Scribbles » Belgium

Why do things always break when I am at home?

Peter — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:58:00 +0000

In case you have not realized this yet: Tine and the girls live in Belgium and I live.. eh.. in other places. Currently I am based in Rome, Italy.

The agreement is that when I am home, Tine can give me a stack of things to do. Things she had no time for while running a family with two teenagers and a dog, a house and garden, and a full-time job (still a mystery to me how she does it).

The funny thing we have noticed is that things typically “wait to break”, until I am home. The moment I step through that door, lights stop working, doors don’t open anymore and locks break.

Last year, on Christmas Eve (!) coming home at midnight, Lana noticed a problem with the power lines along the street, leading to our house.

She said “Dad, funny, these wires are really dragging… Something seems wrong.” As usual, dad ignored the remark, but once in the house, we found we had no power.

Earlier that night, a lorry caught one of the electricity wires further down the street, and with a domino effect, all the poles started to bend over.

Guess who was at the end of the line? Right, our house. So our connection got partially ripped off. Black marks on the wall showed where the sparks had been flying..

No power on Xmas eve, at 1 AM… ! No electricity means no heating neither. No warm water. To my surprise, the power company came to repair it at 2:30 AM. By 3:30 AM we were in business again.

To keep up with this Murphy tradition this year, the fresh water pipe broke and flooded the lawn.

Oh and the dishwasher also gave up. And the toilet downstairs stopped working. And for some strange reason all doors started to squeak. Oh and the grill melted one of its iron supports. Oh, and also…

Today, the last bit is repaired. I am ready to fly back to Rome. I just hope nothing else is breaking before I leave. Everyone has strict orders not to touch anything anymore until I left.

The every-day traveller…

Peter — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:54:00 +0000

I was home, in Belgium, this weekend. Taking the train back to Brussels airport, I was surprised how green everything still was. And how beautiful it looked.

The fields were much smaller and looked more cramped next to the other, compared to what I am used to in my second home, in Italy. But its beauty still amazed me. And it took me by surprise that I was amazed. After all, I have seen this scenery since 47 (soon!) years. I have taken this train to Brussels Airport for 15 years. And still…

It made me think about travelling… Travelling is a state of mind. In finding joy in little details. Even if you see them every day. Travelling is being amazed by these small joys. Travelling is standing still to look at a detail, no matter how common, and to look at it as if it was the first time.

I took some random pictures as the train was passing through scenery. (Surely wished my Nokia mobile phone featured a better camera!)

(click on the collage to view the slideshow)

Brussels Airport: “Kiss and Drive!” and a bad luck logo…

Peter — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:44:00 +0000

I am at Brussels airport, waiting for my flight back to Rome. After six weeks with the family, we are off on our own again. The kids go off to sports camp, Tine starts working in Belgium and I am off to Italy, back to saving the hungry in the world.

Hey, they have new roadsigns at the airport, saying “Kiss and Drive”, meant to guide people to a passenger drop off zone.
I am not sure if the combination of kissing and driving is really safe, but I am all for it. However, maybe “Park and Kiss” would have been more appropriate!

So far for the smileys.

At check-in it seems they have changed the system for self check-in: you will need your reservation number. You can’t check in via your name, passport scan (as in Rome), or credit card swipe. No, you need your reservation number. Damned if I would take out my computer, boot it up, and check my email for it. Damned if I would print it out on paper before I come. Thought eTicketing was all about paperless and effortless booking and checking in? Not so with Brussels Airlines, it seems. Nope you need your reservation number, sir!.

