It's a changed house this week: everyone is suddenly back to school, and so I got out my Bach score and warmed up for the first time since the end of June. Happily, I was able to sing through all of my parts for the Christmas Oratorio without any incident. In fact it felt really good! I don't have to perform it until the 9th of December, but we have a rehearsal with the soprano and the conductor this coming weekend and I'd like it to be in good shape so am working on it all this week.
Malcolm was staying for the first ten days or so in an Air BNB place that I found. He's had little luck finding student rooms in the area of his school, as the student residence building is undergoing renovations and so many students are in the same situation. Tomorrow afternoon we are going to visit three or four furnished student rooms in the northern part of Brussels, where he can leave the house at around 7:20 and still make it to school in time for an 8:30 start.
He is enjoying the classes, which are largely practical ones, and at last account was busy shaping guitar necks with a hand plane. This past weekend he came home and took his bass guitar parts in to Ben's Guitar Repair Shop, and completed the work. It's a beautiful instrument with a really lovely maple and ebony fretless neck, and he is really very proud of it. I haven't had much time myself to go in and finish my Zadowcaster, but there is a chance that I could do that perhaps next week.
Last year I was a part of a crew of six who sailed to London, and this year we had decided initially to go to Boulogne-sur-mer, but the wind direction and weather forecast argued against such a trip at this time; it would have meant extremely slow going, with tacking for most of the journey. Instead we decided to retrace and slightly enlarge a previous trip from July 2015, that Malcolm and I took with Gediminas, his son Simonas, Tomas Sikorskis, and his son Jonas. We began by sailing northeast along the coast from Zeebrugge, passing through the Oosterschelde storm surge barrier, and made our way to Zierikzee for a very rainy overnight. This is a very nice town, which must have been very prosperous at one time if the luxurious houses are any indication. It was raining extremely heavily all morning we were there, so there was only a little bit of exploring possible on foot without getting soaked.
Upon leaving Zierikzee, we reefed the mainsail for safety because of the strong winds, gusting to almost 50km/h, and passed under the Zeelandbrug, the longest bridge/viaduct in the Netherlands, and then through another lock into the Veersemeer. We sailed through the Veersemeer and took the canal Walcheren to Middelburg, where we stopped to pass another night. The next morning the weather was better, and we continued motoring in the canal, coming out at Vlissingen, and then sailed onward to Cadzand marina for our last night with relatively clear skies and a strong steady wind. An early start on Sunday brought us home to Zeeland in good time.
a breakfast on the boat
wet weather sailing to Zierikzee
Zierikzee
a door decoration in Zierikzee
introducing the Lithuanians to some oak-aged Sint Bernardus
at De Vliegende Hollander beer cafe in Middelburg
part of the crew in a 16th-century warehouse, now a cafe, in Middelburg
history lessons in Middelburg
sailing out of Middelburg, with Lithuanian and Red Ensign flags
beautiful day, motoring on the Middelburg canal to Vlissingen
good sailing into Cadzand marina on Saturday
the crew of the Tyfoon in Cadzand
Wednesday 13 September
This week everyone has started settling back into the normal routine. It's taking time for us to get used to the pace of our day, now that we are no longer living in Brussels proper. Public transit is more complicated, because there are multiple, separate transit systems involved: the STIB (Brussels), TEC (Walloon Region) and De Lijn (Flemish Region). Each has an online website that can help us purchase tickets but each one seems more confusing than the next...
Today was quite a whirlwind, beginning very early, and I think we used absolutely every form of transit; we left by car, Duncan was dropped off at the TEC bus stop for 7:18, and took the STIB Metro for the last leg of his journey to school. Maggie and I continued to Brussels by car where she had her routine medical checkups first thing in the morning. She then took the TEC bus to work in Waterloo. Malcolm went to the railway station here in Wavre and bought a 10-ride ticket, then took the SNCB train to Boom, a journey of a little less than two hours. The railway system here is luckily very inexpensive; as an under-26 it only costs him 5,20 EUR per ride anywhere in the country.
After I dropped Maggie off at the hospital, I carried on to one of the kiosk locations where I could sort out the boys' yearly student transit passes. I knew if I went to Brussels South Station and got there just as it was opening I would be likely to be served quickly by a real live human and get things fixed. Afterwards I retrieved my car from the parking lot, and drove to meet Lawrence so we could go for a run.
We've been training together up to 25km distances over the last couple of months, to help him prepare for the Medoc Marathon, a fun run that includes themed costumes and lots of stops for wine. (He ran it last weekend, dressed as Angus Young of AC/DC, and carrying a styrofoam Gibson SG guitar that Malcolm made for him. Our friend Claire was his running partner, and she went dressed as Cher... they were a big hit!). I was feeling pretty out of it after a week of no running, so had to work pretty hard to keep a good pace, but we managed around 14km in the forest, which I needed. I have three trail races of 28-30km coming up in the next month, so I need to get my distance runs back up into the higher 20s to prepare for those.
I got cleaned up afterwards, and went to the bank to get a form so that our rental deposit would be released. I went to our old house to get it signed by our old landlord, and returned to the bank to submit it, and happily received our entire security deposit back. Then I dropped by Ben's Guitar Shop to return the template we had borrowed from him to make Lawrence's SG; he told me that I could resume work on my Zadowcaster on Friday, so I should have some more pictures soon.
After that I went to meet Malcolm in Laeken, near the Atomium, at the top of the city. He took a De Lijn bus down from Boom, and we met for a sandwich lunch and then went to look at student rooms. After spending all afternoon seeing various places we finally settled on one, a nice furnished room with a large south-facing window, that shares a common living/kitchen/bath with two other students, on the first floor of a house on a fairly quiet street. It's in the middle of the pack, price-wise, but is just steps from the bus and train station, so he should be able to make it to school in under an hour, or take a train home to Wavre in about the same travel time. He was hoping to move in right away, but I convinced him to come home for one more night and pack his bag!
Then we went to pick up Duncan after his karate, and then drove to Waterloo to get Maggie from work. Finally we made it home, and had a nice big dinner composed largely of leftovers, with a big salad, and went to bed tired but very satisfied that everything had been accomplished successfully.
Thursday 14 September
This morning the house is quiet, with just Kiki the cat to keep me company. I took Malcolm to the train station this morning with a backpack with enough things to see him through until Friday, when I will go into town in the car with his already packed suitcase. Maggie and Duncan left at the usual time; she has Parent-Teacher night tonight so it's going to be a long day for her, but Duncan should be home around 16:30.
This morning I might do a little bit of gardening, and also will definitely resume practice on my Bach Christmas Oratorio... now that I've got Malcolm's housing settled, it's a real load of worry off my mind.
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