Sortroom.net

It’s just Belga, Belga, Belga, the whole day through…

There’s a Café not far from my house called Café Belga. It’s a nifty little place where the customers are cool, the bar staff are haughty and the beef is cold. It’s got massive big windows out onto the commune’s ponds and a large square that currently has a building work engulfing it. It’s been engulfed for the last four years as well: they don’t hurry on public projects in Belgium I guess. The clientelle simply pretend the building work isn’t going on and on Friday and Saturday nights the place is packed. It’s the place where ‘the intelligent’ people go, apparently.

I’m often there on a Saturday afternoon with my BFF Laura. We do the markets around the pond and then chill out in Belga for an hour or two, sometimes pretending to do work, most of the time not bothering. We get on so well, it’s a fun time.

Well it’s Easter and my university has a two week break. Most of my friends have gone off for what Jack McFarland would call a world-wind tour of Easter/Balkan Europe. Others have gone home to their various countries of residence; namely Britain, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. I’ve stayed behind in Brussels and, in an effort to not feel like an abandoned puppy, I went to Belga for lunch today. Seriously, the fastest lunch ever. I brought some work in an effort to stay longer, but having drunk my coffee and eaten, I found there was nothing else really keeping me there. It’s a nice place to go to, but when I have more purpose at home and fewer people wondering why I’m sitting all alone, I couldn’t drum up the courage to stay for more than about thirty minutes. It’s an interesting experience going to cafés alone, and something I very rarely do. Every time I recall why that is.

I would post a photo of the place, but having forgotten take one when my friend Caroline visited this week, I can’t since I don’t have a camera of my own anymore. Sorry.