Ok, so I try to check in at the “Express check-in”, thinking “I only have hand luggage, so I guess this is ‘express check-in’ “? Not so. A young man stopped me asking for my boarding pass. I told him “No, I am checking in, and am following the signs.” He said: “No checking in here, you need to follow that line”, and pointed to another row of check-in counters.
I told him this was confusing. He just shrugged his shoulders and looked the other way, ignoring my comments. He told a colleague who approached me to explain and said: “Ignore him, difficult customer!”
He then turned to someone else, who wanted to do the same thing as I: check in through the express check-in. And another, and another.. Soon enough we were standing with 4-5 people complaining about the confusing signs. I just stood by and smiled. Ah the sweet taste of a little revenge! Life can be so sweet…

So, I am checking in. They ask to weigh my hand luggage, which is a compact trolley with my computer bag in it. In the bag some small chargers, my laptop and a book: 9.6 kg.
“Sorry sir, you are only allowed 5 kg handluggage, you will have to check it in”, she said.
Dah. Checking in a computer bag? To Rome? Rrrrright. *If* it would arrive, i’d have to wait for 90 minutes at the luggage belt.
“Nope”, I said, “I can show you one kilo of handluggage and then shop and buy 50 kgs of duty free goods, and you would not even know. So…”
She let me go… I *am” a difficult customer!

Anyways, last thought of the day: Did you know the Brussels Airlines logo originally had 13 balls on it. People said it would bring bad luck, so they added a 14th ball at the last minute. Some planes were already painted with 13 balls, so the 14th came with some expense. You don’t believe me? It is true, as it was in the papers!“!

My Home Town

Peter — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:42:00 +0000

I am still looking at the pictures we took last weekend, during our evening walk along Flander’s coast…

I was born and raised in Ostend, and left only after I graduated, at the age of 23. But I always come back, even if it was only for the sea. She has always attracted me. The scent of the silt, the mighty power and potential to harm or kill at any moment. Yet endlessly beautiful, inspiring and gracious. Ever changing colours and behaviour, changing moods in a flash.

Maybe it was the sense of endlessness, the travel, “leaving but never knowing when you would come back” which always attracted me to the sea. Or the freedom. Just take off in a boat and… go!

This boardwalk (“staketsel” in Flemish), runs along the entrance of the port, once busy with a active fishing fleet, cargo vessels and ferries to England. Every so often, a large vessel looses control over its helm, and rams the boardwalk, chewing out a whole piece. And every time, it is repaired. As a kid, we used to climb from the side of the boardwalk down to water level, and drop fish heads strung on a cord in the water, waiting for the crabs to bite into the bait. Or on the beach, next to the board walk, we would collect empty bottles, and get money from the shop when we returned them. Always good for a handful of fresh candy.

My Love Affair With Sabena

Peter — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:11:00 +0000

That is Sabena. Not Sabrena, Sabine, or Sabrina! We’re talking about our ex-national carrier. A customer-company platonic love affair! If you are looking for sexual inspired stories, you won’t find it here! Or should I tell them about he Mile-High club?

Anyway, just a few months ago, SN Brussels Airlines and Virgin Express merged into Brussels Airlines. I was a regular customer of both “parent” companies, so when flying to Rome I was curious to experience first hand the excitement of the new merged airline.
I used to be a regular customer of SABENA, the Belgian national carrier. Back in the eighties and early nineties, they were a shabby airline, deserving their nickname “Such A Bloody Experience Never Again”. Back then, Brussels national airport was a dump, a national shame. Run down, inefficient, unattractive. It was the only airport I knew then, where you had to pay with a coin (then still Belgian Francs), to get a luggage cart in arrivals. Would the international traveler arriving in Brussels, with a Bef 20 coin in their pocket please raise their hand? Right. So most people had to drag their luggage out of arrivals. Pathetic, it was.

Mid nineties, it all started to change. Sabena expanded their network, renewed its fleet of aircraft, and had an overhaul of its staff. Actually it became a pleasure flying with them. And I flew Sabena a lot, as they had loads of African destinations.
Brussels Airport did not get a facelift, no, it went further than that. They amputated the departure halls, then the arrivals hall and cut off one of the oldest departure/arrival wings, all to be replaced by brand new state-of-the-art buildings.

