It's been a busy weekend. Huzzah for a few minutes to sit down and enjoy the fall weather and the Amelie soundtrack and a fresh-brewed espresso and blog.
So, what's new in Brussels land? Well, first of all, Leo the Scooter is alive and well. After a veritable manhunt to find a tow truck that tows scooters, and another to find a scooter store that would accept poor Leo before the end of November, Leo found a doctor (who gushed, "He's so cute!" the instant Leo wheeled in the door, making his owner happy), got his oil changed, got a new tire, and is better than ever before. He's been purring happily around Brussels all weekend, handling interstates, cobblestone streets, and roundabouts like a pro. His owner, on the other hand, has learned quite a bit about one-way streets, Belgian street signs (x's mean go, o's mean don't go), and about how bumpy cobblestones are when you ride a vehicle with limited shock absorption. That said, Leo, now that he's well, is a complete joy to drive, and the independence that he (and his ironic name) are giving me is a beautiful thing.
Independence means the ability to go out in Brussels after the metro closes, which is what I did. I saw a lovely, disturbing film about les maisons closes in Paris at the turn of the last century, experienced Oktoberfest Brussels style, had a picnic in Parc Royale, listened to jazz at the historic club l'Archiduc (which, I am informed, is as famous for its crowds of slightly besotted, unemployed artists as for the fact that Djengo Reinhardt played there back in the day), did some English tutoring, got Leo a rain jacket and myself some motorcycle gloves (complete with flower embroidery, of course), and went to a protest. I also got lost approximately six times, and almost ended up in Liege with Leo. This is what happens when you decide that Mapquest is overrated and/or that the way you got to a place will work to get back home (Lies. Everything in Brussels is a one-way street. The sooner you learn this, the less lost/frustrated you will be. Also, assume you will encounter cobblestones at least half of your drive, and remember not to clench your teeth when you do.)
I now want to pause and talk about another kind of independence, one that's not related to two-wheeled motoring around a historic European city. I went yesterday to the "Portes ouvertes" protest at Steenerkozzel Detention Center, a "centre fermé" where illegal immigrants are placed after they are apprehended. As I got lost with Leo, I missed the train out to Nossengem and thus had to take another train out into Flemish country, passing through Leuven, a charming university town, and chugging through potato fields and warehouses. I assumed that since Nossengem housed a detention center, it was probably an industrial wasteland; but as I watched warehouses fade again into quaint cottages and hedgerows I realized I was wrong. I stepped out of the train and into the kind of quiet country town one sees in Irish coffee table books, or in Disney's Beauty and the Beast: pretty, newly-painted houses; trimmed rosebushes; elderly gentlemen walking dogs; families on bicycles. I stopped to ask one older man for directions to the centre ferme, and felt myself blushing as I did so. It seemed almost profane to mention Steenerkozzel, whose name to me echoes the dull thud of more sinister detention centers from an earlier Europe, to the inhabitants of this picture-perfect town. The man was perfectly nice, however; he smiled and told me that it was a ways off. "Where the road dips down and gets shadowy," he said in poetic French, "turn right, and you'll see it."
When I travel alone, I notice little things and endow them with deep significance. I saw an antique Spanish ship in a window, its sails painted with Columbus crosses. It seemed fitting. So, too, did the travel store a little further down, stocked with shining sturdy suitcases that gleamed with the potential of new journeys under a Western passport. As I descended into the "shadowy" part of the road, I realized that I was right by an airport. Jet liners roared, their takeoffs echoing through the valley. I turned, and saw the huddled grey blocks that make up the centre ferme, hidden behind a double layer of green fencing. Centres fermes are not prisons, though they serve a similar purpose; since their "residents" are illegal but not dangerous, they have open windows with thin metal bars across them. I could see faces at the windows, faces which if all went according to Belgian bureaucratic plans would be sent home to conflict in DRC or unrest in Libya within a few weeks. Planes, which like train stations usually make something in me tingle with excitement at the idea of new potential places to go and things to see, suddenly seemed sad.
As I got closer to the centre ferme, I saw a news truck and, closer to the green mesh fence, a group of 100 or 150 protesters, complete with a makeshift band who banged on drums and cowbells at random intervals. The crowd looked largely like the sort that roam from festival to festival in the states; if not for the big grey building behind them, I couldn't have said whether they were going to Bonnaroo or to protest deportations. Most roamed around, greeting friends, snapping photos, or just staring glumly at the centre ferme. A few yelled out to the inmates, reading off the numbers of help lines in Arabic, English, French, and Dutch (no one spoke Lingala). Periodically, some would chant "No borders, no nations, stop deportation!" or similar things in French. Eventually, a few got wound up and started throwing themselves at the fence with wire clippers. This apparently alarmed the police, who had been hiding out nearby. They came out in full force, riot cops with bulletproof exoskeletons and round riot shields. The crowd obligingly started singing the Darth Vader march from Star Wars. Hanging out in the back of the crowd with my newly-brushed hair, my equestrian boots, and my neocon leather bag, I felt like an onlooker. In all honesty, the closest I've ever gotten to riot cops was good seats at Billy Elliot in London. (That sentence is entirely absurd, and shows how out of my element I was). That said, I also realized I was hopelessly trendy; aren't many white, privelidged Americans my age getting their first taste of riot cops and protests in New York and all around the States?
