Category Archives: brussels

Saturday 3rd September 2016 – ONE OF THE THINGS …

… that is pretty much guaranteed to get my goat is the general unco-operative spirit of people who seem to deliberately set out to obstruct and inconvenience every single one of their fellow human-beings. And I had one of those on the train today from Leuven to Brussels. Here I was, struggling with my mammoth suitcase and there was a family, with pushchairs and all kind of encombrances blocking the passageway, and they simply sat there and watched as I struggled my way down the aisle.

You can tell that I’m leaving Leuven and heading closer to Brussels, on the first leg of my voyage elsewhere.

Despite being thoroughly exhausted after my walk around the city yesterday – so much so that I had an early night, and despite two trips down the corridor, I was awake quite early – round about 06:20 or thereabouts. And I’d been on my travels during the night too – but then again you don’t want to know too much about this seeing as how you are probably eating your breakfast.

After breakfast I packed up and sorted everything out. By the time that I had done this, it was midday and so I went and fetched Caliburn. Strawberry Moose had quite a surprise as I stuffed him into his suitcase, and then I took that up to my room and took down everything that I don’t need. I then took Caliburn back to his little hidey-hole and walked back.

On the way back I bought two baguettes – two being necessary because there is no other way of my obtaining any food tomorrow during the next leg of my journey so I have to make butties. I had lunch and made the butties for tomorrow and then packed my suitcase and sorted out everything that I need.

And here I have had a disaster – I don’t have the charger for my other telephone. Well, I do, but there are two of them and one doesn’t work and it’s the one that doesn’t work that I have managed to bring with me. So this is going to cause a major problem tomorrow late afternoon.

I’d also forgotten the saucepan. I had to wash that and then walk back to Caliburn with it, otherwise I would only forget it. I know that it’s not much good, but it’s the only one that I have at the moment.

And another thing – I’ve solved the mystery of why I always seem to pick up an infection, a heavy cold or cough (or both) when I’m in my room, which goes almost as soon as I leave. The reason for this is that there is about 6 feet of dust and fluff underneath my bed. This cleaner-person just seems to clean where he can see and that’s your lot. No wonder it’s affected me so much.

But, as I have said before, I’m not complaining. I had an important reduction on the room rate due to the time that I was spending there and the price of less than €26 per night, breakfast included, was an excellent deal.

By 16:30 I was ready to leave and so I hit the streets. Dragging the monster suitcase behind me I made it to the bus stop and then on the bus to the station. And despite the difficulties I made it to Brussels all the same. And I got lost in Bruxelles-Midi – it’s all changed since I was last here and what with repairs and renovations and bits closed off, it took me an age to find my way around to the Thalys lounge.

It was 17:15 when I arrived and my train was due to depart at 19:15, and we could board it half an hour earlier, which seemed like a good idea to me. I sat around for a while and then went off in search of food because there won’t be any at all where I’m going tonight. I ended up with a veggie burger and chips and a bottle of pop, quite over-priced (which is only to be expected when you have a captive audience) but wasn’t as disgusting as I was fearing.

Just for a change, I was a mere third on the train and my suitcase, with His Nibs inside, was first on the luggage rack. That’s much more like it than the mad scramble that occurs at Lyon Part-Dieu (which is where this train is heading, incidentally).

Not that it made much difference though, because there was hardly anyone on it. I’ve never been on such an empty TGV – or have I? The one that I took from Lille to Charles de Gaulle a couple of years ago was quite empty, so I recall. It didn’t fill up much more at Lille and we shot off into the sunset from there still pretty-much empty.

At the airport (yes, I’m at the airport) we had the usual half-hour wait for the shuttle bus, and when I finally arrived at my hotel, the hotel had no trace of my booking, even though I had the agency’s confirmation. This led to a very interesting 30 minutes at the reception desk, but luckily the bridal suite hadn’t been booked and so I’m spending the night in 5-Star luxury in an emperor-sized bed. And you can’t say fairer than that, can you?

So an early start tomorrow, and we are off on our travels again. See you soon!

Monday 11th July 2016 – I’M BACK …

… in the Auvergne, would you believe. And at Liz and Terry’s too (well, Terry’s, actually because Liz is stuck in Normandy right now).

What has happened is that there is some urgent sorting out that needs to be done and I’m the only person who can do it. and it has to be done before July 28th. And seeing as how I don’t have Caliburn’s new insurance documents (these are essential of course) and there are a few other bits and pieces required, then the sooner I reacted the better.

Hence, at 10:03 this morning I was on a train in Leuven station.

That’s not all, of course. I was awake at 06:20, packed and sorted shortly afterwards, and upstairs having breakfast when the alarm went off at 07:00. I had a beautiful shower too in my new en-suite shower room (must take advantage of the benefits) and then I was off to the hospital.

I took no chances and went on the bus. The back door of the hospital was actually open this morning so I quickly nipped through onto the car park and over to Caliburn to grab my passport; Then I was back down to the front entrance and back on another bus to the station.

My train was at 10:03 as I said, and I was there for 08:45.It hadn’t taken long and there was plenty of time to sit and read a book.

They even have beggars on the trains now, so it seems, and as you know, that’s something that annoys me intensely.

At Bruxelles-Midi I didn’t have time to hang about. I found my train, found my seat and we piddled off almost immediately. The booking people had cut it that fine.

And it was a good job that I had gone to pick up my passport because (as I expected) there was a police control on board and someone unable to produce her passport had a very hard time of it.

The train was packed out too – hardly an empty seat anywhere.

At Paris gare du Nord I had to wait ages in a queue for a Metro ticket but the person at the counter put me right and finding the Paris-Austerlitz station for the next leg of my journey was quite straightforward (it’s about 10 stops directly down the Porte d’Italie line). We had another beggar on the metro who was going on about how hard it was to find a place to live and a job to do so I gave him a right royal piece of my mind, to a round of applause from the other passengers, and he piddled off elsewhere too.

