| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
Before I had these technical advances, I would have traded VHF and UHF for England's four channels.
It is difficult for me to assess whether overall quality of life is better in New Jersey or Old, but I certainly can find a lot in Europe I wish we had at home. Not the least of which are clean, litter-free public places and a population that cares enough to keep them that way. On the other hand, breathing other people's tobacco smoke has recently been estimated to be the fifth greatest cause of death in the United States and as rude as Americans are about tobacco smoke, Europeans are much worse. Or perhaps their cigarettes just smell a lot worse.
Waiting in the train station Evelyn bought and ate some chocolate. I got myself another Belgian waffle. While we waited we watched subtitled coming attractions. I don't know if I think this is a good feature or not, but most train stations in Belgium have television monitors set up and show film coming attractions. Well, if they have to have advertising, it is certainly one of the more entertaining varieties. Of course, this being Belgium, the trailers--which seem to be almost all for American films--are in English and subtitled in French.
Now after all I have said about religion, I will be accused of making the next story up. It happens to be true. I was staring out the window on the way back and saw a religious image. There was a hill and a cross floating over it. It could very easily have been a religious experience. It was actually a telephone pole on the other side of the train reflected in the window. I take it the window was exactly halfway between the hill and the pole. The effect lasted only for a second but it was quite startling, Maybe I have been to too many churches.
Back in Brussels we had to decide where to have dinner and to celebrate our last night in Europe. The only restaurant we really thought was decent was The Cellar on the Grand' Place, so we decided to go back there. We went back to the rooms to freshen up and then the four of us went to dinner. I commented to Jo that going back to a restaurant that was decent the last time would probably only disappoint us the second time.
It turned out that all the tables were full. The waiter told us if we waited three minutes, he could seat us. That sounded unrealistic to me, so I timed the wait. I was right. It was about four minutes. In spite of the restaurant being in the Grand' Place it turned out the prices were actually reasonable for Brussels. I wanted something adventuresome and they had it all right. An animal I'd never tried before. Horse steak. Now in the United States we tend to associate horsemeat as an inferior meat. But the reason is that in the United States we serve it only to dogs and so we reason, backwards, that it must be fit only for dogs. And that opinion is reinforced by seeing it only in the form of dog food, which looks absolutely terrible and smells worse. But beef we serve to dogs doesn't exactly meet gourmet standards either. I have been told that because horses are more muscular than cows and lead a more active life that by objective standards horsemeat is better than beef. The reason we don't eat horses is that it is considered cruel after they work for us to eat them also. In actual fact, a cow is probably smarter than a horse, and it may well be more cruel to eat beef. But we grew up with beef on the table and so we assume there is something natural about eating beef and not natural about eating horse. As I have said many times, any culture that takes the glandular secretions of a cow, separates out the fatty portions and then lets them congeal and calls that 'fresh creamery butter' does not really have much place saying foods popular in other cultures are disgusting. Real food is what you ate at age seven. If that included butter, you think butter is natural no matter what it really is. At age seven you probably thought of honey as an abstract sweet flavoring substance, so honey remains a nice natural thing to eat. I vaguely know how bees make honey. That's bad enough. I am afraid if I ever find out more precisely I may never be able to eat the stuff again. Intrinsically, the squid and jellyfish I eat in Chinese restaurants seem more natural than honey, and horsemeat more natural still. In any case, I have been trying to avoid red meat but when I saw something as exotic as horsemeat on the menu, I knew I had to try it. Dale ordered a more standard steak and the head waiter said hopefully, 'Rare?' Dale said, 'Medium rare.' I ordered the horse steak and he asked, 'Medium rare?' I said, 'Rare,' and he clearly was more pleased with that answer. In general, with red meat the differences among a good quality cut and an okay quality cut and a poor cut will be much greater on rare meat than on well-done. Generally speaking, if a waiter is encouraging you to have your meat rarer it is because he has really good meat and wants it shown off. I pass this secret on to you because I'm trying to stay away from red meat. I know this fact, but it is likely to do me little good in the future. (For those who care about such things, my cholesterol level dropped from 231 to 185 in the last two years and I assume that was almost entirely in the last six months or so.) Actually, on the subject of rareness, I had a high school teacher--one I liked very much--who on some pretext asked everyone in the class how they liked their meat done. I don't remember how she brought it up. Later in private she confided that how well done you like your meat was a sort of litmus test she applied to people. People who like their meat rare were more earthy and straightforward. People who like it well done are more affected. I'd say that this was one of the few tests in English class I ever did well on, but that would really not be true. This was Miss Easton, my senior English teacher. Through high school I was great at math and very mediocre at English. Then senior year, to my shock and surprise, my English teacher picked me out as one of the three best writers in a class of 200. What made he think that I have no idea. Today both my math and my writing are done only for recreation. But the only person who sees the math I do is me. People as far away as New Zealand and Sweden reprint my writing. It will probably never pay me a penny, but it is nice to know some people care about what I say. Thanks, Miss Easton.
