Riding home from class again

Riding my borrowed bicycle home tonight was nice.  Since the October time change it gets dark early, and the coolness of day spreads unflinchingly into cold night.  This was one of those nights of undeniable mist, which was already seeping from the fields as soon as the sun stopped fighting, and by my homeward ride at nine thirty it was thick and lovable.

It lurked in that unique irresistible stillness of heavy mist.  The occasional car shwooshing past was oblivious and didn’t belong, like litter fallen out of passing spaceships cruising through our solar system on their way to someplace less beautiful.

The season has turned, and acorns no longer pop beneath my tires.  The only sound is the steady whine of the bike-light, which true to its Belgian heritage is slightly different and/or more advanced than what I am used to.  It has no battery, instead powered by the small wheel which presses against the rim of the front tire and turns as I ride.

The light stops as soon as I do, and walking it into the garage set behind our building is not enough motion to really get going, so I always look to see the ghouls hiding in the back among the forgotten rubbish of forgotten tenants, expecting them to skitter away from the wetly dismembered corpses they feed on, but they are staunch and hold mostly motionless among the moist cardboard, dried paint cans and rusting bicycles.

But while I ride the light shines proudly, warning drivers of my presence.  Belgian drivers have impressed me over and over with their awareness of and respect for cyclists.

I pass repeating scenes of square brick houses resolutely bare of adornments, and open fields where soil fraternizes familiarly with pools of rainwater in the furrows, at night the puddles a quietly confident navy blue that would be mistaken for black if it weren’t for the dirt proving the point.

The corn is all harvested down to stubble stalks now.  But only a week or so ago I passed a beautiful nightmare as a looming threshing machine annihilated a field of dry corn stalks.  It was mechanical thunder in the air, menacing power filtering in fleeing shadows between fear-rooted corn stalks as flood lights stripped away all resistance.  If a human walked into the front of that thing it would briefly make a slightly different noise and there would be a splash in an unexpected direction and the driver would probably not notice.

Brussels Flea Market

Yesterday was a good day.  I got up at 2:30, morning still distantly in utero, to listen to the Giants win the World Series, which culminated at 3:30 just as the alarm was going off for Katrien and I to start our day-trip to the flea market in Brussels.  I ate my cereal and drank my green tea and I listened to interviews with the nostalgic giant Giants of my past, specifically Will Clark.  I bet his bald spot was shining proudly.  I wonder if he was wearing eye black?

Misty pre-dawn ride to Brussels in the camionette/fulgonetta/van, hips pressed close on the bench seat’s chilly upholstery and the ubiquitous lingering of cigarettes past.  Still streets of brick buildings with the rare, one or two, pedestrian looking confused at the solitude of Halloween’s non-event here.  A red devil mannequin sat on a bench, with a sign around his neck declaring the Halloween party sold-out, his plastic face wet with dew.

It was All Soul’s Day, November 2, and Brussels was waking up a little later than usual on this bureaucrat-inclusive holiday.  We passed a bus stop with a man sitting inexplicably and smoking in the paltry shelter of the plastic panel and pulled up to the curb opposite the small plaza where the daily market happens.

It was just after 5:00 AM, the trucks of flea market rubble had not yet arrived, so time for a drink in the café.  Green tea for myself and Katrien, coffee for the others at our table, beer for everyone else in the room.  The proprietor was a mountain of a man, with pockets the size of backpacks on the expansive backside of his jeans under a blue T-shirt with a dark ring of sweat around the neck and spreading from the arm pits; we were bundled in jackets, scarves, and gloves, he was a caloric wonderhouse.  His sweat’s domain grew as he served occasional beers.  I drank my tea and tried not to think about salt.

At no visible signal or glance at a watch our table stood up in lax military precision and headed out into the plaza where the first trucks were belching broken plates, warped records, and tarnished faucets onto the cobblestones.  The Regulars were already flitting between piles, flashlights in hand flicking around piles as they grew, impatience and the lust for Their Deal driving them sometimes to climb right up into the truck itself, wending between the unloaders talking at each other in rapid Arabic.