At Austerlitz I needed to buy the ticket for my return. And there was a huge queue. 15 desks in the travel office, 8 of them manned … "PERSONNED" – ed …personned and only two of those people working. There’s a Subway sandwich place around the corner which was where I was planning to go for lunch, but badger that seeing as how the situation was in the ticket office. I was lucky to catch my train.

This train was packed too – with a mere handful of empty seats. I crammed myself in and attacked the packet of biscuits that I had brought with me for an emergency (such as this one).

Terry met me at Chateauroux as he was passing by on his way from Normandy back home. He was early at the station and so the rain was, as you might expect, late. And now I’m back here.

I’m having an early night here too because I have a lot to do tomorrow so I need an early start. But it’s all “go” right here at the moment, isn’t it?

And on Wednesday morning, at Silly o’clock, I’m back on the road (or should I say “the rails”) to head back to Leuven.

I’ll be meeting myself coming back if I keep going like this. And I’m supposed to be ill too!

Wednesday 30th March 2016 – OFF TO BRUSSELS.

And I’d forgotten what a horrible place Brussels was. That I can tell you for nothing.

I fought my way through the traffic and left the Motorway at Woluwe, only to find myself in a huge set of roadworks that seemed to go on for ever – way beyond the Woluwe Shopping Centre. But eventually I found myself on the car park of the Carrefour at Boisfort, right by the Demey metro station.

It goes without saying that the metro station was closed – in fact about half of them were, so I had a weary trudge all the way back in the opposite direction and beyond, to the station at Hermann-Debroux.

I arrived at the bank, which was to be my first port of call, where I needed to transfer some money from my savings to my current account. But I ruled that out when I discovered that I’d left my passport behind in Caliburn. That was no use.

But I made about 30 phone calls to the EU’s Personnel Department (I refuse to use the derogatory term of “human resources”. I’m a human being, not a unit of production, and the whole world went wrong when employers stopped treating their staff as human beings and started to treat them as just another business resource) before someone answered the phone. I explained my problem – and I’m not sure why I had to because the person to whom I was speaking couldn’t see me. So wasn’t that a waste of time? But she did say to call back at 16:00 precisely as her colleague would just be back from a meeting and I might just catch him before he leaves the office.

I bought some bread and tomatoes and had lunch in the Parc Solvay, then went on the bust and tram to Ixelles and the Health-Food shop to buy some more vegan sliced cheese. Four packs, so that’s me OK for a while. And then I went off to see Marianne and have a chat. She was probably surprised to see me, and she’ll be even more surprised shortly if I end up in there with her. But I’ll be heading in the opposite direction, that’s for sure. They are stoking the fires already.

By now, I’d pulled a muscle in my right leg and was in agony. But I pressed on and found my way back to Schuman, having been obliged to take a really circuitous route there, due to “perturbations”. passing through Maelbeek Station, which is all fenced off and covered over, the thought did occur to me that this bomber can’t have been much good, and his infrastructure even worse. Just 400 metres further on is the Arts-Loi metro station, which is the key hub of the underground network, and it doesn’t take much in the way of brains to realise that had his bomb gone off there, he could have crippled the Brussels Metro for good.

I’m on record, and from as far back as 2002 too, as saying that the only reason that there aren’t more of these attacks is that the perpetrators can’t be bothered.

And it’s no use crying about it either. The time for crying was in 2002 when millions of people took to the streets to protest at the actions of Western Europe in becoming involved in a war that had nothing to do with us. But the politicians took no notice, and here we are. And only a politician or a westerner can be so naïve as to believe that if you declare war on someone and start to attack them, those people aren’t going to turn round and fight back.

Ever since 2002, the West should have been preparing for casualties. The first actions of the UK politicians in 1939 was to order 200,000 cardboard coffins “just in case”. The naîveté of the West, its politicians and its citizens, has been unbelievable.

As Douglas Haig once famously said, “fear of heavy casualties is a good enough reason for not going to war, but it’s a pretty poor reason once you are already fighting” or something like that.

I telephoned my Personnel guy bang-on 16:00 and he answered the phone. And I could feel the disappointment in his voice as I spoke to him. But 15 minutes later, there I was and he gave me a few bits and pieces of useful information that I have filed away for future reference, including the fact that I’m entitled to claim travelling expenses for all of my appointments at Montlucon and if I can persuade them at Montlucon to wash their hands of me, which they have done already, for travelling expenses to Leuven too.

But I had the shock of my life in the coffee shop round the corner where I stopped for a rest. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the regular appearances of a young girl known by the name of Zero after an Al Stewart song, the lyrics of which were extremely relevant – a girl whom I haven’t seen for … ohhh … 8 years, I suppose. But breezing into the coffee shop was a girl who would have been the spitting image of this girl, allowing for the passage of time. Even the shade of red hair was correct to the minutest detail. The surprise was so complete that I dropped my coffee. Of course, it probably wasn’t her but nevertheless, it was an astonishing resemblance. I felt like bursting out into the Warren Zevon “there’s a red-haired girl in a red silk dress. I’m asking her to dance with me, she might say yes!”

But I dunno – it quite caught me à la depourvu, as the French say.

At the moment, the Metro is closing at 19:00 so I leapt on a bus and asked the driver to throw me out when we reach a tram route. This was at the Arsenaal and I could board a tram 25 and then the bus 71 which ended up by me being at the fritkot that does lovely falafel.

From there, another bus dropped me off at the Place Weiner from where I could take the tram 94 round to Hermann Debroux and Caliburn again.

And then back to Alison’s.

I’ve had my money’s worth today, although my leg is killing me and I’m thoroughly exhausted.

But seeing this girl has quite disturbed me. Whatever is going on these days?

Friday 8th May 2015 – HERE …

.. is where I spent last night – at a motorway service area at Heverlee, near Leuven. And I slept the sleep of the dead too – totally painless it was. Didn’t feel a thing.

And even better, there was a nice hot shower available too. And didn’t I enjoy that? I haven’t felt so good in ages.

