Small succeses: parks and scooters, bureaucracy and rehearsals

So, I'm in my apartment waiting for my first load of laundry to wash and celebrating this great accomplishment with some espresso and a new blog post. (It took me about twenty minutes to figure out the washer...it's allegedly "universal," which means it uses incomprehensible line drawings to explain "this button is for cold wash." It would have been easier in French, or, for that matter, Flemish) Huzzah for me and my clean clothes.

This has been a busy week, which I guess isn't surprising. After all, it is the first week of classes. I've learned that 1) you should check your ULB schedule obsessively (like we checked email at Davidson) because classes have a sneaky tendency to change locations at the very last minute; 2) you should always have a backup plan just in case the professor doesn't show up (two of my classes were no-shows); 3) you wait a polite "quart d'heure academique" before you escape to freedom; and 4) under no circumstances whatsoever should you ever have your student card mailed to the Bureau d'Inscriptions rather than to your home address. Worst. Decision. Ever. Three and a half hours of standing in line in the temperamental weather, alternately sweltering in my trench coat and freezing in the sudden grey Belgian gloom, listening to the faux-sirens of the baptemes (read: hazing/hell month for new "pledges" into ULB's "academic clubs"), while learning all sorts of new creative ways to mash French swear words together from my fellow line-waiters. If the DMV and the post office had a temperamental, punch-drunk child, the line at the Bureau d'Inscriptions would probably look something like it. But, three and a half very hungry hours later, I got my student card and my attestations and celebrated with a cone full of pasta (all food in belgium apparently comes in cones.)

I also continued the party by getting my student MOBIB card, which means I can now ride the metro and it not cost me as much as a European Diet Coke each time. This is a big victory. It also means I can swipe into the metro rather than using the dinky little paper punching thing. This means I won't keep missing the metro at Gribaumont, which means my commute just got so much better. (Those of you who don't use the STIB, which is probably most of my readers, may not appreciate this; let's just say that I'm not a morning person so anything that makes a morning easier is a Godsend.)

Yesterday morning, I also tried out my first scooter. I am currently on a much-talked-about hunt for a scooter, because it really is the best way to get from where I live to anywhere in Brussels, especially at night (I learned the hard way that the last metro I can take leaves at 12:25 am. That was a long walk home) While I have calmed down, quieted my Roman Holiday impulses, and moved on from insisting that I drive a Vespa in Europe, I am still looking for a scooter that is both practical (aka, it works, preferably without that picky weird thing called a clutch) and pretty. This one was decidedly the former, less of the latter. That said, scooters are not as complicated to drive as I thought. The hunt is intensifying next week, so more on this later. 

Earlier this week, I explored the Parc de Woluwe, which is near my house. It's stunning, huge, and hilly, the perfect place for an easily-distracted used-to-run-cross-country runner. There are pretty cottages that look like the Seven Dwarfs should live there, swans on a lake, lush forests with rocky paths, a full set of tennis courts (random), a tree stump cut into a seat, a suspension bridge which swings over an avenue (gulp!), and miles of rolling, lush, green hills. (It felt like miles, at least; I've evidently not been running a ton :) The day couldn't have been more perfect, and I couldn't have been happier. I think this park and I are going to be seeing a lot more of each other. 

On Wednesday I also went out to the museum. It's always surreal to take the 44 out through the beautiful forests of Tervuren, which is a sleepy Flemish suburb of French Brussels, and to get off, walk past a gas station, and then run into this gorgeous palace that seriously looks like a little Versailles. Knowing who Leopold II was and how he got the money to build this piece of architectural confection makes it all the creepier. That said, the folks at the museum were anything but creepy. They gave me good coffee and laid out internship options while, sadly, informing me that the renovation project I'd hoped to work on is on hold because the architect is apparently befuddle about how to redesign this problematic palace so that the taxidermied lions can fit in more ethically, or something. I'm a little bummed, but am looking into other cool things that they do (and they do a lot). So more on this once I know more. I can already say, though, that I'm going to like working there. The people are friendly and whip-smart, the workspaces are big and full of light, and the coffee is particularly black and strong. 

