Tom and I found student rooms today in a house on Adegemstraat, just across the Dijle canal and right by the city center. The landlady and her husband are extremely kind and excited to have two musicians aboard. With a supermarkt, two boat restaurants, chocolate stores galore, shopping, and a tea/whole-bean-coffee store filled with heavenly scents within several blocks of the place (just to mention some highlights), we couldn't have found a better location. Usually these particular rooms are rented by May or June, but clearly they were meant for us! I am taking the one with private bathroom (complete with friendly spider in the tub) and zebra lamp for a mere 200 euros a month... gonna paint the walls light blue à la Derek's senior single in Pierson. Pierson! What foreign words these Yale names seem already. Too bad the language is still utterly foreign here as well. Now I'm not entirely comfortable anywhere anymore.
The real highlight of the day, as i mentioned earlier and am happy to blab about again, was buying a women's Rincon mountain bike in Gunmetal Grey. Nice bikes don't come cheap in Belgium, but after four years of ole Purple, this baby feels like heaven on wheels. Unfortunately, the bike store folks weren't half as friendly as those in New Haven (maybe because I'm the stupide Américain?). I was also offended that the dude insisted on explaining how to change gears even after I started laughing, but whatever, I'm a stupide Américain (they don't actually say that here--they don't even speak French), and I have no pride. I hopped right on it and biked way out of the city along the bike lanes (which are on the sidewalk), but everyone young and old was passing me and narrowly missing small children, save one slow old nun in her wimple. Eventually I reached a roundabout where a chicken was randomly pecking around the street. At that point, I decided it probably wasn't so smart to bounce my exotic boobs around the Belgian boonies on my third day in the country too much, so I headed back and biked around the city until I was faint with hunger, which after a bit of a disaster at a Belgian cafe was quickly addressed by/at Mister Pitta.
All I really need in life is a bike, a carillon or two, and a place to sleep every now and then. Or so I'd like to think. I wish Bob had been here to help me choose a non-purple bike. I wish I had someone with whom to even go biking! Then we could head straight for the Alps...from Mechelen. No problemo. Everyone and their mothers and grandmothers ride bikes here, but just to get around. So far I've only seen a few mountain bikes and one leather-clad dude on a crotch rocket. Bah humbug. Who needs badass motorcycle boys when you can become your own badass motorcycle girl! Once you pay off all your credit card debts from a year ago, when you were carilloning and biking and cooking and eating and Stammtisch-ing instead of earning money! Yes indeedy!
Pictures yet to come; this DPC Pastoraal Centrum PC doesn't like my camera too much. At least my neighborhoood Frenchman/engineer/chemist Alexandre showed me this nice computer tucked into a random 2nd floor room so that I don't have to pay the Internet cafes. Instead, my euros are going to the...'dollar' stores (for lack of a better term), where I am finding the holy grail of bedding... orange sheets! Cheap-ass orange sheets, admittedly. But after four years of searching, I'll take just about any thread count that comes my way.
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