Mind you, I forgot to buy a bottle of water and so my morning coffee, in a roadside rest area while they cleared away an accident down the road, and coffee made with sparkling water is certainly different, that’s for sure.

I wasted the morning not doing very much at all, and then met up with Alison for lunch. Alison and I worked together for an American company for almost a year, and we both walked out at more-or-less the same time. And for the same reasons – basically that American companies have no idea of the notion of cultivating staff loyalty, and rule their employees by fear. There’s no place in my environment, nor in Alison’s environment either, for an attitude such as that, and we can’t understand why it is that other people allow themselves to be pushed around.

Afterwards, I went to check up on Marianne and to have a chat. It’s hard to believe that it’s two years since she passed away, but then at this sort of age time passes quickly.

It seems that I wasn’t the only person to go to visit her either, for there were a couple of other pots of flowers that had been left on her grave. I’m glad that she hasn’t been forgotten and that she is being looked after by people locally. It’s not feasible for me to come to Brussels to tend to her as often as I like.

It’s also VE day today – the end of the War in Europe, so it’s only right to go to pay a visit to the interred in another part of the cemetery here at Ixelles. There are some military graves here, but there are also some graves of civilian victims of the Gestapo.

There are many people, one or two of my acquaintances amongst them unfortunately, who criticise the French and the Belgians, and a few other people too, for what they see as a lack of resolution by the population of those countries when it came to resisting the German invaders.

But if you have a look at these gravestones, you’ll see fusillé – “shot”, or executé – executed, or decapité – decapitated. These were the risks that people were running every day for four and a half years of the Occupation, so it’s hard to be as resolute as some might like when you are risking all of this.

And, of course, it’s very easy to beat the drum when there’s an ocean between you and the invader. I’d be interested to see just how brave these critics would have been had they been over here amongst the Gestapo during the Occupation.

I braved the rush-hour traffic and set out for Germany. I’d forgotten just how busy the roads could be on a Friday afternoon and I’m glad that I’m no longer involved in any of this.
And here I am crossing the border into Germany not too far from Aachen at the back of Liege.

The camera on my new phone has quite a high resolution and isn’t far off what the Nikon D5000 can come up with on a good day. It’s also easy to use on the move so moving pictures are back with us again.

However, I needed to be careful. Can you make out the blue flashing lights just down the road? I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been waiting for me.

It seems that I have entered my destinations into the Satnav in the wrong order and it’s doing the route backwards. That’s clearly no good so I need to change it all. At a rest area at the side of the Autobahn I pulled up to reprogramme it, but then I thought “what they heck” and it’s here where I’m going to be bedding down, German police permitting.

And talking of the Police, I’ve managed this year to avoid having a run-in with the Belgian police this year. Either my luck was in or else they must have been all asleep.

-3

Thursday 7th May 2015 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that you saw one of these? I can’t even remember when it was that I saw one in the UK, so I never expected to find one parked in a supermarket car park in Brussels.

I can’t remember when it was that they stopped making them but I don’t recall any later than the mid 70s so this one is at least 40 years old.

But make the most of it, because it’s not going to be here for long. To be frank, it’s an absolute nail, full of rust and rot and simply painted over, rust, rot and all, as a display advert. What a waste of a good old BMC Minivan

Here’s where I spent the night last night, at a motorway service area at Nivelles, on the outskirts of Brussels.

I didn’t think that I had had a particularly comfortable sleep, but I must have done, for I was off on my travels during the night. Playing in goal for Pionsat’s 3rd XI as it happens. And then I was off to see my friend Kris. She was living up on the moors right near the crest, and had a huge pile of wood that needed sorting out and would I help her?

Not too far away, on the edge of a village right on the crest, was a Muslim monastery (yes!) just like a huge castle but with an enormous tower in the centre. Round and comparatively modern (like Flemisn 15th Century architecture) it was 14 storeys high but the 14th storey had fallen off. each of the remaining storeys was let out as a separate apartment.

Each time Krys and I went somewhere we saw the tower from a different viewpoint and each time I asked her what it was, and each time she told me.

I’ve sorted out the gas issue by buying what I needed from a sports outfitters here. I reckoned that it would be cheaper then paying to eat out every night, but having had to buy it in Belgium, I’m not so sure. The price was totally shocking.

I’ve solved the beichstuhl issue too. Seeing as how IKEA was right next door to the sports outfitters, I paid them a visit. I’ve bought a galvanised metal pail, and also the curtains seeing as they had the exact colour that I need. And as you might expect, it was the most expensive that they had. I always seem to have the most expensive tastes and I just wish that I had the money to back it up.

Talking of expensive tastes, I’ve found exactly the worktops that I want for the bathrrom and the kitchen.

A mere €295 per square metre, but it really is beautiful and I would love to have this about the house. The biggest problem is that the worktop in the bathroom needs to be 45cms and in the kitchen 50cms, and the smallest sinks in IKEA (they have to be factory-fitted) are 45cms for the bathroom and 50cms for the kitchen.

That’s clearly not going to work so I need to have a really good think about this.

For lunch I stopped off at the Etangs Mellaerts to eat my honey and nut bread, and to watch an old woman feeding the ducks and swans.

As you can see, she had quite a crowd around her – clearly the most popular form of waterfront entertainment.

And at least, I could watch it from the van. For tea tonight I went to my favourite restaurant in Ixelles for a falafel supper, and ended up having to park a hundred miles away . Parking in Brussels these days is something of a joke, that’s for sure.

I’ve also been to sort out the bank as well. I needed to activate my bank cards for my forthcoming trip to Canada. And I took advantage while I was there of sorting out a few financial arrangements. I visited the Post Bank too – I had completely forgotten about an account there and that has been frozen. I need to contact them to reactivate it.

But here’s a thing – it’s the first time that I’ve ever been to the Post Office at Schuman and been served straight away without ever having to queue. That’s a record.

So tonight I’m on the motorway service area not too far from Leuven. I hope that the showers are working because they weren’t this morning at Nivelles.