Most sellers also spoke French, and could probably understand Dutch, but Arabic was their comfortable language.  I shudder at the thought of the bitterness that must have sat rancid in this place as the traditionalists gave way to the new crowd.  The wailing and trills of Al Manar Radio’s mijwiz, qanun, and durbakke replacing traditional Belgian music; did you know the saxophone was invented in Belgium?

I cannot imagine the transition from Raymond van het Groenewoud to Mohammed Abdel Wahab went without rancor in this somehow simultaneously impressively multi-cultural and tragically prejudiced country.

We wound from pile to pile, Katrien catching Flea Market Fever’s irrational fear of losing a deal to someone else and flitting off authentically while I meandered about, taking pictures and trying without success to detect if doing so was pissing anyone off.  I  37% suspect it was.

Three hours later I was tired and the sun finally lightened the sky in the brief gap of time between one pile of clutter and the next, and Katrien had bought a retro, red, two levelled table-thingy that we are now deciding whether to put next to the sofa or the fridge.  As a frequent partaker of hot cups of tea, I favour the sofa.

We witnessed the clientele shift with the day’s arrival, the wreckage aficionados disappearing like vampires who would never make Twilight casting were replaced by dog walkers and idlers who picked through disinterestedly.

We clambered back into the van, pulled up to load our driver’s purchases, a sliding-front podium-desk-thing, a 10 euro table that can hopefully be trimmed and revarnished to resell for 50, and a baby seat for the new niece, then headed home.

A nap, a trip to the high-tech gym, and a casual birthday party for Katrien’s sister rounded out the day and I went to bed happy, eyes ready to close, tongue reminiscing of good wine, and muscles adequately loose-tired from the rowing machine.

Clearing my blog clog and seeing what comes tumbling out

Well I’ve certainly run out of blogging steam, haven’t I?  I suppose this is okay given that this was supposed to be a travel blog and I am not travelling right now, so I would tend to post opinionated rants which I would fear lean generic and would most likely make my mother cry, and since she is 50% of my confirmed readership (en ook goede dag Chris!) and I am hoping for a ride from/to the airport in a couple weeks, I probably shouldn’t upset her.

The only thing I’ve typed in the last couple months, a discussion of religion that degenerated into a diatribe against Christianity.  That would definitely make her cry.  Shit.

Most things I felt like talking about fit in a facebook status update.  Like my embarrassment that gay marriage is still such a controversy in America.  How can people still claim that its legalization will lead to the decay of society when the world is splattered with countries that have legalized it and not suffered one iota of moral decay because of it.  (Pot and hookers were already legal in Amsterdam, just for the record, though I would contest their characterization as decay also, but that’s another post.)

Even Spain legalized gay marriage 5 years ago, and this is the country that still hasn’t realized you can put something on a sandwich other than ham.  I love Spain, though I think the custom of men wearing thongs and strutting is indicative of a certain lack of subtlety and patience, no?

I give Spain credit for something else too, although the decision was made by a court in Luxembourg, in true inscrutable European Union fashion…

Dads in Spain are now entitled to Breastfeeding Leave.  This is awesome, albeit initially ridiculous.

The idea is for fathers to have more time to bond with the child and help the mothers.  What’s better are the court’s words that not giving fathers this time would be “liable to perpetuate a traditional distribution of the roles of men and women by keeping men in a role subsidiary to that of women in relation to the exercise of their parental duties.”

That’s beautiful.  So men should be allowed to be just as active in parental duties.  Hopefully this will extend to a mindset that they also be expected to do so.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=74928

Back to school

It’s not really raining in my part of Belgium tonight. Just that pittering of tiny drops on your face. Cricket morse code, beginning tap dance class for lovable spiders, limited engagement precipitation which only shows up quicking under a street lamp, making facet instants on the gutter water, and those pecks on your cheeks.


Riding home I pass through and over sounds and smells that are coming to mean Belgium to me. The honest reek of a field soaked in horse urine, the stink grown mossy and powerful in the damp, like incense in an ancient cult that’s going to take a lot of getting used to. The pop of acorn husks under my tires. When I get to the rich oil smell of the fries-shop, I know I am almost home. Just come abreast of the pharmacy with its sleepless and standard electric sign chanting the time and temperature religiously in little green dots like a Night Bright, then I’m home.

