In Brussels and not a sprout in sight

The break-up of Tom’s marriage to Hannah has hit us all hard. It was a dreadful shock and a massive emotional wrench. I’m not even sure I should be writing about it, perhaps events are too recent and too raw, but this is a diary and it’s supposed to chronicle my life.

People change, of course, and the breakdown of a marriage is nothing at all unusual in this day and age. Many of our friends and family have had breakdowns and reconciliations - my sister, several cousins, friends ... Margaret’s twin brother Phil has had two wives and is currently working on no 3.

It’s easier when it’s one step removed, even if it is family. Parents are like children, caught in the middle with loyalties owed to both parties - your own child, but also his/her spouse. Margaret, in particular, was very, very fond of Hannah and is sad that she probably won’t see her in future.

I too have many shared experiences with Hannah, from family holidays, Christmases, to standing at Donington Park in the pouring rain all day. She and Tom even lived with us for a while when they’d finished university.

Now I have a new partner to meet and become acquainted with, but also an urge to see Tom and try to offer some support as he sets out on a new chapter of his life. In difficult circumstances, you can often learn a lot from dogs and I feel I’m acting a little like Gravel, not judging, just meeting new people and experiences with an open mind and a waggy tail. Actually, it’s not a bad philosophy for life.

So last weekend, I went to Brussels to spend some time with Tom. I think he was keen for me to go across and there were some things we needed to talk through. I also wanted to see that he was OK and was settled in his new accommodation.

I’d booked fairly late, couldn’t get a Friday night train very easily and so stayed at Sam and Lucy’s and caught an early train Saturday morning. Booking late meant ticket prices were a bit higher, but also that first class was only a tenner more than standard, so I upgraded on the way out and enjoyed a nice breakfast on the train. It wasn’t too busy and also stopped at Lille where a lot of people got off. Quite a few were carrying ski gear and changing at Lille for trains to Switzerland and elsewhere (perhaps Bourg-Saint-Maurice?).

Tom was was waiting for me for me at Brussels Midi, so I had a guide to take me through the idiosyncrasies of a new city’s metro. For example, the doors don’t open on their own like they do in London (sometimes you have to pull a handle and sometimes press a button), stations always have two names (in French and Flemish) and the signage is quite different to London with the four (I think they were four) lines given colours and numbers, but not consecutive numbers, that would be too logical. To make matters worse, they often confuse by having one line sharing the same end destination. It’s a circular line, so it sort of makes sense, but a via Arts-Loi would be helpful.

After a couple of journeys, it began to make sense, but I was still caught out from time to time by the fact they label stations with prominent signs to other locations or destinations. There’s no common, eye-catching logo like there is on the London Underground.

The Brussels Metro is also very is also very shabby with lots of dirty concrete and stations which seem to be either gently decaying or in the midst of a very slow renovation with chipboard nailed over everything. Compared to London (and I never thought I’d say this) it is awful, but there is one redeeming feature that I suspect Londoners would happily swap everything for - the prices are less than a third of what it costs on the Underground. So a journey in Brussels costs €1 and, if you exit the destination station and get back on the metro within one hour, the next journey is classed as an extension of the first and so you don’t pay any more. With a minimum Oyster journey costing £2.40, that’s quite a saving.

We headed straight for Tom’s new apartment, which is situated near the European parliament building at Shuman; it’s on the ninth floor of a development (so quite high) and overlooks the Parc du Cinquantenaire. You certainly get more for your money in Brussels than you do in London and once you’ve got through the lift (which wouldn’t pass health and safety legislation in the UK - no inner door) it’s really very nice. He shares with four others, but has his own bathroom and quite a large bedroom. Two people had moved out and the other two were away for the weekend, so I was able to use one of the empty rooms for the night and we had the place to ourselves until Sunday afternoon when an Italian chap (called Ignatious) moved in.

The apartment itself has two huge living/dining areas and glass doors open onto a balcony overlooking the park. There’s a lion’s head on the wall (a stuffed one), parquet floors, original art on the walls and some really extravagant fittings, such as a chaise lounge, and a massive Bose sound system with quad speakers. On the downside, the plumbing is in the best Belgian tradition, the wi-fi has (shall we say) a limited range and the kitchen, considering the size of the rest of the place was quite tiny.

Can you see the lion's head (by the open door) and the chaise lounge?

I met Tom’s new life partner Lucia, which was something of a nervous encounter for both of us. I guess she’d seen pictures of me, so knew what to expect, but I had no prior view of Lucia except a description from Sam, who had been sent a picture by Tom. Sam has a trick of comparing people to celebrities. When he first started going out with Lucy (his wife) he told me she looked like one of the Corrs. Lucia, he said, looked like Konnie Huq, so that was all I had to go on. I have to say that Lucia looks as much like Konnie Huq as Lucy looks like Andrea Corr!

Lucia is from Ecuador, speaks excellent English (as well as French and her native tongue - Spanish). What can I say? She’s smart, erudite, intelligent, good company and very likable - you wouldn’t expect anything less from someone Tom wanted to be with.