Getting back to dinner--remember dinner?--Evelyn had mussels marinere. The food was much better than we'd had at any dinner in Belgium. A Japanese couple sat next to us. They seemed a little insulated. They did not really look around the room. I somehow think that Japanese feel more separated from other nationalities. Perhaps it is because there are a lot of similarities in European languages and Japanese is so very different. The husband took a picture of his wife sitting at the table. I made motions that I was willing to take pictures of both of them, miming snapping a picture and then making an angle with my hands that took both of them in. He hesitated but handed me the camera. One surprise was that holding the camera horizontally, the picture was framed vertically (portrait rather than landscape), but I got them both in. He responded 'merci.' He even took a picture of his food when it came, so I would hope he would want a picture of them both. As we left I waved to him and got him to wave back and smile, his first smile I saw that evening. We came out of the restaurant to find a big band box set up at one end of the Grand' Place and a jazz concert in progress. It was Benny Goodman sort of stuff that the Americans brought over during World War II. It sort of took root and flourished. I guess if Vietnam had been fought in the Ardennes then the concert would have featured 'Light My Fire' and 'Horse with No Name.'
The three of them sat down under the Gothic arch of the Hotel de Ville. I, on the other hand, had a momentary panic. I discovered my trip log was not in my pocket. Second only to my passport, the most valuable thing I take with me on a trip is a log which is a draft of the document you are currently reading. I write impressions as I go along I could never recapture later. Even my photographs don't recapture my impressions as well as does my log. Then there's the priceless record of puns. Or is it valueless?
I went back to the room--it was really only about a three-block walk--and found my log open on the bed. I grabbed it. On the way back I was helpful to a group of Canadian tourists who were in the lobby of our hotel and asking if the Atomium was from a World's Fair or something. I told them.
Back at the square I found our party and listened to the jazz concert a while. While we were there Dale dropped his walking stick three times until I helpfully put my foot on it, pinning it to the ground. Evelyn appreciated the thought, I think.
Singing with the Brussels Big Band was a woman who really belted out the songs. A look with our binoculars told us that she was Chinese. Imagine a Chinese Ethel Merman. The mind boggles. While the convert was on, Evelyn and I danced a little. A couple behind us on the stairs made love and it seemed like a Belgian Woodstock. However, all good things must come to an end and the jazz concert did also. When it ended the light show on the Hotel de Ville started. We saw it from right on the steps of the building and it was somewhat impressive. Finally our last entertainment item came to an end. We went for ice cream, then bade Dale and Jo adieu. They were staying in Europe another six days, either to return to the Netherlands or to see Luxembourg. But for us there was only the trip home.
I kept myself up till about 2 AM in the hopes I would make myself sleep on the plane. It didn't really work.
|
This is the day of the trip I would be happiest to do without. There is nothing but travel pains and at the end of it you are just back to normal. I guess the way that sounds best to me to get home is how they do it in science fiction films. You put yourself in suspended animation and when you wake up, you are home. Of course, that is easy for them; they don't have a bunch of connections to make and all their luggage is checked. Not that checking luggage is such a great idea either, but at least you don't have to carry it around the way we had to lug our luggage, first to the Metro, then to a train. We travel light but it is almost impossible to travel light enough so that much lugging does not get to be a real pain. We bid our last farewell to the Metro stations. They are decorated so nicely with all the Jean Claude Van Damme posters for a film called WRONG BET. I don't know how much they paid to have all the Metro stations filled with pictures of this big, beefy, greasy guy in a sleeveless undershirt standing in a train yard, but it is in every Metro station at least twenty times. Skran tells me that Van Damme is from Brussels and is sort of a local hero. His nickname is 'The Muscles of Brussels.'
Speaking of unappetizing-looking men, there are also a lot of ads for a woman's hairspray called 'Taft.' Somehow the name Taft conjures up in my mind more pictures of a certain United States President who, not to put too fine a point on it, was supremely chunky. His picture is not exactly what one would want associated with a beauty product. I would say that in the United States you could not get away with a name like Taft on a beauty product, but now that I think about it, how many Americans can even picture Taft any more? I mean the President, not the hairspray.
