Tune-O-Gram, 19 Nov 1999

Again I have added some people to this list of Sagas from the Continent. If you don't want to read about my adventures, let me know, and if I should add someone, let me know!

First of all the Word for this time is an amusing Dutch creation; like Greek and German, Dutch is a language where large words are put together out of small ones. I was watching a National Geographic Special about the NYC Subway the other day, and they mentioned that one station isn't used anymore and it is like a ghost station, and what should appear in the Flemish subtitles but..."spookstation."

On to my adventures. Things have mostly been quiet and I haven't had to go back to France for a few weeks, which is nice - flying gets tiresome really fast, even if they hand out chocolates (they do on Sabena, the Belgian airline, in business class). So I'm in outer Brussels still, and you can see what my apartment looks like at http://geocities.datacellar.net/minsq, follow the Zaventem link. There are also a few snaps of Liege (lee-AY-zhuh) where I went last Sunday and walked around. It is a city in the southern, French-speaking part of Belgium called Wallonia.

What I'm most thrilled about is that I joined a choir here this week, a mostly British expatriate choir called the Carols for Christmas International Choir. The concert is on December 5th in Brussels. That's pretty soon, but I'm an old hand at choral music, and am fast learning the songs. I think it will be a lot of fun - a good mix of choir, orchestra, soloist and children's choir, and audience sing-a-long. Also a good mix of the usual carols, less known works, and For Unto Us a Child Is Born from Handel's Messiah, one of my personal favorites. Good arrangements, good direction, and over 100 adult oices. I'm very pleased. Some of my pals from KPN Belgium, where I am working on site, are planning to attend! (How did I find out about it? I started a web search on "choirs brussels" and "theatres brussels" to find a group I could work with in the short term, and eventually I found http://www.xpats.com/ which had this on the Activities page.)

Also, a note to all you IKEA shoppers (if you don't know what I'm talking about, go to http://www.ikea.com/)! I went to IKEA here in Brussels last Saturday, and it was forty times as crowded and insane as the IKEA in Seattle ever got. And there are three of them in town! Whoa! But it was still fun, and now that I know where it is I can go back on a weeknight, when it's quieter.

And I must plug my darling Sassycats a cappella group back in Seattle. Two things: they have put a sound file on the main web page so everyone can hear a sample (and more are coming!), and they asked me to put up a page of photos of myself all around Europe, which I finally started on. It's linked from my name on the main page or there's a link on the News page. Start at http://www.sassycats.com/.

Ciao bella, everyone! C a r o l y n

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