Belgium

Soooo, Binche. I actually took a train to Enghien to meet up with my Belgian family, well, mainly Michel. We joined up with Thomas later. It was nice to be with someone who knew what was going on and what the traditions are. Binche is this tiny town in Belgium where the people literally live for Mardi Gras. The whole process is deeply rooted in tradition. (In fact, it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Not too shabby, eh?) The way this works is as follows, in an attempted summarization. The main guys are the Gilles.

As the Carnaval de Binche website explains:

"In Binche, the Gille is allowed to wear his Gille costume on Mardi Gras only. Tradition also forbids Gilles societies to make a performance outside Binche. Carnival has its strict rules. In the very early hours of Shrove Tuesday, the Gille day starts with his dressing : l’habillage. This family ceremonial is only attended by initiates and a few invited close relatives. Later comes the tamboureur (drum), fetching his first Gille at home. Along with friends and relatives, they go from house to house to collect the other members of their society. This is called the «ramassage». At about 7 a.m., all the societies slowly start walking to gather in the centre of Binche to the tune of the drums. They go to the Town Hall, wearing their traditional wax mask. There, the jubilee of the entitled participants is celebrated."

During this whole fetching of the Gilles, people begin to follow them around. Everyone who follows is invited into the person's home where the Gille is being fetched to have a cup of champagne. Thomas and some friends were able to be a part of this, starting at four in the morning. I got in around 9 or so and the Gilles were already up and moving around, with that intriguing step that they do to the drums. The have bells everywhere, so it sounds absolutely lovely. The march around town in their societies, crossing each other in the streets, each society having to stay true to their own beat.

The Gilles cannot go anywhere without a tambour. I even saw a young Gille about 5 or 6 who was being walked back home with his own tambour following him.

They circle up in front of the town hall to be presented to the mayor. I can't remember if the masks go on before or after that, but either way they represent equality amongst the Gilles.

They also look kind of creepy from just the right angle.

The day is spent following around the Gilles, going in and out of bars, buying a round for the people you are with, which in my case were these guys:

In Belgium, cheap, good beer is not a paradox.

For lunch, we were lucky enough to be invited into one of Thomas's friend's home and ate a hot meal prepared by his mother and even had pie for dessert as it was some girl's birthday. That was fantastic.

In the late afternoon, people begin to line the streets for the parade of the Gilles.

The Gilles put on their special ostrich feather hats (not all of them wore them this year because of the wind). They work their way down the parade route throwing…. ORANGES!

There were grills on the windows to protect them.

It's like our Mardi Gras, only a lot healthier.

After all of that, I caught a train back to Enghien, slept there and headed out early the next morning to try and make a class that ended up being cancelled.

Needless to say, the rest of that week I was essentially dead. Exhaustion took over and I think I dozed off in my first class in France ever. Thankfully, it was the one lecture class I have that is huge, so it shouldn't have been too noticeable. All this and the next week was Jane's visit. However, I should do some homework before I keep on going with these marathon updates. But what you have coming up: Jane in Lille, us in Paris, Caen, Bayeux, Paris, then Matthias and I in Barcelona. No wonder I am currently looking enviously at my bed. But I promise videos once I re-remember how to do that.

For Christmas break I hung around Lille mostly, except for Christmas Eve and Christmas day, which I spent with a wonderful Belgian family. The connection to them is a bit complicated, but this is what I understood: Twenty years ago they randomly decided to go on a trip with a group from another city to Marksville, LA as part of a twinning. Once there, they were paired up with Randy DeCuir as their host. Randy's father and my great grandfather were brothers. I think. Anyway, point being, they hit it off extremely well and have spent the past twenty years visiting back and forth, shipping a Corvette, bringing a giant umbrella on a plane, and calling on Christmas Eve. When I sent an email back home asking any one of my numerous 'cousins' if they knew of somewhere I could go for Christmas, Randy suggested the Pary family, who immediately agreed. On Christmas Eve Michel (the dad) and Thomas (a few years older than me) drove into Lille and picked me up. Forty minutes later we were in Enghien, Belgium. We pulled up to their house, dodged the giant black bear that they like to call a dog (appropriately enough for his demeanor, his name is Fuego), I met Florine, the mother and the mayor of Enghien, and Valentine, their daughter who had recently married Filipe. They were pretty excited that I did speak French, as it a holiday much less complicated when someone doesn't have to translate constantly. I was pretty excited that they were on the French speaking side of Belgium instead of the Flemish side, so I guess the enjoyment was mutual.

