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.
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