-3

Thursday 9th October 2014 – WELL, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING.

I missed the connection at Brussels.

And not by 5 or 10 minutes either, but by a whopping couple of hours too. It took all night to evacuate this ill person and her baggage and we were about a couple of hours late before we took to the sky.

The flight itself and the food were excellent but the in-flight entertainment was rather rubbish. There wasn’t a single film that I was interested in seeing. On the Sports Channel however there was the World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany from 2014- the match where in a devastating spell of just 6 minutes half-way through the first half the Germans totally demolished the Brazilians.

At Brussels, those of us with onward journeys to attend to had to regroup in order to see what they airline had in store for us. For me, they could move me onwards to Paris via … errrr … Frankfurt am Main. That was clearly out of the question. However, there was one person who was flying on to Lyon and so that gave me an idea. When I was at Montreal I heard them call an Air Transat flight to Lyon and while I’m not overly impressed with Air Transat, I still put into the back of my mind the idea to go around to the airport at Lyon to see what I could see and to spy out the land.

This seemed like the opportunity and so I made the appropriate noises at the airport staff. There was indeed flight to Lyon but at 17:00 in the afternoon, meaning that I had 5 hours to kill. A meal voucher for €16:00 to compensate me in part for the inconvenience meant that I could have a meal but even that voucher only made a slight hole in the price of the meal, prices in Belgium being what they are. But nevertheless, the choices of meal here seem to be better than what was on offer when I was stranded at Paris Charles de Gaulle last year.

For the rest of my stay in Brussels, I also took the opportunity to go for a wander around the airport, inside and outside. It’s been a long time, 9 years in fact, since I’ve been here and there was a time when I was here a couple of times a week, back in the good old days.

So braving the horrendous weather outside, because it really was bad outside, I went for a look around.

There have been some tremendous changes to the airport in this time. Outside, there’s an enormous amount of redevelopment and much of the old building is being swept away and replaced ith more modern stuff.

There have been even more changes inside the place. A huge programme of expansion has taken place with all kinds of new terminals and departure gates and I do have to admit that it is quite a significant leg-up from how it all used to be in the past.

The plane to Lyon was one of these small 70-seater things with about 40 passengers on it. The flight took a quite reasonable 75 minutes which wasn’t bad at all, even if there was no special meal for me. That came as no surprise seeing as how I’d chopped and changed from one flight to another – it can’t be helped. I was glad that I had had a meal at Zaventam. And descending into Lyon through a thunderstorm, we were being tossed around like a cork on the ocean. Not for the faint-hearted, this descent.

Lyon was a very nice airport, quite modern and up-to-date, and the tram connection to town, quite shockingly expensive at €15:70, was nevertheless straighforward and direct, to right opposite the main railway station in town. No issues whatever with this at all (apart from the cost of course).

The ticket for the train to Riom cost a mere €16:00 with my senior citizen’s railcard (and that puts into perspective the astonishing price of the tram ticket) but there was a wait of 100 minutes for my train. No mind – it gave me an opportunity to look around outside the station. In the square behind the railway station there were all kinds of food shops, including a Subway sandwich store so I grabbed a foot-long vegetarian and orange juice there – that was tea sorted out.

Further investigation revealed that just a 10-minute stagger away from here is one of these Premier Class tourist hotels. A modern unit-type hotel with en-suite facilities.

So the verdict on Lyon as a departure point for Montreal? Well, even if the only flight offered is an Air Transat service, then I am no longer going to struggle all of the way out to Paris Charles de Gaulle. Apart from the tram fare, everything else that I would need is right here in front of me at Lyon, much more so than at the airport hotels in Paris. There will also be a saving of over €200 on my travelling costs and that, dear reader, is all that you need to know.

The train to Riom presented no problems whatever, and Terry was there to meet me at the station. Liz and Terry offered me a bed for the night, for which I was extremely grateful, and I was out like a light. It had been a long day.

Thursday 8th May 2014 – I HAD THE BEST …

… night’s sleep that I have ever had in Caliburn, to be sure. I was late dozing off – round about midnight I reckon, but I remember nothing else until the alarm went off at 07:30. Even the morning’s heavy traffic didn’t wake me up. I’ll remember this spec – down at Boisfort on the road out towards the motorway and tucked behind a hedge on the road at the side – for another time.

So once I was organised, I went to park Caliburn on the hypermarket car park and I was off on the Metro once I found the entrance to the station.

First stop was the Troc. All of Marianne’s possessions have been sold, so it seems, and her account cleared. Similar news at the Bank too – the notaire has done the necessary there.

One of the things that I needed to do was to make my annual report to Marianne and check on her grave now that her gravestone has been installed.

The gravestone contains several errors that need to be corrected and so I’ll have to get on to that pretty smart-ish. But at least an all-over stone means that no work is required to maintain her grave. That was always going to be my biggest headache.

Anyway, it’s hard to believe that a year has gone past since she went to meet her maker, and I hope that she is happy wherever she might be.

After that, I turned my attention to happier things and WHA…HEY! I’ve booked my annual journey to Canada. Leaving 28 August and returning 8th October (actually 9th October as it’s a night flight). And with booking so far in advance and not travelling at a weekend the flight works out even cheaper than my previous two flights there, which is excellent news. Just €580 including taxes (which are more than the base price of the flight, would you believe?)

That’s not the best of it either. Had I wanted to go via Air Transat it would have cost me €50 less, if that were possible, but I’m flying Air Canada – a flagship airline too at that price – direct on the outbound flight and via Brussels on the return. I’m quite pleased with that deal, as you might guess, and I’m pleased that Connections, my travel agents, came up with the goods.

I’ve booked 4 nights at that hotel at the Cote de Liesse on the edge of Montreal where I stayed last year. That gives me plenty of opportunity to continue my exploration of the city so I need to make a list of things that I would like to see. I need to focus myself much more positively this year.