I am coming back from class. The first time I realized I needed to go to bed early because it was a school night I felt a chuckling nostalgia for the grimace that came back with surprising familiarity after all these years. School.

So I am a student again. I bought a textbook with matching workbook. I bike to class on Mondays and carpool on Tuesdays. I bring two pens, a pencil, and a notebook, though I generally scribble any notes in the book’s margins. I need to buy more lead for my mechanical pencil before it runs out.

I am taking Dutch classes at a local night school with all the other immigrants and mail order brides. This tongue-tied community is deepening my welcome to Belgium with their Filipino names, Cuban gold teeth, Polish haircuts, Romanian giggles, Dominican accents, Congolese cool, Armenian eyebrows, and ridiculously broad Latvian shoulders. The Eastern Europeans came for work, the Latin Americans married Belgians and moved here, and there is a rumor that the Congolese guy plays semi-professional soccer, which may explain his customary absence.

Our skill levels span a decent range of the very bottom of the scale. I think the Spanish speakers have it the hardest, especially since the Cuban and Dominican accents heavily aspirate (to the point of deleting) “s” and the ends of syllables, which just doesn’t fly in Dutch. And none of us are proficient at the Dutch “u” sound, where we almost always replace it with “oe.”

But spirits are generally high, though Tomasz the Pole still whines horribly at any sliver of homework, and also-Polish Bogdan’s absences are competing with Congolese Tchite’s. Bogdan’s wife still comes to class, and I wonder how long she can keep up her explanations for his absence; he has gone from sick to working late to breaking an ankle playing soccer. But that’s probably okay because when he did come he refused to take notes, insisting that his wife was doing it for him.

Oh and one time, Tomasz, the whiner, on his first day actually, knowing full well when class ends interrupted the teacher with 6 minutes left to say “isn’t it time to leave?” I thought that was about the balsiest stunt I’ve ever seen from a student.

But other than those couple humorous Poles, the class is sweethearts. There is Shushanit, from Armenië whose husband has finally stopped patrolling the hallway outside the class with their daughter all three hours. I suspect she is the best Dutch-speaker in the class but she is so soft-spoken it is hard to say. Or the other Armenian woman, Lilit, whose eyes are always laughing. I biked home with Romans from Latvia the other day, whose bicycle has no brakes, and though I couldn’t understand all of his enthusiastic English I enjoyed the company. Eduardo from Cuba had a son born two days ago. I think Traian has a crush on Ewelina.

So even though the class moves pretty slowly, I am happy to be there, watching my classmates, learning the language, integrating with my new...home?

How do you tell?

How do you tell if someone’s opinion is just different from yours, from when they are a cold, calculating, vile, Cheney-like human being?

Today’s case: the people who say investing in Green Energy is bad for business and the economy, insisting that the staff of their oil rigs outweigh everyone else, and meanwhile China is cornering the market on solar panels and wind turbines in an industry providing well over one MILLION jobs. (1.3 according to this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html)

In California right now, Texan oil companies have spent 7.9 million dollars (out of 8.2 raised) on a proposition eliminating a clean energy bill we passed in 2006, and they are expected to spend even more as the election approaches. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/17pollute.html?_r=1&hp) They are trying the same old scare tactics to justify their blatant self interest (at the expense of the REST OF THE WORLD) by saying the initiative will cost jobs and raise gas prices. Boogedy boogedy.

Do they know about those million jobs China has added to produce solar panels and wind turbines?  Do they realize they are full of shit or do they actually believe themselves?

I just don’t get it. They are a profanely rich oil company. The move towards renewable energy has to happen. It is going to happen. If not here, then elsewhere. It will create a massive amount of jobs, and be the economy of the future, with the fringe benefit of, you know, saving our fucking lives. The mind-shatteringly obvious question is “why don’t THEY do the work?” I understand selfishness, especially in a corporation where it is built into the fundamental charter, but why doesn’t Valero invest those 4 million dollars in making wind turbines instead of running manipulative TV commercials? Poor Valero, they want so hard to be the shiniest emblem in Satan’s porno magazine, but that damn BP is just too good at what they do.
Yuck, I can’t talk about this anymore right now. But I gotta say, if California passes this initiative and kills the (honestly fairly mild) green energy bill we passed four years ago... Nevermind. Optimism! It is a beautiful day!  Think about kittens!

