| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
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In fact I give it a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale, mostly due to some decent visual design by the comic artist Moebius. The story had touches in the range from okay to wretched. Some of the problems with visualization would have been okay in a foreign film (such as THE NEVERENDING STORY), but I think were considered sub-standard in an American film, which hardly seems fair. It is not a film I will ever want to see again, but I am glad to have had a chance to see it this once.
Finally came the closing ceremonies. No really special guests except the guests of honor. Then the 1990 Worldcon was over. Evelyn looked around for Dale and Jo in order to do something with them in the afternoon. They were not around so we went back to the hotel. We had previously arranged to meet them for dinner anyway. After freshening up at the room, Kate, Evelyn, and I went walking around Scheveningen just to see the boardwalk. By about 4 PM we were ready for a snack so Evelyn and I had pan au chocolate and Kate had a grilled cheese and pineapple sandwich. In Europe cheese and pineapple seem to be a pretty standard combination. Pineapple is even a standard ingredient for pizza. After that we walked on the boardwalk looking at junky souvenir shops. Then we went back to the room and Evelyn napped while I wrote. At 6 we went out to the boardwalk again and met dale and Jo for dinner. We chose an Italian place. I had grilled fish. I should get back into the habit of eating fish. In this part of the world fish seems to be a specialty and meat dishes are not. Fish is, of course, also healthier. The five of us went to a very nice Italian restaurant with occasionally too loud live music. This was our last night in Holland and we toasted Holland. I did have a minor distraction through dinner. I am not sure what it is about Holland but the mix of backgrounds seems to give rise occasionally to some women of stunning beauty. We had a waitress at a fast food place who looked like a young Ingrid Bergman. A woman who sat across the way from me at this restaurant was just as good-looking. I am not usually a girlwatcher but it was hard not to look over occasionally. There have been four or five such attractive women I have seen here in a week. At home I wouldn't see that many I find that attractive in a year.
After dinner we returned to the hotel for discussion of what we'd do in Belgium. Kate recommended that Dale get his knee xrayed. He probably will do that. We went to bed around midnight.
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I was up by about 6:30 AM and Kate by 7; Evelyn slept in until 8 however. About 9 we went down for breakfast. I should, I suppose, mention what a pain the key situation is in Holland and Belgium. It is impossible to lock your key in your room because you need the key to lock and unlock your door. That means you are safest leaving your key in the door at night since if there is a fire you will need the key to get out. It also means that you have to remember to lock your door from the outside when you leave. All room and building locks seem to work the same here.
This was the day we'd planned to go to the Municipal Museum of the Hague. (I never did know why Hague got the article 'the' by the way. I suppose it is like 'the Kremlin.' But I cannot think of any other cities you do that for. You don't tell someone, 'I am going to The Pittsburgh.') Anyway, we had head the museum had rooms upon rooms of abstract art. Because of that and because we did not know what the hotel situation would be in Brussels, we decided to skip the museum and get on to the next country.
We went to the same station we'd left (after saying good-bye to Kate, who was kind of down to be going back home and to work). We bought our ticket and went to platform three. At about ten minutes before the train was due, it pulled into the station. I got on and asked, 'Brussels?' No, it was going to someplace else I've forgotten, but I could change there for Brussels. Wrong train. I heard the doors start to close and dashed out the door. You don't board a train, even an international train, ten minutes early because it isn't ten minutes early into the station. Another train came and went before the Brussels train, which arrived the minute it was supposed to and stayed for a minute or two more. I would love to have transportation that precise in our country. At work we waste an amazing amount of time because people show up to meetings ten minutes late and everyone waits. Arriving late has become a way of saying, 'My time is more important than yours.' The way to avoid sitting around waiting is to arrive late yourself. Then other people arrive even later. My friends think that I have a sort of bugaboo about punctuality. Actually, it is somewhat less so since I have taken to carrying magazine articles with me. If someone had kept me waiting, I pull out a magazine article and get that reading done while I am waiting. And when I travel I pull out my trip log and write a paragraph. But that takes effort I would rather not spend and would not if trains and people were as punctual as these trains.
The train itself is hot and noisy. If you open a window, it gets noisier; if you close it, it gets hotter.
It was a kind of hazy day. I saw my second traditional windmill, but only from a great distance. We are not really spending our time where the famous windmills are. I have seen a few of the more modern wind machines, but those don't really count.
The land you pass is mostly farmland with an occasional city such as Rotterdam. You cannot see much from the train but a few big buildings in the distance. After about two and a half hours we got to Brussels.