Last night (okay, so my chronology is all over the place, sorry! bad historian bad), I went to the first rehearsal for the ULB orchestra. I was again pleasantly surprised. Not only did they give us dinner (cheese sandwiches, but oh, what cheese!) and beer (of course :), the musicians were also really friendly and surprisingly sociable. That's not to say that orchestras aren't sociable in general (oh, my DCSO friends, I have not forgotten orchestra tours :), but the one I played in at Sciences Po in Paris was made up of a rather quiet bunch that certainly wouldn't have all barreled off to the local pub after practice. These guys seem slightly raucous but very fun, and they clearly love music just as much if not more than they love Jupiler. This is a good thing.

The sun is shining and my laundry is just about dry. Time to celebrate small successes again. :)

On se met tout à nouveau

Well, it's been a busy few days. I officially moved into my new apartment Saturday. It's in Woluwe Saint Lambert, a nicer suburb slightly east of Brussels center. I'm living with a retired Panamanian diplomat, whose active life at 65 is putting mine at 22 to shame. She's fluent in three languages, a veteran expat, and a dynamic, opinionated person who stays abreast of the news minute-by-minute and keeps me on my toes. She's also a very good cook. I'm pleased, to say the least.

I was agonizing over my choice of apartment this weekend because, to be honest, I've never had full control over my housing choices before. Sure, I had some lodging choices to make at Davidson (subfree or not? F or Hart? Not F. Bad choices), but I always knew I would be living on campus. In college, negotiated roommate pairings (which could be sticky), but never read a contract or signed a lease. While in Paris, Middlebury took care of leases and contracts for me. Surfing apartment websites, visiting buildings, and negotiating rents are thus all new things to me, and I can assure you doing them in Brussels was extra "fun". That said, apartment stalking was an excellent transcultural experience; not only did my contract-related French (and sometimes English) vocabulary expand exponentially, I also garnered a life skill and met some potential new friends. I even wrote my first international housing contract. Perhaps we can consider the apartment stalking process my first lesson in international contract law.

That sounds very professional. Do not be deceived, however; when I moved in on Saturday I was feeling super insecure about my housing choice. The insecurity became soon became an existential crisis. Here's how it went: "Oh no! The apartment's not in the buzzy city center! I'll never ever go to a cool cultural event in Brussels EVER! (Lies. I have been to two already)." Then: "Oh no! It's not near ULB and so I won't EVER make it to class!" (Lies. See below). Then: "I am living with old people and babies! I will meet NO ONE my age!" (Lies. See below). This is, unfortunately, what happens when my slightly melodramatic inner voice goes apartment hunting for the first time in a city outside of its country where it knows no one.

With my inner voice clammering about its potentially friendless, culture-less existence, I went out to buy groceries at the local supermarket. This supermarket happens to overlook a cobblestone plaza called Place du Roi Chevalier (the King-Knight Square), which on Saturday was full of blue-and-white tents and thoughtful-looking people. Intrigued, I investigated. It turns out that I moved into my apartment on the day of the annual book festival, where brocantiers (antiquers) bring out their old comic books, used novels, and rare first-editions. I saw first-run Tintin comics (not, sadly, Tintin au Congo), a French translation of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, a gorgeously illustrated Around the World in Eighty Days from 1910 (in French, of course: Autour du monde en quatre-vignt jours), and some witty (if poignant) guides about how to speak to a Flemand (a Flemish speaker from the north of Belgium) if you're a Walloon (a French speaker from the south). A hopeless bibliophile, I was instantly hooked. I browsed for at least an hour and a half, talking to the wrinkled monsieurs who watched over their books carefully while laughing with fellow shoppers eager to introduce me to the impressively vast world of the Belgian BD (bande desinee; the Belgians love comic books). And that's about the time when my inner voice shut up about the apartment and recognized that it had found a good home.
(It didn't hurt, of course, that in addition to the book fair there is a great bakery and a scarily good friterie, or fry shop, within two minutes of my apartment :)

Sunday was la journee sans autos, in which all cars are forbidden from entering the city center. Most people thus take bikes into the city; and, as it was nice, the old beautiful medieval Grande Place was brimming with people in traditional Belgian costume and Belgian boy and girl scouts in uniform (not sure why they were there actually). The Place, historically reserved as a meeting space for the ancient trade guilds upon which the city's financial security was built, was full of tents selling Belgian sausages, fries, waffles, and, of course, the ubiquitous beer. Since it was unseasonably warm and sunny, everyone was in a fantastic mood. There were traditional Belgian dances, huge puppets that were nearly double my height (still not sure the story on those), accordian and fiddle music, and roast corn. Apparently roast corn is the epitome of festival food in Brussels; they take corn on the cob, swath it in butter, then barbeque it. It's good.