I hadn’t picked the best day/weekend to visit Brussels. On Saturday it was cold, raining and windy and on Saturday night it snowed and froze hard, so the pavements were like a skating rink. On Saturday afternoon Tom and I went down into the old town to the Grand Place or Grote Markt. It’s a beautiful square, but best enjoyed in sunshine. There’s a beggar who always has puppies with him and, according to Tom, always does a roaring trade. As promised, there he was, complete with three puppies covered by a blanket against the cold and the tourists were chucking their cash in his tin. For a beggar, there’s nothing like a dog to boost takings, so you can imagine how the revenue increases when you have three adorable puppies. Tom was wondering how he always managed to have puppies and also what happened to the puppies when they grew bigger and slightly less adorable. I wouldn’t like to speculate, but if I had to, I’m guessing it involves a hammer and a skip.

A short walk from the Grote Markt, down a street lined with chocolate shops, is the Manneken Pis. This is a fountain where a statue of a small boy is weeing into a pool. It’s all very strange! The statue was put there in 1619, but has been stolen many times and the current statue is from 1965. The original is in a museum on the Grote Markt. The Belgians think it is hilarious to dress the Menneken in different costumes. I wasn’t that keen to see it, but I was a tourist in Brussels and I think Tom would have been offended if I hadn’t. It was a bizarre sight, a tiny fountain, in very bad taste and 30 Japanese or Chinese tourists snapping away. The Manneken was dressed in something, but I can’t remember what.

On a damp, cold day in Brussels, there’s only one sensible thing to do. We retreated to Mort Subite for a gueuze of the same name. A gueuze is a blended beer made with wild yeast, it’s cloudy and quite sour, but I had some Mort Subite at Christmas and I rather liked it, so I was keen to try some in situ. It’s jolly good stuff - not a Fursty Ferret - but very palatable and in a la Mort Subite, you have it with a plate of cheese, mustard and celery salt. We followed with a Chimay Blue, which I preferred; it’s darker, also sour but more bitter than sour and with a greater depth of flavour. I could get into Belgian beer in a big way. I like the idea of drinking stronger beer in smaller quantities and I also like the ceremony of beer where there is a different glass for every type of beer.

Mort Subite - a gueuze fermented by wild yeast

Chimay Blue - like a Mackeson

In the evening Lucia was making an Ecuadorian meal. Sam had suggested this would be baked guinea pig and this is a joke that the Ecuadorians also appreciate. Toby Knights had guinea pig in south America (perhaps Peru) and had not really enjoyed it at all. Lucia says it’s very nice when done properly and perhaps Toby had the version they give to tourists. My meal wasn’t guinea pig and it was very nice. A bonus was that the Italian girl who had moved out of the flat had left behind some bottles of wine and we made sure they didn’t go to waste.

Sunday was bitter cold. It was nice to look at the snow from my warm bedroom window and funny to see dogs in the park charging around like loonies. Why do dogs love snow so much? Margaret sent me a picture of Holly in the snow in Thorney, there was a couple of inches there too. After breakfast, we set out a little too early (considering the weather) to the Palais de Justice, which sits in an elevated position above the old town. When it was opened in 1883, residents of the area whose houses had been demolished to build the courts, occupied the building and made a dirty protest, defecating all over the building, so it had to be closed and thoroughly cleaned. After the war, the retreating Germans set fire to it and the central dome (which is larger than St Peter’s in Rome) collapsed. It was rebuilt and open again by 1947 and is currently undergoing further restoration, so I wasn’t able to see it at its best.

It was pretty cold in Thorney too. This is Holly running in the
snow in our garden on March 24th (spring!)

The walk down into the old town was quite treacherous on the icy pavements. I found a chocolate shop to buy Lucy an Easter chicken and Davina (and the office) some rich chocolate. I’ve given up chocolate for Lent, so there I was in Brussels surrounded by the stuff (even being offered free samples) and not able to have any. It was so cold that we went to a cafe next to the flea market in Place du Jeu de Balle. Some hardy stallholders were setting out their wares so, after we’d warmed up a little (and it was a little) we had a wander around the market. It’s the sort of place you could spend a happy hour or two on a warm day; perhaps I’ll be able to come back one day and do just that.

Chocolate everywhere (some of it free) - and I've given it up for Lent!

We were really just killing time until we could go to the restaurant that we’d booked for lunch - a place called Restobieres, which I guess translates as “the beer restaurant”, in rue des Renards. I had reclat cheese (melted in a dish, not by a little stove), followed by rabbit and a waffle (for the full Belgian experience). To drink, we started with a Trappist beer called Westmalle, which had a particularly nice glass and which also tasted very good. This was followed by Liefmans Goudenband, which was darker and had a very distinctive sour taste. I liked it very much, which probably means that a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord will never have the same satisfying taste it had before I was corrupted by Belgium.

The hard stuff - Trappist beer gets the monks singing (quietly to themselves)

You know a beer is special when it comes wrapped up.

And that was pretty much that. Time to head back to London (and no first class this time). Actually, Eurostar back to London is a less pleasant experience thanks to the UK Border Agency. I had to queue for about 20 minutes at Brussels Midi to get through passport control and then another 15 minutes at St Pancras to go through the whole process again! I can’t help feel we’ve got it a bit wrong - we annoy British passport holders with unnecessary bureaucracy but somehow Jordanian Islamic hate preachers can get in and spend years taking the mickey out of the country. Fortunately, I was staying with Sam and Lucy on Sunday evening as the delays would have put me back to the 10.10 train.

I’m back at Brussels at the end of April when we’re off to Assen for the World Superbikes round and hopefully Margaret and I can spend a few days there in late June or early July before Max’s wedding.