All of this, plus the fact that I hadn't eaten since noon, made me grumpy. I watched the guys flinging themselves at the fence; saw the still, almost sarcastic faces of the riot cops. They were wholly ineffective; you could tell the riot cops were also hungry, and found it ridiculous that they'd been called away from Sunday mussels for a protest this small. Protesters started picking corn from a nearby field and throwing it over the fence; one riot cop moved his shield to bounce away a cob. His fellow officer looked at him and rolled his eyes, as if to say, "Seriously, man? It's corn." And, at the end of the day, that's all it was: noise, corn, a few well-placed stickers courtesy of Anarchists International (yes, I was a little alarmed they were there, but they seemed to be more interested in autocollants than revolution), a few grammatically questionable English profanities, and a lot of very wordy handouts about future opportunities to do the same thing. Part of me was excited to be part of something that was part Kent State, part Les Amis d'ABC from Les Mis, part Wall Street protest; part of me was angry at myself for how absurd and anachronistic that excitement and those references were; part of me was irritated at my fellow protesters for their fence-flinging and lack of showers; and part of me was frustrated at myself for refusing to fence-fling, for taking photos and taking notes rather than refusing to shower or fill my scooter up because that was funding the state that was sending these people away.
I left early, propelled partially by the time (I had to meet a friend later that night), partially by the cold (Brussels becomes frigid once the sun goes down), partially by hunger, and partially by my conflicting feelings. Did I want to join the protest earnestly, call the riot cops Storm Troopers, paste anarchist stickers, bang on a drum? Did I want to ignore it, to regret the inconvenience of going out to Nossengem, to make sure that no photos of my presence at such a thing ever got posted on Facebook for law schools to see? As I walked back out of the shadows, past the Storm Troopers that looked like regular family guys and gals, past the impromptu protestor campsites and the prim blue collar cottages, I thought about privelidge, and freedom. These kids, with their intentionally-worn clothes and studiously unbrushed hair, were privelidged; they had the freedom to go out, to spend hours protesting and lounging around with their friends; to make radical statements with little consequences for their current occupation as students. As long as you're a student, you don't have to curb your speech for fear your employer will find out; you don't have a job that starts at 8 or 9 am; you don't have a family and a stack of bills to pay. You can protest, you can be passionate: and I realized that that kind of passionate protest is a luxury, a gift, something that no one in the centre ferme at Stennerkozzel or the closed centers we call office buildings really has. And, like all luxuries, that kind of protest is largely self-serving; I am under no illusions that any inmate at Stennerkozzel was helped by the cowbell-banging crowd outside the gates. As I walked back, painfully aware of not only that luxury but also the luxury of being a legal immigrant funded by one of the most generous postgrad grants around, I thought about what could actually make a difference for those immigrants; about how sound immigration policy could be made; about how human rights could actually be defended. I remembered why I wanted to be a lawyer, and wondered if I could combine the fence-flinging zeal of my fellow protestors with the smooth hair and polished suits of an attorney. I thought about how far was too far: how passionate you could be before you became dangerous or counterproductive; how integrated into a system you could become before selling out entirely; how you could avoid throwing corncobs; how you could avoid living peacefully on the hill above the shadow.
Today, I went to the commune in prissy Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, took a number, and sat beside my fellow immigrants. I paid sixteen euros cash and received an invaluable paper, stamped with the seal of the Belgian king and the commune burgomeister. The office attendant handed it to me with a smile, informed me that if I were stopped in the street I should produce this paper and no one would bother me, and then said "Welcome in Belgium. We are glad to have you." In fairness, I've been through quite a few bureaucratic headaches for this little piece of paper; I've sent countless documents to the commune, the consulate in Atlanta, to ULB, and to the police precinct. Immigration is never easy. But as I walked out the door, paper and even more invaluable navy US passport in hand, I realized that for many in this and other countries, it's impossible. As they struggle to escape unrest, turmoil, or even genocide in their homelands, they encounter the impersonal, inhuman face of a bureaucracy that attempts to remove personal responsibility for their fate. They are stopped for their skin color (please note that I've never been asked to produce papers, while several of my fellow classmates of African or Middle Eastern descent are asked at least twice a week); detained often because they don't understand French or English or Dutch well enough to explain their situations; and deported back to their homelands with the fatal stamp that forbids them return to Europe for ten years due to their immigration delinquency. And while I can always call my embassy and bring US wrath on bureaucratic heads, these people's embassies often hold less clout than I as a single US citizen do.
