Stepping into the Decade

Surely the last thing the world needs is another blog. (I know, I now, your name’s not Shirly) But I’ve been toying with the idea for a while and today, the first day into my 30th decade, I finally figure ‘what the hell?’. Certainly I’m as interesting as all the other nobody’s out there, and considering that I live a serious plane ride away from a good many of my friends, and it’s just not possible to talk to everyone often enough to share all the adventures, we all might enjoy a new way to keep up. (“We” meaning “I” and “keep up” meaning one-sided commentary from yours truely!)

While I will generally desribe this blog’s subject as a Culturephile’s journey and musings, and that means heavy on observations of cultural quirks and good old travel stories, it doesn’t count out much of anything that inspires me.

Seeing as how yesterday was my birthday (contrary to what the opening statement might seem to insinuate, I turned “20 plus 11″), my first comment will be to say thank goodness I escaped “Belgian” celebration of my day. You see, Belgians seem to have some twisted impression that the person celebrating his/her birthday is supposed to give other people goodies, and well, I don’t wish to be ungenerous…but I’m admittedly too lazy to cook my own dinner each night much less to cook some sort of sweets for everyone around, and too poor to buy my way into cultural appropriateness. Besides that fact that it just plain doesn’t make sense! Why should one person treat 30 friends as a way to celebreate him/herself instead of vice-versa?

No, instead I had a wonderful dinner with my dear boyfriend and dear friends Pia and Yvonne. The decor alone was worthwhile. Our waiter was a hysterical cartoon character of a “French” garcon. Picture John Leguizamo waiting tables in a pinstriped suit, jacket continuously buttoned, accent strong enough to sound fake, snear permanent enough to seem a ruse. He meant well, but was too caught up in his own assurance of how funny he was to see that he was merely awkward. You can always count on the Francophones…

The Belgian style of customer service wasn’t limited to him: walking in to an almost empty restaurant and being seated at a table that was not to my bf’s liking, we asked to move to another table. We were told that they were all reserved and they seemed very confused by our request. I explained in French that we preferred a booth, and again, we were told they were all reserved.

We reserved as well. I do believe that a handful of people do call and reserve specific tables, but certainly the whole restaurant (3 dining rooms) was not complete with table-specific rservations. Perhaps it simply did not occur to them to consider one of the other 2 rooms. I have said it before and I’ll say it agian, they’re just not problem-solvers.

In the end, going into the other room and asking the hostess opened up a host of possibilities (“Of course. where would you like to sit. Just pick. Anywhere’s fine.”) and we were happy, if not confused as always by the incapability of the average Beglian service worker to actually be helpful. (It’s only fair to note: there were actually a couple of very helpful staff. They are the rare breed though, and that’s no lie.)

Update: Strangely I realize that I never mentioned exactly which restaurant we ate at. It’s called Brasserie du Prince d’Orange. Overall, even though it’s not the best restaurant we’ve eaten at locally, the food was plenty good and the decor is worth at least one look.