Happy mothers day, mums outside the UK! I hope you’re all having an excellent day and that your children and/or partners are spoiling you rotten!
The UK version of mothers day was back in March, but today seems to be the day that most of Europe, the US and probably other countries celebrate mums, so here are some flowers for you all:
OK, so it’s now been a little while since Scharnaval 2015 actually happened – maybe as much as a month. It’s been a busy few weeks! But Schaerbeek again put on its annual carnival parade, despite the occasional outbreaks of rain and the freezing cold, and – much like last year – it was absolutely lovely!
Below are some pictures, to give you an idea of the creativity and colour of the carnival!
A beer butterfly
Band in kilts
Bears throwing gifts
Bees in dresses dancing
Brazilian dancers 1
Brazilian dancers 2
Brightly coloured dressers
Child with a sewing machine on its head
Dancing pantaloons
Dancing with a chest of gold
Demon dancers
Demon pet
Demon
Does this dress make my boobs look big?
Donkeys and a mini-smurf
Extremely noisy cannon
Flourescent band
Giant bear
Giant conquistador
Giant head in a toilet
Giant heads
Giant Norman in the rain
Giant puppet family looking sad in the rain
Green car
I heart you
I think her head is on backwards…
Ladies in pantaloons in the rain. With chandeliers
Lady in pantaloons singing
Little girl joins parade leaders
Mad car
Mario and Luigi
Member of the order of Brussels moustaches
Mickey, Minnie, a monkey, a boy and a band
Military band leader
More giant multicoloured heads
Non a la haine
Order of the Brussels moustache – flag car
Pheasant feathers and green velvet
Pink flamingo dress
Pogge in the rain
Red and white dancer
Red and white dancers and children in a cart
Red car
Second wave of giant heads
Sewing machine dancers
Spectators
Sweets and beer
The stress of carrying a chandelier on your head
Unicorns and flamingos
Yellow car
It snowed this weekend – we woke up on Saturday morning to see that the park had turned white and crisp and pretty!
By the time we actually got around to going outside, having eaten breakfast (scrambled eggs on toast, in case you were wondering) and got dressed and sorted ourselves out, the sun was thinking about coming out and the snow was beginning to melt. Which made taking these photos all the more likely to kill me with slippery pathways and slushy snow. I hope you appreciate the efforts I go to for you all… ;-)
Today is just grey and bleh, so I’m glad we went round the park yesterday. The birds looked very confused, but the kids in the neighbourhood were having an awesome time! This year’s toy-to-have was clearly a wooden sled, and there were loads of (tired-looking…) mums pulling small children up hills and around the park on them. It even kind of made me want a sled, for a brief second, until reality kicked in and reminded me that I’d end up breaking bones if I actually tried sliding down hills. (No, I don’t ski. How could you tell?)
Anyway, yesterday’s winter wonderland:
I’m not normally a fan of autumn – it’s usually rainy, grey and miserable, with short days and long nights, leading to winter and freezing temperatures. This autumn has been relatively bright and sunny though, and the colours of the trees and the parks are absolutely gorgeous!
NaNoWriMo continues – though for the first time this month, I don’t think I’m going to make it. I’ve been doing relatively well at keeping up all month, but my plans to write loads this weekend have been scuppered by something weird happening to my back/shoulder/ribs that’s making typing for long periods of time a bit of a nightmare. Not what I need when I’ve got another 18000 words to write in the next week…
I also have a new camera toy – macro tubes. They’re this clever piece of equipmentg which I don’t really understand – you add them in between your camera and your camera lens, and they reduce the minimum distance you need in order to focus (which has been a problem with my zoom lens) so you can get closer to the thing you’re photographing. It also reduces the depth of field significantly, though, which sometimes means you can only focus on part of what you’re photographing. Leads to some interesting effects, though, and I’m enjoying playing with them to see how they work!
In January, I dutifully registered at my local town hall, as required by law.
This was, I found a relatively straightforward process – though I suspect this is because a) I can read and speak French and b) I’m used to French bureaucracy. Our commune has a list of the required paperwork on its website, which was a welcome surprise – and they even had an English-language version for all the people who can’t speak French or Dutch.
Unfortunately, the list of paperwork on the French version of the site and that on the English version of the site don’t match.
However, I didn’t let this stop me. I took my list from the French version of the site, and went to the town hall armed with multiple photocopies of everything. Plus passport photos. And my passport. And photocopies of my passport. etc… And we joined the Queue of Many People waiting to hand all of these over. If you’re a patient person, the whole process is easy enough – and our town hall is a stunning building. Even its waiting room for people who need to do business is marble-clad, with ornate pillars and a stained glass ceiling.