I don't have answers on immigration, on social inequality, or on the best way to protest. But I've got more questions, which is where all revolutions, no matter how big or small, start.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Leo est malade, or, You Can't Get a Southern Girl Down (but you can get her bike out of commission)
Okay, so this was my first officially frustrating day in Brussels.
My new scooter Leo has been sick for several days. I originally thought that he had a minor oil problem, changed the oil myself (a first for me), and tried to ride it again. No such luck; the evil red eye of oil death came back on. I don't drive anything that glares at me with red light, so I decided to leave it in the garage over the weekend (no one repairs anything in Europe on the weekends, let's get real) and to take it to the scooter doctor today. When you're unwilling to drive your bike because it's got an attitude problem/oil leak (in my world cars and bikes and computers are all personified because I think they are as unpredictable and difficult as people), taking your bike to the scooter doctor means walking it. Please note that this is not a bicycle bike, or even a cute little moped; it's a 100 cc scooter, which weighs quite a bit. And, of course, the scooter shop is uphill. So, 45 sweaty minutes later, I finally reached the shop, locked my scooter, and went inside with my Big Sad Southern Belle Eyes. (These usually work at the Volvo store at home).
No such luck. I knew I probably had a problem when I saw that the store basically only sold brand-new Vespas (read: only sold overpriced scooters to Eurocrats.) I had a bigger problem when I realized that I was the only one including the mechanic not in some form of suit. And when I told my tale of woe to the mechanic and he responded by laughing, I knew I had Big Problems. Apparently, asking him to even look at a Sym scooter was a deep insult and I should know that They Who Work On Vespas do not work on Syms, or anything coming from anywhere but Italy. Not even Hondas. Duh. Apparently.
After being informed that I was an idiot for buying Asian (yes, me, and every student at ULB, okay), and informing me that "I could sue the guy who sold me the scooter except no I'm foreign so forget that I'm screwed," I left. Usually tears work well with mechanics, but I refused to give High And Mighty Suit Mechanic the pleasure of letting him know he had made me upset/angry. It was a sore blow to my Big Sad Southern Belle Eyes, however. This is their first loss in the world of mechanics, oil, and unspecified dohickeys that make engines run.
I locked my bike up, ran off to tutor a French girl in English, and then came back to retrieve my bike. And that's when I noticed something: I have been longingly gazing at scooters since January, or maybe even before, when I decided that a scooter was the best way to get to my internship (it still is, provided said scooter does not glare at you with red eyes and spit oil at you when you try to make it feel better). Seeing a scooter made me simultaneously happy and jealous. Today everything had changed, however. Today, as I watched people riding scooters on the street while I wheeled my hamstrung scooter home, I felt like people do when watching slap-happy-in-love couples after they've just gone through a bad breakup. I resented every scooter-and-rider-couple on the road. I growled with every cute little rumbly acceleration. I shot angry eyes at every leather-clad rider swinging their leg easily over their perfect little bikes. I felt like informing each of them that their scooter, too, would probably deeply disappoint them before they knew it. "Just you wait," I wanted to say, "someday you'll wake up and your pretty little Vespa will be a nasty thing spitting oil at you and you'll be walking it home like a misbehaved preschooler."
Fortunately, the walk back home was downhill, which helped me calm down. A cathartic beer and several calls to AAA later, I am over my bitterness toward Leo and toward the rest of the Belgian scooter community. We can all still be friends. I'll still take Leo to a doctor (albeit one who's not elitist about scooter brands). Now that my arms feel a little less like over-stretched rubber bands, I can admit that while this whole scooter-being-sick thing is no fun, it's teaching me valuable lessons about vehicle ownership, about buying something used about which you know very little, and, potentially, about the grace-under-pressure necessary to be a real Southern belle. (Who knew that this grant would teach me such relevant Life Skills?)
You can't get this Southern girl down. I will ride again. And, hopefully, Leo will, too.
My new scooter Leo has been sick for several days. I originally thought that he had a minor oil problem, changed the oil myself (a first for me), and tried to ride it again. No such luck; the evil red eye of oil death came back on. I don't drive anything that glares at me with red light, so I decided to leave it in the garage over the weekend (no one repairs anything in Europe on the weekends, let's get real) and to take it to the scooter doctor today. When you're unwilling to drive your bike because it's got an attitude problem/oil leak (in my world cars and bikes and computers are all personified because I think they are as unpredictable and difficult as people), taking your bike to the scooter doctor means walking it. Please note that this is not a bicycle bike, or even a cute little moped; it's a 100 cc scooter, which weighs quite a bit. And, of course, the scooter shop is uphill. So, 45 sweaty minutes later, I finally reached the shop, locked my scooter, and went inside with my Big Sad Southern Belle Eyes. (These usually work at the Volvo store at home).
No such luck. I knew I probably had a problem when I saw that the store basically only sold brand-new Vespas (read: only sold overpriced scooters to Eurocrats.) I had a bigger problem when I realized that I was the only one including the mechanic not in some form of suit. And when I told my tale of woe to the mechanic and he responded by laughing, I knew I had Big Problems. Apparently, asking him to even look at a Sym scooter was a deep insult and I should know that They Who Work On Vespas do not work on Syms, or anything coming from anywhere but Italy. Not even Hondas. Duh. Apparently.
