Winter in Belgium, 2012

So ... Gert tells me, the last time we had more than 14 days without the temperature rising above zero degrees celsius was ... 1-17 January, 1941.

Tomorrow we hit Day 14 under zero celsius.

Back in 1987 and again 1997 there were 12 consecutive days under zero.

Zero celsius = 37 farenheit.

More often we've been down around -10 -14 celsius these mornings (converts to 7- 14 farenheit), and there have even been a couple of -20, when you factor in wind chill factor (-4 farenheit).

Nothing much in the way of snow but, by crikey, it's been cold here in Belgium lately.

These Freezing Days in Antwerp ...

Wiinter has finally arrived.  I've been trying to ignore it, despite preferring that the seasons come and go in a natural way, however ... minus 20 celsius is simply rude.

And I wouldn't know about -20 celsius (reached due to a -11 frost the other day and combined with windchill factor) but I sometimes get to do the 2 hour-round-trip that is getting Miss 7 to school this year.  4 trams and some brisk walking.  A trip that involves a leather and sheepskin coat that weighs as much as an adult polar bear (my estimate in terms of weight) and multiple layers, with hiking boots, hat, gloves, and a scarf.

Tomorrow we have to be out the door by 7.30am and this morning, the radio weather people predicted a temp of -20 celsius.  I'm not excited about this.  I arrive home completely drained by the freezing cold bleak cityscape.  As I write this, at 9.31am, I checked in on my old blog and the weather there ... it's still -11.

I phoned Gert.  He works in one of the old guild houses in the city ... the pipes are frozen there.  They

have no water.  He's a bit glum too. 

However,the sun is shining. The heaters at home are working.  I did pick up my camera in an attempt to ward off thinking of the fact I have to race across the city later this afternoon.  I did see some nice light outside.  It's the view out the window behind me, here at my desk. 

Yes that is snow. 

Yes really, many Belgian home owners don't clear snow from the pavements outside their house.

Yes, walking anyplace here at the moment is increasingly treacherous as it freezes and freezes.

Well yes ... Monday is feeling kind of challenging, actually.  I'm here trying to write myself into a better mood.  It's not working, is it :-)

My very first newsletter is due out tomorrow.  If you would like to take a look, leave a comment and I will forward you a copy.  The first is going out to Everyone I know ... just that one time, then you are welcome to subscribe if it seems like something you would like to continue receiving.

And now ... to work.  Tot ziens.

In a previous life ...

In one of my previous lives, and I've had more than a few so far, I used to bake, and to cook impromptu dinners for other people. 

I loved it but it was another time, before the pressure of a long list of things 'I must do' arrived.  Back then, I was a mother and a housewife, a dog owner, a wanderer but on a very small scale, while following my first husband's teaching career round the South Island of New Zealand.

I moved to Istanbul, the oven didn't work.  No baking was done.  Impromptu dinners were usually the stove-top cooked Persian Chicken.  Two years later and I arrived in Belgium where I was introduced to strange and unknown idea of a gas oven and really, I hated it.  Ours was a dodgy one.  The first and the second. 

Suddenly, due to an almost-Christmas-Eve oven failure, we have an electric one that almost works and voila, we're hosting Stephanie and Catalina tonight.  There's a big fat tasty Shepherds Pie ready to cook, with sultana scones as a dessert.   A 'dessert' fit for an Englishwoman and this homesick kiwi.  And quite immodestly, I'm delighted with the results.

And it seemed, to me, like the perfect way to say thank you to Stephanie and Catalina for inviting us along to our very first English pantomime here in Antwerpen on Sunday afternoon.  It was divine.  So very much what I had read of growing up but never actually attended.

Tot straks from this kiwi in Belgium

a few days and good friends ...

I have some truly remarkable friends and I've been busy with some of them.

Shannon came visiting from Holland, arriving on Friday night, she stepped straight into a wee adventure, racing off to view the latest Jane Eyre movie with Ruth and I.

I had forgotten how much fun the movies could be ... and it was a most excellent movie.

Shannon and I wandered through Saturday ... starting late, we headed into the city and spent most of the day chatting in the lazy lovely way old friends chat.

