The elusive Katya shows up to say farewell and we're off after a quick
side trip to see the old mill that Gerda's ex-hubby is converting to offices
for his company. It was a nice vacation from the vacation. Staying at a
beautiful, comfortable home a couple of days helped me get relaxed again and
recharged the batteries for the remainder of the trip. Gerda and Anya lead
us to the entrance to the autobahn and wave goodbye. We get on the highway
and three hours later we're in Brussels. The windshield again covered with
dead bugs.

     We find a place to stop, go to a payphone and Tony gets us reservations
at, and directions to one of the three youth hostels in town. Then we drive
around getting lost for another hour. Finally nature's call forces us to
stop. Tony spots a place with a sign "International Communication" and
deduces that they may be able to direct us to the hostel as everyone we had
asked previously couldn't communicate internationally, in English, you know.
Here we meet Mohammed. Accent on the last syllable. Ma-ha-MED.

     He was our deliverer, literally. The "International Communications"
storefront was a place immigrants could do an "ET." Call home with the aid
of interpreters who spoke both French and Arabic. It seemed that we had
stumbled into a predominantly Arab part of town. This is when the US was
going toe to toe with Saddam over UN inspections in Iraq and Nato was on
high alert. Mo took us down the street to a friend who spoke better English.
He was sitting at a table outside a small Arabic restaurant drinking coffee.
We told him we were looking for the youth hostel on the Rue d'elephant
(Elephant Street). "Ah, are you English?" he asked, like many others who
translated for us. "Nope, Americans" we replied. This seemed to make him and
Mo very happy. "Oh, Americans, Americans" they said, grinning. Then Mo's
friend says he will get a map from his car. While he does that we answer the
call that originally made us stop in the toilet of the restaurant to the
stares of everyone in there. The friend rejoins us outside after taking his
map to another store and making a photocopy of the section we need and shows
us and Mo on the copy the route to our destination starting with a turn at
the next corner. Mohammed, seeing my lack of faith in my navigational skills
in this foreign place, volunteers to lead us there. So he gets in the car
with us and as we pull away from the curb his boss comes running out of the
office and asks where is going as he is supposed to be at work. He shouts
back that he is helping us find our way to our hostel (I think) and the boss
accepts this as a perfectly reasonable excuse for just walking out of work
and taking a ride in a car with complete strangers.

     After several blocks we see a distinct lack of Europeans. The Belgians
probably called this neighborhood "Little Baghdad" or something similar. I
am starting to get just a little apprehensive. I'm ready to gun it in
reverse if Mo leads us down a blind alley or something. But all this
friendliness is genuine and in a couple of minutes we are in front of the
hostel. I offer to drive Mo back but he refuses. He says he will take the
bus. We offer him bus fare but again he refuses. He says goodbye smiling and
takes his leave. We check in for our last two nights in Europe. We unpack, I
could have sworn I had more underpants. The hostel is big and airy with 3 or
4 floors of large rooms with bunk beds, of course, and very large windows
that open out to the street in our room today. Tomorrow we will be moved to
a room on the side across from a large though mostly paved park with benches
and a playground. We rest a while. Then we got out looking for the Mannekin
Pis.

     Armed with tourist maps from the hostel we set off through town only to
encounter a plethora of one way streets. We head to the ring road we had
become aquainted with on our earlier drive. Brussels is so large that it has
a small ring around the old town, a mid-sized ring in town  and a large ring
of highway around the outside edge of town. It was the middle ring that
proved the most effective for getting us to our destinations. It connected
many different districts of the city. We became quite familiar with it. As
we approached the section where old town and the little pisser were we ran
into a delay. Big black trucks with flashing lights on the roof pulled in
front of us and men and women in black uniforms jumped out and began
erecting barricades blocking our progress. We were one of the last cars to
get through before the whole street was blocked and traffic had to find a
different route. One that would have had us hopelessly lost no doubt. As we
drove on down the ring road we saw what they were blockading, NATO
headquarters and the American Embassy.

     We went to the business district where there was plenty of parking on
the street as it was Sunday. Took off walking and in a little while, after
walking several blocks of the business district, crossing the ring toward
the center of town, walking past the Embassy, through a park, past a real
wide street with very large old buildings on it. Then walking down, down we
were getting close to old town an that little twerp relieving himself in
public.

Next time - An afternoon in Brussels

Pictures - They're BACK -  Manny, Mo and Jack