Tag Archives: schaarbeek

Friday 8th June 2018 – I FINALLY MADE IT …

train world railway museum schaerbeek schaarbeek belgium june juin 2018… to the railway museum at Schaerbeek today, after several years of trying.

I’ve usually never had the time, had too many other things to do or (on at least one occasion) been too tired to carry on to the station, even though it’s been three years since it opened and I lived about 20 miles away on a direct railway line for a year of that time.

Mind you, I was almost too tired to make it there today.

I don’t recall too much about last night except that it was another disturbed night. I’d fallen asleep listening to a couple of radio programmes and after I’d awoken to switch off the laptop I couldn’t go back to sleep again for ages.

And then it was another “mobile” night, with me sitting bolt upright at 06:00 as something made a noise in the room.

Nevertheless, I’d been on my travels, even though I don’t remember too much about them. It involved a swimming pool somewhere and the changing rooms, instead of being individual cubicles, were cubicles for a dozen or so people. And in our cubicle was a little girl of about 3 or 4 who took great delight in telling us – and showing us too – how she folded up her cozzy when she was ready to leave. From there I went outside to do back home and was looking for the road signs. Sure enough, there was not one, but two road signs pointing in different directions to – was is Cemaes or Caersws? Can’t remember now. That had completely confused but on waking up I could still see them. One was black-on-white and the other was white-on-green so it was obvious that one was via the motorway and the other was via the normal roads. But why I couldn’t work that out in a nocturnal ramble was a mystery to me.

We had the usual morning performance and once I’d settled down, I set off for the station and bought a day return ticket to Brussels.

am 86 sprinter gare de leuven railway station belgium june juin 2018And one thing that I didn’t know until this morning was that there’s a direct train from Leuven to Waterloo that goes through Bruxelles Schuman instead of one of the main stations. And seeing as I wanted to go to Schuman that would save an awful lot of messing around.

I arrived at the station at 09:50 and the train was due to depart at 09:52 which was perfect timing, even if it wasn’t planned. And I don’t recall ever having travelled on one of this type of train before.

It’s an AM (for automotrice, or railcar) 86, one of 50-odd introduced between 1986 and 1991 and the class has been progressively modernised since 2012. Very comfortable and a smooth ride, apart from the tight curve at Haren.

It didn’t take long to arrive at the Bank, and I shall remember this train for the future. It will come in handy.

Once I was there I picked up my bank card, only to find that they hadn’t sent me the code to operate it. So we aren’t all that further forward. I also managed to complete the change of address, seeing as the guy who manages the counters was engaged elsewhere. But cancelling the standing order for Caliburn’s parking wasn’t so easy. I need to do that next month.

Negotiating the new redesigned Schuman station isn’t all that easy so I was lucky that the 10:55 train was late. But it had a good toilet which was just as well, even if I did have to queue for a while to use it.

Siemens Desiro AM 08 bruxelles gare du nord belgium june juin 2018With it being late I missed my connection at Bruxelles Nord for Schaerbeek station, but with it being on the main line out to the east of the city there was another train due in 10 minutes – the service S6 from Denderleeuw.

And much to my surprise, that one, a Siemens Desiro AM 08 pulled in 4 minutes early. You can see that we are nowhere near the UK, can’t you?

This one terminated at Schaerbeek and there were only a handful of people travelling on it so I had a carriage pretty much to myself.

gare de schaerbeek schaarbeek railway station belgium june juin 2018Schaerbeek Station is really beautiful, a credit to the architect and the builders, just like many of the public buildings in Schaerbeek which reflect just how wealthy the commune was 150 years ago.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous reincarnations from many years ago will recall the tour that we had of the magnificent Schaerbeek Town Hall.

But times have changed over the last 75 years and it’s now along with Molenbeek and St-Josse one of the poorest communes in the city.

train world railway museum schaerbeek schaarbeek belgium june juin 2018The railway museum was comparatively expensive to visit. I remarked to the cashier that I only wanted to visit the museum, not to buy a train. And there wasn’t all that much stuff that interests me.

Mind you, any railway museum would be considered a total disappointment by anyone who had visited the Canadian railway museum near Montreal. And despite my comments I managed to stay here for a good three hours and when I’ve sorted out the photographs I’ll give you the conducted tour.

Siemens Desiro AM 08 gare de schaerbeek schaarbeek railway station belgium june juin 2018Back on the station, my train to Leuven was due to depart imminently from platform 12 so I dashed all the way down there, only to be met by a swarm of people flooding back the other way.

Had I missed it? Not at all. It was a change of platform so I had to dash all the way back again.