Our number came up, eventually, and we went over to the nice lady behind the counter. (Everyone I have had to deal with during this process has been lovely, quite a change from dealing with French bureaucracy!) She expressed some surprise at the amount of photocopies of everything we’d bought, was amazed that we’d managed to get everything we needed on our very first visit, and after we’d both signed and stamped all the papers in the world, she sent us away with a promise that a policeman would be round shortly to check we hadn’t lied about where we live.
The policeman duly came, a week or so later. By the end of January, all the necessary paperwork had been filed, and the checks had been done. We should have received, three weeks or so later, a letter from the commune inviting us to go and collect our residence cards.
Six months later, in June, we sent an email asking whether there was a problem. (Having lived in France and having had the extremely dubious pleasure of dealing with URSSAF and the RSI meant that it took me six months of total silence before I started to think something might be wrong.) They emailed back very quickly to assure us that nothing was wrong, they were just dealing with a bit of a backlog, and we’d receive a letter very soon.
Three months later, we emailed them again, to see if there had been any progress. As we apparently hadn’t received the letter they were sure we should have, we were summoned by email for the next stage of the process. We queued again in the town hall. Again we handed over passport photos, and some money. (€21 each, in case you’re wondering how much residence cards cost here.) And we were told we would receive a letter in about three weeks, telling us we could come and pick up our cards.
My confidence in this estimate was not high, by this point. So, you can imagine my surprise when just two weeks later, a letter arrived with Secret Codes, telling me I could go and get my card. On Thursday, I went and sat in the town hall for what I hope will be the last time for a long while, and received my new and shiny residence card.
It looks like an ID card, and appears to have more information on it than my passport does! I am not, however, sure whether I can use it to travel on within the Schengen area. Does anyone happen to know the answer? I know it’s not actual ID, so it won’t work outside Schengen, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t count as government-issued photo ID for within Schengen…
Also, we have a weekend of freak summer. It is gloriously sunny and warm, and yesterday we wandered through the park near us and went into parc cinquentenaire taking photos. So here, have some pictures of autumn sunshine in Brussels, so I can remember that it’s not always grey here, even if it sometimes feels that way!
So, last weekend was a bank holiday weekend, which means it was time for the annual International Bathtub Regatta, held every year on 15 August in Dinant. I don’t remember where I first heard about this tiny slice of madness, but I loved the idea immediately.
Dinant is a small town to the south-east of Belgium, in the French-speaking part of the country. It’s about an hour and a half’s train journey from Brussels. It’s also the birthplace of Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone – as this year apparently marks his 200th birthday, he was the theme for this year’s boat race.
The premise of the bathtub boat regatta is simple, if slightly reminiscent of team-building exercise on corporate training events: you must make a boat, capable of floating in the river, which can be powered by wind or people-power (including rowing or pedalling, or whatever else), but nothing mechanical. The boat must include a bathtub, which has to touch the water. You need to attach a long rope to your bathtub, so that if/when it sinks, it can be easily removed. And that’s about it. Other than that, the river is your mollusc and your imagination is your only limit.
I have to admit, before going, I had a suspicion this would turn out to be better in theory than in practice. But Dinant itself looked pretty, and we’ve wanted to go to that part of Belgium anyway, so we decided to go and risk it. At worst, we would have wasted an afternoon of a long weekend when I’d otherwise have been working.
And Dinant itself was pretty – a small town at the base of steep mountains, with a walled citadel at the top of the cliff, and a huge Gothic church at the bottom. And the all-important river Meuse is large and winding, making its way through the town centre.
Inside the church:
Outside the church, there was a band by the riverside:
And some flowers:
And a puppy:
I was wrong to worry: the boat race was excellent. The bathtub boats were imaginative, well-decorated, surprisingly well-constructed, and everyone looked like they were having so much fun! No one even sank, at least while we were watching! There was beer. There were battles between boats. There was a surprising amount of audience involvement (i.e. the boat-racers decided to throw buckets of river water and water bombs at innocent bystanders lining the riverbanks…)
And I’m already looking forward to next year; who knows, I might even enter a boat of my own one year!
I meant to post this recipe last weekend, but I got something in my eye while riding a bike (I’m learning to ride a bike; I don’t understand how 5-year-olds manage it, this shit is hard!) and had an eye of fire and pain, which meant that as well as looking about as attractive as you’d expect with an eye that was red and crying all the time, I couldn’t really see to type.
