A trip to the countryside

Brussels is nice. Really, it is. And, yes, I’m a city boy. Well, as much as a suburban Long Islander can be a city boy. Nonetheless, I like cities. Big cities, though, are, well, big and most have a similar feel. Brussels is, as I’ve said before on this blog, the “Capital of Europe.” It is host to the European Commission and the executive Council. Who knows, if the Irish pass the Lisbon Treaty today Tony Blair may soon be taking up residence in Brussels as President of the European Union….Anyway, because of that it has an international feel which is great, but I’m here to study Belgium to some extent and you can only do so much of that in it’s capital.

I don’t know many people here, but when I arrived I was put up by a former Belgian BAEF fellow, SC. SC and his girlfriend and sister have a place in the university section of town and they were very kind, took me out for lunch and dinner, and helped me get settled before I found my place in Saint-Gilles.

Last weekend was the Fête du Communauté française de Belgique (Festival of the French Community of Belgium) with all sorts of things going on around the French-speaking part of Brussels and Belgium itself. A day or two before the start of the festival, I wandered through Grand Place to see a huge stage set up and a sound check going on for some Belgian pop star. It was an interesting mix of old and new.

It was around then that I got an invite from SC’s sister to join her and her family in their hometown about 30 minutes by train outside of the City for a dance performance called “Décrocher la Lune” (to take down the moon). Heeding my mantra of, “yes, I’ll go!” I took her up on the offer and planed for, well, I didn’t know what to plan for. I had no idea what this was. Evidently the same guy who put together the stage show for Celine Dion in Vegas was responsible for this. Having never seen that Vegas show (or any Vegas show for that matter) I was happily ignorant of the spectacle that was going to unfold on the small square in La Louvière, the small town where the performance was to take place.

I met EC at Gare Nord (North Station) and took the train south into Brabant Walloon. “So, you went to Ypres last weekend,” she said. “Yup,” I replied. “You know that’s a center of Flemish extremism, of separatism.” “No!” I said. I had no idea. The divisions in this country are interesting and I’m fascinated by who thinks what and so on. EC likes her country as one, as do most Belgians when it comes down to it, but there are centers of extremism, especially in Flanders where the economy is booming. The fact that Ypres is a center of it is interesting since that was the place where the Allies took a stand in World War I to stop the Germans to save a unified and free Belgium. (Something for the blog, I thought!)

Anyway, the trip was nice and the countryside was beautiful. We arrived at the station and went with her father to their house, a nice place literally in the country. We drove down a one lane road after we left the town passing fields of wheat, corn, potatoes, and a golf course….the Scots got here, too!

Lunch was very nice – it was nice to have a home cooked meal, though I’m trying my best to cook as much as I can at my place – and then EC, her mom and I headed out for an impromptu tour of the area. I didn’t see this coming. (Oh, and the festival started at 9pm and we all wouldn’t be back ‘till late, I was to stay over. Of course, I had no change of clothes….oh well, when in Belgium….)

First we went to the church in Nivelles. A Romanesque church that, well, um, the US destroyed during World War II. It seems we didn’t have smart bombs then either and missed the target destroying the church, La Collégiale Sainte-Gertrude. In what I’m sure Glen Beck would have thought was a terrible waste of our tax dollars, the US offered to rebuild the church after the war.

Now, the kindness of those I’ve met here has been phenomenal and the tour of the church we took was no exception. EC’s mom hired a very nice docent to give us the tour. Of course, it was in French. Thankfully our kindly tour guide spoke very slowly and, of course, a bit more loudly than necessary (it’s a universal thing, it seems). I got about 1/3 of what she said about the church, 1/3 from the various hand gestures, pointing, and the like, and 1/3 from EC and her mom translating bits and pieces here and there.

Sainte-Gertrude was (is?) a pilgrimage church and there is one part of one pillar that acts as a “portal” where if you step through it, you will go to heaven. I did it. I fit through. I’m going to heaven. No problem. What was really cool was that the stone around this portal was so worn down all the pilgrims who had passed through it over the years. Pretty cool.

After the church we drove by the Battle of Waterloo site. It’s a big field with a man-made hill at one point with a cast-iron lion (the Dutch lion) at the top facing toward France as warning…sadly, the next enemy came from the other direction. Twice. (EC’s mom told me that every so often they have reenactments and people dress up as Dutch, French, Prussian, British soldiers and such. She said, "often people ask, “Where are the Americans….” Um, we weren’t always meddling in the affairs of Europe….)

Then we visited the ruins of an abbey. We got there late and only had about 20 minutes, but it was beautiful and peaceful. There was a bride and groom having their pictures taken in the nave of the old church, left half standing after a local businessman had sold, brick by brick, the stone buildings of the abbey for the building of new houses. This all happened after the French Revolution. Nonetheless, the place was hauntingly beautiful.

This is a long post, so I end this one here because the next bit of fun was the festival and, oh year, watching WWF wresting dubbed in French….