After flirting with SAS, courting KLM, seducing British Airways and winking at Air France for a while – the latter relationship being blocked by the EU – Sabena decided to partner up with Swiss Air in 1995. And Swiss Air spoiled it all. They literally sucked up all liquidity and valuable assets, and run off with it, declaring bankruptcy themselves right after 9/11 (a handy excuse, 9/11 was!). They left behind a sad-faced Sabena management who could not have been too clever having Swiss Air get away with all the sucking! The souvenir of the short lived partnership was a huge debt and a flabbergasted Belgian Government (who was then a part owner of the national carrier).. They are still fighting as to determine who mismanaged Sabena. They went bankrupt also. Sabena that is. The Belgian state was bankrupt already a long time ago.

Gone was the holy shrine of the jet-era flashy status of being a pilot or air attendant. They all joined the long queue at the employment office. Left was just.. a shrine.. And a massively under-utilized brand new national airport. Oh, and thousands of stranded passengers of course… “Sorry, we can not fly you back to Belgium, madam as ‘We’ don’t exist anymore!”
It took “Swiss Air” only weeks to get reborn into “Swiss” – no wonder with all the cash and assets they ran off with from Sabena. But the Belgian carrier is still picking up the pieces today.

First reborn into SN Brussels Airlines (who invents these names? People actually get paid to come up with a name like “SN” Brussels Airlines?), as a small regional carrier, slowly expanding their network. They were still a pleasure to fly. And the left-over air staff from Sabena, still showed a pride.

Virgin Express was born in 1996, using Brussels as a regional hub, servicing several destinations in Europe. They were to be a low cost carrier, but after a few years they became just as expensive as SN. Minus leg room (you wanted to bring your legs aboard, you had to pay extra..), minus food, minus drinks, minus the frequent travel scheme and often minus the smiles too. Plus the attitude, often.

It is a mystery to me why SN wanted to merge with Virgin and create Brussels Airlines… Just as it was a mystery to me who invented their TV publicity spot announcing the merger (people actually get paid for stuff like this?). The spot showed (tricked of course) two aircraft (one Virgin 737 and an SN Avro Jet), courting in the sky, flying loops and upside down stunts together (rather a scary sight to see a 737 passenger jet fly loops and upside downs, I am sure there is a law against that, but hey it’s TV!…), to clearly show how much in love the two planes and the two parent companies were.
Result of the courtship was a rather distasteful televised birth of a small plane (including all the slime, blood etc..) pressed out of the back of a Virgin Express 737 (clearly in the female role!), and.. taraaaaaa, the small plane had the logo of Brussels Airlines. How inventive, those TV commercials people! Oh wow!

So I guess Virgin Express was no longer a Virgin anymore. They stopped being ‘Express’ a long time before the merger… Mr. Branson probably said ‘Thank you’, took the money and ran, to buy another island in the Caribbean (actually quite a nice one, we anchored right beside it last summer!) leaving all of us mortals to wonder what the merger would do..

And what did the merger bring? Read about it tomorrow in “SN plus Virgin equals abortion?”

Home – “Le Plat Pays”

Peter — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:11:00 +0000

‘Gojnobuutn? Diknbucht!’, the skipper of the fishing vessel shouted in our dialect, as we passed him in the harbour of Nieuwpoort yesterday. The instructor we had on board our ship did not understand a word of it. Even though he speaks Dutch, and lives only sixty kilometers away, he does not understand our dialect. It could just as well have been Chinese to him. ‘Gojnobuutn? Diknbucht!’.. The fisherman was warning us of the fog at sea.

We were out sailing on the Belgian coast. Loreena McKennitt’s music was playing. It is my home-coming music. It made me think: “Despite all the exotic traveling I do, I always come back to this place.” And ‘by this place’ I do not mean Belgium, nor the region where we live at the moment. No, the place that feels home like no other is the area I was born and raised, the coastal region of Belgium, where we were sailing yesterday. My roots.

