Brussels Week 4-6 - ART/FLOWERS

First point of discussion on the agenda: April is the month of cutting all your hair off. Do it now. I did it. It's great. I keep touching the back of my head where the remaining inch or so of hair feels all sharp and fluffy. I can see more of my face. Paradoxically, I actually feel like I have *more* hair, because it looks thicker and more defined. So, turns out cutting off all your hair is a good thing. Let's all cut off our hair. Hair is a scam. Hair is banned now.

In other news: Brussels is moving into spring/summer transition with elegance and dignity. It turns out that Brussels has a lot of cherry blossoms lining its streets, and they are giving a magnificent performance right now. Their burst into colour has transformed the streets nearly overnight, from grey and functional to exquisitely pleasant. The petals are luminously pink, and range in intensity of colour, from a delicate champagne to the vibrant Barbie pink of a ten year old girl's backpack. They're just starting to fall right now, resting in the gutters like the aftermath of a party. You can pick them up in fistfuls and feel their softness in the folds of your fingers.

(I'll say this very quietly - they're much better than the ones in Japan.)


I will be sad to see them go.

Some other, more minor points of information:

• I started making soups again. The place where I live has quite a bit of kitchen equipment, including a soupy stick. You know, a blendy thing. The soupy blendy.

One of these!

So far I've been pretty unadventurous, sticking to French onion and tomato varieties, but I've got an interesting-looking recipe for broccoli and peanut butter waiting in the wings. I've actually done pretty well in Brussels in terms of not living solely on chips and beer, and I've even lost a couple of kilos. I walk a lot, and eat fruit. You can see me at the gym, using the two machines I know how to correctly use.

• I found this bar at the bottom of the road where I work. It specialises in gin cocktails. This one has raw egg white in it and it wasn't even disgusting. There's a lot of green light in this bar. I like it.

• Some friends and I spent last week at this forest just outside the city. It's a small spot famous for its bluebells. Look how nice:

• Brussels has a Magritte museum. Magritte, as it turns out, is really really good. His work is really striking in its use of colour and shape, he messes with perceptions of society and gender and interaction, and he also made this cartoon that I find really funny. I know it's about philosophy of language and ontology and stuff, but it's also a cartoon of a man pointing at a horse and saying 'horse', which is inherently funny. I highly approve of this 'Art' thing and would like to see more of it in future. I predict big things for 'Art'.

• I have been trying to meditate. It is not going well. Meditation makes me intensely uncomfortable. Every time I am reminded to focus on my breathing, I remember that my body is essentially a sack of meat and sinew kept conscious by constant consumption and expulsion of gas, which is unpleasant. I've no idea why people find it relaxing. On the other hand, if I push myself through it (I can manage two or three minutes, max), I do find that I feel more focused for a little while afterwards. Still a bit unnerved by the whole meat-bag thing though.

That's it for this week. Bye

Brussels - Week 2/3 - From Ducks, to Cats, to Humans

It’s spring!

Belgium is blooming. And by blooming, I mean ‘it was slightly warmer for one day’.

If you recall my last post, it was at the end of my first week, and I had made friends with some ducks in my local park. Well, I’m now easing my way into my fourth week, and slowly moving up the evolutionary chain of friendmaking. Last Thursday I visited a cat café near my office, and had a beer with a new acquaintance:

(The drink was only okay, sadly – a rather unmemorable Radler. Mind you, literally the only beverage I’ve had so far that wasn’t fantastic).

At Easter weekend – only a three-day holiday here, which is unconscionable – I decided it was time to start making human friendships, humans being much less adorable but slightly better at sophisticated conversation. I attended farewell drinks for a colleague after work on Friday night, during which someone said the word “shots!” and I, in some kind of Pavlovian reaction, also said the word “shots!”, so we ended up doing shots. This is, as far as I can tell, the only way that anyone ever does shots. No-one actually wants to do shots. The word ‘shots’ just gets…said, somehow, and at a certain point in the night, you assent to doing the shots. I mean, someone said the word, so you have to do them. That’s how it works. Obviously, by the end of the night I’d ended up in a kebab shop, requesting falafel and garlic sauce in appalling French. They clearly knew I was British, because they put chips in my falafel wrap. Angels.

Saturday I recovered; Sunday I went out to meet people. There’s always an aspect of artificiality to making new friends after moving, but the awkwardness tends to be dispelled if you just embrace it – be honest that you’re looking to meet people, ask questions, be open to new experiences. I went to brunch with some other foreign girls in a florist-slash-café (apparently this is a thing) and then went on to a writer’s meetup in the centre of town. We introduced ourselves briefly, and then wrote in silence. I’ve never written with other people before, but I found it helped me to focus (and to feel guilty whenever I got distracted). I worked on some short-story stuff, which I haven’t done for some time, and which I might eventually publish on the blog if I’m not too embarrassed by it.

On Monday I rounded out the Easter weekend with a massive walk around my sleepy, wooded neighbourhood. It was actually warm enough to take off my coat (for a bit), and at one point I saw an exhausted dad asleep in a hammock, which pleased me. More nice spring weather, please. I would like to see more dads in hammocks.

So concludes my first month in Brussels.