Waffling About

Having arrived in Brussels, I took a cab to the office, after struggling a bit to resurrect enough French to give adequate directions. I picked up a key to the apartment I'm staying at, and then continued on there. Here's what it looks like:



I unpacked, searched in vain for an iron after realizing that every piece of clothing I brought was wrinkled to the point of not being wearable, and then decided I didn't really care. (Meaning, I didn't find an iron.) I took a quick nap of about two hours, got up at 3 p.m. and walked back to the office to check in with Jones and the Brussels crew.

After spending an hour or so getting to know the desktop-support guy -- sound familiar? -- I was up and running. And conveniently, it was quitting time!

Jones took me to a mobile-phone outlet to buy a SIM card for the phone Tina loaned me. 28 euros later I had an operational phone. Take that AT&T Wireless! Jones and I then met Ben Vickers, and ex-WSJ.com guy who is now living in London but who happened to be in Brussels for the weekend. We had some kind of wheat beer that was pretty ok as far as blanche goes. (Not a big fan, but don't totally hate it.) We also had frites with mayo, marking my official baptism into brussels.

As we were getting ready to leave, another WSJer from Brussels, Barbara, came by and took me to the center of the city. We walked to the Grand Place, which is breathtaking (photos later, I didn't have my camera with me.) We walked all over the city center and Sablon, a very fashionable district next to it with lots of cool cafes and restaurants and some nice parks. We saw a section of the old wall around the city, just sitting there between two buildings. No fence or anything. So different from New York, where something like that would be covered in barbed wire.

Here's another picture of the apartment, btw:


Anyway, after a bit of wandering and a stop at a cafe for a beer, Barbara and I went to a pretty cool restaurant for dinner. I had chicken tandoori, which was delicious, and Barbara had something called Stoemp, which was basically sausage served over mashed potatoes that had vegetables mixed in them. I tried some of hers and it was pretty tasty.

Then we met up with her friends and went to a few bars. I held up surprisingly well considering my lack of sleep. Maybe it's because I have so much less hair to cart around now:


Anyway, we ended up at a pretty cool jazz/blues bar somewhere in the city center, and I discovered that I quite like Chimay Bleue, at least among the Belgian beers I have tried so far. We left the bar around 2 a.m. and I was home and in bed by 2:30 after a short taxi ride home.

In case you need extra verification, here's another picture of my head, showing, albeit a tad blurrily, how short my hair is now.


C'est tout pour maintenant