She left on Sunday but not before we picked up Peter, the lovely tenor bloke I know, from the Airport bus.  We strolled across the big square outside Central Station, here in Antwerpen, and popped into the Zoo Cafe for a small wine-quaffing session.

Shannon left, and Peter came home to stay with Gert and I.  He's here for a few days before he jets back to his base in Berlin and so our days are full of conversation and photographs.  Jessie and I are updating his professional information photographically and he is being generally entertaining.

In other news, my daughter photographed me today.  I needed a publicity shot too.  It's quite the bizarre thing to be on the other side of the camera but voila ... hello from me here in the flatlands.

My Friend, Judy

It has to be said, I have the loveliest friends ...

Today, Judy was coming to town.  We had plans, that changed, and were all the better for changing I’m thinking. 

We immediately wandered from the train station to Caffenation, for some really good coffee.  Much talking later, we left, heading for my most favourite bookshop in Belgium ... De Slegte, in Antwerpen.  We both love books.

Lunch, and Judy introduced me to a cafe she knew once.  It was lovely and I recommend it so highly ... Moments, on the Meir at number 47.  Second floor, for those like me who have never noticed it before.

We walked on, finding delicious boots at Torfs (that were not purchased), my new favourite shoe brand, also found on the Meir at number 14-16.  Then to the Grand Bazaar ... which is nothing like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul but still, place of some favourite stores of mine. 

There, she bought me a birthday gift that made me smile.  I have never known anyone quite so convincing in the ... ‘well-it’s-better-if-you-choose-what-you-would-like-rather-than-me-guessing’ line of gift giving.  I do adore her.  And so, after quite some sweating, I chose a favourite author’s latest book.  I have all of Joe Simpson’s non-fiction and I have to confess, his work of fiction had me totally in its grip by the time I reached the supermarket, via the tram home.

Then, I took her to Lojola.  This youtube takes you to the cafe ...  it’s the cutest little cupcake and coffee or tea place in the city.

From there, after much laughter, we wandered back to the train station where ... after running for the wrong train, she decided to walk me to my tram, as she had time to spare.  The most commonly used sentence during the long walk to my tram was variations on ‘Yes Di, I can find my way back to my train, as I did Cuba alone’.  But there was so much more humour that doesn’t quite come through in that sentence.  Both Judy and I are terribly amusing.  Modest though.

So yes ... it was a magical day.  Unexpected really but all the more lovely for it.  As I write this, I’m listening to the Chan Chan Compay Segundo cd that she slipped into that birthday package for me. 

Dank u wel, Judy.  Today was truly delicious.

Autumn means Easter to Me ...

I’m not sure my unconscious will ever adjust to this upside-down life in the northern-hemisphere.

The leaves are changing colour and we’re waiting for our first frost which means ... it’s almost Easter.  But no, that was a New Zealand thing.  Here it’s already mid-October. although Belgium had been enjoying high temperatures as late as last week. 

I took the bike out this afternoon, needing to stretch. I took myself and my camera into the park on our beautiful day.  We’re blessed with this city park, and mostly I love it even while struggling to forget the massively busy European motorway right next door, the motorway that, if I wake in the night, sounds like a Spring tide at Tautuku, on the lower East Coast of New Zealand.

Anyway, today it was pretty.  There was a blue heron down at one of the many ponds, hanging out with the big white geese and the ducks.  The moles hills were there mocking mans efforts to tame nature too.  I love those moles ... there to remind us, surely, that we’re not quite able to tame and maintain everything out there in the natural world.

Eugenio Montale, Christy Moore and Pasta Hippo ...

I woke this morning, with ideas for my book demanding I note them down ... I gave in at 5.30am, grateful I hadn’t lost them to laziness.

This book will be full of images but I need text too.  This morning the images came marching into my mind so I got up and wrote the words for them.

Yesterday was a day spent going through all of my notes; a day spent working out the structure of the workshops I plan on offering soon ... the workshops where I see if you want to come spend time in my worlds, either via the chair where you read this, or physically come wandering.

As I do these things, new ideas come knocking on my door. 
What about this idea for a book?
Hey, where’s that manuscript ... that story you put down and forgot to pick up in your mad rush to live?
Don’t you wish you could draw ... imagine, then we could do this with that idea?.

Wednesday was a stunning day.  I had no idea it was going to be. 

