, a librarian, had never actually touched pergamon, he arranged that, too...for in antique bookseller's shop I was able to open and read books (and the one pergamon in stock) that I used to describe to my librarianship classes, but never really dreamed of handling!
And we ate warm goat's cheese pastries with sorrel and tomatoes and drank Belgian beer in the old brewery,
and Luc collected us from there and took me to his brother-in-law's house where Bart scanned in the photos for me, and showed me an armontillado collection from South America, and I handled Maya ceramics from a past so preliterary a librarian can only muse upon it..
And we talked internet and ICQ, for, truly, the past and present and future do meld at such times, and in such places...
And Mieke collected me that night to show me a Belgian flea-market, and then we went back to the house and tried to read some of the old books, ( I mean, SERIOUSLY old), that Jan has collected
And I was gradually getting this hotel room stocked, even without a 'frig or teamaking ...Mieke had found me a baby-bottle warmer which heats water quite hot enough for herbal tea, and the manageress lent me her iron and found me a fruit bowl, and I had Hungarian cherries at least four times the size of those we see in Oz,and white-flesh nectarines to try, too!
But then Thursday things started to go wrong...
Thus when the manageress, (with whom I'd been speaking just a few minutes before), asked him if his guest realised that all these phone calls she was making were being charged at 20 Belgian francs PER MINUTE,(hotel policy!), he did not respond in an entirely friendly or unstressed manner (and, remember, the Flemish language SOUNDS angry, even when people are merely discussing the weather,(though, thinking about the weather, that might explain a lot.......!!!). Especially when you remember I was using THIS hotel because Luc had felt the ones in town were too expensive, and the peculiarities of the hotel's local-call tariff had NEVER
been described to us, either verbally or in print...
So Luc left the manageress promising to see what she could do in the way of goodwill discount,(he was MOST persuasive about THAT, you can be sure!!),and we set off to post the parcel...and they wanted......the equivalent of A$420 to send a 6 kilo postpack.....but if I repacked it as a number of smaller postpacks, it would cost me around a third of that....
And Luc explained to me, on the way to his almost-completed dream farm- home, that these things happen in Belgium because of MONOPOLIES, and because of the clash
between so many different nationalities, governments and languages in such a small place,and that it is hard to effect change because Governments are elected for SEVEN
YEAR TERMS!!
Despite the fact that we had made my trip THIS week, because Luc started his holidays on Moday, and I had
filled in time in England AFTER the wedding rather than arrive while he had no free time, Luc's firm decided he MUST work on Wednesday, (which meant he had to prepare a presentation on Tuesday), and work again and out-of-town on Friday, but overnight he had also been advised he was needed on Saturday, as well, my flying- out day.
As he said, rather bitterly, when he asks for a raise, the work he is doing is insufficiently vital, but when he asks for holidays,suddenly he can't be spared!
And though he had begged a female colleague to stand in for him, she had pleaded 'family pressures' of varying kinds and had been most unhelpful!
So he wasn't in the best of humours, when he called to collect me to go with him to feed the animals at his farm,posting my parcels home as we went, (there is NOT a neighbourhood Post Office on every corner in Belgium..nor a food shop or Takeaway, but that is another story..)
So, with 7 hours internet access already on my slate, I was owing A$420 on top of the hotel tariff..and remember, this is a hotel where I can't even make a cup of tea or get an evening meal!
so Luc and the manageress discussed THAT in their angry Flemish while folk queued up behind us, or left, and a nice French couple sympathised....
..and we left with the unsent parcel, and three more postpacks, and another trip to the out- of our- way parcel office required!
And he was making plans for "next time", when I should
return with my husband, and how we would do things differently, but I called home on
the mobile, (now a seemingly cheap way of keeping in touch), from Luc's farm..which, I noticed is only very marginally larger than our suburban block, to explain why I wouldn't be on line much until America, and discussed the Queensland election results, (how WE get things changed), with my husband, who wondered aloud whether I would find the United States any less bureaucratic?
Then I added insult to injury by dragging Luc through a supermarket shopping trip for the third time in his life,(twice this week), and bought things for the 'Australian' meal I planned to cook for them on the Friday night, and noted the smallness of choice in fresh foods after the cornocoepia (sp?) that was
British food abundance, and compared it with what WE are used to..
And I've decided that there should be a form of National Service introduced in Australia...requiring every young Australian to spend some months abroad thus discovering how LUCKY they are to be..Australian.
Then, with the animals fed, and a few weeds pulled,and a freshly picked red rose to take back to the hotel, and a photo taken of a Flemish windmill, Luc was hungry and wanted to eat....but Thursday lunchtime is NOT, apparently a good time to find an eating establishment open in Flanders...though Croque Madame, after a lot of searching and inadvertent sightseeing, with properly made coffee, tastes extremely good...think it must have been the longest time Luc has sat still for ages, (I am a slow eater),..he is NOT one for sitting still in the laidback, unplanned Australian manner! Life moves rather more by appointment for these people, for whom our motto,"She'll be right, Mate.." would NEVER do!!
and then I noticed the French tinned foods section which had Ratatoille Nicoise, a variation of which I was planning to prepare, in a variety of large tin sizes....which would a great saving in time, but not quite the same thing one hopes!
But then Luc realised I planned to cook zuccini and corn, both of which he LOATHES!!
And I couldn't work out why Luc kept taking my greengrocery purchases away,
though he kept muttering about losing the corn on the way out to the car.....until he explained that in Belgium the customer has to do all the weighing and labelling...that the checkout operater merely...checksout!!
'Cause I have to say, folks, despite the kindness of everyone here and in Britain, I haven't seen anything yet to convince me I am living in the wrong country, or that our cultural cringe has any raison d'etre!....
and I didn't really get to hear any French spoken until I turned on the 20 channel TV tonight..so all that preparation was a bit wasted, too..
And though the Manageress announced they would cut my phone costs down to 10 Belgian francs per minute, I think the damage is done.....America,Land of the Free, you are going to have to work VERY hard indeed to prevent me from returning home earlier than planned!!.
But my next stop is Vermont, where I'll be meeting Rudco from my chatroom...
And the next stop is Atlanta...who carries my suitcases there, and what I cook, is still being negotiated
I suspect he is another not very laid-back person...comes across-line as another born worrier!!
I'm trying to persuade him to play tennis with me but he says he can't on doctor's orders!!!
He wants me to cook an Australian meal for him, too..says he is in a culinary rut..
Hmmm....he's probably expecting steak and eggs and Fosters when I'm into ratatoille and aubergines cooked
in yoghurt!!
Oh..and horse fillet served with mashed potatoes and braised whitlof....and Belgian fries, of course!!
But since I am paying a GREAT DEAL to have kitchens in both Williston and Atlanta, it will definitely be something good!!
But first, FIRST OF ALL FOR EVER MORE, I am going to make them sign a contract about the COST OF A LOCAL CALL!!
SEE YOU IN THE U.S. of A!!!
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