After being informed that I was an idiot for buying Asian (yes, me, and every student at ULB, okay), and informing me that "I could sue the guy who sold me the scooter except no I'm foreign so forget that I'm screwed," I left. Usually tears work well with mechanics, but I refused to give High And Mighty Suit Mechanic the pleasure of letting him know he had made me upset/angry. It was a sore blow to my Big Sad Southern Belle Eyes, however. This is their first loss in the world of mechanics, oil, and unspecified dohickeys that make engines run.
I locked my bike up, ran off to tutor a French girl in English, and then came back to retrieve my bike. And that's when I noticed something: I have been longingly gazing at scooters since January, or maybe even before, when I decided that a scooter was the best way to get to my internship (it still is, provided said scooter does not glare at you with red eyes and spit oil at you when you try to make it feel better). Seeing a scooter made me simultaneously happy and jealous. Today everything had changed, however. Today, as I watched people riding scooters on the street while I wheeled my hamstrung scooter home, I felt like people do when watching slap-happy-in-love couples after they've just gone through a bad breakup. I resented every scooter-and-rider-couple on the road. I growled with every cute little rumbly acceleration. I shot angry eyes at every leather-clad rider swinging their leg easily over their perfect little bikes. I felt like informing each of them that their scooter, too, would probably deeply disappoint them before they knew it. "Just you wait," I wanted to say, "someday you'll wake up and your pretty little Vespa will be a nasty thing spitting oil at you and you'll be walking it home like a misbehaved preschooler."
Fortunately, the walk back home was downhill, which helped me calm down. A cathartic beer and several calls to AAA later, I am over my bitterness toward Leo and toward the rest of the Belgian scooter community. We can all still be friends. I'll still take Leo to a doctor (albeit one who's not elitist about scooter brands). Now that my arms feel a little less like over-stretched rubber bands, I can admit that while this whole scooter-being-sick thing is no fun, it's teaching me valuable lessons about vehicle ownership, about buying something used about which you know very little, and, potentially, about the grace-under-pressure necessary to be a real Southern belle. (Who knew that this grant would teach me such relevant Life Skills?)
You can't get this Southern girl down. I will ride again. And, hopefully, Leo will, too.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Museums, memory, and marketing: or, selling chocolate and staying dry in Brussels
So it's a grey, cold, drizzly Sunday; I'm sitting here watching the sky spit fitfully while sipping Mariage Freres tea (quite possibly the best tea on the Continent) and listening to the Bach Mass in B minor, a holdover from similar rainy Sundays in Dublin four years and many ages ago. Brussels is finally living up to its reputation as a rainy, dreary city; the past two days have been chilly and wet, the sort of weather that eventually soaks your trench coat and sends you inside in search of hot drinks or just a warm fire.
This weather is perfect for museum-going, however, which is exactly what I've been doing. I signed my internship contract with the Africa museum Friday, which basically means that I can access Henry Morton Stanley's papers, most of the colonial archive, the permanent collection, and the library. This is extremely exciting; I am itching to get my hands on some old maps, problematic diaries, and intriguing photos. I also rode Leo out to the museum, which was equally exciting; I got up to 90 km/hr (around 55-60 mph), which is actually pretty fast when you're not enclosed in a car, I learned. Leo has unfortunately come down with something, however, so he's going to the doctor tomorrow. Cross your fingers for his speedy recovery. (For those of you who missed it, Leo is my scooter. Just realized that might be confusing :)
Saturday (yesterday) I went to the Magritte museum with a fellow grantee studying Belgian symbolist literature. I loved everything about this museum; from the big echoey elevator to the disorienting floor plan to the artful way it wove together Magritte's paintings, sketches, letters, biography, quotations, and photos of him dressing up as an extraterrestrial (complete with tinfoil hat. The man had a sense of humor.) Magritte's famous works, such as "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" and "The Son of Man," aren't in the museum. As a veteran of many many trips to the Louvre, I actually liked that the famous stuff wasn't in the museum; it kept the hordes of tourists at bay and meant that I and everyone else had time to focus on the rest of the paintings, many of which are just as good/interesting/frustratingly enigmatic as Magritte's more famous stuff. This also meant that curators were more chill than in Musee d'Orsay or the Louvre; you could get up close to the paintings and see that the seemingly-smooth surface of Magritte's creepy works is actually made of thick paint. It became really easy to envision Magritte (who looked more like a handsome banker than a skinny painter) daubing paint onto his pipe-faced, bowler-hatted men in suits, which made his paintings somehow more human and more approachable. Finding the human side of these paintings is good, since I would have otherwise spend two hours getting progressively more and more creeped out by his girls eating magpies and sliced billiard balls. Another good, human thing was the price: two euros for hours of artsy entertainment (and warm shelter from the incessant drizzle). Being a less-than-twenty-six-year-old student in Europe is the best.