It was enough when the postman delivered a parcel and I opened it to find a book titled Eugenio Montale, Collected Poems 1920-1954, a revised bilingual edition, translated and annotated by Jonathan Galasi.

I had wanted that book for research.  And it arrived unexpectedly.  Thank you, Gert.

But that wasn’t enough.  That night we had dinner at my favourite Antwerpen restaurant, Pasta Hippo.  The food was glorious, as always.  I remember I stopped going for a while.  I believe I may have run into the owner one time, if not, a staff member who was so rude, I remained offended for months however ... the food is that good. And the slightly expensive glass of Chianti I had while waiting for Gert ... it was divine.

Then to the concert of an Irish singer I had been loving forever.  I remember gifting a copy of his cd to my ex-mother-in-law, more than a few years ago.  On our recent trip from Dublin to Connemara, my first time driving in 7 years, I stopped enroute, stating that we simple MUST have a Christy Moore cd playing, as we wandered in Ireland.  It was grand.

Christy, at 60-something, is one of those musicians I could listen to for a very long time.  He’s a story-teller gifted with the loveliest voice. Individual political songs he has performed throughout his career include Mick Hanly’s ‘On the Blanket’ about the protests of republican prisoners, his own ‘Viva la Quinta Brigada’ about Irish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and his own ‘Minds Locked Shut’ about Bloody Sunday in Derry.

Moore has endorsed a long list of left wing support causes, ranging from El Salvador to Mary Robinson in the 1990 Presidential Election.[2] At Glastonbury Festival in 2005 he sang about the Palestinian solidarity activist Rachel Corrie.

I loved his courage.  I loved his voice. It was a grand evening out, with Gert and the lovely Stephanie.  You know, if a fortune-teller had told me the story of where and when and with whom I would see Christy Moore perform live, back in those New Zealand days, I would have known that she was a charlatan ...

One never quite knows where life might take them, does one.

Wednesday was the loveliest day.  Thursday was spent hunched over my desk, I worked through into the night after dinner.

Friday ... let’s see how plays out.  There’s a plan that involves a private art viewing, a castle, and lovely friends tonight.
Note on the editing and re-editing: I started writing this about 5.30am.  Errors were made.  Now I must go and find coffee.
Have a lovely day and tot straks!

An Everyday Scene at the Stadsfeestzaal on the Meir, Antwerpen

Antwerp has 165 different cultures living within its city limits, and mostly we all do okay. 

I love the vibrancy of the cultural mix ... riding the tram is like wandering the world. To me, this foreign creature who found herself living here ... being Belgian stands for so many things but on the good days it’s all about a this tribe of people who have a huge degree of tolerance and acceptance of the other. 

Our Garden in Antwerp

The temperature rose unexpectedly today ... unexpectedly because I had imagined summer was done and autumn was here.  It’s at least 23 celsius as I sit here in the garden, as per instructions from Gert.  He told me to take the laptop outside and work in the sun, using the small table he bought me for precisely that purpose.  He said ‘rest’ and so here I am, sure that my neighbours, the ancient man and his lovely wife, are wondering what on earth I am doing out here, with all of my gadgets.  I brought my camera gear too ... just in case.  The garden has poppies and sunflowers and all kinds of other things tempting me.

It was painful moving everything out here and I processed the sunflower image without really being able to see the screen.  The roofers are a bit noisy just a few doors ... or rooftops away, although their music is good.  Blaringly loud workman-style music, the same the world over I suspect, as the sound of it surely takes me back to the sound of my dad working as a fibrous plasterer or wallpaperer,out on a job.  God only knows what toxins I’m breathing in as they weld their way across that rooftop but even that is the nature of Antwerp.  You can be 110% sure you don’t want to know what you are breathing in in this city situated on the crossroads of Europe ...

Gert finally found one of our black garden toads the other day, so I guess its wondering what I’m doing out here too.  We hadn’t seen them since the autumn but there he is, making his home in the compost heap Gert is developing up the back of his garden.  The birdfeeder has been left empty since spring, as if we could have saved the elderberries from the wickedgreedy pigeons who have spent the summer gorging on them anyway. 