I’ve booked another big Dodge too and I do hope that I get one – I’ve heard a nasty rumour that Avis are planning to change over to Fords and the Ford Flex isn’t half as versatile as a Grand Caravan. That was a good deal too, better than last year.

The plan is to explore Montreal, then do the Richelieu Valley in the reverse direction (I hope that they have good mirrors on the car) then go to the Maine State Fair and tractor pull at Clinton. From there to the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival at Fredericton and then I’ll be off to Cape Breton, Newfoundland and then back to Labrador ro complete my visit of Highway 138 and then retrace my steps along the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Such is the plan but as we all know, “the best-laid plans of mice and men” etc etc.

One final task before I leave Brussels. They’ve fitted new brake shoes at the rear of Caliburn but I clearly interrupted them when I arrived to pick him up yesterday, for they had of course slackened off the handbrake cable to remove the brake pads but in the confusion they forgot to tighten it up so I had no rear brakes and no handbrake to speak of when I left the garage.

Now we are all happy again.

Leaving Brussels in a rainstorm, with traffic queues and roadworks all the way beyond Charleroi and I’m now in a lay-by with a couple of lorries in the foothills of the Ardennes near Couvin. Still not out of Belgium, but as my adventure starts at the frontier just up the road, I don’t want to do it in the rain and the gloom of the evening. Who knows? It might brighten up in the morning.

But I won’t have the sleep that I had last night anyway – the rain is bouncing off Caliburn’s roof and it sounds like a drum in the back.

-2

Wednesday 7th May 2014 – I MUST HAVE HAD A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP …

… despie the howling gale that was blowing in around the badly-fitted double glazing units.

During the night, I was back in the UK (well, it’s not all that far from here and you don’t need a ferry for your nocturnal perambulations anyway) with the long-suffering Nerina and I couldn’t take her somewhere on the following day (a Monday) as I’d promised Maria, a Greek girl with whom I was quite friendly when I worked at the EU, that I would do something for her at some place that she had told me and which I knew, but which has now gone out of my head once I woke up.

Nerina wanted to know what it was, and I thought that it was a motorway service area and so probably I had to pick her up off a coach or something. Anyway, our phone wasn’t working properly – when people called us, the phone didn’t ring – so one of us had to stay by the phone (nothing in your dreams is logical, is it?) and I had promised to take Zero to the adventure circus on the Sunday night, so poor Nerina drew the short straw, again.

I took Zero to the circus and right at the end they opened the mudbath for the children. After a couple of minutes of vacillation, one girl leapt in fully clothed, up to her knees, and once she was in, all the others followed suit.

I was then interrupted by another friend, someone from waaayyyyyy back, asking me why I hadn’t done the shopping, to which I replied that I was booked up until Tuesday morning, and what did he need that we didn’t have? He replied “well, wine, of course” – something that brought a smile to my face.

Meanwhile I had lost sight of my charge and had to chase around looking for her and eventually I found her all cold wet and muddy, wrapped in a big fluffy white towel. I had to wash her and shower her off to get her nice, warm and clean again.

So despite all of the excitement of the night, I was once more awake before the alarm went off so I managed to have a good hour or so on the computer before breakfast. Downstairs at breakfast though, I was joined by a coach-load of British tourists and I had forgotten how much I hate the “little England” provincial attitude of the aforementioned, even if it was my bread-and-butter for 13 years in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. I’m glad I don’t have to mix with them today.

Still, never mind. The Hotel New Astoria didn’t let me down. The bed and breakfast that I had for €45 plus local taxes has to be the best deal that I have had on my travels these last few years, despite the company.

Having dealt with the issues of breakfast etc I went for a wander around. I’d seen some kind of ship working just offshore last night in the doom and gloom and lo! and behold – here she was again. Quite an old ship by the looks of things and probably a dredger too, she’s called the Pinta.

Presumably named after one of the three ships – the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and not after an old Milk Marketing Board advert. And anyway, she looked as if she was old enough to have accompanied Columbus on his travels

On my way back to the station area I found, much to my surprise, a free ferry that crosses the harbour to the other side. I’ve not noticed that before and I wonder why not because I’ve been to Oostende dozens, if not hundreds of times.

As you know with ferries because I’ve told you before, every time I see a ferry it makes me cross, especially if it’s free, and so here I am sailing, or rather, dieseling, across the harbour. No sense in missing out, is there?

The other side of the harbour is also somewhere else that I’ve never visited and, once more, I can’t think for the life of me whyever not.

It’s quite historic over here and all kinds of things are happening, or are on display, or are simply “there”. Like this old barque called, incidentally, the Oostende moored here at the foot of the lighthouse. There has to be a story about this kind of ship and I wonder what it might be.

And, more to the point, why it isn’t moored up with the Mercator, another historic survivor fro the days of sail.

You don’t need me to tell you the story about all of this, do you?

Oostende was one of the more important ports along the coast facing the UK and the Germans had something of a fragile hold here. The ports along the coast, Oostende and Zeebrugge, had been raided in force in World War I and the unsuccessful landing at Dieppe in 1942 showed that the Allies had not forgotten the importance of these ports in World War II.

The Germans thus fortified them as part of the Atlantic Wall defences that I showed you a couple of years ago, and the fortifications still remain.

From this side of the harbour I managed a closer look at Larkspur.

There was no-one around who really knew what was going on with her – I asked a couple of people and they each gave totally different answers – but there was a couple of people in industrial safety clothing on the deck and I noticed a few rubbish skips present at the scene.

From my untutored eye it looked like they were gutting the ship of anything that was of high value in preparation for sending what remains of her to Turkey or India where she will doubtless be turned into a couple of thousand baked bean tins.

What a sad end.

After a marathon hike around the docks (because it is) I made it to the station for the 14:45 train and that had me back in Brussels by 16:00. I picked up Caliburn, did a few bits of shopping, had an excellent falafel supper at that place near Marianne’s and now I’ll be settling down for the night.

I hope.

