Bye bye, Ixelles

Hey,

I'm sitting between my packed bags, moving out today to crash at a friend's place for the last few days. Actually, I'm just changing beds as I'm still ill with the flu...
So gone is...
...the last night of lying aslope-asleep in a broken bed with a way too small mattress. Clonk. Another bar out.
... the last night in a room filled with daylight even at midnight --> street light
... the last day having a hole in the bathroom where water's dripping on my nose while toothbrushing
...the last time to take a dirty mouldy shower (luckily, you always get clean, though)
... the last day of having housemates with the worst taste in music ever and the least respect regarding the volume
... the last day in a police-barricaded house
... the last time to get squeezed in bus 95
but also
... the last time to stand in the queue of our hot bald Colruyt cashier ;-)
... the last day to have Katha and Adam around, which is actually some more meaningful.
Anyway, there are still a few nice days left for me in Brussels.
Have to hurry now, cu

Mit einem Taxi nach Paris...

Hey everybody,

finally, (hi Marie! :-) ) here's my promised Paris post! I didn't have the time or leisure until now, the more so as, this weekend, a very good friend of mine from good old Germany came along to visit me, which made me really happy. But finally I'm making it!

Actually it was rather the TGV than a taxi which brought us to the French capital. Was faster and cheaper anyway... We stayed in the city from Friday to Monday morning; our accommodation was at Montmartre in a very lively quarter near Moulin Rouge and Sacré Cœur, over and over painted in lavender, our room occupied by ants that ate up all our Arab sweets - and my bed rather a hammock, but we enjoyed staying there very much.

Of course, we did some of the "classical" stuff that assumingly every tourist in Paris does (such as eating burgers at Quick, haha), but besides we did some other stuff that obviously not all the tourists have on their schedule. That was very relaxing as those places were not that crowded...

In details: Sacré Cœur at daylight time as well as Sacré Cœur by night (is there any tourist in the world who does not possess a Sacré Cœur photo???). We walked through the dark and mouldy catacombs with all their bones and skulls. Great. Took the elevator up to the stormy roof of the Tour Montparnasse, where, although just in that moment the weather turned a bit hazy, we had a marvellous view all over Paris and where Katharina reanimated the last unicorn (see picture). Decided not to clinb onto the Tour Eiffel, which was too crowded (and besides, many years ago when I was even smaller than today, I once jammed my head in the grid trying to have a look down - that's enough...) Spent lunch time in sunny and peaceful Parc Luxembourg. Took a walk along les Champs-Elysées and watched all the Japanese tourists trying to catch a photo impression of the Triumphal Arch. Visited two of the famous Parisian cemeteries with graves of departed idols and intellectuals, such as Heinrich Heine (I owed him that visit as I had been living in "his" street for 6 years!), Truffaut, Sartre and his life-long?? affair Beauvoir, Gainsbourg and Beckett. I must admit, these cemeteries were really worth a visit with their nice, peaceful, calm and autumnal-sunny atmosphere, but finding the graves was sometimes as exhausting as searching Easter eggs! Our biggest challange was finding Maupassant, whose grave was obviously not at the place that the map showed... So, as we couldn't spend the whole weekend at Parisian graveyards, we did not go on to the Pierre Lachaise cemetery, albeit it must be really beautiful and plenty of celebrity fame, such as Morrison and Wilde, is located there. May they rest in peace until I'll come back one day to visit them.
And... we did succeed finding the location where Bertolucci shot his scandalous "Last Tango in Paris" in the Seventies: the bridge and the appartment house at Métro Passy... where is Marlon Brando`s grave btw??

So, I will stop gabbling. Just enjoy some more pictures!






















(P.S.: No housing news lately. Just rumors about fire, and about tiles that are supposed to fall from the roof. The police barrier however is meanwhile being ignored... I think I will survive without any problems, though.)

Weird!

Help! Our house has been barricaded! Steel fence and police barrier tape in front of the facade, just our house and nothing else around! They left not more than a small pass to the front door - what's that??? Dubious. Did we miss a crime? Did the other guys sell drugs on a grand scale? Was there an accident? Did anyone find out about our illegal mould breeding? Does this house not only have urine scale but also skeletons in the closet?
uhuuuuu... Nightmare is calling ;-)
Or it's presumably just our landlord who is finally getting trouble 'cause of national building laws. No matter how lax they are, he probably violated them.

...amendment (12th): We still haven't found any corpse. Maybe we'll find some human ashes (see comment) which would actually be much better as it won't start to stink... ;-)
Thanks for all your compassion btw!