Yesterday was my first day of class; I went in early for an Amnesty International meeting, and ended up meeting some wonderful ULB students who are still idealistic about human rights. Apparently AI at ULB focuses mostly on les sans-papiers, the hordes of undocumented workers and immigrants who cluster to the north and south of Brussels and who come mostly from North Africa and the Middle East. It was fascinating to watch Belgians discuss (and sometimes squirm) about the ways in which their country interacts with (or refuses to interact with) these illegal newcomers. The links to our own challenges with immigration were blatant. More on this in a later post, I promise.
My first class (and most of my classes) was at 5 pm, which is late for me. I had heard stories of six hundred person lectures at ULB where one feels invisible, and expected much the same thing out of this class, Questions d'actualité en éthique appliquée. But ULB never ceases to surprise me. I instead arrived at a class with six people, all girls, and all (except me) Belgian. I only had two classes that small at Davidson, a college of 1900 students; and yet here I sat at ULB, a university of 40,000 some students, and was as far from invisible as possible. Note-taking and lecture-listening in French (because yes, of course, even in a class of six the professor lectures) was kind of exhausting, but I kept up. It helped that apparently applied ethics was born out of the counter-cultural movement in 1960s America, so a lot of his references were US-based.

After class, two students invited those of us they didn't know for drinks, since we're apparently going to be a small group and, as they said, we had better get to know each other fast. I found this so surprising, frankly; I am used to Sciences Po, where most of my Parisian classmates wouldn't deign to prendre un pot with an American classmate even if she were the only other person in a class. But Belgians are different; the ones I've met have been open, laid back, friendly, helpful, and largely appreciative of a French-speaking American despite her accent. I'm really grateful that this is the case. And I have to say, I can deal with the fact that one meets for beer rather than coffee after class in this quirky country.

So there's that; on se met tout a nouveau. New apartment, new school, new social injustices, new academic setting, new cultural experiences, and new potential friends. It's challenging, but I have to admit it's been fun so far too. Hooray for moving into a new home and a new life.

Vive le bazaar

Well, it's been three days since I arrived in Brussels. I've just now had a chance to sit down, rest my blistered feet (Europe=walking, which I forgot), and update the blog. I'm currently in apartment stalking mode. This goes far beyond simple hunting; I am not just sitting on apartment websites quietly waiting to shoot emails at unsuspecting landlords. Oh, no. I am stalking the streets of Brussels, calling each and every number on every orange-and-black "A Louer" sign on every Art Deco door in this city. (This can be very amusing, as sometimes the room for rent isn't really specified. I've been offered a garage, a four-bedroom penthouse, and an entire floor of offices "perfect for bureaucrats.")

While apartment stalking is often frustrating and sometimes funny, it's also been a fabulous way to meet Belgians in Brussels. This is harder than it sounds; Brussels is a city of immigrants, a melting pot that rivals New York. It's a strange mix of suit-as-uniform European Union bureaucrats, kinte-clad Central African refugees, headscarf-and-kaftan-sporting north Africans, somberly stylish (and usually disdainful) Parisian expats, bike-riding Dutch, and a handful of hipster-esque exchange students, mostly Erasmus (I am fast learning how unusual it is to be an American who 1) speaks French passably and 2) is studying at ULB). As one of my potential landlords told me yesterday, "Bruxelles est un bazaar," a strange, barely-organized mix of newly-immigrated people and cultures loosely fenced in by a relatively new city who can agree on neither language nor cultural heritage nor political power (Belgium still lacks a functioning government, incredibly). This bazaar is becoming more and more international, to the point that many expats spend years in Brussels without ever meeting a real Belgian. To many Brussels-dwellers, whether in heels or a hijab, a real, native Belgian is like an endangered animal, once native to an area but now pushed into hiding by new predators and competitors.