-2

Tuesday 6th May – I’M GLAD I WENT TO BED EARLY LAST NIGHT …

… because at about 02:00 the refrigeration unit of the lorry parked across from me suddenly sprung into action.

And it was rattling away for about half an hour and just when I thought tht it ould never stop and I was thinking about giving it up and moving on, it cut out as dramatically as it had started and we all managed to go back to sleep.

And no harm done either as I was awake long before the alarm went off too and I even had time to make myself a coffee. No hot water in the Gentlemen’s rest rooms so that ruled out the possibility of a good wash and shave.

There’s no ticket machine at the terminus at Berchem St Agathe and the bus driver wouldn’t change €20 so I ended up at the railway station with a 40 minute wait for a train to the Centre. Fird train that passed was the train that I used to take to go to work when I worked at Boisfort. I was debating whether to take it and do my business around Schuman first, and I wish that I had now because my train was cancelled and I ended up with over an hour to wait. It’s just like a third-world country here.

Anyway I hopped onto the next train going to Schuman and started from there, albeit an hour later than planned.

I dealt with the stuff that needed doing in the city centre and then caught the train back to Caliburn, and doesn’t the rolling stock look modern compared to the relics of the 40s and 50s that they still had here when I used to go to work?

There’s a fritkot right by the station at Berchem and the smell was overpowering. And it was lunchtime too and so I fell by the wayside.

Caliburn is now in the garage having his check-up and I set off to the station. I’m having a night out and so I’m going to the seaside – and why not? It must be all of 2 months since I’ve seen the sea, and it’s not all that expensive on the SNCB, certainly when compared to railways in the UK.

I wouldn’t have made it here to Oostende and back on the amount of diesel that the railfare would have bought me

I’ve found a cheap hotel, the Hotel New Astoria, for the night and I really did forget just how tacky these package holiday resort hotels can be, even down to the organist in the lounge at night. This brings back a few memories I can assure you.

As for value for money, no complaints here at all. I’m quite happy from that point of view.

Down the the docks to see what’s happening and first port … "ahem" – ed … of call has to be the old Larkspur, now apparently known as Lark.

Built in 1976 (so I’m surprised that they didn’t change her name to Ark), which is well past her sell-by date according to EU legislation, she was formerly pride of a couple of ferry fleets, especially the Sally Line with whom she sailed for years as Sally Sky and then Eurotraveller.

She ended her days as the flagship of Trans-European Ferries, who inherited, at several removes, the old National Belgian shipping line that ran between Oostende and Dover. Without the financial backing of the Belgian government, which struggled even so to keep the line running, no-one made a success of the line and TEF was the final fling, having worked some kind of deal with the town of Ramsgate about running into the harbour there.

Now she’s sitting here rusting away while her future is debated.

You have probably seen Larkspur’s sister. A video of her being run aground full steam ahead on a beach in Turkey to be broken was posted on the internet a few months ago and did the tour of the world in seconds flat.

But it’s sad to see her, or any ship for that matter, end her days as a rusting hulk.

She wasn’t the only ship in the harbour either. There were a couple of cruise ships moored here too.

One of them was totally inaccessible but the other one, the Delphin out of Nassau, was moored up next to Larkspur which must have been a different kind of experience for the holidaymakers.

Or maybe it isn’t, for the Delphin is even older than the Larkspur, being built in 1975 and her claim to fame is that she was refloated after sinking in Singapore harbour in 1992 and subsequently undegoing a full refit.

The Delphin was also apparently a former a car ferry – or at least, that’s the impression that I gained after learning that her refit included "welding closed the opening bow doors". She was formerly based at Odessa in the Soviet Union and owned by the Black Sea Shipping Company.

Since then she has passed through many hands, several of them ending in bankruptcy.

There was something of a crowd on the jetty opposite the Delphin and on making enquiries I was told that she was just about to depart. And even as we were speaking, a tug sidled up alongside and a line was heaved aboard.

One the line had been secured, the Delphin cast off from the quayside and with a little "slow astern" and probably some "left hand down a bit" too and "full speed ahead" from the tug, the Delphin slid away from the quayside and executed a beautiful 180° turn in the harbour.

Poetry in motion, you might say.

Now that she was pointing in the correct direction, it was "full steam ahead" and she set off into the setting sun with her full load of passengers – next port of call Ijmuiden in the Netherlands.

I set off too in search of food and ended up with the worst, and probably the most expensive, falafel supper that I have ever had the misfortune to eat. That was a real disappointment after the excellent falafel suppers that I have had in Brussels.

Anyway, that was enough excitement for me. Back to the hotel where I discovered that I had forgotten to bring with me my USB key with my collection of feature films downloaded from http://www.archive.org.

Never mind – I had an early night instead.

-1

Monday 5th May 2014 – I KNEW THAT IT WAS A MISTAKE …

… to have that final cup of coffee. Despite being nice and comfortable in my little bed – no complaints there of course – I couldn’t get off to sleep and I was watching dawn break through the windscreen at one moment. I think that the best sleep that I had was the hour or so after the alarm went off, to be honest.

Mind you, no complaints about the choice of service area either. This was quite quiet and isolated and with the “usual offices” close to hand, which is always a bonus.

The coffee was still warm in the flask as well and so that saved on brewing up too.

Once that was organised, I could hit the road, but not before laughing at some Parisian’s idea of parking. Why take up one place when you can take up four? No wonder that all of the other French people that I know don’t have a very high opinion of Parisians.

The journey to Brussels was quite uneventful but I realised that I would be too late to do what I needed to do as I wouldn’t be there before lunchtime, so I hit the shops at Waterloo. And Media Markt was having a sale so I stocked up on a pile of DVDs. There’s enough there to keep me out of mischief.

In Brussels, Caliburn’s annual check-up is fixed for Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning and so I need to find something to do for Tuesday night. And I have a cunning plan too! Just wait an see!

A visit to IKEA is always compulsory espcially as I have a few little things to buy, and I finally found a sofa that is what I want for the house, whenever that it might be that I’m ready for it. But I’m not holding my breath, as you can imagine;

However I saw the funny side of something that happened in IKEA and when I find my micro-SD card converter I’ll show you a photo of it.

