Hello from Paris!
I’m back home after a great trip to Brussels. I thought I’d send you a few notes and more photos, but one paragraph inspired another, and pretty soon I had a bunch of pages and hadn’t even gotten to the hotel yet. So welcome to my new Thursday project! A kind of travelogue. We’ll see where it leads.
Brussels: The Arrival
A few weeks ago, I visited parts of Paris I hadn’t seen in years— museums and cemeteries, my favorite churches and cheese shops, parks that offered panoramic views, cafés of course, where we drank cool wine in the sun, and bridges over the Seine which snakes through the city. I even re-visited corners of my own neighborhood in East Paris which had become strange to me since Covid narrowed our lives. Memories surged up, sometimes from decades before, sometimes years, binding together my messy life.
That was re-discovery. Discovery is something else. To travel! To go to some place unknown, and open yourself up to it, allow even the small things to touch you. I wish I had written down all my impressions of Brussels. The first was so banal—using the toilet in the train station, and upon emerging, discovering an automatic tap that not only offered water from the center, but also dried, shooting out hot air if you put your hands underneath the two wings to the side. I stood there snickering with delight. Those clever Belges!
That train station smelled different, too, not of piss and disinfectant like so many Paris stations, but the perfume of buttery waffles which aren’t made with a simple baking powder batter, but a yeasty brioche dough with fat pearls of sugar that melt and caramelize when they hit the hot iron.
Google maps told us it was only a thirty-five minute walk to the hotel. We felt energetic, and decided to forgo the tram. It wasn’t exactly a mistake.
Leaving the station and all its tiny mall-like shops was the first obstacle. An arrow pointed to exit number two, but when we followed it, discovered a few steps later another sign indicating only exits numbered 3 and 5. I spent a lot of time spinning around like a dog chasing her tail. When we finally got to the correct door and emerged it was to the dank piss and exhaust of a bus station.
Beyond that, Google maps directed us to what it grandly called a Boulevard, but was really a mammoth construction site, the street dug up deeply, fences lining it. Big machines paused in the middle for the Ascension holiday. We scuttled down the tiny pedestrian path alongside like two tiny Parisian rats.
I didn’t mind too much. We were on vacation. We’d escaped. From the architecture alone, I knew we weren’t in Paris. Rather than pale stone, many of the buildings were brick. Or brick and stone. Their proportions were different, too. They were narrower. Scrunched. Glancing up we discovered that there were some remarkable houses sandwiched in with the indifferent rest.
We took a parallel street for a while, got nervous and returned to the construction site via a tunnel with a beautifully graffitied ceiling. (If ceiling is the right word for the rounded top part of a tunnel. If graffiti is the right word for that art.) Shortly afterwards, we passed a comic book store. It wasn’t shiny and bright with precious objects, but jam-packed with old and new stuff, all a little scruffy. Everything loved.
A few blocks on, we sat at an intersection where there was a fountain. I checked google maps again, saw that the Grand-Place was just a few streets away. We decided to save that for later, but instead paused at a nearby frîtes place on rue de la Bourse that online guides recommend.
We arrived during a lull when the tables outside were empty. We commandeered one. Inside a girl with purple hair and a dykelike mien was manning the counter. Another girl tossed fries in the back.
I ordered a small, and asked about the beers on tap. Her favorite was called Urine. I ordered it anyway, a double IPA fruity and refreshing, delish. Like the frîtes. We gobbled them staring around at the nearby Saint-Nicolas church, its facade plain, dirty stone with plain Gothic arches.
I forgot to take pictures of our snack. But I’m sure you can imagine it, the little rectangular cardboard box with a mound of twice-fried fries crunchy on the outside, soft within, a glass of cool foamy beer. The black and neon green backpack taking up its own seat. The two dykes grinning at each other across the plastic table, their lips bearing a faint shimmer of grease.
Eventually, we stood up. The hotel wasn’t far. Down a boulevard, past an immense plaza lined with nineteenth century buildings bracketed with cranes. Then down one more avenue with the same faded glorious buildings, kebab places at street level, windows of cheap men’s tuxedos and smoking jackets, a fancy English-language bookstore, and a couple of sex shops. Beyond, past the end of the street, I saw immense modern towers of glass rising up. The whole city a mishmash of old and new, renovated and decrepit.
Our room was very clean. A budget affair with a chic efficient design. We overlooked a chicken place. The windows were thick. We didn’t hear (or smell) anything. I set the pack down in the chair, plugged in my phone. We’d arrived.
That’s it for this time.
As Belgium’s Flemish speakers say,
Tot ziens! See you later,
K