So there we were in the Brussels train station. Sitting in the station with our luggage. Now what? I left Evelyn with the luggage and went to scout but found nothing. It turns out there was an information stand not far from where we were, but it was only for train information. Nonetheless they were able to point out a real tourist information office only about four blocks away. So we set out, dragging our heavy luggage, trying to find the place. We were following two other tourists who were directed by the office. It took a fair amount of trial and error before we found the office, which with the heavy luggage and the heat wave with 90 8o 9+ temperatures was no picnic. The tourist office found us a place to stay only a few blocks away near the center of town and near Metro stations for Dale's knee. They just wanted a chunk of money up front for finding it and we didn't have a Belgian franc to our name. We asked if they took Visa. No Visa. But there was a bank nearby in which we could get a loan on the Visa. Rule for the future: first thing you do in a new country is get some of the local currency.
So the room was straightened out. We started dragging our luggage through what was apparently a street but what looked at one end to be a dangerous alley. It had the ominous name Rue des Bouchers. Scary stuff, huh? It turned out to be nothing but a string of one tempting restaurant after another. Deadly to diets. The specialty is mussel dishes. But there is all sorts of seafood
Following the instructions we found our hotel, the Hotel Opera. We are near the opera house and a lot of concerns locally have 'opera' in their name. There is a bar called the Opera Drug. We also saw La Pharmacie de la Opera. I started humming to myself to the tune of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA:
We have your aspirin needs And laxatives. And if you get nervous We've sedatives.
Anyway, we got to our room and found it hot but tiny. The hallways are dark with timed light switches to give you two minutes of light. That seems to be an idea used a lot here to save power. Escalators look to be broken and start running only when you start to step on.
The room itself is too small to open the doors of the cupboard. The bathroom puts a spring in your step because the linoleum has warped an inch or so over the real floor. Ironically, the toilet works with type 0 actions. The whole room shook with the noise of a workman drilling somewhere. All this for just about $60 American/night. I guess location is everything. We freshened up and went out to see Brussels. Evelyn wanted first thing to get a drink and she bought an iced tea in a can from a vendor. Surprise! Ever heard of carbonated iced tea?
I think it is time to mention the city of Brussels' tragedy. It becomes very quickly apparent to any sightseer and it is very sad indeed. Sometime around 1963 somebody must have brought a model building into the country without getting it inspected by customs officials. It was infested with a dangerous pest, the Scaffold Moth. Just one moment with their guard down and this treacherous insect got into the country. Now it is almost impossible to look at even a few of the city's historic buildings without seeing the unsightly reminders of this horrible insect. I would say at least one in three historic buildings has been enshrouded in ugly scaffolding hiding its beauty from the viewer. The Town Hall's great tower is encased, of course. These scaffolding cocoons seem to cover just about any building you want to see.
Near our hotel the streets are very narrow. The awnings from the restaurants on each side reach to each other and at some points are no more than eighteen inches apart. Brussels is an international city, the headquarters of NATO, so it is relatively easy to get by with English, but not quite as easy as it was in Holland.
Our first destination was the majestic Grand' Place, a large marketplace in the center of town. In Mexico it would be called the zocalo. There are two huge buildings. One is the Hotel de Ville but nobody stays overnight because it is really the Town Hall. It was built between 1402 and 1410. It has a tower 300 feet tall and, like many of the local buildings built to the French and German taste, it is jaw-droppingly garish. How many people you know decide their Town Hall would not be complete without gargoyles? This building has herds of them. The architect felt it there was a square foot of surface space without a statue getting in the way of seeing the building then hornets would feast on his flesh.
Second prize for bad taste goes to the garish Maison du Roi. It is also done in the Notre Dame style. If we'd wanted to see that style, we would have gone to see Notre Dame. Actually, the style was of some interest so we went to see Notre Dame. In this case it was Notre Dame de la Chapelle. It was about three blocks away. Here it was, a Gothic cathedral here in the heart of the future capital of Europe! (Not such a big surprise, but I did want to throw in some drama at this point.) It supposedly has a very nice facade. Unfortunately, there is not much that can be seen at this point because scaffold moths have been at work cocooning the whole place in scaffolding and plastic so there is not much to see. Evelyn said we really should see some churches this trip since we'd seen five synagogues so far. Apparently the Jewish Historical Museum was made from four synagogues. It is not a synagogue any more, I'd say. And even if it was, we'd still have about 87 synagogues to go until we'd seen even numbers.
Well, we wanted to see a cathedral without all the scaffolding so we thought we'd try the town's biggest and brightest and most devout. This is the Cathedral of St. Michael. Just getting in to see it costs 250 Fr. That is more than a movie costs in the United States. How kind of the church to charge the locals only the paltry sum of 250 Fr. to see what the church bought with the collection plate funds! On the outside, of course, the building was being mercilessly ravaged by scaffold moths. We did not go in.
In the time remaining we just walked the streets. We passed a bank that had a very tasteful statue of Noah counting the animals. |
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