...this and that and that and this...

Hi folks,
a whole lot of work and other things to do, so I'm not too keen on doing bloggery at the moment...
Life in Brussels is going on while time is running away. Work is in progress, aswell the construction in front of my window. I'm putting on a few pounds as I do not have time for sports. Actually I am too stretched with other stuff. Or just lazy, call it as you like. Or spend too much of the little rest of time watching DVD, eating and drinking. Had one more scary experience with our flat, but nothing serious. Highlight of the last week: I visited a horse show, international world class jumping, which did indeed take me a whole lot of persuasive powers. Don't be afraid - I won't bother you with any of these girls' stuff pictures...
That's what's going on at the moment. I'm busy and content. And more fond of reading and hearing from you and what you're doing than writing myself :-)
Despite, excitement will return next week - Paris is calling! I will tell you then.
Greetings and hugs, cu

Work fine, Belgium sunny

Hi folks,

time is flying… While work is much but going fine so far and my research report’s taking shape slowly but surely, life mostly still shows its pleasant side. Since Marie arrived, we met a few times and enjoyed a world music concert and some Krieks together (probably not the last ones). Besides, I’m very lucky with my nice new trainee colleagues though I’m missing two of the girls with whom I shared my office in August. One of my three August mates is still here.

The pictures show Bruge and Liège, where we went one resp. two weeks ago. While Bruge is a nice small town, a bit kitchy, everywhere canals, crowded with tourists and even more horse coaches, Liège (in Wallonia) is bigger and instead of tourists and horse droppings, it is congested over and over with the worst-dressed fashion victims you’ve ever seen. The city awakes most of all an insignificant or ugly impression. I would not believe that Gaufres de Liège originate from this town... However, it hides some interesting corners and offers the visitor a view form the riverside that is somehow amazing - in a very strange kind. Weird. All in all not really a serious candidate for my personal Belgian Top Three Cities.

As you see, I’m not very keen on writing at the moment - too many other things at the moment... Today’s lame excuse is that I was out all day, visiting an experimental herb garden and an artiste school which had/have their doors open this weekend (many institutions in Brussels do so, therefore we're planning to visit amongst other things the Royal horsestables tomorrow), hence I’m tired now after strolling around. So just excuse me for the moment and enjoy the pictures!

great construction progress

I don't want to withhold you a new one-month-later picture of the construction in front of my window...
At least, 100db machine noise every morning (punctually at seven or a few minutes earlier) and dusty windows showing hardly any transparency have led to some progress fo far... Newly, the volume has gone a very little bit down - instead, the guys have discovered their love to disco music , volumed up to the end stop...

beginning of August 2006 ...and one month later...

Nevertheless, I love my room, my house, my street, my mates...

Paliament and some (more?) European nonsense

Dear everybody,

I promised you some Parliament impressions from the inside - these are some photos we took during our visit (my trainee colleagues Ilona and Nazli and me), see my post last week. Looks like a plenary hall should look like, I think...

While surfing the internet for some information on national disability legisations and statistics in Austria today (hey Firdavs, got some impressions yet?), I searched on the website of an Austrian ministry (I forgot which one exactly), and what did I find? Suicide statistics regarding 32 cuntries, showing Belgium - which has in general a quite high suicide rate - on 2nd rank at my age group, outstripped only by Finland. So if I ever feel I should follow these statistics, the easiest way will be having myself squeezed to death in bus 95, that's for sure...

However, I don't actually think of this as a good idea. If I ever feel I should leave my Brussels existence behind, I will prefer THIS:

(Rather practical, just a few metro stations from work, right on the pavement in front of Brussels' big Basilika...) What remains is the question where it may lead - I suppose, to Helsinki...

Belgium's beauty shines in Gent

No bigger happenings at work this week. It's going OK so far and I really like spending my office time; I continued working on my research and discovered once again that I love the Federal Agency for Statistics in Germany. If I cannot become an elephant keeper or marine biologist, then I want to work for the Federal Agency for Statistics, that's a safe guess! Next week, my mentor will be back at the office, so I think, new challenges will surely surface very soon...