And technologies are getting better. Like cars (looking for that silver lining pretty hard here). Did you know you don’t have to change your oil every 3,000 miles anymore? Cars have gotten better, and, depending on how severe of conditions you drive in, you can easily wait 5,000 or even 10,000 between changes.

Here, and I recommend the one about loading your washing machine and dishwasher properly too. (Yes, I was clearly browsing the NY Times while eating lunch today.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/your-money/11shortcuts.html?src=me&ref=business

Amerikan Kebabologist Discovers New Species

Amerikan Kebaboligist reports discovery of new species
By Harvey von Nubbinbubbler, AP


BRUSSELS - American Kebabologist Doctor Timothy Tendick is reporting in the current issue of the presitigious Kebablife Quarterly Journal the discovery of a previously unsuspected species of kebab.

The new find is said to dwarf all previously catalogued species of kebab, though no exact measurements have so far been released. According to Doctor Tendick “we took one look at this thing and knew we had discovered something...well...big. It was radically different from the conventional understandings and assumptions of kebabology.” There are apparently several key differences, but one above all made the case clear for Doctor Tendick’s team. “The bread is totally different too, but it took us awhile to notice that because shit man, have you seen the thing?”

The kebab was locally assumed to be a common Chicken Kebab, also called a Poulet Kebab, after the great Luxembourgian Kebabologist Dr. Ivan Poulet.

The mega-kebab was discovered in a small town in the Flanders region of Belgium. Experts say this makes the find even more stunning, given that Belgium is in the heart of Western Europe, traditionally known as the kebab’s primary habitat. Most kebabologists had considered this area well mapped with regards to kebabular variety, but, according to Doctor Ignatius P. Wallyflower this makes the mega-kebab’s discovery actually somewhat less surprising, since the prevalence of kebab species in the area and the tremendous success with which they have propagated in this region make such mutation all the more likely.

“And this thing is definitely not a product of normal evolution, which is glacially slow. No, that baby is a mutant.” asserted Wallyflower, whose pupils remained dilated the entire interview.

The discovery took longer than normal to report because the initial investigation was unable to fully plumb the depths of the new species. According to Doctor Tendick “We left after the first trials exhausted and feeling kind of greasy, but the dedication to kebabology is not something to be put on the shelf in the fridge and forgotten, so at the first opportunity we were back in this thing, elbow deep, although it took most of a bag of salad greens and a cut up tomato to make the research possible.”

This is not the first time Doctor Tendick, also a professor at the European Academie for the Teaching of Ingestible Things (EAT IT) has discovered a new species. In 2009 he discovered the now infamous Apparently-All-Chicken-Skin Kebab in southern Spain. His reputation was tarnished later that year however when he claimed to have discovered another new form, which he called the That-Was-A-Horrible-Mistake Kebab. Authorities examined his taxonomy and declared it a Common Kebab. But this find in Belgium, if authenticated, should jump him right back to the top of the (unnaturally homogenous colored) heap in kebab epidemiology.

“My team was really unprepared for a find of this magnitude. I mean, I can barely carry the damn thing.” Admitted Doctor Tendick, seen below posing, like a goober, with the kebab, which is even larger than his also-famously-oversized noggin.

Border Crossing and Zambia

Traveling is full of different challenges from back home.  Taking public transport when you don’t know the language, the system, or any of the place names.  Bartering properly, which changes between countries.  Ordering food when you have no idea what any of it is. (Just do it! Play the culinary lottery! I love this one!)

And of course, border crossings.

Crossing from South Africa to Botswana involved a moderate amount of bureaucracy, a couple forms, a couple stamps.  The best part was when a guard peered in the window and saw the copy of Obama’s The Audacity of Hope that I was reading and came around to talk to me about it.  Despite his not speaking English, we got by on a few words, several smiles, and a big thumbs up.  (We would continue to see Obama bags, posters, and shirts throughout Africa...it is a better time to be an American.)  As we were leaving, another guard looked at our friend Lisa’s shirt, which had kind of a sherbet-colored swirl of reds and oranges and said in a soft, deep voice “I like your shirt, I want to eat it.”  We laughed and smiled politely and drove on up the road.

