opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr

A horrible thing to say about a town. But yes, Nijmegen is small: 140,000 people or so. I see from wikipedia that some would lump in Nijmegen in the Randstad, a metropolis that if you squint long enough encompasses the whole of the Netherlands. That strikes me as special pleading: yes, everything is close to everything else by train. For example, if you want sushi in Nijmegen, you get on the train to Arnhem, a mere 15 minutes away. But you are still going through a bunch of forest to do it; and the Randstad is so called because its cities (stad) are on the edge (rand) of a bunch of trees and/or water. So no, in my book, Nijmegen is small.

It’s cute, which comes with being small. Well, the mediaeval Stadhuis (town hall) is cute:

I was struck by the fact that Nijmegen has an Italian (and Spanish) name, Nimega. The Spanish name could have just been a reflection of the Spanish rulers’ discomfort with Dutch (and Dutch Low Saxon) diphthongs (Dutch Low Saxon: Nimwegen)—

I had no idea that the Netherlands spoke not only Frisian, to the north, and Dutch, but also Low Saxon to the East—which, in anything but name, is Low German. Dutch in fact was originally the language of just Holland; and the Netherlands is bigger than Holland. You’ll notice I’ve been scrupulous about saying Netherlands. More on that later.

—but the fact that Italian uses the word too made me accurately conclude that Nijmegen was a mediaeval centre of commerce. The Stadhuis is classy enough to reflect that.

And the downtown is cute:

Pretty compact; and I was astonished when Sonja (Sebastian’s girlfriend, chez whose laundry I was crashing) ducked into a doorway opposite the local Dixon’s: the downtown shopping centre is all residential upstairs from the shops, and indeed in inconspicuous wedges between shops.

(I was also astonished that a British electronics chain store, which gave me the wrong bloody adapter for my eeePC in Heathrow, would turn up in Nijmegen. But that’s globalisation for you.)

The little drinkeries open at night were even more cute, except for that hellhole playing loud crap remixes of ’80s tunes and with whooping Nijmegen Uni students being nuisances. Sebastian and Sonja were suitably apologetic, but not enough to make me want to stick around there. But the first drinkery was cute, what with its “would you like some free mints?” and special smoking room and easy-going bar staff; and the deserted final drinkery (a real local’s place, dark and cozy and pleasantly grotty) was even more cute.

I was arrived in Nijmegen to drink and reminisce with Sebastian, not necessarily in that order. The drinking glass sizes threw me off: what they call a small beer glass was indistinguishable from a shot glass, and what they call a large beer glass wasn’t much larger. I clearly wasn’t in Australia. But I did learn all the Dutch I would ever need there. Well, more than I needed, since they all spoke English, but enough to ingratiate myself with the bar staff:

“Twee Amsterdameltje vaan Dommeltsch en één bruin Duvel, alstublieft.”

Which translates to:

“Two small-sized water tumblers (which you have the temerity to regard as “large” drinking vessels) of the local generic lager, which I’m not even going to dignify with my attention; and a single goblet of the slightly but not very stout rendering of one of the fine assortments of Belgic ales you have on tap, my good man, and I think I have just exhausted my knowledge of Dutch.”

*hic*

To my amazement, I woke up the next morning. I didn’t have *that* much to drink, but I was out of practice: A mere four mid-sized glasses of beer (the last out of deference to the pleasantly grotty place, since I’d already bailed out to lemonade in the college bar). And that Gueuze in Brussels on the way up, of course. Mm, gueuze.

The education precinct of Nijmegen is not cute. The Max Planck, at least, attempts the monumentality of squares (and fails, because gray brick is not monumental, it’s a suburban reception centre):

I didn’t have the heart to photo the building itself, it was blah. The Latin as cute: at least someone was bothering not only to do Latin inscriptions on buildings in AD 1996, but to date things on the Nones of March. A lot less people know what the Nones of March are than know the Ides of March.

The inscription itself, I wasn’t as happy with. It’s a take-off of the old standby Verba volant, scripta manent: spoken words fly away, written words stay behind. (Unless they’re on digital media more than five years old, but I digress.) The version here was, Sermo volat, lingua manet: speech flies away, language stays behind.

