August finds me back in Belgium--the long-sought objective of my decade-plus European wanderings and ponderings. Yet, as I pause my commute for an ever-so-unctuous Grimbergen Double, thoughts turn to the old Chinese curse, "be careful of what you wish for..."
August is a strange time to land in Belgium. This is the time of year when those wacky"Flems" and "Loons" with their fully-vested 32 vacation days blow the bulk of them in sunnier climes, and the time when I found out I would not be so generously vested until 2010. The place has a post-neutron bomb air to it, even as it retains its considerable visual, imbibatory and gustatory charms.
Waking up daily to quintessentially Bruxellois scenes is surreal for me--hence the term "surreal for breakfast." And waking up as an actual Employee of an honest-to-Buddha US multinational (with a concomitant cut to my comparatively lordly consulting pay across the Dutch border) makes things weirder still.
But in Belgium, weirdness is normal. Indeed, the second to last stop on my commute is named for it. "Weerde."
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