And you can see what I mean about the railway station here at Schaerbeek. Probably 18 platforms, of which only 4 seem to be in use and even those are overgrown with weeds and fenced off where they are crumbling. Its former glory has long-gone.

In Leuven I bought a baguette and some tomatoes and a baguette and made myself a very late lunch. Following which I crashed out for a good hour and a half.

I’d been on my last legs going around that museum. I’d even crashed out for a couple of minutes in the gentlemen’s rest room and been caught unawares, not by an automatic flush toilet but by an automatic timer that cuts out the lights.

Later I had a shower and then went to meet Alison.

street musicians leuven belgium june juin 2018We had a really good chat and a good meal at our favourite Mexican restaurant where we were serenaded by a group of street musicians.

Not exactly the Ritz and the Palm Court Orchestra, but at least it’s entertainment.

We followed our meal by a walk out to St Pieters hospital that we had visited yesterday. Alison was interested to see the plans for the forthcoming redevelopment of the site. She told me that the site had been intended for the French community but the construction of the building was followed almost immediately by the language schism. The French decamped to Louvain-la-Neuve and never took up their option on the building.

And then back up to town for a coffee.

Now I really am going to crash out. I have a long day to travel back home tomorrow.

Sunday 18th August 2013 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

… afternoon out today. Or, rather, a late afternoon out because Cécile and her mum crashed out for an hour or so this afternoon.

First stop was to the cemetery to pay our respects to Marianne. Cécile and her mum had bought a pot of flowers and so we planted the contents on her grave. I hope that she will notice them.

From there I took everyone on a guided tour of the top end of the city and we visited the Square Montgomery, the Joyeuse Entrée, the Berlaymont, the Sacré Coeur de Schaerbeek, the Schaerbeek maison communale and a thousand other places until we arrived at the Atomium.cécile demarest fabienne desmarest atomium brussels Here, everyone alighted from Cécile’s car and we went for a walk around. After all, you can’t go to brussels and not visit the Atomium, can you?

Back in the car we came home via the Chinese Pavilion and the Japanese Tower, on the edge of the Royal Palace Gardens. 19:30 when we arrived home – that’s some going.

But Cécile’s mum is certainly having her money’s worth, visiting the town like this.

Saturday 10th August 2013 – WELL, YOU MISSED…

… all of the excitement today, anyway.

You may remember that I told you yesterday that Barry Town had beaten the FAW hands down in the court case concerning the football club’s expulsion from the league.

Anyway, to day in one of the Welsh newspapers was a letter from a member of the FAW commenting on the case, and I have to say that in all my life I have never ever seen such an inflammatory, insulting, offensive letter.

Its contents, full of vindictiveness and hatred, certainly would have brought it into the realm of a “Contempt of Court” charge.

It provoked a whole hornets nest of comment from all kinds of people and I myself spent some considerable time drafting a letter of complaint.

And then what? Yes, the newspaper concerned withdrew the letter with a comment that the author denied ever having written it and does not subscribe to the views that are represented within it.

Frankly though, I cannot believe that a respectable on-line newspaper would have published a letter of such a type without making further enquiry.

If the editor didn’t, then he only has himself to blame for whatever might follow for, as night surely follows day, this matter is not going to rest here, given the amount of dust that has been spread around.

It wasn’t without its moments of humour either. I sent my mail to the editor of the newspaper concerned. It came back with “sorry I’m on holiday, please send your mail to (my deputy)”
So I resent the mail to his deputy. It came back with “sorry I’m on holiday, please send your mail to (the editor)”.

You couldn’t make up a thing like that.

tir national military firing range schaarbeek schaerbeek fusilé cemetery executed by nazisAt lunchtime I went off to do the shopping. I went to the Carrefour at Evere today and made a little diversion on the way.

If you remember from last Sunday, I took you all to the cemetery at Ixelles to see some of the war graves. I mentioned the Tir National, the old army firing range at Schaarbeek quite close to where I used to live when I had the little apartment in the Boulevard Reyers.

I told you all that the Tir National was used as the execution point for those found guilty of War Crimes by the Germans.

edith cavell memorial tir national military firing range schaarbeek schaerbeek fusilé cemetery executed by germans world war 1Many of the victims have been buried there, and although I did tell you that Edith Cavell was there, that’s no longer true.

She was disinterred shortly after the end of World War 1 and taken to be reinterred at Westminster Abbey and ended up being buried at Norwich Cathedral on 19th May 1919 as Annie so kindly informed me.

However, her name is there on this World War I monument along with that of the people who died with her, and plenty of others from World War 1. A mere thirty-odd, you might think.

