February 28, 2004

Hello all,

Since I last wrote, I have taken my second 15 km hike in the Belgian countryside, making me a hiker I think.  Well, proving the first one was more than a one-off anyway. Again, afterwards I was pleased to find myself behind a large plate of pork, this time, the two largest slices of bacon I’d ever seen, perched happily on a pile of mashed potatoes, carrots, turnip and bacon fat, lightly sweetened, all with a beer, for the low price of 3.50 euro ($5 Cdn give or take). Later that day, my landlady cooked a roast of pork and although I wasn’t able to attend dinner due to a rehearsal, she left me a piece of crackling in my apartment for a bedtime snack. Heaven!

Last weekend, I took the Eurostar to England, and spent a lovely weekend at my aunt and uncle’s place.  They are great hosts and I always have good time with them. They also hosted a couple of cousins for dinner, giving me a chance to catch up a bit. Anne (my father’s sister) is a fellow cellist, so we had some fun playing. It was great to be in London again - it has the energy of a real city and makes Brussels seem very small in comparison. The Eurostar, while terribly convenient, at 2.5 hours from central Brussels to central London, is a bit of an anti-climax.  I don’t think I was quite expecting to descend into the Channel in a glass tunnel but I had somehow hoped to at least be able to SEE water at some point.

This week I had dinner out twice: once at a house party of Canadians and Irish, where I met a couple of other interns and spent a great deal of time discussing life as an ex-pat - a major pre-occupation for most of the Brussels population I have met! The second dinner was with a former ICLEI colleague and good friend from the European Secretariat in Germany. It was great to chat with him and reflect on how much as happened at ICLEI and to me since I left less than two years ago.

Next weekend I am off to Lille (just over the French border) with Bettina and John (my landlady and her husband) to a chamber music workshop. I am preparing one of the Vivaldi sonatas to “perfect” while there. John, a bassoonist, will play basso continuo and we have arranged to with a pianist too. I am really looking forward to it!

Tips on how to be spotted as a Canadian:

1. Sit in a restaurant ordering food in marginal French while reading a Margaret Atwood novel. You are bound to be asked which part of (English) Canada you are from. And then of course, since they will be from Toronto too, you discuss how much you miss the Beaches.

2. Laugh in spite of yourself at the ineptitude of winter driving - longing to say: “three tips - don’t use your accelerator, don’t use your break, don’t use your steering wheel” but not having the French vocabulary to do so. (we have had a little bout of winter in the last few days which brought most of Brussels to a stand-still yesterday morning)

3. Without thinking, put the can of salmon with “from Canada” on its lid into your shopping basket.

4. Not notice for weeks how out of place the car on the street with University of Ottawa emblazoned on its rear window is!

My linguistic observations of the week:

1. My all-time favourite Commission-English expression is now “invalidity pension”. To Canadians, this is equivalent to long-term disability insurance, but doesn’t it sound much more dire when transited from the French invalidite?

2. Trainees or interns at the Commissioner are referred to by the French moniker “stagiere”. I however was recently referred to by an Irishman as a stagieress - perhaps the first Anglicisation of a French word I’d seen yet, although certainly, as previously noted, the reverse is extremely common.

Celia

+32-494-28-98-09

PS to the Canadians to whom I suggested using Looney calls, let me apologize for misleading you. While in theory it is possible to make overseas calls at 20 mins for a buck, this doesn’t apply when the recipient of the call is on a mobile phone. Sadly to call me using Looney calls, you will pay 34 cents/minute. Cheap - and I assure you worthwhile! - but not as cheap as I’d promised.