Since that’s all better now, and I can see again, voilà my recipe for bagels. Brunch is a thing of beauty and joy, not least because it means you aren’t at work and you can lounge around in pyjamas listening to the radio or watching old episodes of the West Wing, and bagels, smoked salmon and cream cheese are an integral part of this. As is coffee. Delicious, caffeinated coffee. (I am not the most graceful and coordinated of people at any time of day, but pre-coffee, life is a nightmare. Also, I have no idea how I never managed to see a single episode of the West Wing back when it was new and shiny. I am currently working my way through all the serieses on Amazon. It is excellent.)
Anyway. Bagels.
Makes approx 6 bagels.
Takes approx 2 hours, much of which is spent waiting for the dough to rise, and the oven to bake. Actual work involved, approx half an hour.
Ingredients:
300ml lukewarm water
1 teaspoon of sugar
450g flour
A bit of oil (I use olive oil) (optional)
1 sachet dried yeast
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Equipment:
1 large bowl
1 measuring jug
clingfilm
1 saucepan (This is going to have bicarbonate of soda added to it. I don’t know if that makes a difference as to what kind of saucepan you use, but if you’re more science-minded than me, you might know. I mention this just in case.)
1 slotted spoon
baking paper/silicon sheet
1 oven and 1 baking tray
Method
Remove the bagel after the 1-2 minutes with the slotted spoon and stick it back on the baking tray. This is the point at which you add things like sesame seeds and all that if you’re a heathen who likes that kind of thing.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to the doctor to have a proper check-up and give a medical history – it’s easier to do this (especially in a foreign language) if you’re not also dying of plague, I find. So, as part of this, she takes my blood pressure, checks I have a pulse and working reflexes, asks about tricky family illnesses, etc.
And she weighs me.
While I knew I wasn’t exactly at my thinnest, the number on the scales was a little terrifying. I’ve tried to avoid scales in the past few years, since focusing on numbers can quickly become an obsession, and that way madness – and incredibly boring conversation – lies. I’ve been able to tell myself for several years now that it’s not the numbers that matter, eating healthily isn’t rocket science, blah, blah, blah.
And it’s not. But we don’t actually do it, even if we know what we ought to be doing.
The proof is in the numbers that I’ve been trying so successfully to ignore, which have climbed and climbed until I can’t ignore them any more.
So, it’s time to do something about it. I have purchased scales, for the first time in – well, actually, possibly ever. (They sell them in Carrefour in Brussels, if you happen to be looking to buy your very own set of scales. They seem to be called pese-personnes, although asking about balances was close enough that they knew where to direct me. The beauty aisle, obviously. Guess how often I go down there normally…)
I am also beginning a diet, of sorts. I looked at the 5:2 diet – the one that the rest of the world seems to have gone mad about a couple of years ago, but I was only peripherally aware of it. (For anyone similarly unaware, the premise is that you eat normally – healthy-normal, not cramming-your-face-with-junk-normal – for 5 days a week, and twice a week, you drastically restrict the calories you eat, down to 500 calories for a woman, or 600 for a man.) I don’t know enough about the science behind it to be disposed to argue with it, so I’ll accept that the long-term health benefits are true (apparently intermittent fasting, as this diet is also known, potentially has tons of health benefits in addition to weight loss, which is really a side effect to the whole thing) – it’s the weight loss that I’m interested in, primarily, at this point.
And the results of that are relatively convincing – people do seem to lose weight, consistently, over many weeks. Not huge amounts of weight in one go, so it avoids some of the unhealthy crash-diet effects that are apparently so bad for you. (Although – and this may tell you everything you need to know about me – the bonus of crash diets is that at least you see effects quickly. I’m not good at patience and delayed gratification, clearly…) And I tried it out for a week, just now, and it’s not nearly as difficult to eat just 5/600 calories as you’d think. (You do end up drinking ridiculous quantities of water, but since I tend to be dehydrated normally, that’s a good thing!) It could be do-able in the longer term, it’s not like you can never eat again.
But some of the reviews I read – quite a lot of them, in fact – bothered me. I know that cutting your calories that far for a couple of days a week is probably not going to kill anyone, and it sounds scarier than it actually is. (At least, I’m assuming this is the case, since otherwise one assumes doctors would be all over the internet and/or the media, explaining what a terrible idea this is…) But the glowing reviews from people who are so proud of their self-control, who actually look forward to “fasting days”, who focus on every single calorie that passes their lips on those days? They sound pretty indistinguishable from anorexics, to me. Part-time anorexics, sure – the health risks are presumably avoided (or at least, minimised). But the thought process sounds pretty close from here, and I’m not sure that’s a healthy path to start down…
But clearly I need to do something different, because what I have been doing is obviously not working. I had some success a few years ago when – for other health issues, not weight management – I had to stop eating wheat and dairy for a while. Kilos melted by the minute. But I suspect that was more due to the calorie restrictions imposed by cutting out bread and cheese while living in France… Still, perhaps something like that would work better than starving myself twice a week. It will at least make me think about the food we’re cooking and plan better, cutting out a lot of the meals we’d otherwise default to, which have clearly been part of the problem. A change is as good as a rest and all that. I might do a mix of both diets and both cut out wheat and eat significantly less (though not as much less as just 500 calories) a couple of times a week, and see where that gets me.