Now, that could be a Saussurean distinction between langue (the abstract linguistic systems that linguists study), and parole (the stuff that actually comes out of people’s mouths). Very Chomskian line to take if that’s what they meant, but psycholinguists actually use parole more than most linguists to work out what linguistic structures are; so it’s an odd slight to make, especially in Latin. Or it could be some optimistic statement (not that distant from the first) that words are temporary but languages are forever. Given the rate of language extinction in the world, that’s not too prudent a statement either.

Nijmegen Uni (formerly Nijmegen Catholic U, now Nijmegen U named after Catholic Bishop Radboud) is not even trying to look monumental: it’s just bad mid-20th century concrete. I was looking forward to the experience of a German (or Dutch) mensa (university cafeteria). I didn’t quite get there in Nijmegen U, but at least I know to avoid the filet américain (see enteraining fulminations at Yahoo Answers, where the answers may not be correct, but they are funny). Bad enough as steak tartare on a plate; but in a salami tube as a squirtable topping? Just say no.

As already alluded to, lots of Australian linguists there, some of whom even asked me what my PhD topic had been…

Wenn sie fragen, wer i g’wesen bin:

Tambour von der Leibkompanie!

(That’s being deliberately abstruse too. Some other blog post perhaps.)

Oh, and I got to say goodbye to Sebastian and Sonja about four times. I kept planning to leave Nijmegen and getting stranded. At least I caught up with my blog posts for the day.

OK, one more Dutch Sojourn posting to go.

When I was an undergraduate, one of my lecturers was the quite Dutch Tobias Ruighaver. At the conclusion of his course on computer architecture, I stood up with a couple of musicians in the lecture theatre, and gave a stirring rendition of Het Wilhelmus, the Dutch national anthem. I think Tobias was more interested in the Amstel beer we’d also gotten him; but the performance got people talking for at least a semester.

I completely failed to get the Netherlands, of course; I should have bought that Undutchables book at the airport, I think it would have illuminated some things. Still, now that I’m back in Melbourne Town, and jetlagged (I slept like a log on the plane—but on the wrong leg of the flight), I bid you all please be upstanding for my rendering of the Dutch national anthem (a bit more T.S. Eliot than the original):

I’m William of Nassau,

My blood is Dutch.

I’m true to my country

beyond death’s reach.

A prince out of Orange,

free, unafraid:

my word is my bond to

the king of Spain.

I was not going to leave Amsterdam without crossing off some of the local specialities off my list.

Fries was not on my list, but since I didn’t know what I’d get in Brussels, I thought I’d try some here. And a good thing, because the fries in Amsterdam are free to proclaim to the world that they are FLEMISH FRIES!

Not French Fries! Definitely not Belgian Fries—the very idea! Nay, while there is a frying pan and some soggy mayonnaise to spread, the Flemish cause lives.

Of course, this is gratuitously unfair; for all I know, fries were invented in Flanders before Belgium was a glint in the Duke of Wellington’s eye. But it was an obvious dig to make; and as far as I can tell, “Flemish Fries” is really what they’re called in Dutch (and not just in Flanders.) I wonder what the Walloons call them. Probably just pommes frites, and not, I dunno, frites de liberté or frites de flamandais maudits.

(Checks Wikipedia on history of fries.) Well, yes, reports on fries in the Lower Countries are claimed for 1680, way before the existence of the Belgian state; and they are placed in the Meuse valley, between Dinant and Liège, both of which are in… HAHAHAHHAHAHA!!! Walloonia! Oh history, you are so delightfully tricky…

The list of local specialities included Argentinian steak. For reasons I cannot fathom, Amsterdam tourist precinct is packed with Argentinian steakhouses. I wouldn’t have pegged Amsterdam for a big Argentinian community, and I don’t see that Argentinian steak is the best match for aromatic coffeehouse-induced munchies; but I counted at least seven Argentinian steakhouses.

I had steak in the place I had my Sunday morning coffee and apple pie (La Gauch, just before Centraal Station); the minimum 200g fillet, because I don’t foresee a situation in which I could do anything constructive with a half kilo slice of cow. For an empty tourist joint, the steak was just fine. Not tender enough to scoop out with a spoon (as my friend Steve found a steakhouse showing off in Buenos Aires); then again, I’m not sure I’d actually want a steak that tender. But yes, quite tasty.