After having had multi-level marketing

on an Air Transat flight last year, we now have staggered opening times for different nationalities. This must be something of a first in the Developed World, although of course it is Belgium and anything can happen here.

As indeed it did. Half an hour after typing these words I had a run-in with the Belgian police – yet again. And it wasn’t as if I was doing anything either. I was quietly parked up at the side of the road reading a book. Either Caliburn or Yours Truly is well-known to the Belgian police, I reckon. But then again I recognised one of the policemen – he was one of the two with whom I’d had a “frank exchange of views” last year, so he was probably getting his own back.

God how I hate this country.

Anyway, If that’s not enough excitement for the day, while I was parked up at the motorway service area outside the town (and outside the jurisdiction of the poilce of Bruxelles-Capitale, I ended up repairing some young guy’s car that had broken down and later I witnessed a collision between two lorries on the car park.

It really IS all happening here.

-3

Monday 4th November 2013 – THE DEED IS DONE

Marianne’s apartment has now been sold and her estate liquidated. And when I see just the amounts to which everyone seems to have helped himself, there isn’t much of it left. “Vultures picking over the bones of a corpse” is what immediately springs to mind, and the metaphor seems to be quite apt. “Give everything that is left to the poor” said Marianne, and that’s what I will do, but I can’t help feeling that the poor are going to be rather disillusioned with the Vultures of Belgium.

First thing this morning was to roll up the mattress and bedding and have that ready to go. Second thing was to go to the DiY shop and purchase a new rubber gasket for the sink waste pipe outlet. I’ve fitted that and now the sink drains much better. Everything else that was hanging around went into the last cardboard box and the waste bin, and I put all of that outside along with the plants while I vacuumed everywhere.

The next-to-last thing that I did was to have a shower and to clean the bathroom and to pack up the suitcase of clothes. That went outside along with the shower curtain, and the final task was to read all of the meters.

Fetching Caliburn, I loaded all of the stuff up, and there wasn’t much room for anything else after that. I’d judged it quite fine. It’s a good job I wasn’t intending to take the plants with me – they are decorating the hall of the building now for people to do what they will with them.

I found a quiet nook and settled down with a good book until the relevant moment, and that was that. And I do recall saying to my lawyer as we left the building at the end “I won’t say a definitive goodbye to you, because I said that a couple of years ago and I still ended up coming back, but maybe we shall meet agin, a long time before Philippi”

I still have a few things to do in Brussels, not the least of which being to cancel the standing order about the payments to the apartment and also some things for Marianne, but that will have to wait for another time as I’ve rather lost interest in it all for now. I was on the motorway and out of that accursed nation.

At Melun, I stopped for fuel as usual but my friendly neighbourhood kebab house was closed. That was a disaster. However Dominos Pizza place was open and I ended up with yet another pizza vegetariana. And goodbye to the vegan cheese because I forgot to nip over the road earlier and buy some more.

But back on the motorway, round about midnight I was just overwhelmed with sleep and I’ve no idea why. I can’t keep going like I used to. Nothing for it but to pull off the highway and have a kip. I’m getting old.

-4

Sunday 3rd November 2013 – AND IN A CHANGE OF PLAN …

… I’ve been working today. Or, rather, what remained of today by the time that I got up. I wasn’t in much of a rush seeing as it’s Sunday.

Today was the day that absolutely everything that remained in the apartment, with the exception of what I want tomorrow morning, can be packed up and made ready to go. And not just that either – no-one came for the video and audio cassettes so I bagged them up into rubbish sacks and stuck the video cassettes in with the rubbish downstairs. The audio cassettes I put outside on the pavement with the broken clothes drier and, true to form, they disappeared during the course of the day.

The bed I dismantled – I’ll be sleeping on the mattress on the floor tonight, and the coffee and dining room tables I dismantled and wrapped in clingfilm – I can see the uses of this stuf during furniture removals.

So with all of that done, I bought myself a pizza (I shan’t be cooking again in here) and sat down to watch some gridiron until the late evening when it all went quiet. Then I went off down the road to rescue Caliburn and started descending all of the boxes in the lift (there were 7 lift-loads in all and I was hoping for no more than 5). It was at that moment that the concierge started to wash the hallway floor – 23:00 hours. He wasn’t pleased about me blocking the hallway, just as I wasn’t pleased about him washing the hallway at that time of night. He told me to put my stuff outside. Well, like I’m really going to do that in the pouring rain so I told him in no uncertain terms what he coud do with his broom handle and this led to yet another contretemps (long-term readers of this rubbish will know only to well that this is not the first contretemps that I have had with this ignorant peasant, but I digress)

So Caliburn is now almost fully-loaded, with more stuff that I was hoping to take back but there you are, and tomorrow is the final day, but we haven’t quite finished yet. The sink in the kitchen has now totally blocked up and there was no way of emptying it. Dropping my tea into the sink twice last week hadn’t helped. Taking the drain plug out of the elbow didn’t improve matters very much and so I bit the bullet and dismantled the entire system from the sink down to the main drain. And here was the culprit. Just in the downpipe from the sink, everything was all clogged up with a sub-human mass of congealed whatever that must have been there for a hundred years and Yours Truly was there for a good half hour chiselling it out.

So having finally dealt with what was left of Quatermass’s Experiment and seeing that the water was now draining out a hundred times better, I reassembled everything only to find that I’ve torn the rubber gasket that connects the downpipe to the sink and there’s quite a leak.

Ahh well – off to the DiY shop in the morning, I suppose. I could have done without this.

-3

Saturday 2nd November 2013 – WHEN THE ALARM WENT OFF THIS MORNING …

… I just rolled over and went back to sleep. Somehow I couldn’t summon up the energy to leave my comfy little bed here.

And when I finally did wake up, I decided that I would have something of an informal day of rest and not do too much. That was the cue for coffee in bed and a James Bond film, together with a good book.