Wandering around the house, I was pleasantly greeted by all things Avoyelles. The fridge had Avoyelles parish tourism office magnets right next to those big Grand Casino cups that were enjoying a place of prominence as the official ice cube cups. The room that I stayed in had a Mardi Gras poster up on the wall and Florine's office had a Louisiana shaped plaque from the mayor of Alexandria. A Louisiana Lottery koozie was on the shelves. I mentioned to the family how much I enjoyed seeing these random signs of home and Michel kind of chuckled, saying how he didn't even notice all that much any more.

We spent a lot of time trading stories about everything from Randy and Susan coming to Enghien for Valentine's wedding to the radio show Michel and Florine were on at an Alexandria radio station to Dennis's accent. It was lovely. However, the vast majority of the time that I was there was spent here:

At the table. Christmas eve, at about 7:30, while waiting in the living room for the annual Randy phone call, the aperitifs started.

Champagne, cherry tomatoes and cheese, these little cups of pureed fish, and other fancy hors d'oeuvres. Come nine, we moved to the table and began the meal. Oh, the meal.

There were about three courses if I remember correctly, each one paired with the appropriate wine (did I mention that Michel has his own wine cellar?). Pauses in between courses were at least 30 minutes or so, longer for the pause to open presents, again, still at the table.

After finishing dessert, the guests got up from the table and went home as we went to bed. At 1:30 in the morning. That makes 6 hours in total, four of which were at the table. Talk about a marathon meal. And then there was a repeat of the whole affair the next day with other family members lasting about as long. It was definitely impressive. And tasty. After nearly five months of cooking for myself, it was nice to have a meal that was made by someone else. It was incredible to have a very, very good meal of things that I would never know how to cook: lobster, pureed celery, these cooked apples with raspberry like sauce inside, salmon and mashed potatoes, some type of really good roast, red bellpeppers on top of veggie that we couldn't translate even with the help of a dictionary. The list goes on and on. For dessert we had the traditional buche de noël.

Being in house was nice for Christmas. I got to sit on a sofa and read a book next to a fire (a fire that was actually necessary to help heat the house, imagine that!)

I had a bed with a bit more cushioning than the current thin mattress on plywood. I heard the King of Belgium's Christmas day speech in several languages and listened to Flemish pop music. I played with the monstrous Newfoundland Fuego that had recently been adopted into the house. I woke up to the countryside as opposed to lots of buildings.

And I had a shower that didn't require me to press a button every 15 seconds to keep it going. Ah, the luxury!

All in all, it was a wonderful visit and I will return soon. We are already trying to work out plans for Mardi Gras, meet up with Randy in a few months, and then later to take me (and possibly family) to see the grave of Albert DeCuir. The Pary's are a wonderful family and I was lucky to have them take me in. Not that Christmas in Lille was all that terrible, I mean, we DID have elves rappelling down the side of La Vieille Bourse.

Does it get any cooler? Oh wait, did I mention that Santa came down too?

Yeah, that's right. And as soon as I upload photos from the other holiday times, expect them to be up here soon. I hope that everyone enjoyed their festivities and whatnot. Merry Belated Christmas and Happy Belated New Year!

I don't know what all these excessive buttons and advertisements are on here. They weren't here when I started and I sincerely apologize for their unsightly presence. Now that I have gotten that off of my chest, moving on.

So what I didn't know when I posted last was that later that night I would find myself in Brussels. Yup, that's right, I finally crossed the border that is maybe 20 minutes from where I live and headed on over to Belgium. On a whim. This is how it happened:

After an intense game of 3 on 3 football (soccer) during which I scored twice, David mentioned that his friend Tim from Ireland was having a birthday extravaganza that evening. In Brussels. He said that he was going to take the train at around nine if we wanted to join him. This was at about 6 pm. There was no way that we were going to pass up an opportunity such as that, so, we met downstairs and set out for the train station. David, Ben, Lena, Toni and I bought our tickets for the 9 o'clock train.

Not thirty minutes after we left, we were outside, trying to decipher a Brussels tram map to get to a place that had a Flemish name. And we were admiring the advertising. March of the penguins, anyone?

Ben and I continually exchanged looks of "we just went to Brussels on a whim" all night long. Crazy.

We met up with this Tim fellow, bought him a drink for his birthday, as seemed to be the preferred method of gift-giving that evening.

We hung out with him and his other Irish friends, his friends from Brussels and some other random ERASMUS students. (ERASMUS is essentially the exchange program within Europe) So we went out all night.  I'm talking 3 bars (not including the one repeat and including one that claimed to have 2,004 varieties of beer), 2 kebab stands and no sleep.  And it was a blast, really. 

