Mama, don't take me to International-Land [Belgium #2]

(Or, why I do not want to behave like an expat)

Ahoy--
so as I was sitting at the tram stop this evening, there were two little boys and their mother sitting next to me. Well, perhaps I should say that there was a woman and a little boy of maybe three sitting next to me, with another little boy of about four or five occupying all the empty space within about six feet of her. My inner child felt an instant bond with him. I first noticed them because the mom was saying things in Dutch (when you speak Dutch in a primarily French city, you learn to pick up on it quickly. More on that later). As I eavesdropped further, I realised that the little boy was asking (in French) how to say various things in various languages; in the span of about five minutes, they went through Dutch, English and Spanish. It made my ling-nerd heart warm for him, the petit polyglot: what a wonderful future he will have, growing up with a command of so many tongues. Pan-Europeanism is alive and well in the youth of today!

This is in stark contrast to the thing that has been on my mind quite a lot lately, which I referenced in the subject: International-Land. Based on the Vesalius people I have met, and several experiences in English-speaking pubs to which I was taken on someone else's initiative, I have made what is probably not a new discovery. There are people who are physically resident in Brussels who actually live in the parallel universe of the Brussels outpost of International-Land. International-Land has an outpost in any major city where people from many nations come together for trade or governance. The Hague certainly has one, Paris probably does too. They can be found as far away as Tokyo and Moscow, and more likely than not as close as Montreal or Toronto.

The people who live in Brussels-International probably work for NATO or the EU, but they might also work for some multinational which found it convenient to place their European Headquarters here. For people who live in International-Land, it doesn't really matter where in the world they live, since they go to work in English. After work they go to English-speaking pubs to drink Guinness or Budweiser. They belong to English-speaking clubs, with whom they play tennis or chess or hockey or whatever they play. Their children go to English-speaking schools, and then go back to the US to go to college. They might spend their whole career in one outpost of International-Land, but more likely, they transfer to different countries every couple of years. Their lives barely intersect at all with the inhabitants of wherever they live. If you drew an enormous map of the city, tracing the path throughout the day of every inhabitant, you would find that the paths of the inhabitants and of the Internationals would be drawn from two sets of starting points to two sets of endpoints, with barely any overlap. They cross on the roads and in the public transit system, but for the most part, the Internationals are going from different places, to different places, than the inhabitants are.

This is not to condemn them, not at all. It might be all well and good for the (I will assume male) head of household, since he has his job to go to during the day and then can relax at night. But his wife can't pursue a career, since she's jumping around the world every couple of years. His kids can't really make long-term friends. For them, each new culture isn't just another place to do the same job, it's a whole new *world*. I'd be freaked out and want to stick to my International-Land things that I know too.

But I am not them. I'm here for five months, and I can afford, emotionally, to jump into a new culture and try to figure it out. I don't need to go to O'Reillys, or Churchills, or Monkey Business. I don't need to watch football or baseball. I want to go to a place where I can have a beer, or a coffee, and listen to people speaking French and Dutch. And I'm happy to do that by myself, and not go out with the study abroad kids to International-Land.

I didn't mean that to sound as much like a polemic as it turned out, but I guess I feel kinda strongly about it. On a happier note, I was browsing Craigslist for Brussels (which is pretty lousy) yesterday when I came upon a wanted ad that read:

LOOKING FOR english/american reading material - EUR3
Looking for some fiction novels or fairly recent magazines from America or English language stuff...

On a budget but if anyone has some left over books they're done with I could really use some leisure reading in English. Looking to pay just a couple euros per book.

This person, I thought, is panicking. They need a hug, and something familiar to hang onto for a while. Fortunatly, I was a lot like that back when I was nine. Hell, I was feeling a lot like that last week. Instantly, my expat survival skillset sprang into action. I wrote back a couple paragraphs about English books at the public library, where to find the public library, where to find the English books in the public library, where to find the suburban outposts of the public library...in short, a little calm-down handholding, ending with "Hope this helps; I know what it's like to be in a foreign country and to just want to read something in English."

Today I got back: "Wow that's great info, thanks so much. I'll definately check them out. :-)"

I think I may have just saved someone's sanity a little bit.

Let's change the subject completely. I've been having a number of petits avontures lately. I have discovered that it's actually quite easy to have an adventure; all you have to do is make yourself look friendly, and place yourself in a situation where there are other people. The first time I did this was on the tram on the way back from hockey practice on Wednesday. I was sitting with my hockey stick, looking very conspicuous, when a elderly bearded gentleman sat down next to me and said something in French while pointing to my hockey stick. Sensing my confusion and lack of coherent response, he asked me if I spoke French. "Non," I told him. "Nederlands, English, Deutsch...pas de Français."

Then he did something that really surprised me. Instead of instantly switching to English, as just about everyone I've talked to has done, he started talking to me in DUTCH! It was very clear that French was not his first language, and that Dutch was certainly not his second language, but we had a very nice little conversation about hockey players and how agressive they look in their uniforms. Then he went back to reading his newspaper, but before he did, he shook my hand and said, in Dutch, "Thank you for the conversation." It just made me feel really nice, that someone valued a casual conversation enough to thank me for it.

Another petit avonture happened on Friday night, when Matt and I were coming back from seeing Blood Diamond. It was about 12:45 at night, after the trams stopped running. Matt considered taking a taxi, but since I was happy to walk, and was therefore unwilling to split the cost with him, he had to walk too. It wasn't that far, only about four km, which would take us about an hour. About halfway home, a guy pulled up next to us in his car and asked if we knew where such-and-such street was. I didn't, but I told him in a mix of French and English that I had a map in my pocket, and that he was welcome to look at it.

As it turned out, he was headed almost all the way to our house. Thinking on my feet, I said, "Well, since you're going up there, do you mind giving us a ride?" Of course he didn't mind, so we hopped into his tiny European car and got driven almost all the way home.  Petit avonture!

I've actually been walking quite a lot around here, even to school a couple of times, which between six and eight kilometers, depending on how you walk it. It takes between an hour and an hour and a half, and entails walking either a secant across the eastern part of the city, or into the center and back out again. The second way is longer, but more interesting, since it avoids walking through the heart of EU-land, characterized by horribly ugly glass architecture and badly-driven cars going way too fast. On the way, you get to see the progression from immigrant neighborhoods in Schaarbeek, to center-city governmental stuff downtown, and then upscale stuff in Etterbeek/Ixelles before arriving at the school. It's quite enlightening.

Speaking of downtown, having had my emotional experience by the tomb of the unknown soldier has had an unexpected side effect. As it turns out, one of the two main routes downtown leads right by him, so I pass by almost every day. Every time I pass by him, I make sure to take off my hat (if I'm wearing one), or give him a nod or a little salute. I think it's important to do, because he's all alone, and no one even knows who he is. And he was just a boy, maybe younger than me, off in a terrifying hell. And someone never knew if he came back. So it's important to do your part to make sure he's remembered.

Finally, I probably ought to end this overly long and rambling letter on a positive note: on Thursday, I'm going to Barcelona for the weekend, and the next thursday, I'm taking a night train to Berlin! You know who else takes night trains to Berlin? Spies, that's who. Maybe I'll meet a spy on his way to Berlin, and he'll drag me into a fantastic adventure of intrigue and deception, which will fortunately end in time for me to get to class in Brussels again on Monday morning. I'm very very very excited!

Time for me to go to sleep!

--Nathan