Jacques Brel –remember, the famous Belgian singer-songwriter you had never heard of?- made a song about my roots: ‘Le plat pays qui est le mien’, he called it. Literally, ‘the flat land that is mine’… This flat land is a coastline of only sixty kilometers long, stretching from the French to the Dutch border, with England about fifty-sixty kilometers on the other side of the Northsea.

Every time I go there, I feel moved deep down inside. No matter what the season is. It can be stormy with massive dark threatening clouds and strong south-westerly winds gusting over the coastal planes, pushing so hard most trees grow, bent into one direction.
Or the white crispy clean beauty of frost and light snow, where you have the impression your breath will freeze in your noose.
Or baking hot blue skies, converting the whole sixty kilometers of coastline into one gigantic pool for millions of people, coming to seek freshness in the sea. The sea that welcomes them with a cool breeze and tumbling waves. At those times, the whole coastline is one feast of happiness, and terraces, and music on the beach, with parties and fireworks in the evenings.

Sometimes, a lot of times, the sky is grey. As you stand on the sand dunes which make a large part of the coast, you can look over the flat horizon: the fair almost white sand glides over into the sea, which is almost just as white. The waves reflect the cap of low clouds and mist, making the panorama one transition of shades of white and light-grey.

Sometimes the clouds are so heavy the light wind can not carry them anymore, and the moisture sinks down over the land, creating heavy mist, like we had yesterday. The people then say: ” ‘t is voe te snien”, literally “you could cut it”, so thick the mist could be. It happens you can not even see two meters in front of you. Then the sound would be muffled, echoed, and carries much further than usual. This makes everything confusing. And wet… Especially wet.. The mist would drip off your face and clothes, and off the tree branches. If you are real silent then, you can hear the drops create a weird, short and soft dripdroptiktok, echo-t all around, as if you would be surrounded by thousands of fairytale-d invisible dwarfs tiptoeing around you. It is then, this land of mine whispers its mystic and old stories. Legends about the people who lived there in a dark past. It is then the music of Loreena McKennitt comes to its full right.

It is a land of stubborn people. Traditionally keeping things to themselves. Speaking a Flemish dialect nobody else understands, rich in sounds with an ‘undertone’ of things that people do not say but rather think. Only to be read by the tone in which things are said..
‘Gojnobuutn? Diknbucht!’ the skipper of the fishing vessel had shouted at us. Literally he said ‘Going outside? Fat junk’. What he meant was ‘Are you going to sea? The fog is very thick’.

Our language is a dialect, a mixture of Dutch, French and English words often bastardized and changed into new words hardly showing their roots. Only people here, at the coast, speak it. Nobody else understands us. It is a language of all possible verbal sounds and intonations, making it sound funny. Even to this day, when I talk to Tine in our Flemish dialect, no ‘outsider’ can understand. Not even someone who lives only sixty kilometers further inland, like our trainer on the boat.

This is a land of people conquered and ruled by many nations, but they did not mind, they were independent at heart and in spirit. The Romans conquered, then the Saxons, the Franks, the French, then we came under Austrian rule, later Spanish and Dutch, until they had no clue anymore what to do with us, so they made us an independent country. We became a buffer state between “the big players” at the time: Holland, England, Germany and France.. Even after our independence, we came under German rule twice. We actually stopped the invasion of the Germans during the World War I at the very place we were moored yesterday, in Nieuwpoort: the lockmaster had purposely opened up the locks at springtide, and flooded a huge part of the country, making it impossible for the Germans to progress. They got stuck for 4 years, in the mud. No matter we had to drown most of our homes, the invaders were stopped! Once again, the sea had played its predominant rule in our history…

It is the sea that made the land what it is. The sea that gives and takes. The great plane, the great adventure, the symbol of travel, of limitless, of the unknown, of death and of life, of beginning and ends. The sea that can be as calm as a lake, and as raging as a nightmare. With huge waves, breaking everything in its way. Rolling in fast, and deep, chewing at the dunes, carrying away the sand on the beach, and at times dropping off whole vessels on shore.