Next on the list was jenever, the Dutch version of gin. You can get an Old jenever, which is yellow and mellow and not a Donovan song; or you can get a Young jenever, which is still working through its teenage rebellion. Since I had only 24 hours more in the Netherlands (of which most would be spent at the airport, asleep, or getting lost walking around town), I enquired whether a jenever might be possible from my Argentinian hosts.

ME: Could I possibly have a djenever.

HOST: A djenever. Or even a yenever. [looks around] I will get you one, sir.

HOST: [Calls over waitress] Doordrecht Utrecht Rotterdam Leiden yenever.

(By the way, mine host has hit the sweetspot of gutturality, such that I can’t be sure whether he’s speaking Dutch or Arabic. I will assume Dutch for the remainder.)

WAITRESS: … Jenever?!

HOST: Amsterdam Groningen Nijmegen den Haag shop Arnhem Almere jenever!

WAITRESS: [runs out the restaurant as I pretend to be completely unresponsible for the commotion]

WAITRESS: [walks back with a bottle of jenever that looks suspiciously like the bottles of jenever I saw later on—at the bottle shop around the corner]

WAITRESS: Stuyvesand Leeuwenhoek Vermeer serve Rembrandt Tasman Dampier jenever?

HOST: van Dijk van Diemen van Gogh van Morrison shot glass Amstel Rijn Flevoland customer Poffertjes Clogs jenever!

As a result, I had before me a clear glass of young jenever, next to my pepper sauce and steak. This was a quite young jenever. Young enough that it should have been grounded. Young enough to crash its car in my gullet and do a runner. Interesting experience. Not a million miles away from my grandfather’s moonshine grappa, but with juniper flavouring going on.

The third thing on the list was Rijsttafel. The guidebook explained it well: it was Indonesian food for Dutch colonial appetites—

“Hm, this is a lovely satay skewer, mijn heer Indoneesisch hawker. I will take 50 for lunch please. With a couple of carts of rice. Marieke, are uw dining with? Better make that 100 skewers, and three carts. She is watching her carbohydrates, uw know. So, gijf me now please all your spices.”

I didn’t get to have Rijsttafel, or to reach a more mature evaluation of the history of Dutch colonialism. I struck up a great conversation on the train back from Amsterdam with a Turkish linguist at the Max Planck. (My thesis came in handy: I’d at least heard of a few more Turkish towns than average.) She actually mentioned that they were having Rijstafel at her place that evening, but I already had a date with Argentinian cuisine.

The last thing on the list was Stamppot. I got a lot of incredulous reactions on that one. It’s distinctly Dutch comfort food, which is why noone in Amsterdam would go anywhere near it: “We did not become the cosmopolitan diamond and aromatic coffeehouse capital of Europe to eat our grandparents’ cabbage mash”. It’d be like a tourist in Greece asking for fasoladha. (Bean soup. Hearty stuff. You should try it if you’re in a Greek restaurant: mess with your host’s mind. Wonder if it’s even allowed in Plaka…)

Well, I was that tourist. And Amsterdam did not make it easy for me to be that tourist: not a whole lot of places serve stamppot around the Centrum. (And even outside the Centrum, you saw a lot more Italian and Indonesian and Thai than, you know, Dutch.)

I finally found a place to my linking: the Roode Leeuw Brasserie, within the Hotel Amsterdam on the Damrak. It was an island of class in the tourist theme park: the menu actually bypassed English in proclaiming its cuisine régionale nederlandaise. (Well, only for the title: the menu items were still bilingual with English.) Within, red wood panelling, statues of horse carts, place mats that subtly hinted through archival photography that the Red Lion Brasserie has been here a smidgeon longer than the Burger King next door (Est. 1911); lion silhouettes (none red); and a clientele mostly over 70. (There was one other lost-looking scruffy tourist, and a couple of businessmen under fifty. And me. Who despite the crows feet, am still not over 70.)

The waitress was slightly surprised at my request for stamppot, which was on the cuisine régionale nederlandaise menu outside but not on the lunch menu inside. She said (not sure whether in Dutch or English) “I will get you some”. I’m pretty sure she didn’t run around to the corner bottle-o to do so.