David, noting that the glass bears the name of his hometown.

We wandered around town some too, seeing the main square.

The next thing I knew I had danced until 5h30 with a very random group of people to a combo of bad eighties pop and good rock songs.  On the way to the second kebab place a guy was hanging around a fountain and asked us for a minute of our time.  He wanted us to sing " I love alexia " to the tune of "I love rock and roll" up to a window.  We quickly agreed, thinking that it would be a fun addition to the night. He proceeded to fill in all the lines between with some pretty clever lyrics and we left after exchanging handshakes and "bonne chance"s. We never got to see this Alexia, but I hope she appreciated it.  Or at least heard it. 

After the stop at the kebab place to refuel (not me, as somehow I had managed to leave Lille with all of 3 euros in my pocket, 2 of which I had spent on a pint of beer)  we headed to the train station to catch the earliest eurostar back to Lille. We lounged around exhaustedly for thirty minutes and then we were ready to board our train. 

Turns out they needed a passport from the two Americans to let us on the eurostar. 

Now I had mine (always a good idea for that whole international travel thing, yes?) but Ben had managed to leave his.  The lady asked if he had enough time to go back and get it because the next train that didn't require a passport wasn't leaving until noon.  He kindly explained that the problem was that his passport was in Lille, because the French somehow let him out of the country without it. The lady kind of laughed and said that he'd have to take a different train.  I offered to stay with him, sort of in the same spirit that David had stayed at the concert for me and the fact that Ben had helped me drag around my luggage on our voyage over here.  Plus, I thought it would be kind of crappy to leave a friend stranded passport-less in Belgium at 7 in the morning without sleep, a phone or a plan. 

So we went to have out tickets changed, with the same guy that had sold us the originals.  He looked at us and said that there was a train that was leaving in 5 minutes, did we want that one?  "Oui, bien sûr."  "Voie 16, à votre droit." ("yes, of course." "Track 16, on your right.")  And so we ran.  Once up the escalator, we were greeted by.... nothing. No train.  I turned to the only other person standing there and asked for the train to Tournai (the changeover station for us on this new ticket)  and she said, " oh, ils ont dit que maintenant c'est voie 21" "21? merde!" ("oh, they said that it is now at track 21." "21? —insert favorite exclamation here—!") We took off again, sprinting full speed, back down to the terminal area, then back up. We saw that the train was still there (hooray!) and then we tried to open the doors.  I don't know if they had been closed on purpose or if we just hadn't been told the secret handshake, but we couldn't open them.  Ben saw the conductor fellow at the end of the train and ran.  At this point in time, I would like for you to keep in mind that we had essentially been out ALL NIGHT.  Not very much of said night had been spent sitting down. None of it had been spent sleeping. I was tired. And Ben was fast. I ran like I was.  We asked the guy if this is the train to Tournai and he says "Oui, montez, VITE" ("Yes, get on, QUICKLY") and slammed the door behind us.  We collapsed into the nearest seats and caught our breath as we handed him our tickets.  We commenced laughing as soon as there was enough air in our lungs.

Our new train was commuter train -like thing.  Meaning, we went through what seemed to be a lot of obscure countryside and made quite a number of stops.  It also means that it was incredibly beautiful to watch the sunrise over the Belgian scenery.  Ben and I spent several contented minutes of silence just watching as the fog was eaten away by the sun.  Stunning. I tried to take a picture.

Here is the station where we had our change of trains.

And here is the station that signaled we were home.

A wonderfully random evening/night/morning that required a little catching up on sleep, but all in all was well worth it.

The Sunday I spent hanging around downtown, mainly because it looked like this:

That's the fountain right outside of the Palais de Beaux Arts. I think I miss the Hendrix fountain.

The sign basically explains don't drink this and don't bathe in it either.

The cool thing about the first Sunday of every month is that all national museums are free! That includes this one.

I saw a few Monet's and some Rodin. The Van Gogh that they have wasn't available to the public, but Napoleon was there:

There was also this lovely statue that made me think of Marksville, with the whole broken wheel thing. So I took a picture.

Coming back I ran into a Braderie. It's as if everyone in a city decided to have a garage sale at the same time. It started at this metro stop at Marbrerie:

and went all the way to this one at Fives:

I bought this coat, because it is ridiculously heavy and only cost 5 euros. and some funky pins, too.

I also managed to show up for the first ever Fête de la Tartine.

This is something to tell the grandkids about, right? Here's a tartine for those, like me, who have no idea what exactly that means.

Yum. And then I came home and back to the real world.