That took me through until lunchtime and then I nipped out to the local shops for the baguette and the bits and pieces that I shall need for the journey home next week. Hard to think that this is effectively my final shopping expedition in Brussels, although I’ve said things like that before.

This evening, I went out again. No football in the Netherlands border area this evening, and none in the German border area either. There was however a match at the Argosstadionachterdekaserne, the home of KV Mechelen, where the home team was to entertain Zulte-Waregem.

People, including Yours Truly, do say that Belgians have no sense of humour, but you would be forgiven for thinking differently when you see the sign over the entrance gate to the stadium. You can tell that KV Mechelen aren’t doing so well in the league at the moment.

But the stadium itself, which must qualify for having one of the longest names in mainstream football, wasn’t easy to find. It was hemmed in right in the middle of an area of what would be in the UK some kind of Victorian working-class terraced housing and it did remind me of going to a football match in the UK back in the good old days of when all stadia used to be like this.

There was however some easy – and free – parking on the old railway goods yard about 500 metres away, and there were even a couple of marshalls to help everyone. Long time since I’ve seen this kind of thing.

The next thing was something of a shock though – unlike at Breda in the Netherlands last week, the stadium doesn’t accept payments by card – it’s cash only. And I wish now that I had paid with a card at the supermarket this afternoon rather than with cash. The nearest cash point was 1500 metres away, so I was told, and me with a bad foot too after my exploits with the coffee table earlier in the week. I didn’t need any of this. Mind you it was a good job that I arrived early.

So having procured a ticket, at €16:00, it was into the ground. And this was a surprise as well. A First Division game in one of Europe’s leading national leagues and the stadium had probably over 50% of its capacity as standing. When was the last time that you ever heard of this?

And as for the stadium itself, you can tell that they’ve never heard of the Taylor Report in Belgium either because this place wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in England following the report on the condition of English football grounds after the fire at Bradford City. It really was like stepping back in time to the early 1970s in English football and you have no idea how comfortable it felt to be standing up on the terraces.

But I don’t care what anyone in authority has to say – the fans are totally correct in their opinion of all-seater stadia. With so many standees in the ground, the atmosphere really was electric for the entire 90 minutes and the Mechelen fans must be the noisiest that I have ever heard at a modern football match.

The Powers That Be want everyone to be seated at a football match as in a theatre or a cinema, and give polite applause whenever someone does anything merit-worthy and to keep quiet the rest of the game. That is total nonsense and is what has ruined the game as a spectator sport. Football is all about noise and atmosphere, 90 minutes of bedlam on the terraces, and you can’t do that sitting down. And it’s not just about the merit-worthy actions either. When Zulte-Waregem’s n°3 went down rather too easily and for far too long right under the referee’s nose and on the “popular side” after a challenge early in the game, the Mechelen fans were on his back for the rest of the match with whistles, jeers and abuse to such an extent that his captain swapped him over to the other, more sedate side of the field.

THAT is what real football is about.

People might think that that is being grossly unfair to the footballers concerned. Four or five years ago I remember Craig Bellamy being quite upset about the abuse that he was receiving from the crowd. Firstly, I don’t ever recall him complaining or being upset when the fans of his team were dishing it out to an opposing footballer, and secondly, I will gladly go and stand out in the middle of a football pitch for a whole 90 minutes and let 30,000 people hurl as much abuse as they like about me and my family for only 25% of the money that he is on.

As for the football however, we had a torrential rainstorm and a 2-2 draw, the result being a fair reflection of the balance of the play. And the best player on the field was the Zulte-Waregem centre-forward who scored both his team’s goals. A different class of player than the others on the field.

I’d seen a Turkish Fritkot on my way into town and so I stopped off there and, sure enough, they conjured up a plate of falafel and fritjes. I enjoyed them too, especially as I felt that I had earned them. I’ll miss all of that when I leave. But I’ll have to come back ina couple of weeks though – there’s a book sale in the car park and I must add to my collection a copy of “Honkie and Ponkie On The Moon”.

I’m depressed though about how much Vlaams I’ve forgotten, I really am. I must do something about this.

-5

Friday 1st November 2013 – IT’S A BANK HOLIDAY HERE TODAY.

But not for me – I have work to do.

Now that the cleaner has finished, I can review the packing situation, especially as, on my travels yesterday to buy my bread, I liberated a pile of wooden boxes.

Everything was unpacked from the cardboard boxes and repacked in the wooden or plastic ones. There are two types of boxes – those that are wanted as soon as I get home, and those that can wait for whenever. The idea is that the least urgent stuff will be crammed right down at the far end of Caliburn and the more urgent stuff put closer to the doors. That way it will all be to hand.

You’ve no idea how long it took to do all of this – much longer than I thought – and then of course I had to dismantle the empty cardboard boxes. But at least now there’s plenty of space available in the apartment and it looks more like a furniture removal job.

For tea I had the last of the aubergine casserole that I had made earlier. Then, having washed the pot and the plates, they all went into a box. Tomorrow I’m out and Sunday I’ll have a pizza that I can eat out of a box with my fingers. I’ve officially finished cooking.

-5

Thursday 31st October 2013 – THE CLEANER …

… came round this morning right on time and was here for about 4 hours. I did what I could to help, but that wasn’t all that much and it was clear that I was in the way and so I skulked off to my little room and stayed there, just occasionally giving advice and assisitance.

I can’t say that I’m too impressed with what she did, to be honest. I was expecting a much more thorough job that this, but she did more in four hours than I would have been able to do in four years and so I can’t complain too much.

The purchaser turned up with a workman later. He wants to have the parquet floor sanded and polished, and needed an estimate. I didn’t have any good reason not to let them in and so in they came. It rather disrupted my plans a little, but that’s what plans are for, of course. And after they went, I cleaned a few of the more obvious places that the cleaner had missed.

There wasn’t much time left after that and so I had tea and called it a night. An early night with a good book is always a good idea every so often.

-2

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality