07.15 - Alarm clock goes off. Already? Ok, fair enough. Big day today. Get showered, shaved, dressed - suit, light blue shirt, red tie with blue stripes. Confident, a little flamboyant but still professional.
07.45 - Breakfast. Coffee #1. Careful not to spill any cornflakes on my shirt. "Yes, I'm going to Brussels for thesis interviews" to everyone who asks why I'm wearing a suit to breakfast.
07.55 - A few minutes to check out the day's news - FT, Economist, BBC, L'Echo...
08.15 - Set off for the station: no time to walk, so bike it is. Almost get fined for cycling across a (deserted) pedestrianised square on the way. Policeman just tells me to go back and round. Not worth arguing. Apparently someone at the College was fined €160.
08.33 - Train to Brussels. Decide to relax and listen to the Russell Brand podcast on the way - stifle laughter most of the way and have to put up with "why aren't you miserable like us?" stares from commuters.
09.28 - Brussels-Midi. Off the train, into the metro. 5 stops.
09.37 - Get off metro at Trône. Walk down Rue du Luxembourg. Phone first MEP on the way: "Hi, I believe you're expecting my call? When are you available to meet today? Ok, I'll pop in at 10.30"
09.45 - Approaching Parliament. Phone MEP2: "Hello, I'm at the Spinneli entrance. Can someone come down and meet me?"
09.55 - Signed in (they kept my photo on file - I feel like a regular), and then we go to the airport lounge coffee shop (I don't know what it's called, but it's the one on the third floor that's really weird and open plan and makes you feel like you're in an airport) and do the interview there. Coffee #2.
10.20 - First interview done. MEP2 walks me to MEP1's office. He's not there, so I take a seat and wait. He doesn't come, so I leave him a note.
10.35 - Sit on the 3rd floor concourse and read the paper, waiting for my 11.00 appointment. Kilroy walks past.
10.55 - phone 11.00 appointment (Assistant), but no answer. Go down to the ground floor, buy the FT and read about cartel fines for ThyssenKrupp and Otis as well as other fascinating things. Phone Assistant every ten minutes, but no answer.
11.30 - Assistant phones me back - had been a delay because of voting starting late. We go to the hemicycle bar for coffee (Coffee #3) and do interview.
12.40 - Interview and post-interview chat about French politics done. Go to sandwicherie for lunch (ok, but not great)
13.25 - Phone MEP3 to arrange meeting place. Go to MEP Members Bar (Tea #1) for on-the-hoof interview. Won't let me record, so frantically note-take.
13.45 - MEP3 Has to rush off. Phone MEP4. Go to his office. Slightly crazy man, but very friendly. Gives me a thesis scoop, so I like him.
14.15 - Decline invitation to another UKIP MEP's birthday bash (tempted as I was to celebrate his 73rd birthday with a glass of champagne right before a job interview...)
14.20 - Settle down to read the paper, get out of thesis/parliament mode and into finance/journalism/interview mode. Takes quite a while.
15.10 - Start walking slowly towards Schuman.
15.29 - Buzz the buzzer of the office, go up in the lift. Meet everyone. Big smiles, firm handshakes, use people's names.
15.32 - Interview well underway, walking along street towards café, asking intelligent and insightful questions showing knowledge of firm. Arrive at café, drink orange juice and have interview where I don't seem to stop talking, not letting my interviewer get a word in edgeways (oops).
16.40 - Interview finished. Went well. Everyone seems happy. I'll be hearing from her. (I did, an hour later.)
16.45 - Phone Mum for compulsory post mortem. Calming down.
16.50 - Meet Nick. Talk very quickly about what we've both been up too - euphoria at meeting up and having long, tough day successfully over. Walk to Place Lux for coffee (actually, Beer #1)
18.00 - Peckish. Buy sandwich. Slightly stale. Drink water to make up for massive dehydration (coffee, alcohol...)
18.30 - Meet Fran outside UKRep (The UK Permanent Representation to the European Union - essentially ~EU embassy). Go and do a pub quiz there. Extremely random, but strangely in keeping with general theme of the day
20.30 - Head to Fin de Siècle for delicious meal (spinach chicken curry thing followed by tarte tatin - mmmm) (Beer #2, Coffee #4, Free digestif #1)
23.50 - Wander slowly to Brussels-Central. Crap. No train to Bruges. No ticket office for Nick to buy a ticket.
00.09 - Take a train to Midi and hope for the best.
00.47 - Phew. Last train to Bruges!
01.51 - Arrive Bruges. Walk home. Stay up too long talked.
03.15 - Go to sleep (20 hours after I had got up)
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Rant: Reasons why Belgium is crap: #1 Dry cleaners
Ok, I know it's quite a niche rant, but Belgium has annoyed me today for its extreme crapness in terms of dry cleaners.