The land of mine is very flat. Sometimes below sea level even several kilometers inland… Long ago, at every high tide, the sea would reverse the current in the rivers and streams, making them stream inland, and through a meshed natural system of saltwater creeks and marshy reservoirs, fill up all the waterways inland, sometimes as far as thirty km.. It would do this twice per day. And twice per day, the water would run back to the sea. Every six hours, the creeks and marshes would fill and run dry again. Well, they were never totally dry as the land was mainly marsh land. Filled with wild-life, and wild-people. You needed to be a special breed to survive here, living off the land, exposed to the elements. It was also the land of robbers and pirates. Fishermen, farmers, traders. But above all, of opportunists, and pragmatists.

As the land slopes ever so lightly into the sea, the sea has always been very treacherous. Loads of sandbanks off the coast, creating dangerous currents. On the shore we had ‘viertorn’, literary: “fire towers” (lighthouses), made in stone, where they would light a bonfire on the flat roof. At night, it would be the beacon to the entrance of the ports for the fishing vessels and trading vessels, bringing wealth to this area. But pirates would light bonfires on the beaches and in the dunes, luring vessels onto the beaches, where they would be plundered, stripped of anything with value. The currents, sandbanks, pirates, and dense sea traffic made this coast difficult to navigate. Yet many came to its ports, at we made the world’s finest decorative carpets in those times. And sold the finest wool, cotton, lace and linen. It was where good seaworthy ships were made, and where you could sell or buy anything.. What the Khyber pass on the Silk Route was in the East, we were to Western Europe in the Middle Ages.

But the sea gave and the sea took away. The sea slipped dry the main trading port of Bruges, which was twenty kilometers inland, by depositing more sand than what could be cleared, and the economy declined..

It was difficult to survive in those days. The towns along the coast were flooded every year.. My hometown was on a strip of land, a long stretched peninsula, sticking out into the sea. There was a west end, an east end and a church in the middle, and that is how they called the towns. West-end, East-end, Middle-church: Westende, Oostende, Middelkerke.. The sea took this strip of land, in one go, in one flood, drowning thousands. The land, the towns, disappeared into the sea.. The towns were later rebuilt further inland, under the same name, but the old land, we never saw again. Still today, the fishermen claim to hear the church bell from ‘Middelkerke’ clinging on the sea bottom, luring ignorant vessels onto the sand banks. Maybe that is why the area is littered with hundreds and hundreds of wrecks…

Because of its stubborn people, and the wild nature, these areas were very difficult to travel through. Roads would be flooded, and easily washed away. Even if the roads were there, the bush around it was so thick, anyone could hide, ready to rob any convoy. If it was not for the robbers, people would go out of their minds, scared to death, crossing the marshes as the legends filled the creeks and wetlands with scare-devils, curses and myths. They were not stories, they were part of the beliefs of people. Told father to son, mother to daughter. It would be given to the child together with the mother milk. It would be encapsulated in songs, and dances, and story telling evenings by the fireplaces.

I am a son of this land. It is so much a part of me. Like a magnet, it can draw me back. No matter how far I have gone on the earth, there is only one place I need to come, to feel home, and at ease. It is like migrating birds are, through some strange magnetic fields, compass-ed to their destination, I always come back. It looks like the start and the destination of my Road, reminding me it is the road I have to enjoy.

Samples of the music mentioned in this story (.wma): Loreena McKennitt , Le Plat Pays
My home area: Realtime peep through a webcam at the Flemish coast

Pictures courtesy of www.kustonline.be (J.De Keyser), www.belgiumdigital.com, www.zuidrand.be, www.uitkerkse-polder (R.Vantorre/R. Martein)
Music samples courtesy of www.archambault.ca

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