A quarter hour later, I was about to peruse the afternoon papers, to see whether I could guess the meaning of Dutch in newspapers as well as I could on cigarette packs, when my stamppot arrived. With a server so surprised at the request, that he gave me a 30-second disquisition on stamppot and its social setting.

SERVER: Here is your lunch sir. It is a heavy lunch. This is stamppot: this is mashed cabbage, and this is mashed potato and lima beans, with bacon and sausage and beef. It is what we eat in January, when it is really cold outside; so we eat it after we go out skating.

ME: Well, unfortunately I could only get here in March.

SERVER: Oh, no problem sir, we serve it all year round!

But not to many tourists, I suspect. And you know, it was a heavy lunch. Definitely comfort food, and the cabbage-based mash was surprisingly pleasant; but you wouldn’t want to eat it every day. Unless every day involved skating, I suppose.

Lunch was accompanied—because I like to try anything once—by Dubbelfriss and Amsterdam koffie. Dubbelfriss was a European-sized helping of lolly water. It was friss because it was fresh (and Friesian). It was Dubbel because it mixed two flavours of lolly: I got raspberry/cranberry. The Dutch for “raspberry” is framboos, which is somewhat reminiscent of the French framboise. The Dutch for “cranberry” is cranberry, which is somewhat reminiscent of globalisation.

The Amsterdam koffie did not my knowledge involve anything served in aromatic coffeeshops. It was coffee, full cream (again with the cream), and honey liqueur.

Definitely liqueur and not just honey. I’m pretty sure the base coffee was Douwe Egberts too (or as I have mangled it at least once, Doogie Engelbarts); so heavy vanilla substrate to the cream and mead. Yes, I approve.

Back to diet next week, I know.

Here at opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr, we’re all about the heterochronicity. So as I sit in the foyer of Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen, waiting for a taxi to launch me on the path back to Amsterdam…

and in the plane over the Western Desert returning to Australia…

… I will continue blogging about what I saw when I was already in Amsterdam on Sunday.

And insert some comparisons with what I saw when I was back in Amsterdam Thursday into Friday.

Here at opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr, we’re also all about the resentment at not having become an academic linguist. OK, not all about it; but with MPI an elite linguist hangout, with longstanding ties to University of Melbourne Linguistics, and complete with memorialised linguists’ busts (and psychologists—it’s the Institute for Psycholinguistics after all),

… regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too abstruse to mention. The PhD students at the next table are picking through their good fortunes at being in Nijmegen. I hope they don’t get disillusioned like I did, really I do.

No, focus. When last blogged, I had just rocked up to Centraal station, and been sore astonished at the multiplicity of bikes. I then wandered south, to see what I could see.

What’s south of Centraal? The Red Light District. I swore I wouldn’t bother going there, because I wanted a better sense of the soul of Amsterdam than AMSTERDAM XXX BY NIGHT would provide. But bang, there I was. I didn’t immediately stumble across the brothel windows—that was a street down; but I did come across the sex shops that I’m declining to photograph in this shot—

—not because I’m above that kind of thing, dear reader, but because I dare surmise you might be.

The Red Light District, I found rather puzzling. There was a lot of incongruity to process here. (I mean, you’re showing that video cover right on the street window? Really?) I did find it funny that two shops down from said video covers, there was a Greek restaurant dedicated to the Virgin Mary:

and an Italian restaurant dedicated to the Virgin Mary:

in a losing battle. Not least because they were faced off by one of the innumerable aromatic-smelling coffeeshops that blanket the precinct, even unto Rusland St (where my hotel was, 1 km further down):

The battle is in fact to represented by a T-shirt. I’ll refrain from republishing gratuitous blasphemy in a public blog, so since someone else has encountered the T-shirt, I’ll link off site.

But you know, sex shops and aromatic coffeeshops, and prostitutes in lingerie incongruously tapping on the window as you walk past (Lady, I’m lugging a suitcase halfway across Centrum, and it needs A Good Time right now even less than I do)—do not convey the frisson of risk and edge that they might. I chose the word tacky rather than dodgy, and there was a reason for that. Sebastian (who I was visiting in Nijmegen) crystallised it for me when I expressed my disappointment to him: it’s a clean, sanitised, manicured experience of sex and drugs and souvenir T-shirts. It’s a tourist theme park, really.

