Belgium   and a few hours in Paris...

Nov. 23, 2002

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Overview

We almost didn't make it.

The idiots who designed the traffic pattern at the Nassau Park shopping center should be forced to circle around their own mall during holiday traffic for the rest of eternity. Stupid traffic almost kept me from getting back in time with the Subway sandwiches in time to jump into the limo and speed off to the airport in order to catch our flight to Brussels.

But we did make the plane, and spent five and a half hours watching "Signs" and thinking over and over again, "who's telling M. Night Shyamalan that every film should be more boring than the last...and why does he listen? And why the hell can't I get a decent in-flight snack? And why can't the Palestinians figure out non-violent civil disobediance?" until I fell asleep.

We touched down in Brussels on a typically grey and rainy day and began our Belgian adventure. It had been almost a year since Ann had seen her family and there were many relatives to visit, cheeks to be kissed, and gratitous but delicious Belgian chocolates to be consumed. If there's one custom America really could learn from the Belgians, it's the gratuitous plate of delicious chocolates customarily offered to visitors. Then again, it probably wouldn't help our obesity crisis. Never mind.

We were met at the airport (after a little searching around) by Ann's dad Andre and his girlfriend Mieke), dropped our things off with Ann's mom and her boyfriend (are Ann and I and the old geezers the only ones who believe in marriage?), visted Ann's Bom and Bompa (cute words for Grandmother and Grandfather), her Mou Mou and Va Va (even cuter words for her other set of grandparents), and as if THAT wasn't enough, we stopped in at the bakery to say hi to her aunt, uncle, and cousin, met up with Ann's old friends from college and high school, had Belgian fries in Mechelen with Geert and Anja and their two adorable children, and got chauffeured around by Katja and Roeland. Whew. On top of that, Ann scheduled every conceiveable medical appointment in order to take advantage of the Belgian socialized medicine system and saw the dentist, the ob-gyn, and got a sonogram done all in a two day period! Not bad for a girl with a phobia of hospitals, doctors, and needles.

The last noteworthy thing we did was take a day trip to Paris. We pulled in to grey and rainy Paris (OK, so the Belgians aren't the only ones with crappy weather) sometime around 10:00am, and proceeded to walk around the entire city. We visited Sacre Coeur first, and Montmartre right behind it, where no amount of pleading would convince Ann that we needed to buy one of the paintings, then we walked for about an hour looking for the Moulin Rouge which Ann kept trying to tell me really wasn't worth it, and which I stubbornly refused to believe since I had seen the movie and was expecting a scantily-clad Nicole Kidman to climb down her elephant shaped apartment and attempt to seduce me for my money (wait a minute, I don't have any money...). In the end, predictably, it wasn't really worth it.

After that fiasco we took the subway to the Ecole Militaire to try and find the apartment I used to live in when my family lived in Paris. The problem is, I was four when my family lived in Paris and don't remember much except the grey, crappy weather (nice to know some things never change). I had two things stuck in my head... Avenue de la Bouronnais and Place de la Tour Maubourg. I also knew that I lived on a dead end street, so I guessed that I lived on a dead end street that was off of the Avenue de la Bourdonnais.

After walking up and down that damn street for half an hour we finally broke down and starting asking Frenchies for directions. We finally got one to stop (she was with little kids and they couldn't run away fast enough) and she explained that there are streets with both those names, but that they are nowhere near each other. The only thing that would solve this enigma for me was the wisdom and sagacity of my mother. So, one seven-minute collect call to America later I found out the truth: we lived in two places. First we lived on the Place de la Tour Maubourg, then we moved to Avenue de la Bourdonnais. And it only cost my parents $21 to tell me that!

So, we snapped some pictures, ate some lunch, went to the Louvre, and promptly fell asleep on one of their soft cushiony benches for over an hour. Yes, we were in one of the most famous museums in the world, home of the Mona Lisa and surrounded by masterpieces, but honestly I was getting chafed from my boxers and Ann was tired from taking three steps for every two of mine, so we just sat down and took a nap.

To cap it all off we got picked up from Mechelen by Katja and Roeland who took us to the best "frituur" (that's the place that sells french fries, exclusively) in St. Katelijn Waver for some Belgian french fries and mayonnaise ("they drown 'em in that shit, I seen it") and back to our beds before it was time for us to leave and come back to our plush queen sized bed, our climate controlled condo, and our TiVo. You know, I love to see Ann's family and prove to them that she actually DOES have a husband, but I sure do sleep better back in the good old US of A.

--Brian