friends

Joan’s discovered facebook. I don’t know whose invitation to join finally triggered her to register, but now that she has, she’s added a lot of friends (including me!) and is looking for more especially among people she half-remembers from high school. I’ve gotten into it, too and maybe everyone has, because it seems like more people are inviting me, as well. Interest in facebook is growing in Belgium also—the word often seems to jump out of overheard, otherwise French or Dutch conversations.

One of my friends, who despite her living in Brussels, I’d barely communicated with this summer, finally came over for dinner last night. She had a friend (boyfriend? I don’t think she would have worn that dress for just us.) with her and he and I got on well. Joan and I talked about afterwards how although we’ve had a few people over, none of them have been Belgian. Our friend actually lives in the U.S. most of the time and is from Congo. And her friend was Dutch.

Lux

Although there are a lot of good bars and restaurants in this neighborhood, when my office decided to do a happy hour, we did it at the office, with drinks in the “refectoire” (“break room”) and food—cheeses, quiches, cold cuts, olives—on tables set up in the hall. It started right on time at about 5:30 with almost everyone attending. What did we talk about: Flemish history, whether it’s customary in Bru to greet people in French, Dutch or not at all, Luxembourg (because I was about to go there), other people’s holiday plans, a proposed soccer tournament (on the Play Station 3).

There’s a Chi-Chi’s in Luxembourg, in the main square, next to the Pizza Hut. There are also several more traditional tourist trap restaurants, and we ended up with falafels. Our first day there, we took a tour of the “casements” the underground passages that were built in the middle ages when the whole city was a fortress, and although theoretically interesting, the experience was like going down to the basement but with a lot more steps. So I’m really glad we stayed the night and went back to the centre again the second day, and found the “other old town,” tucked into the valley, again dating from the days when the city was a fortress. I don’t generally care that much about food so I think it means something to say I ate one of the best meals of my life there—potatoes au gratin with spinach. It sounds really ordinary, but they put something in that sauce and it was really good.