To my relief, when I came back and got intentionally lost walking around town, I saw the flipside to Centrum. (I had a couple of destinations, but got gloriously lost by following the ring structure of the roads bordering Centrum.) I didn’t get a sense of the soul of Amsterdam—in the end, how could I in a couple of hours; but I saw that the flipside is a town that still has too many bikes, but also a place here people get work done, go out to dinner, and get home by 10. Not a particularly striking looking town, but lived-in. (This is not Vienna, which had a point to prove in its architecture; Amsterdam ran the world as a business, and was satisfied with individual affluence.) By the Plantage district, which was parkland until past the Golden Age, the town even loosens its belt a little, and allows for some greenery, and mansions that aren’t single file.

What other superficial impressions of Centrum? Nieuwendijk was a jumble of souvenir shops and garishness; the fashion stores wedged amongst them tried to look classy, and failed. I didn’t even want to take photos as I went down it; just a dismissive look back when I got to the Dam:

I was more forgiving when I went back: Nieuwendijk at 10 pm was defanged and normal for where it was, and Nieuwendijk on a Friday morning actually made some sense, as a street tourists would happen upon.

The Dam was more my style: I approve of the stateliness of the Koninklijk Paleis

although I have to wonder how they filmed that scene in public where… oh, “above that kind of thing”. Right.

The Nieuwe Kerk is also suitably commanding:

That’s the New Church in the Nieuwe Zidje: New as in 1408, as opposed to 1306, and the Oude Kerk in the Oude Zidje.

It’s an old town. Even the post-1945 monuments at the Dam look suitably in place—the marble lions don’t have their innards deconstructed or their manes braided or anything.

Even the Madame Tussaud’s and department stores look dignified here.

(I can’t say the same about the hot dog stand, but the town planners can’t take responsibility for everything.)

And in comparison to Nieuewendijk, the Damrak… well, it’s a step up:

Not a complete staircase up, mind you—

—but somewhat more orderly. The Damrak also hosted one of my proudest linguistic moments, when I worked out what a Dutch cigarette packet said on a bin (proudly emblazoned with the city symbols, XXX):

Roken is dodelijk. Reeking is deadlike. OK, ok, I worked it out via German, Rauchen is tödlich, Smoking is deadly. As Sebastian told me later (I dont just bore you, dear blog readers, with this crap; I also bore anyone I’m visiting), the German packs say that Rauchen kann tödlich sein: they are reluctant to assert a 100% fatality rate. No such caution in the Netherlands or the Anglosphere: there’s lives to save, don’t you know.

Those XXX’s? They’re meant to be St Andrews’ crosses. They’re everywhere:

And while they long predate the use of XXX as a Google searchword, the similarity has not gone unnoticed in the Red Light District. (I won’t even mention what they do with their depiction of Amsterdam traffic bollards.) This is just about the only Red Light District use of XXX I could find that would not itself attract an XXX rating:

In response to comment from Philip Newton, here is a closeup of that house-identifying doggerel. (It was actually next to a cafe, in an awkward vault location):

Over to you!

The title is a reference to McGonagall, and is about as well-informed…

If you’re not live-tweeting your photographs into interwebosphere, doing a blog based on your photos three days after the fact is something of a challenge. Let’s just see what I can throw at the wall and make stick.

Did I fall in love with Amsterdam like I was supposed to? No, not really. Partly because I don’t fall in love much any more. Partly because when I went tramping around Sunday morning, the good bit of Amsterdam (southern Oude Zijde) was empty and overcast. (At least, that’s how I remember it; from the photos, it looks more empty than overcast.)

When I was leaving Tuesday afternoon, it was sunny and busy. And it made a lot more sense. The photos don’t convey it, but I paused and looked around at the Waag, and smiled: this wasn’t half bad after all:

The Waag? (Or as they would say there, [vɑɑχχχ], and you weren’t really planning to use that uvula again, were you.) It’s an old weighing station for farmers’ produce. And it looks much more important than that. (As a conference participant who hadn’t read his guidebook put it, “that castle thing in the middle of the street.”) It’s a restaurant now. More importantly than that, it’s a signpost for lost tourists.

