June 5, 2001

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

Dear Friends and Subscribers,

We arrived late in Brussels but I went straight to the Internet to check my mail and see how my children were doing. Twenty years ago when we traveled abroad I hated being away from home and feeling so out of touch. Once I got so homesick I called from Switzerland just to hear the babysitter say to me, "I never let them out of my sight." Those words were a great comfort, but they cost $42!

Now, the internet is such a wonderful way to communicate. Business centers are available in every hotel, and internet cafes have sprung up in every town througout Europe, Asia, and probably every continent except Antarctica, at incredibly cheap prices (I was online in Turkey for over an hour, and it cost $2). My children can send me messages any time they think of it so they feel in touch with me, and we can write to each other about normal every day things that you don't usually talk about on the phone at $7 a minute. It's a challenge using the different keyboards however. In France, a is a q, m is a ', w is x, and a period requires a shift key, etc.

We were hosted by Dr. Hardy Bouillon of the Center for New Europe. Brussels is the headquarters of the European Union, and most of the attendees of the luncheon were high-powered members of the political and economic bureaucracies, and few of them were champions of free markets and laissez faire policies. They asked hard-hitting questions and brought up many interesting challenges. They did not ask what music Mark would choose for himself.

Mark's brother Royal, a linguist, is teaching in Germany this summer, so he and his wife, Sirkku, drove over to hear Mark's speech. Later we went for a walk into the old part of town, near the Gros Plats which is famous for its flowers and baroque buildings. We ate Belgian waffles and Belgian chocolates, bought Belgian lace and Belgian tapestries, and saw TinTin memorabilia everywhere (Tin Tin is an illustrated series about a detective/journalist written by Belgian Herge, and has been a family favorite for many years.) But we did not see Hercule Poirot...

Our true adventure began when we left to meet our hosts for dinner. They had given us the name of the restaurant, Chez Marie, and the address, 40 rue A. de Witte. Our concierge gave us a map and directions, and Royal had a car (which was most difficult to locate, given that the power had gone out in the parking garage and we had to fumble forward in the pitch dark, inch by inch, until we found it!) Then we had to deal with twisting, one-way roads, tiny unreadable street signs, changing street names, and impatient traffic. After many u-turns and checks with the map, we found 40 rue de Witte, but it was an empty warehouse in a very bad part of town (girls were sitting in windows, advertising themselves for rent....) We had no luck finding the restaurant in the telephone listings or calling our hotel for messages, and since we were now more than an hour late, we returned to our hotel. Three phone calls later (to Chez Maria, Chez Marius, and finally the real Chez Marie) we found our friends, who were still waiting for us to join them. The address? 40 rue Alphonse de Witte! a very short street in a much nicer part of town.

Dinner, and particularly the conversations, were wonderful and well worth the effort to get together. In addition to Hardy and his staff, we were joined by the Editorial page editor of the European Wall Street Journal, a hard-driving, smooth-talking, cigar-smoking, animated storytelling young but old-school reporter of the classic Clark Gable type. We had a great time listening to his stories and sharing some of ours.

On the way back to our hotel our cab driver drove like a maniac, even though we were in no hurry and the night was still fairly young. He honked constantly, kept passing on the left into oncoming traffic, was furious when the cars ahead of him did not proceed immediately when the lights changed. Finally he tried to pass three cars by moving into the oncoming lane, only to find that they were turning left--right in front of him. He let two go by, honking furiously, and then drove on ahead, just as the third car, also belligerently demanding his right of way, went ahead and turned left. Of course, our cab hit the turning car, and the two men flew at each other in outraged self-righteousness. Not wanting to get involved with police reports, Mark and I quickly slipped out of the back seat and walked the three blocks to our hotel, enjoying the night and the adventure.

-- Jo Ann Skousen

email: jaskousen@mskousen.com

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