Tag Archives: police parking

Tuesday 13th December 2016 – I’M NOT BUYING …

schnitzel insecta burger delhaize leuven belgium october octobre 2016…any of these burgers and schnitzels.

They might be on sale in the Bio range of the Delhaize supermarket in the centre of Leuven, but they don’t look as if the are vegetarian, never mind vegan, do they?

Yes, I went up to town today to do some shopping. A baguette, some hummus, some rice and a carton of iced tea, and that’s me fixed up for the next few days.

Not only that, I was browsing around in the HEMA on the corner, and that had a mini-wok on sale, reasonably good quality, for just €10:00. It’s just the thing for cooking while I’m here, and with this I can do some fried onions and all that kind of thing.

My curries will take on a new dimension with this machine.

With my early night last night, I was wide awake by 06:30. I’d been on my travels during the night, but don’t ask me where I’d been now, because it’s all gone out of my head.

By the time that the alarm went off, I was already eating my breakfast and that is something that hasn’t happened for a long time, has it?

And then I came back to my room to witness the excitement.

one way street kruisstraat leuven belgium october octobre 2016They’ve turned the Kruisstraat, the street at the side of the building, into a one-way street but not too many people have taken much notice of it.

Consequently, they sent a police van and a police patrol out to ambush the motorists. But if you notice, you’ll see that the police van is parked the wrong way round in the one-way street, and that’s the kind of thing that can only ever happen in Belgium.

After lunch, I carried on with some work on the website, with a little bit of rest here and there, and then I went for my tea and an extremely lengthy chat with my housemate.

It’s late now, and so I won’t have much of a decent sleep unfortunately. But that’s the kind of thing that happens when you socialize, and that’s a new experience for me.

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Friday 26th July 2013 – WE HAD A COUPLE …

… of rainstorms today

Not much of a surprise though because it’s been threatening for a day or so.

The first one woke me up, again before the alarm went off, but then that’s no surprise seeing as how I was away with the fairies for a while yesterday afternoon.

So after breakfast I sorted out a few papers that I needed for the notaire and off I went.

It takes an hour and five minutes to walk there, as I now know for I timed it.

Yes, off I went on foot. I seem to have much more exercise when I’m here in Brussels than when I’m at home in France. When I’m out I do a lot of walking.

Bit of a shame that the walkman went flat after just 400 metres but then you can’t have everything.

The notaire didn’t come up with anything that was unexpected – well, yes she did, but what I mean is that nothing in Belgium is unexpected, if you see what I mean – it’s all par for the course.

So I left the building, straight into another rainstorm, and walked into town.

poor police parking brussels belgium july juillet 2013And you’ll see what I mean about nothing being unexpected when you see the fine example of Belgian police parking in the city.

Belgian drivers are the worst in the world, and so it’s no surprise to see that the coppers have no room to be complacent.

With driving like this from the police farce, no wonder that they can’t recognise poor driving whenever they see it and so the standards go down and down.

colonne de congres bruxelles belgium july juillet 2013I walked into town past the famous Colonne de Congrès.

This column, extremely controversial in its day, was designed by Joseph Poelaert and erected in the 1850s.

It is meant to commemorate the people who “ont fixé les destinées nouvelles du pays, après la fondation de son indépendance” – “gave the new country its new direction and future after independence”.

47 metres high, there is a spiral staircase of 193 steps inside and in the olden days it was possible to climb to the top.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible these days. Like much of Belgian infrastructure, it’s in poor condition. And it was badly-damaged by Hurricane Cyril on 18th January 2007.

soldat inconnu unknown soldier colonne de congres bruxelles belgium july juillet 2013At the foot of the Colonne is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

One unidentified Belgian soldier was taken from each of the battlefields on which the Belgian Army fought in World War I and a blinded Belgian veteran made the choice of which one was to be interred here.

He was laid to rest here on 11th November 1922 and an eternal flame was lit.

After a mega-ramble I ended up at Elak, one of my favourite shops in Brussels. It’s an electronics shop and I buy my 12-volt LED warning lights and 12-volt piazzo buzzers from there.

I’m running a little low on the aforementioned and so I need to build up my stocks. No red lights in stock, and the blue ones are flaming extortionate, so I stocked up on a few green and yellow, and a couple of buzzers.

I’ve also found (well, remembered) a shop, Pêle-Mêle, that buys second-hand books, CDs, computer equipment and that sort of stuff and so I can move on a pile of Marianne’s stuff without too much effort and that will make even more room here.

I caught the bus back here, and once more crashed out for a few hours, but this isn’t doing any good. I’m going to have to start focusing myself so much better on what I need to be doing.

In other news, I was listening to one of the new CDs that I had bought the other day just before leaving. Warren Zevon’s superb Stand In The Fire.

A magnificent album, it really is, and it features, apart from “Excitable Boy”, “Werewolves of London” and “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money” (which will be my theme song for Canada-2013 of course) – to name just a selection of good music, a magnificent mickey-take of “Sweet Home Alabama”, entitled “Play It All Night Long”.

When I was in North Carolina in 2005 I remembered these Classic Rock radio stations that played nothing but “Hotel California”, “Free Bird”, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and, of course, “Sweet Home Alabama” non-stop. I wish that I had had a copy of “Play It All Night” back then.

Anyway I edited the relevant page of the journey to include the lyrics of the chorus. They were really appropriate for the journey through North Carolina.
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