Without people, the houses and the canals are pretty but decontextualised—a regiment of soldiers guarding a moat, each with different epaulets.

Because even the epaulets blended in to each other after a while, houses tended to put up little ID badges as well.

(Anyone have a translation for this, or do I have to hit Babelfish, and cross my fingers because it’s in Old Dutch orthography?)

The regiment of houses has some soldiers wider than others:

Some soldiers more industrial than others:

Some soldiers more surreptitiously stoned than others:

And some soldiers turning up like it’s Casual Bauhaus Friday:

The disaster in the middle is Rembrandt House Museum. The pretty and Hollandically sensible house to its right is Rembrandt’s actual house. And the place to the right of that is where you too can buy a Rembrandtburger downstairs for €8.50…

Amsterdam used to be a maritime city.

That ship-looking thing to the right? It’s not a ship, because Amsterdam *used* to be a maritime city. Now it just remembers that it was a maritime city, and erects memorials: the ship-looking thing is the Nemo science museum.

Now instead, Amsterdam’s all about the bicycles:

(ok, bicycles, and please no doggie doodoo.)

By the time you get to Centraal station, it’s not funny any more. I mean really:

Amsterdam was also all about the religious tolerance. Unless you were Catholic; which is why the guidebook gave the impression there were more clandestine Catholic churches in town than above-ground Reformed churches. When the Catholic churches went above ground, it was payback time, and I’m not surprised that a lot of Amsterdammers were put out by the Moses and Aaron church: it had two centuries to make up for, and it does: this is not a Hollandically sensible regiment.

I did want to get a snap of the Portuguese synagogue, which was one of the beneficiaries of Dutch religious tolerance, and is around the corner from Moses and Aaron (hah… just realised the irony there). But it was pretty non-descript on the outside; as the door opened to let some people in, the inside looked interesting, but I didn’t get the impression I was the target audience.

So I headed to Centraal station, as good a staging post as any, noting the houseboats…

… the somewhat more Hollandic majesty of the Nicholas church….

… and the new centre of Amsterdam, displacing the harbour and also memorialising it—Centraal station itself

Which, like a lot of buildings in Western Europe (as I also found in Brussels) is undergoing restoration, and so offers you a simulacrum of the facade:

I also scanned the horizon to see where I would be staying on my return to Amsterdam Friday. The selection criteria were (a) I had not been paid in two months, and (b) I was getting the train in at 10 pm, and in no mood to traipse along the cobblestones, so get me something next to the station. I had decided on the A-Train hotel:

Oh great. A hotel at a slight angle to the rest of the universe. Given that Amsterdam is built on sand, this happens more than you might think.

Those of you who know Amsterdam geography know where I ended up next, without even particularly intending to. Those who do not, will find out next post.

Life, it is a giddy thing. Yesterday, I was in Amsterdam, where Dutch is spoken. Today, I am in Brussels, where Dutch appears on some shop billboards, and is the third language after Arabic. Yesterday, I was walking down the Zeedijk, where the first language was English. Today, I’m in Chaussée de Mons, where the first language is Arabic. Yesterday, I had entirely too much free internet. Today… I also have entirely too much free internet (though at a tenth the speed), because the instructions on how to password lock your wireless connection are in English, so someone in every apartment block in continental Europe fails to.

Yesterday, I was in the five star splendor of the Radisson Amsterdam, Oude Zidje. Because my main criterion when I booked my own accommodation was that I hadn’t been paid for a couple of months, today I’m in the Hotel Scandinavia, Anderlecht, which has… can you have negative stars? No, no, it’s not that bad. It’s 2 ½ stars. (Well, it’s 2 ½ star bad.) And I’d scarcely want to add to the merriment of the reviews; but no, it’s a 2 ½ star hotel, as long as you can do expectation management, you’re fine.

The fact I had to lock my room on the inside, and I was handed a remote control as I checked in, helped manage expectations quickly.