Today, I went to mass at Notre-Dame au Sablon, one of the old Gothic cathedrals in the city center. Gothic cathedrals, especially ones in Belgium, have had a hard time of it; their soaring spires and rich decorations have made them targets for raids since they were constructed in the Middle Ages. This continued up until modern times; Brussels was largely decimated during World War I and II, and most of the cathedrals lost their priceless stained glass windows to bomb blasts. Most cathedrals here now have pretty but plain replacement windows. Notre-Dame au Sablon is one of the only exceptions to that rule. I'm not sure if the stained glass is original (kind of doubt it), but if it's a replacement it's stunning; beautiful (if anachronistic) portraits of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, most saints, and some random Brussels burgomeister meisterburghers (portly, but terribly pious). There is also nothing like a chanted mass in a medieval cathedral; no matter how much I struggle with the politics and precepts of the Catholic Church (I'm Protestant), I'll never be able to deny the visceral, spine-tingling beauty of voice and organ echoing off stone. There's something about the fact that people have been singing the same way in the same place for centuries that is really beautiful and humbling.
Afterwards, I wandered out of mass and into the brocante at Petit Sablon, an open-air antique market full of red-and-green-striped tents where elderly Flemish and Walloon merchants sell Depression glass, silver teapots, gemstones, woodcuts, crucifixes, comic books (of course), and real-croc-skin purses. There's something for everyone, and something that will creep everyone out. For me, it was the "Achat du Congo" booth, which teemed with knockoff sculptures, masks, cowrie-shell purses, kinte cloth, and (oh, yes, Brussels) cream colored helmets, complete with netting. The lady running the booth was very pleasant, had spent many years in Congo, and clearly saw nothing ironic in her very retro wares. I chalked up the booth to her age and walked on, only to be confronted by the most beautiful chocolate shops ever. The displays were decadent; delicate high heels in dark chocolate, wedding cakes made of different colors of macaroons; a willow tree whose delicate, curling branches were made of dark, light, and white chocolate. And then there was the last window, Planete Chocolat, where the display featured huge cacao beans made of chocolate, large earthen pots made of bitter chocolate, masks made of white chocolate painted different colors, statues of various heights and chocolate composition, and a whole scene featuring dark chocolate figurines in various states of undress gesturing wildly at a pot of chocolate. A tiny chocolate sign in the corner read "Le chocolat au Congo." So, basically, unless these figures were made approximately fifty years ago, marketing based on the good ol' colonial past isn't just something that outdated colonial subjects do. That said, how many times has Atlanta used good ol' racially dubious Gone With the Wind to try to jumpstart its tourism industry? Is Brooks Brothers obliged to stop gushing about the exotic refinement of the Indian and Egyptian cotton it uses to sew its legendary shirts? Should everyone re-upholster their British colonial palm-tree-and-monkey chairs? (Actually, yes; from what I hear, that fabric is out of style, and sitting on monkeys is really just creepy). Do we whitewash our past? Ignore it? Re-upholster it? Do we lay it out for everyone to see? Do we capitalize on it? Is that ethically wrong, or just in poor taste?
(Potential answers on this to come.)
For now, I am done with my tea and moving on to neuhaus pralines (which, despite their lack of authentic Congo-themed marketing, are as perfectly Belgian as you can get). The drizzle has calmed down and the sun is trying really really hard to come out. Yay surprising, unpredictable Belgium.
This weather is perfect for museum-going, however, which is exactly what I've been doing. I signed my internship contract with the Africa museum Friday, which basically means that I can access Henry Morton Stanley's papers, most of the colonial archive, the permanent collection, and the library. This is extremely exciting; I am itching to get my hands on some old maps, problematic diaries, and intriguing photos. I also rode Leo out to the museum, which was equally exciting; I got up to 90 km/hr (around 55-60 mph), which is actually pretty fast when you're not enclosed in a car, I learned. Leo has unfortunately come down with something, however, so he's going to the doctor tomorrow. Cross your fingers for his speedy recovery. (For those of you who missed it, Leo is my scooter. Just realized that might be confusing :)
Saturday (yesterday) I went to the Magritte museum with a fellow grantee studying Belgian symbolist literature. I loved everything about this museum; from the big echoey elevator to the disorienting floor plan to the artful way it wove together Magritte's paintings, sketches, letters, biography, quotations, and photos of him dressing up as an extraterrestrial (complete with tinfoil hat. The man had a sense of humor.) Magritte's famous works, such as "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" and "The Son of Man," aren't in the museum. As a veteran of many many trips to the Louvre, I actually liked that the famous stuff wasn't in the museum; it kept the hordes of tourists at bay and meant that I and everyone else had time to focus on the rest of the paintings, many of which are just as good/interesting/frustratingly enigmatic as Magritte's more famous stuff. This also meant that curators were more chill than in Musee d'Orsay or the Louvre; you could get up close to the paintings and see that the seemingly-smooth surface of Magritte's creepy works is actually made of thick paint. It became really easy to envision Magritte (who looked more like a handsome banker than a skinny painter) daubing paint onto his pipe-faced, bowler-hatted men in suits, which made his paintings somehow more human and more approachable. Finding the human side of these paintings is good, since I would have otherwise spend two hours getting progressively more and more creeped out by his girls eating magpies and sliced billiard balls. Another good, human thing was the price: two euros for hours of artsy entertainment (and warm shelter from the incessant drizzle). Being a less-than-twenty-six-year-old student in Europe is the best.
Today, I went to mass at Notre-Dame au Sablon, one of the old Gothic cathedrals in the city center. Gothic cathedrals, especially ones in Belgium, have had a hard time of it; their soaring spires and rich decorations have made them targets for raids since they were constructed in the Middle Ages. This continued up until modern times; Brussels was largely decimated during World War I and II, and most of the cathedrals lost their priceless stained glass windows to bomb blasts. Most cathedrals here now have pretty but plain replacement windows. Notre-Dame au Sablon is one of the only exceptions to that rule. I'm not sure if the stained glass is original (kind of doubt it), but if it's a replacement it's stunning; beautiful (if anachronistic) portraits of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, most saints, and some random Brussels burgomeister meisterburghers (portly, but terribly pious). There is also nothing like a chanted mass in a medieval cathedral; no matter how much I struggle with the politics and precepts of the Catholic Church (I'm Protestant), I'll never be able to deny the visceral, spine-tingling beauty of voice and organ echoing off stone. There's something about the fact that people have been singing the same way in the same place for centuries that is really beautiful and humbling.
Afterwards, I wandered out of mass and into the brocante at Petit Sablon, an open-air antique market full of red-and-green-striped tents where elderly Flemish and Walloon merchants sell Depression glass, silver teapots, gemstones, woodcuts, crucifixes, comic books (of course), and real-croc-skin purses. There's something for everyone, and something that will creep everyone out. For me, it was the "Achat du Congo" booth, which teemed with knockoff sculptures, masks, cowrie-shell purses, kinte cloth, and (oh, yes, Brussels) cream colored helmets, complete with netting. The lady running the booth was very pleasant, had spent many years in Congo, and clearly saw nothing ironic in her very retro wares. I chalked up the booth to her age and walked on, only to be confronted by the most beautiful chocolate shops ever. The displays were decadent; delicate high heels in dark chocolate, wedding cakes made of different colors of macaroons; a willow tree whose delicate, curling branches were made of dark, light, and white chocolate. And then there was the last window, Planete Chocolat, where the display featured huge cacao beans made of chocolate, large earthen pots made of bitter chocolate, masks made of white chocolate painted different colors, statues of various heights and chocolate composition, and a whole scene featuring dark chocolate figurines in various states of undress gesturing wildly at a pot of chocolate. A tiny chocolate sign in the corner read "Le chocolat au Congo." So, basically, unless these figures were made approximately fifty years ago, marketing based on the good ol' colonial past isn't just something that outdated colonial subjects do. That said, how many times has Atlanta used good ol' racially dubious Gone With the Wind to try to jumpstart its tourism industry? Is Brooks Brothers obliged to stop gushing about the exotic refinement of the Indian and Egyptian cotton it uses to sew its legendary shirts? Should everyone re-upholster their British colonial palm-tree-and-monkey chairs? (Actually, yes; from what I hear, that fabric is out of style, and sitting on monkeys is really just creepy). Do we whitewash our past? Ignore it? Re-upholster it? Do we lay it out for everyone to see? Do we capitalize on it? Is that ethically wrong, or just in poor taste?
(Potential answers on this to come.)
For now, I am done with my tea and moving on to neuhaus pralines (which, despite their lack of authentic Congo-themed marketing, are as perfectly Belgian as you can get). The drizzle has calmed down and the sun is trying really really hard to come out. Yay surprising, unpredictable Belgium.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Birthdays, bizarre art, and two Leos
Okay, so it's been quite a while since I updated. This is the problem with blogs: when you're busy, you don't update, because you're doing so much. Then, you realize you have to update, and when you think over all you've done you don't know where to start. But enough of my first world problems. Here we go.
I first want to thank my incredible family/extended family, who managed to figure out how to send birthday cards and, in one case, monster cookies (!!) to my address in Brussels just days after I learned how to properly write it. You all rock.
My birthday was a week ago; I turned 23 and celebrated my full entry into the twenty-something era by eathing a chocolate cake on the way to the Africa Museum, finding my scooter, eating scrumptious moules and homemade frites with a Belgian friend of mine, and then going for drinks. Brussels people like birthdays; these new friends, who I've known less than three weeks, were so generous, sweet, and celebratory. I am impressed by the Belgians, I must say.
Belgian university schedules, on the other hand, are not quite as impressive. Or perhaps they're impressive in a different way. It's kind of exciting to have to wake up and check GeHol (the scheduling software) every morning to see if your class just might have changed time, location, date, or professor. The suspense (and the alarm clock) is excruciating. The good side of this is that I believe I've seen every building on ULB's Solbosch campus, including the recently-completed business school on the far side of the parking lot, because I've either 1) had class there; 2) had class moved there; 3) had GeHol tell me class was moved there but had class in the original location; 4) had class somewhere else, been unable to find it, and have a friendly-but-mistaken ULB classmate send me elsewhere. So that's been a fun way to see the campus.
That said, classes themselves (if/when you find them) have been very interesting; while two hours of Kant in French at 5 pm can induce either sleepiness or intense, grumbly hunger, the classes on bioethics (and the ways in which bioethical deliberations are slowed in Belgium due to linguistic competition between the Flemish and French communities), business leadership (complete with classmates from the Royal Military Academy and several officers from East African countries), and the ethics of communication (which basically confirms all your icky creepy feelings about Facebook) are fascinating. What's sometimes more fascinating are the Belgian/other international students' reactions to debates and discussions; for instance, while I sat silently outraged that the Belgian Committee on Bioethics only meets twice or three times a year due to the fact that they must have an equal balance of French and Flemish speakers every time they meet, my classmates either rolled their eyes or smiled sadly or didn't react at all. The level of linguistic politics and division in this tiny country is amazing. Perhaps they looked abroad to big, problematic Congo because exploration could distract them from the gargantuan task of getting these two proud regions to coalesce into one tiny nation.
Things to think about. I'm signing paperwork at the Museum today, hopefully, which means that there will be much more to come on colonialism and Belgium and history and memory and all those good depressing but interesting things that I do so like to study and research (and that, in all seriousness, I think are vitally important, too)
Friday was "La Nocturne de l'ULB," a big student-run music festival. While it was run with ULB's signature style (long lines, inefficient ticketing system, completely irrational way to pay for beers), the variety of bands and the number of students there was really quite fun. My favorite band was a Congolese group whose electric thumb piano player (!!) blew me away. They were also the only band of the night that got their mostly-white crowd to change from the European techno hop or the American white man's shuffle to a dance that involved much more hip movement and swaying. They were really fun (I would like to insert the video I took here, but I haven't figured out how yet. So check back later when I successfully battle my technological ineptitude).
Saturday was Nuit Blanche, which goes from 7 pm to 7 am the next morning and is a city-wide public art exhibit. There were funky glow-in-the-dark flowers, electro-dance-party lightshows in old cathedrals, a really interesting series of wax figures that gradually melted as the night went on, revealing all-wired skeletons underneath (again, the creepiness of Facebook), a really frustrating exhibit with mirrors that I never quite understood, a woman contorting herself in a box, a large series of head-scratching films, an enormous soap machine blowing bubbles to the crowd, and a klezmer band complete with unicyclists. I loved Nuit Blanche in Paris, but had even more fun in Brussels; the art wasn't quite as top-notch, perhaps, but the weather was infinitely better (oh, irony!) and the Belgians know how to throw a block party. Everyone was out, nibbling on falafel and (of course) drinking beer, snapping photos of art and relaxing on terraces (all the restaurants and cafes stayed open late and had drink/food specials). Good times.
I have spent the past few days picking up my scooter and desperately searching for insurance for it. I've finally succeeded, drawn up international contract number 3 (or 4? At this point in time that class in international contract law next year is going to be a piece of cake), and am off to get my "plaque" (license plate) in just a minute. I'm dying to ride Leo (for Leopold II, originally, but it also rhymes: "Leo the Mio," a rejected children's book about a European moped) around Brussels; he is beautiful, black-and-silver, and what's best, he runs when the Brussels metro does not/decides not to (which happens more than is quite necessary). This means that I will be able to get to ULB with time to spare to hunt down the new location of my elusive class, and that I will be able to get to Tervuren without feeling like I actually went to Africa instead (due to the tram delays and transit times :) Before you worry, I have an oh-so-impossibly-European cream helmet, so the Brown Cloud (my ever-unruly hair) will be flatter but will stay intact.
There are more, reflective things I ought to write, and I promise they are coming soon; the weather is getting greyer and colder and drizzlier so I'm much less likely to be taking walks and picnicking in the gorgeous parks here and much more likely to hole up and read and think and get curmudgeonly about the winter. But for now, suffice it to say that Belgium has impressed, bemused, frustrated, challenged, and, on some heartwarming occasions embraced me, and I'm happy (for now :) to embrace it back. We'll see how I feel after chasing Leo(pold's, not the scooter's) ghost around Tervuren for a while.
I first want to thank my incredible family/extended family, who managed to figure out how to send birthday cards and, in one case, monster cookies (!!) to my address in Brussels just days after I learned how to properly write it. You all rock.
My birthday was a week ago; I turned 23 and celebrated my full entry into the twenty-something era by eathing a chocolate cake on the way to the Africa Museum, finding my scooter, eating scrumptious moules and homemade frites with a Belgian friend of mine, and then going for drinks. Brussels people like birthdays; these new friends, who I've known less than three weeks, were so generous, sweet, and celebratory. I am impressed by the Belgians, I must say.
Belgian university schedules, on the other hand, are not quite as impressive. Or perhaps they're impressive in a different way. It's kind of exciting to have to wake up and check GeHol (the scheduling software) every morning to see if your class just might have changed time, location, date, or professor. The suspense (and the alarm clock) is excruciating. The good side of this is that I believe I've seen every building on ULB's Solbosch campus, including the recently-completed business school on the far side of the parking lot, because I've either 1) had class there; 2) had class moved there; 3) had GeHol tell me class was moved there but had class in the original location; 4) had class somewhere else, been unable to find it, and have a friendly-but-mistaken ULB classmate send me elsewhere. So that's been a fun way to see the campus.
That said, classes themselves (if/when you find them) have been very interesting; while two hours of Kant in French at 5 pm can induce either sleepiness or intense, grumbly hunger, the classes on bioethics (and the ways in which bioethical deliberations are slowed in Belgium due to linguistic competition between the Flemish and French communities), business leadership (complete with classmates from the Royal Military Academy and several officers from East African countries), and the ethics of communication (which basically confirms all your icky creepy feelings about Facebook) are fascinating. What's sometimes more fascinating are the Belgian/other international students' reactions to debates and discussions; for instance, while I sat silently outraged that the Belgian Committee on Bioethics only meets twice or three times a year due to the fact that they must have an equal balance of French and Flemish speakers every time they meet, my classmates either rolled their eyes or smiled sadly or didn't react at all. The level of linguistic politics and division in this tiny country is amazing. Perhaps they looked abroad to big, problematic Congo because exploration could distract them from the gargantuan task of getting these two proud regions to coalesce into one tiny nation.
Things to think about. I'm signing paperwork at the Museum today, hopefully, which means that there will be much more to come on colonialism and Belgium and history and memory and all those good depressing but interesting things that I do so like to study and research (and that, in all seriousness, I think are vitally important, too)
Friday was "La Nocturne de l'ULB," a big student-run music festival. While it was run with ULB's signature style (long lines, inefficient ticketing system, completely irrational way to pay for beers), the variety of bands and the number of students there was really quite fun. My favorite band was a Congolese group whose electric thumb piano player (!!) blew me away. They were also the only band of the night that got their mostly-white crowd to change from the European techno hop or the American white man's shuffle to a dance that involved much more hip movement and swaying. They were really fun (I would like to insert the video I took here, but I haven't figured out how yet. So check back later when I successfully battle my technological ineptitude).
Saturday was Nuit Blanche, which goes from 7 pm to 7 am the next morning and is a city-wide public art exhibit. There were funky glow-in-the-dark flowers, electro-dance-party lightshows in old cathedrals, a really interesting series of wax figures that gradually melted as the night went on, revealing all-wired skeletons underneath (again, the creepiness of Facebook), a really frustrating exhibit with mirrors that I never quite understood, a woman contorting herself in a box, a large series of head-scratching films, an enormous soap machine blowing bubbles to the crowd, and a klezmer band complete with unicyclists. I loved Nuit Blanche in Paris, but had even more fun in Brussels; the art wasn't quite as top-notch, perhaps, but the weather was infinitely better (oh, irony!) and the Belgians know how to throw a block party. Everyone was out, nibbling on falafel and (of course) drinking beer, snapping photos of art and relaxing on terraces (all the restaurants and cafes stayed open late and had drink/food specials). Good times.
I have spent the past few days picking up my scooter and desperately searching for insurance for it. I've finally succeeded, drawn up international contract number 3 (or 4? At this point in time that class in international contract law next year is going to be a piece of cake), and am off to get my "plaque" (license plate) in just a minute. I'm dying to ride Leo (for Leopold II, originally, but it also rhymes: "Leo the Mio," a rejected children's book about a European moped) around Brussels; he is beautiful, black-and-silver, and what's best, he runs when the Brussels metro does not/decides not to (which happens more than is quite necessary). This means that I will be able to get to ULB with time to spare to hunt down the new location of my elusive class, and that I will be able to get to Tervuren without feeling like I actually went to Africa instead (due to the tram delays and transit times :) Before you worry, I have an oh-so-impossibly-European cream helmet, so the Brown Cloud (my ever-unruly hair) will be flatter but will stay intact.
There are more, reflective things I ought to write, and I promise they are coming soon; the weather is getting greyer and colder and drizzlier so I'm much less likely to be taking walks and picnicking in the gorgeous parks here and much more likely to hole up and read and think and get curmudgeonly about the winter. But for now, suffice it to say that Belgium has impressed, bemused, frustrated, challenged, and, on some heartwarming occasions embraced me, and I'm happy (for now :) to embrace it back. We'll see how I feel after chasing Leo(pold's, not the scooter's) ghost around Tervuren for a while.
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