The vending machines in the train station were of some interest. They have coffee machines like we do but they have special buttons labeled 'dosage' for you to choose how much milk and sugar to put in. When you order coffee (and I don't but Evelyn does) you get a device above the cup that it drips through so you get drip coffee.
The train trip back was uneventful. I bought my third and final Belgian waffle on the train. In Belgian society, waffles have pretty much the same place that doughnuts have in ours. The trip, incidentally, was to Schipol, the airport near Amsterdam. Just so I didn't fall asleep I set the countdown timer on my watch to count to our scheduled arrival time. As it turned out, we actually arrived at Schipol a little ahead of schedule--about twenty seconds. Since we'd been intentionally over-cautious in our scheduling, we found ourselves with about three and a half hours on our hands. We sat writing next to a nice couple with a baby. I am not sure what nationality they were, almost definitely something Islamic. My best guess is that they were Turkish. I made faces at the baby to keep her entertained. The couple spoke French but not English. Oh, one clue to their nationality. Both the mother and the baby seemed to have their palms and fingernails painted red. Maybe someone reading this log will know why. At one point they got up, leaving their luggage behind. I really wish they hadn't done that. I don't care how innocent they looked, it is not a good idea to leave unattended bags. As I was worrying I noticed the mother and child returned.
There is not much point in describing the next hour or so since it was fairly typical of any airport. We hastily spent the last of our money. About the only real memorable incident was that KLM impounded our walkie-talkies. We still are not sure if they thought we'd use them and they'd cause interference or if KLM thought they could possibly be some sort of detonators.
The flight was a long and dull one in very cramped quarters. Dinner was fish in a cream sauce that was only mediocre. The crew had some problems with English. 'Tea?' asked the stewardess. 'I'll take some,' said Evelyn. 'Do you have any lemon?' Evelyn asked. 'You're welcome,' she was told as the stewardess continued on. The movie was BIRD ON A WIRE. The fish was better. Time was when I would really love to fly. Anywhere. Any time. Then I got bigger and the seats got smaller. Under the false assumption that people don't like to be reminded that they are flying, they have made the windows tiny so only those who sit in the window seats can look out.
We had taken off about an hour late due, they said, to catering problems. Well, they always attribute it to something that sounds safe but uncomfortable. You never hear them say, 'We'll be a little late because we are patching cracks in the left wing and the fuselage.' I know I'd be really understanding if they did announce that. I'd tell them to go ahead and take the time to do the job right.
Anyway we arrived late by 45 minutes, got basically waved through the passport check and figured we were getting the time made up. Then they put us on the same carousel as a jumbo jet from Ireland. Their stuff got unloaded first. It was seventy minutes or so before our first piece of luggage showed up on the carousel. It was a mess with a lot of people milling around and it was very difficult to get to the belt to get our luggage. Customs was also just a wave-trough. Our ride was there and we went home.
Almost all that was left was the jet lag. It has been my tradition to wake up the first night home after a trip and not know where I am. Not only do I think I am still in the country I came from, I don't even think I am in bed there. The night I got back from China I woke up in the Reed Flute Cave near Guilin. This time I was in a Belgian church.
Evelyn doesn't have that problem, but she has another one I have. She wakes up alert, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed in the morning. Then she looks at her watch and discovers it is 1:30 AM. You can force yourself to stay awake when you're tired much more easily than you can force yourself to sleep when you're wide awake.
So Holland or Belgium? Which country is better to visit? Well, probably Holland had the edge. It was certainly more expensive in Belgium to do most things, especially eating. In Holland people seem to be happier and more optimistic. In Belgium the people seem more bland. Holland also seems cleaner, with Belgium seeming more dingy. As Americans, it is much easier to get along with English in Holland than in Belgium. Belgian people do try to use English with Americans, but the Dutch seem more familiar with English. Holland has a greater selection of cuisines to choose from. At least while we were there, the climate was nicer. The country seems to make things easier for tourists with one price for all tickets for things like the trams and museums. On the other hand, the most interesting museums we saw were in Brussels and they were free. Another advantage in Brussels is that you could more easily get local cuisine. I think in the Netherlands it is easier to get Indonesian food than Dutch. Finally, the historical sites are much better in Belgium. That may be because the Netherlands was a country of merchants to the world while Belgium provided the world with battlefields. It seems as if time and again two foreign armies would clash on Belgian soil. I suppose the fear of foreign armies could have made all the difference.
THE END
|
|
| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
|
 |
| Other travelogues by the same author: |
|
|
|