But Anderlecht is an interesting change from the whitebread (and slightly stoned) tenor of Amsterdam Centrum. For starters, I’m back to being bamboozled trying to interact in French, rather than the clipped but impeccable English of the Dutch. (Well, almost impeccable: “Welcome in Amsterdam”.) For seconds, the street architecture in Anderlecht is reminiscent of Greece to me: run down 19th century, vertical and in your face at the sidewalk, faded beige but with a vague recollection of Rome. And of course, it’s not very whitebread; the Arab maisons de café are more reminiscent of traditional Greek coffeehouses than are the Rastafarian temples of Amsterdam Centrum. The demographics posed me an added challenge as I went out for a bite to eat last night.

The night scene of Anderlecht is dotted with restaurations, snack bars—some open, and all selling shawarmas; one Congolese restaurant proper; one patisserie that also looked very familiar (baklavas and biscuits), but was closing down; a grimy corner shop; a couple of shops filled with phone booths (wow—I thought mobile phones had done away with those); and some neighbourhood pubs that did not look tourist-friendly. Had I gone the other direction in the Chaussée de Mons, I would have found a quite acceptable couple of Egyptian restaurants. I didn’t, so when I happened across my first resto, I decided that, yes, local colour is all very well, but I did not come halfway across the world to eat a souvlaki, and (perusing the Congolese menu) that I was not feeling quite up to le crocodile either.

Five minutes later, as I realised that a shiny whitebread Gordon Ramsay chain restaurant was not going to spring up in the middle of Anderlecht, I ducked into a shawarma joint after all, ducked past the bored patrons (“Salaaaaam…”) waiting for their takeaway, and ordered:

ME: … [baguette, baguette, sandwich]… [Ah, I recognise something.] Le pitta, please graciously.

SHAWARMA GUY: Euh.

ME: *puts une boite de Pepsi Max on the counter*

SHAWARMA GUY: *ignores me*

SHAWARMA GUY: *wraps up other patrons’ baguettes. With fries wedged in them.* [This too is familiar to me: it’s what Greeks do with their souvlakis. Would you like some starch with your starch?]

SHAWARMA GUY: *waves pitta at me*

ME: [Ah, he realises I am not fully conversant with the languages of either Voltaire or Avicenna.] Yuss.

SHAWARMA GUY: *drops some more fries into a funnel thingy, and nonchalantly munches on a couple*

ME: *zones*

SHAWARMA GUY: Wotsaucedyerwant?

ME: … explease me?

SHAWARMA GUY: What sauce do you want?

ME: … Ah. What sauce it is that you are having.

SHAWARMA GUY: *mpf* *gestures at the bottles at the window* American, Chilli, Tabouli…

ME: Le tchillie.

SHAWARMA GUY: Tahini…

ME: Le tchillie.

SHAWARMA GUY: Zneurghalili…

Me: Yes, him.

SHAWARMA GUY: *Spreads pitta with non-tchillie*

SHAWARMA GUY: *Starts adding a little coleslaw to the pita*

SHAWARMA GUY: How are you?

ME: *blink*

ME: *realises that Ça va also means “is that ok?”* Yuss.

SHAWARMA GUY: *Dumps generous allotment of fries into pitta.* Arglé Euro Barlgé cents.

ME: *Hands over €10, coz didn’t the sign say €6?

SHAWARMA GUY: *Hands back the €5 note, coz the sign did not say €6 for the pitta.*

ME: شكراًَ. *I knew watching Bond films would come in handy one day*. Good eveningment.

SHAWARMA GUY: Right.

You know, the starch with your starch is surprisingly comfort-food-ish. Not a bad bite, at the end of it.

I did use that remote control they handed me at the desk. Cool doco on Flemish TV on the fall of Ceauşescu. Nice to realise that, you know, I can almost follow Dutch. Just as well, because my Romanian is even worse. And I finally happened across that short-lived spin-off of Law and Order with Bebe Neuwirth in it. Comment s’apelle en anglais? Trial By Jury. I know I should be over the whole dubbing of American shows thing, but Fred Thompson speaking in French—in a non-presidentially high voice—was mildly amusing to me.

OK, I’ll go check out, have breakfast, and possibly get beaten up by Anderlecht Football Club supporters for maligning their fair burg. I’ll probably blog backwards in time and try and make at least some sense of the photos I took in Amsterdam Sunday morning. Not that they made sense at the time.

Oh, and I haven’t made my quota of snide ignorant comments about Belgian linguistic politics. Yes, will have to address that. I need to see more bilingual signs to raise my ire.