One is more than enough but 30-odd does pale into significance when compared to the several hundred others from World War 2

robert roberts jones grave  tir national military firing range schaarbeek schaerbeek fusilé cemetery executed by nazis world war 2Amongst these hundreds and hundreds of graves from World War II is this one of a certain Robert Roberts-Jones.

With a name like that you might be forgiven for thinking that he is a Welshman, but he is in fact a 3rd-generation Belgian and was a lawyer before he was shot in 1943.

Brussels was honeycombed with spy networks (for example, the Soviet “Red Orchestra” had its headquarters a brisk walk from where I’m currently sitting) and escape routes, called “rat lines”, which were used to dispatch escaping and evading Allied forces personnel and others into neutral territory for trans-shipment back to their units.

The most famous was arguably Andrée (Dédée) de Jongh’s “Comet Line”. This was however infiltrated and collapsed in 1943 and Roberts-Jones, one of the members of Comet, was arrested, tortured and executed.

He has a street named after him, at the back of the Russian embassy here and I often wondered, while I was driving down the street to pick up visas and the like, what the street referred to.

unknown graves tir national military firing range schaarbeek schaerbeek fusilé cemetery executed by nazis world war 2More poignant though are the “unknowns” here. Probably a hundred or so graves are marked as “unknowns”.

No-one will ever know who they are and what they did – they will be amongst the victims of what the Germans called Nacht und Nebel, “Night and Fog”, the name given to the method by which people were quietly abstracted from their environment and “disappeared” for ever, presumably after suffering all kinds of horrors ant the hands of their torturers.

Wednesday 20th June 2012 – AFTER THE USUAL …

… couple of hours on the laptop I went off to Rosemary’s for the afternoon.

On the way there thought I had a couple of interesting encounters, firstly with the German guy – Heidi’s husband or partner or something – who lives over the back here, and then with Francois Carriat who lives at Barrot.

Francois was full of energy as usual – “on your way back, drop in. I could do with a hand”.

memorial to the fallen nazi puy de dome franceOn my way around to Rosemary’s, I came across this memorial. I can’t think why I hadn’t noticed it before, because I’ve been up and down this road quite a bit.

Many people criticise what the perceive as the lack of resilience of the French population to the Germans in World War II.

Leaving aside the question that I don’t recall the British civilians of the Channel Island doing too much to resist the German occupying forces – even down to the extent of sitting on their hands in starvation conditions for 9 months after the war had passed them by, the real fact is that there was quite a considerable amount of French resistance!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the numerous plaques that we have seen scattered around the countryside honouring people who were fusilés – shot – or decapité – decapitated – by the Germans, and we’ve seen the cemeteries at Ixelles and Evere in Belgium.

I wonder how these critics would cope if they were running the risk of being shot or decapitated every day.

Round at Rosemary’s we made some space in her barn, put my door in there and loaded up Caliburn with the rubbish, as well as a few bits and pieces that she knew that I would like.

Then we had a coffee and a chat to put the world to rights as we usually do.

I brought the rubbish back here because I have some stuff here that needs throwing away …{thud] …[thud] and I can heave that into the back of Caliburn and make just one trip down to the dechetterie at Pionsat.

Francois certainly did need a hand too. He’s had a rotavator in his small field and turned it into some kind of market garden, and a friend offered him “some” tomato plants. This “some” turned out to be about 150 and they were about 10 inches high with flowers on them.

Anyway, to cut a long story short …”hooray” – ed … Francois did the planting and I followed on behind with the watering cans and we managed to plant most of them before it went dark.

For my trouble Francois gave me a dozen for which I am grateful, and also a chili plant.

Not only that, he fed and watered me too, and we had a good chat about all kinds of things. Including the fact that tomorrow there are four groups of musicians who will be roaming the Streets of Saint Gervais d’Auvergne playing in all of the bars.

Now that sounds like a fun evening and so I might just as well go out and see what’s going on.

Monday 14th February 2011 – AND SO …

… having decided upon a new plan for the apartment, we cracked on with our work today.

Terry started off in the toilet this morning. He ripped the toilet and the sink out of the WC and ripped all of the tiles off the wall in there. Liz finished off the painting in the bathroom while I washed down the walls and part of the ceiling in the living room.

While Terry was tiling the WC floor, Liz and I went to the tiling place in Schaerbeek and bought some wall tiles for in there. We saw some nice glass mosaic tiles that would make a pretty border like we did in the bathroom and so we added them to the list of shopping. We may as well make this apartment into a place of which we can be very proud.

Mind you, whether the bank balance can afford it is another matter completely. But I’m not going to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar. I need to concentrate on the long-term ciew and keep on going.