I crossed the border between Zambia and Tanzania on a train, sweating and gritting my teeth because I had substantial food poisoning and you can’t use the toilets (which are just holes in the ground over a short curved tube) when the train is stopped...particularly when the train is surrounded by women and children selling bananas, casava root, and balls of clay to passengers.  The clay is apparently to clean out your digestive tract...maybe I should have bought two.

We crossed from Botswana to Zambia at the Kazungula ferry over the Zambezi River.  The Botswana side was only a little waiting, filling out forms, and stamping, then we drove down to the river, past a mile-long line of trucks waiting about a day to cross.  Luckily cars cut to the front.  The ferry is a rickety platform of splintered planks falling into dust, and the rustiest, oil-leakingest motor I have ever seen hanging off the side.  It fits a couple trucks at a time, and when loaded unevenly the entire thing has tipped, killing everyone on board. Oh, and the river is full of crocodiles and hippos too, just for comic book good measure. Crocodilicious.

There were two trucks on the ferry when we drove up, and they gestured us on behind them, where our van basically fit, though when the ramp was lifted it also lifted the little trailer.  The poor thing looked kind of embarrassed, like it was at the Zambian proctologist.

There was a guard in camouflage walking around with a Kalashnikov, looking very conscious of the fact that if anyone actually made trouble for the ferry he would be desperately out-gunned.  Although the truck drivers might be able to back him up.  He stopped me from taking a picture, but turned out it was because he wanted to be in it.

On the Zambian side trucks sat in the central African heat and dust, piled with jagged scrap metal, massive pipes for the mines, and who knows what else, going through a mysterious and largely invisible process to get their cargo across the border.  Luckily a local guy just happened to be there, yup, to help us, guiding us from office to office to pay our entry fee at Immigration, and get our entry stamp, and then our Customs and Excise stamp, and then pay the Counselor Fee, and then pay the Carbon Tax, and then pay the Road Toll Tax, and then get Third Party Insurance, which involved substantially more negotiation than your local State Farm Agent.  And no, I did not make any of those up.

While my two valiant compatriots were navigating this web of suspicious extravagance, I was our security guard and spent the three hours standing in the dust by our van and trailer, though I left my Kalashnikov at home.

First was a hustler-vendor, who wanted to sell me tourist kitsch, and to whom I eventually traded the hat I never wore for a safari mask.  Then there was a group of children, girls aged maybe 6 years old?  They had trays and baskets of brown bananas and a few small apples to sell to truckers, though I never saw anyone buy; their playground the massive dusty tires of semi trucks.  We stood in the shade of a shipment of mining equipment and looked at each other, my attempts at communication invariably met with indulgent smiles and clipped answers of “yes, yes” no matter what I said.

I gave them some of our carrots.  We smiled some more.  A prostitute walked over and climbed into the cab of the truck.  We all just kept standing there and smiling at each other while the stagnant stream of activity seeped along.  It was bizarre and heart-breaking.

AIDS is killing its second generation in Africa, and there, just above and behind the heads of these children, maybe it was taking another victim, adding another link.  This stretch of highway through Africa is sometimes referred to as “The Corridor of Death,” as truckers drive up and down it, going to prostitutes and spreading the disease wherever they go.  Condoms are still a concept for NGOs, not daily people, and the spirit world is credited and blamed for many ailments, from Robert Mugabe’s power to the symptoms we would recognize as AIDS.

I stood by these children, totally overwhelmed and helpless in front of the situation, wishing I could spend a lifetime talking to them.  Instead we just stood in the dust and the heat and the noise.  They were no different than before she climbed into the cab, such things are everyday there.

A new voice behind me said in the slow slur of the drugged “hey man, howzit,” the South African slang for “how is it (going).” I looked at his bloodshot eyes, stained thick yellow by disease, then back towards the children. They were gone, leaving a tray of bruised bananas in the dust.

He proceeded to spend an interminable hour trying to sell me drugs and bum stuff off me, his speech barely intelligible and gaze unfocused. Once he found out we were headed to an orphanage he told me about a daughter he had, and how she needed some of our stuff and my money. He tried until we were literally driving away. The kids never came back to get the tray.