I feel lucky, therefore, to have sighted, spoken with, and apartment-stalked several real Belgians in the past few days. I've met a retired public health worker who after years of working in Somalia now illustrates children's books, a schoolteacher who transports, advocates for, and teaches refugees from central and north Africa, an entrepreneur moving to Latin America to start a fast food pasta chain, a diplomat's wife (and an entrepreneur in her own right, as she owned an impressive number of apartments in a very desirable area), an amateur painter who idolizes Matisse and Magritte (so, vaguely tropical surrealism), and a professional violist who is also an expert cyclist. Most were warm, unassuming people; I would have never guessed that they were so passionate, and so quirky.

I have yet to make my final decision on an apartment, but I am already quite happy with the results of my stalking. I've learned quite a bit about Belgians in the bazaar within the past three days, and am eager to get to interact more with at least one of these people in the future. I'm also thrilled that Belgians, at least at this point, seem very forgiving of slipups and accents in French; while Parisian waiters and shopkeepers would as often as not sneer and start speaking in English as soon as they detected an accent, the Belgians either ignore my accent or ask politely, "Where are you from?" in French. This makes getting back into la Francophonie much, much easier. I am also pleased that people wear colors besides grey and black here, and that heels are decidedly optional. And while their bureaucracy does make me (and many others standing in line with me today) want to cry, their bureaucrats do know how to apologize and soothe their edgy clients.

All in all, three days into apartment stalking I'm happy and tired and still hotel-bound and thus technically homeless. Belgium is pleasantly surprising me.

Of course, this may be all due to the chocolate: Belgians serve all coffee with a bar of either milk or dark chocolate, and when I used my "Find Chocolate" app (yes, there's an app for that) to see how many chocolate stores were within walking distance of my hotel I found 15 within a five-minute-walking-distance radius. Vive le bazaar, indeed :)

Packing, tape

I'm five days away from leaving.

That statement is incredible to me for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that this time last week I was still hoping and praying and willing my visa into existence. Now, the visa is safely tucked away in my passport; the infamous Orange Monster (my oversized and oh-so-florescent suitcase) is nearly packed; my viola has been repaired, restrung, and re-housed. Good raincoats and new work dresses have been bought, tailored, stacked, and rolled. Documents are still being gathered and notarized. Flights, rebooked. Friends, phoned for the last time Stateside. Contacts lenses, rush shipped (oops).

None of this is terribly new. After all, this is not the first time I've moved overseas, and I'm fairly certain it won't be the last. I'm familiar with the combination of excitement and stress and anticipation and worry of international travel. I recognize that dull nagging fear that I'll forget my boarding pass, my wallet, or my viola somewhere between home, the car, Hartsfield-Jackson, and my Belgian residence (still to be determined; life is nothing but a grand, last-minute adventure).

I feel the way I always before I go abroad: that sense that everything matters, that everything is a last: last case of Coke Zero, last dinner at the hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant around the corner, last soggy bike ride to Starbucks, last scotch-and-ice-cream night watching The Good Wife, last perfectly-cooked culinary masterpiece, last stroll around Little Five Points, last movie at the high school movie theater, last run on the cracking sidewalks that line the buzzy suburban streets near my house. If this summer of pleasure reading and sleeping in and pastimes to pass the time was a dreamy haze, all these lasts are a caffeine shot to the brain: colors leap out, textures linger, smells haunt, words exchanged matter more than ever before. Temporal context changes everything's relative importance. You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone.

And yet, it's the gone-ness that makes everything fascinating. It's like gifts: I've never decided whether it's more fun to put Scotch tape on a present, watching it become whole and secure and stuck, or to watch tape slowly unpeel, losing its stickiness, upsetting and maybe tearing the wrapping, and revealing an unknown, exciting-but-potentially-disappointing gift. Regardless of my preference, however, now it's time to un-adhere again, to pull off and pull up and nervously anticipate what I'll find when I pull Belgium's wrapping back.

I don't know where I'll be living this time next week, and I don't know how I'm going to procure a scooter, and I don't know how my classes at ULB will be (hopefully better than my interactions with mes chers fonctionnaires at the Admissions Office), and I don't know what my internship will look like, if it looks like anything. Nevertheless, I am five days away from leaving and I am twenty-two days away from turning twenty-three. It's time to wake up, smell the coffee, and start unwrapping this new, incredible present.