I’m hoping that by putting this up here, even if there aren’t many of you reading this, it will help me remember that I want to change and eat more healthily, whatever that ends up looking like! Keep your fingers crossed for me, and let’s see how I get on over the next few months.
This has been a fabulous weekend in Brussels – it’s been warm and sunny, and I’m writing this on our balcony with the smell of jasmine and lavender around me.
On Friday we went for dinner with my husband’s work colleagues, who are lovely people with adorable children. Then Saturday came, bright and sunny without a cloud in the sky, and we went to the centre of town to watch the Pride parade. I love Pride, it’s always full of happy people, bright colours and loud music, a glorious celebration of queer culture. Brilliant.
And then, today, I was brave, and let my husband start to teach me how to ride a bike. I didn’t learn as a child (well, my parents say I did when I was tiny, but I have absolutely no memories of it, so it can’t have stuck!) and since everyone around here cycles everywhere, I figure it’s about time I learnt. I have mastered braking and making the bike move, albeit in a very wobbly line. I can’t turn corners yet. But it is a beginning!
This week has involved Russell Brand, the friendliest brunch in Brussels, and scouts in the bois de la cambre. Not all at the same time, naturally. (I’m now struggling to imagine Russell Brand surrounded by scouts on bikes in a forest, and I think this is all your fault. Yes, you, reading this now.)
Anyway. On Monday, Russell Brand came to Brussels as part of his tour round Europe with his Messiah Complex show. I was given tickets at the last minute, which was lovely, but meant I couldn’t find anyone to come with me. (I know, I know, #firstworldproblems) – but sitting through Brand’s very sexually graphic show, I was kind of glad I went on my own. I think I might have felt inhibited laughing at rimming jokes with a work colleague sat next to me. (A personal failing, obviously.) But the show itself was fabulous – two things we should all remember are 1) threesomes are better than shaving, and 2) public masturbation is a bad thing. And Russell is keen that we all remember that drugs and cold weather have an impact on the apparent size of your (his) penis. Life lessons for us all…
And then yesterday we had brunch at the friendliest café ever – if you find yourself lost on the streets of Schaerbeek one weekend morning, go to Les Trouvailles de Louise (290 rue Josaphat,1030 Schaerbeek) and have one of their giant brunches. I had the fraicheur version, which comes with pastries, bread, butter, jam, honey, muesli, yogurt, coffee and home-made juice. (I recommend the apple and strawberry juice, for what it’s worth.) And the ladies who run it were super-lovely and replaced the muesli with porridge for me, since I can’t eat nuts and they weren’t totally sure if the muesli was nut-free. Fabulous customer service, and just generally friendly people. You should all go there! I’m certainly going back!
I had my camera with me, so you can have some pretty pictures of brunch:
Then, since it was a nice sunny day, we went down to the bois de la cambre. We did not know that this was not the best weekend to go on a quiet visit to the woods, since all the scouts in the world (OK, possibly just Belgium, but seriously, thousands of them!) were camping in the woods. Google has since told me that this is because of the 24-hour bike challenge where scouts and guides come together to conduct a 24-hour relay race on bikes. As you do.
There were bike-floats, like the below:
And everywhere we looked, there were scouts and guides in all their different uniforms, of all ages, behaving so well! No beer, no cigarettes, no fights, it was positively astounding! (I’m not, as you might be able to guess, a scout person, so I couldn’t tell you what the different uniforms actually say about the wearers – enlightenment welcome in the comments!)
So, an unexpected interruption to our peaceful walk through the woods, which I had envisaged more along the lines of the next set of photos, which we took as we headed away from the heaving mass of humanity that was the scout camp.
(It did, however, lead to pretty much the only time I have been able to successfully give directions: someone asked me, as we were walking through the woods, if I knew where the “scout thing” was; I did indeed!)
And, lastly, some bonus pictures of flowers, since I’ve been practising taking close-up pictures:
ExpatinBrussels 