And clearly I’ve made the delighttful discovery that I have wifi out here in the garden.  I’m less happy about spiders, wasps and toads when it comes to gardens and more about wine, the laptop and flowers.  Although today it will become more about painkillers or red wine sometime soon.  I read that red wine really does ease arthritic joints and my joints have been honouring the high-impact motorbike crash back when I was 18 ... they creak on the stairs and ache in the cold.  What’s that about then ...

Anyway, a little snapshot in words and image from this summertime day here in Belgium.

Het Internationaal Schutterstornooi - a toast

Sometimes, lovely friends pull you into the most magical experiences…

Dank u wel, Jurjana, for a day full of ancient wonders and beautiful photographs.

This photograph arrived, via Jurjana, just now and it made me smile.  It’s rare that I am ‘in’ a photograph but I had to post it.  There I am, in the midst of the archery guild members while they make their ancient toast, in the very old City Hall here in Antwerpen.

Photo credit goes to Tom Meeus.

The View from Antwerp Town Hall ...

On a good day, with a telephoto lens, this is the view from Antwerp’s town hall ... a beautiful ancient building here in the city of Antwerpen.
They say that it is clear that it was built by a city at the height of its power and wealth.  It was finished in 1564 by architect Cornelis Floris de Vriendt and the interior decoration dates mostly from the 19th century, or so I am told.  It was a good day.

 

New Zealand Guests

I just had the most delightful weekend with Leonie and Nick ... surely two of the loveliest New Zealanders living in London.

More stories to follow, I just need permission to blog some photographs.  Meanwhile, here’s one that Leonie spotted and I stepped back a bit with the telephoto lens and shot over her shoulder.

Thanks guys, I’m still smiling over spending time with you both.

 

A Delicious Day here in Antwerp

Note to reader: The words ‘delicious’, ‘delightful’ and ‘lovely’ are used often in this post.  Just so you know …

Yesterday was one of those delicious days I don’t want to forget but today finds me train-traveling to Leopoldsburg, with no time to sit down and savour my yesterday howevere I have packed my tiny blue travel laptop and so, here I am, writing from the train.

But perhaps it didn’t begin yesterday.  It began months earlier, when a woman called Karla wrote me a note enquiring about family photo-shoots.  It didn’t work out then but later it did. 

And the shoot was so much fun.  There was the pleasure of meeting the loveliest family, photographing the baby with the bluest eyes, hanging out with a friendly black labrador … stuff like that.

We stayed in touch, worked out a date for the photographs to be picked up and voila, we arrive at my yesterday.

Karla came over, toting her beautiful blue-eyed baby, accompanied by this lovely Irish woman who brought her very own chuckling bundle of delightful baby boy.  Really chuckley … I can’t emphasise how delicious his giggle is.  I’ll photograph him one day, it’s written all over his face when he laughs.

We sat down at my kitchen table, with tea and coffee, and talked, in that intense and delicious way that strangers sometimes do and voila, my marvellous yesterday had begun.

We looked through the photographs first, we learnt something of each others lives, I was introduced to my very first colour therapist and did I mention … we TALKED.

The babies played while we toyed with new ideas for each others lives and businesses.  There was that delightful click of like-minded souls meeting, it’s something that always amuses me.  While right-wing populist politicians work at making us fear ‘the other’, there we were, as is more often the case, finding connections across 3 different cultures and histories.

Karla and Marcia didn’t really know Antwerp at all and so we wandered into the city for a lunch.  I couldn’t resist and despite rain, I introduced them to my most favourite square here … Hendrik Conscienceplein … created by the Italian Jesuits, it soothes my soul sometimes.

We stopped in at the soup cafe, Comme Soupe, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  It’s tiny but the soup is a truly satisfying work of art.  I should have taken a photograph but I will return there, I promise. 

Tiny cafe + two pushchairs meant that we didn’t like to stay longer than need be but afterwards, we crossed the small space to the Cupcake Cafe called Lojola Coffee and Cake, at Hendrik Conscienceplein 14. Oh my, if in Antwerp, you must pop in.

We chose divine little cupcakes to compliment our coffee and we were happy.  Delighting perhaps, in the dollhouse-like playfulness of that little cafe.  Mmm, photographs to follow.

And it was almost 4pm … so suddenly. 

