June 23, 2007

6/23/07
8:00 PM
Hotel Ibis
Charleroi, Brussels

The day pauses, so I write.  Rain is falling on the river outside our window.  It's a thin river, nothing like the Allegheny or Ohio back home, and it seems usually smooth.  The rain makes ripples on the water.

This is a rich moment, somewhat because of how far I am from home & somewhat because this town isn't someplace we meant to be, but it makes me curious and shy.

For lack of plans after our plane set down in Brussels Airport, Gina & I found a hotel close by, intending to stay one night and move on to Luxembourg today after changing her airline tickets at the airport again.  Instead, we enjoyed the evening here and looked around for a little while, and decided to sleep in late & spend the next day here as well.  Dinner was odd; we went through 3 waiters before finding one who would put up with my butchered French & his shaky English.  At some point I was able to apologize for not speaking French; I mentioned I studied it only a little but thought it was a beautiful language.  I don't what where he thought I was from.  He mentioned he liked English too, then clarified, "But American..." then he wandered off proclaiming, "Fuck!  Fuck this!  Fuck that!"  I guess that's his impression of the USA.  I'm glad I didn't fit that description exactly.

Today we wandered around Charleroi.  I'm not sure what it is, other than a small town outside of Brussels near enough to the airport to get some traffic from travelers.  As far as I can tell, the main commercial hub is somewhere between a train station that happens to be across the river from this hotel, and a large factory put up on a hill nearly half an hour's walk away.  The train tracks, river, & major highway all seem to run in the same small concourse along the south of the town; the factory is in the north.

There is a university here, though it seems to be from the early soviet era & seems run-down, if not somewhat abandoned.  It's called the Universite de Travail, & it was founded by Paul Pastur, of whom there's a Stalinesque statue standing in an overgrown cobblestone square between the ivy-conquered buildings.  It's only a short walk away from the factory, & I wonder if it's related to the rise of the workers' rebellions from the 1930's and before.  Outside the hotel there's another statue of a worker with some classic soviet-style figurines carved in the base: your common laborer, wielding his hammer or whatever.  I'm curious what happened in this place.

There's also a Waterloo metro station, but I don't actually know (and this is embarrassing) where the real Waterloo was, so I have no idea if this is it or if it's more in Russia somewhere (which is what I thought before).