Furthermore, on Wednesday I visited the Parliament together with my dear intern colleagues Ilona and Nazli, which was nice but not too impressive. We got earphones and a kind of walkman and had to follow our guide to the 4th floor where we could regard a huge metal sculpture which extends - I don't know - from the ground floor to the 7th or something like this... After a short while, we were led to the actual plenary hall (and sat down at the visitors' gallery) which looks a bit darker, however warmer and more friendly than the plenary hall in Straßburg - maybe due to the kind of wood they used for the wall panelling? Well, the nice lady in our ears gave us a 20 minute or half an hour monologue about EU history and development, European Parliament, function of the President, decision-making, how to adopt directives and regulations and so on. Most interesting probably for visitors who do not know much about yet. You ICEUS people could recite most of it even totally juiced or half-asleep, of course ;-) Afterwards, back to the lift and the party was over. Cut.
I do not have photos yet as my camera didn't work satisfactorily (- they will hopefully be given later).


This week's undoubted highlight was however today's visit to Gent (casting as usual: Katha and me, without lazy resp. unpersuadable Adam). An awesome city, more beautiful than Antwerp and soooo much more than Brussels. Sun shone above our heads while we explored the streets and crested famous "Wilfried", how we lovingly called him (actually Belfort, German: Belfried, which is a secular building, a tower built by guilds in the middle ages), to enjoy a beautiful view from above. Great. A boat trip on the ducts completed this marvellous sunday, and back in Brussels, we felt like we should immediately leave the city, move to Gent and ply for the rest of our time here...
Well, let's finish daydreaming and see what next week will bring.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friends – short trip to Antwerp

Antwerp, which is less than an hour by train from here, welcomed us with sunny weather and a fresh harbour breeze yesterday, so our fight for the last available Stroopwafels was soon forgotten (ok, Katha, just kidding). The beautiful weather was awesome as we are actually used to grey and rainy Brussels at the moment… We had a nice look around in the city and spent our lunchbreak under a shady tree (yeah – shady, a cloudburst haunted us not before afternoon), while some guys were making music and playing/singing an endless version of a melancholic song about “sleeping every night in a large and lonely house in a large and lonely bed” and so on. Rather jamming than performance butbeautiful.

By noon, the city got very “crowdy” (new linguistic creation) and tourists from all around the world congested the streets (until rain chased them away in the later afternoon). So we refuged into the big, bright Cathedral of Our Lady, one of the most famous Gothic cathedrals (the interieur is baroque by the way, for historical reasons), a very big one which holds a rank amongst the world’s 20 biggest cathedrals if I remember correctly.

Japanese tourists have by the way a special inspiration to visit this cathedral: A century-old fairytale, almost forgotten in Antwerp but common in Japanese schoolbooks of the first schoolyears for decades,
is responsible for them loving Antwerp so much. This story’s main showplace is the stones in front of one of the Rubens paintings “The Descent from the Cross” in the Cathedral of Our Lady. So if you see a Japanese drawing out his camera in well-known pose he is just reanimating a childhood memory.

For finishing our nice little journey adequately, we quickly bought two very becoming eighteen carat diamond rings for souvenir and then returned to the train station, leaving back to Brussels.

I'm missing my sports...

... so today I went to a fitness club, just next to my workplace – basically very practical, I thought – to ask for their prices, which, even though I knew that it wouldn’t be cheap at all, caused me a little surprise, or should I say quite a shock. Way too expensive… Therefore, I will probably save that money resp invest it otherwise, go jogging every now and then, or, back in Germany, on a little diet if necessary, haha.

This week was again dominated by plenty of work which is challenging, however fun and quite relaxing most of the time. So, even though I’m in my office the major part of the day, there’s enough time and energy left for leisure time activities, or hanging around with my colleagues and flatmate(s), at lunch break, in the evenings or at the weekends.

What I haven’t showed until now: On Sunday we enjoyed a beautiful view over Brussels from the big wheel (there is parish fair in the city currently) – see below – and afterwards found the funniest tram line in Brussels.

First, you can visit friends or relatives (Thomas), then meet Queen Silvia (Suede), to go on to the casino and win a whole lot of money (Monaco) to spend it for a fine dose of snow finally (terminus Drogenbos)… we died of laughter... (I wanted to upload a photo but you cannot see anything...)

And – thanks to the Catholics – I had a whole day off on Tuesday, which we used for rummaging in book and comic shops that had kindly opened their doors for us – and for millions of tourists. So, Tintin’s helping me now improve my French, which is fun.

A feeling of everyday life starts to emerge now, though almost a litte more joyful, and with that I’m really lucky, I think. In the movie that we watched tonight, there was an old lady, rather a sibyl, who, reading the protagonist girl’s lifeline, told her: Life is like a bank account – what you put in is what you get out. For this weekend, I think I’ll put in some fun, hopefully a bit travelling around in Belgium, a few drinks and a pinch of bohème.