We said our goodbyes in the city, and off I wandered on my next big adventure.  The buying of the Nespresso coffee machine.  Just the espresso part … inspired by a desire to avoid future pain when searching the city for good espresso. Genova and her beautiful coffees ruined me.

I felt childlike but I don’t think they knew in the shop.  Remember that feeling of having that birthday money clenched in your hot little hand as you marched off to buy that thing that you really truly wanted, forever?  It was like that.

I chatted with the woman in the busy Nespresso store, staffed by many.  She had been in Australia.

You know, the more years I am away from New Zealand, and realising both my brothers are married to Australians and living there, the more I feel that we downunder people are fairly similar and there is no insult in mistaking me for an Aussie.

Beaming, and still feeling like a small excited kid, with my coffee machine bagged up and in my hand, I boarded a tram home and had this nice looking guy beckoning to me, wanting me to sit with him.  Gert and I had managed, quite by chance, to find the same tram to ride home.

Well yes, he did have to suffer quite some Chitter-Chatter by Di on the way home.

I didn’t dare caffeinate myself after dinner.  Chitter chatter on a tram after work is one thing, he can do it … just.  Chitter-chatter at 3am, of the over-caffeinated kind, is something else.  I had my first little espresso this morning and it was good.

Lately, life has been all about intensely good friends and meeting lovely people.  Thanks guys.

Anyway, you see it, yesterday was a very good day…

 

On the way home ... in Belgium

Nina’s Ornamental blog is the place I wander to when I’m in need of that feeling I found in New Zealand.

I used to live in this funny little cottage with huge windows on the edge of a harbour, and I had a beach for each mood back in Dunedin.  And there was a creek my Labrador and I ran away to when we lived in the mountains beside Fiordland National Park.  Lake Te Anau did just as well. 

There was a tiny road that twisted and turned, taking us to a small bay in Marlborough Sounds while we lived on the Airforce Base in Blenheim, and there once was a place where the mighty Clutha River flowed into a smaller quieter side-stream and that became ‘our place’ while we were living in Cromwell ... although some days we’d throw off our responsibilities and race through the Kawara Gorge to visit the Arrow River in Arrowtown. 

My dog was a wanderer too and travelled all over New Zealand with us.  She died at 16.

I always had a special place and a dog in New Zealand.  Here, in Belgium, I miss the wild peace of home.  Just ‘being’ in Nature is far more difficult, perhaps because Nature is much less powerful by virtue of so many centuries of ‘civilisation’. 

I’m looking for a golden labrador crossbred with some kind of sheepdog because I’ve had labradors since I was 9 and the best was a crossbreed.

Meanwhile I couldn’t resist parking my bike and taking this photograph because the scenery on the way from the new house to the old apartment is nothing to sneeze at ...
Tot straks from Belgium.

Cafe Stanny, Antwerp

I had passed by Cafe Stanny on the train as I travelled to and from Brussels city, and I have slid by it via the Number 8 tram so many times but I had never quite managed to step off and visit its red and welcoming friendliness.

Today, I had no destination in mind, I was simply escaping a really bad day and so there was nothing to lose as I climbed off Tram 8 with my small travelling laptop.

Cafe Stanny’s lunch menu is diverse enough to offer something for everyone, with soups, breads with a range of fillings and things I can’t quite remember. I chose a most divine bacon and onion omlette for lunch and it came with a soft brown heavily-grained bread that was delicious.

The music indicates good taste (an important criteria when wandering, laptop in hand). The atmosphere, now that it is summer, is open door with benches both inside and out. The staff were friendly and the decor lovely - appealing and a tug on the strings of memory for this kiwi so far from home. A deep blue bar/counter with stools, and stools along the high tables at the two large windows in the front.

Back in winter, I remember being attracted to the warmth of Cafe Stanny’s red exterior and the promise of its fogged up windows, clients bicycles piled up outside calling to me in but I was rushing, always rushing through that stretch of the city between here and there, I never made time to detour a little.

Cafe Stanny’s is lovely, a new favourite of mine but come see for yourself.

It’s at Stanleystraat 1, 2018 Antwerpen, located on the Tram 8 line and close to Berchem Railway Station ... seen from the train on the left side as you pull into the station (I think).
You can’t miss the red.