I have an interview on Thursday, so I wanted to have my suit dry cleaned. Today is Tuesday - no problem, I thought. Dry cleaners are usually overnight at the longest, and most places can do it in 4 hours, can't they? Heck, I'm sure I've seen some that do it in an hour. Not in Belgium.
The first place I went to was one of those where they send it off and it gets delivered back - they said it would be Thursday afternoon. No good, but fair enough for a send-off place, I thought. So I decided to go to a proper dry cleaners. They said it would be ready on Friday - they laughed in my face when I said I needed it first thing Thursday morning. It was almost as if the concept of dry cleaning in less than 3 days was beyond comprehension - a bit like saying you want to bake a cake in 5 minutes. Running out of ideas, I even went to tourist information (my usual tactic when I don't know something about Bruges - they're very helpful). The woman there even phoned around 3 places for me... apparently having something dry-cleaned in Bruges in less than 3 days is impossible. It's bloody ridiculous. Stupid backward country.
I have an interview on Thursday, so I wanted to have my suit dry cleaned. Today is Tuesday - no problem, I thought. Dry cleaners are usually overnight at the longest, and most places can do it in 4 hours, can't they? Heck, I'm sure I've seen some that do it in an hour. Not in Belgium.
The first place I went to was one of those where they send it off and it gets delivered back - they said it would be Thursday afternoon. No good, but fair enough for a send-off place, I thought. So I decided to go to a proper dry cleaners. They said it would be ready on Friday - they laughed in my face when I said I needed it first thing Thursday morning. It was almost as if the concept of dry cleaning in less than 3 days was beyond comprehension - a bit like saying you want to bake a cake in 5 minutes. Running out of ideas, I even went to tourist information (my usual tactic when I don't know something about Bruges - they're very helpful). The woman there even phoned around 3 places for me... apparently having something dry-cleaned in Bruges in less than 3 days is impossible. It's bloody ridiculous. Stupid backward country.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Contrary to what you might think, the EU isn't always rivetting(!)
Luckily the class ended just in time. I wasn't sure how much longer I could take the noxious cocktail of extreme boredom, trying to look interested and professional and tantric hysteria. 3 hours of a particular Wednesday afternoon class (no names mentioned...) is always an epic experience. It's a bit like climbing Everest: it's a long haul, you're not sure you'll make it and plenty have died along the way. The main differences are the lack of snow and sense of achievement. Speaking of dying along the way, we started today one down, lost another an hour in and then a third half-way through. The rest of the room was roughly divided between the suicidal and the sleep-fighting. Everyone is very good at using the time to do other things - text a friend, plan a thesis, stare into space. Luckily the professor is very much oblivious to this, despite the fact there are only 12 of us (or 9 today) in the class. Today I had a WTF-o-meter to tally the times I got completely lost by one of the anecdotes - on mad cow disease, Belgian motorways or Leuven university's mission statement. 11: Not bad for three hours.
Monday, March 19, 2007
The Eurocrat
Big moment of a fat cat, Financial Times - 19 March 2007
By George Parker and Tobias Buck
It has been a month to remember for the Eurocrat. At the start of March he helped to save the world with a masterly stroke of his Mont Blanc pen at a European summit; this Sunday he will share a bottle of Lafite 1957 with a few close friends and toast the European Union's 50th anniversary.
The Eurocrat has committed his life to the Treaty of Rome's vision of "ever closer union". Even his private life has embraced European integration: his wife is French, his lover is Spanish, he pays maintenance (true to the spirit of EU solidarity) to the Greek mother of his 10-year-old son.
For 25 years the Luxembourg official has laboured in the bureaucratic saltmines in Brussels, breaking down national barriers and building a "European home". To an ungrateful European public he is only another "fat cat" on the EU gravy train.
The Eurocrat resents this inaccurate and unfair caricature. But he knows that when he retires to Liguria on his adequate - but not over-generous - EU pension he will look back on March 2007 as proof that he made a difference. His moment came at the EU summit on March 8. Midnight was approaching, and Europe's member states could not agree on whether to set legal targets for boosting renewable energy.
President Jacques Chirac of France would sign up only if the low-carbon French nuclear sector was taken into account. Anti-nuclear Austria was refusing to accede to his demands. Now was the time for the Eurocrat to deploy his most potent weapon: constructive ambiguity.
"Why don't we make a reference to nuclear in paragraph 7, cross-ref it to another mention in paragraph 11, then cross-ref that to a report that nobody can remember reading?" he said, trying to stifle his excitement.
Across the table there were baffled looks: "What exactly does that mean?" asked one diplomat. "Precisely," shot back the Eurocrat. France and Austria signed up, the renewables plan was agreed and the world suddenly seemed a greener place.
The Eurocrat has worked hard to reach the pinnacle of EU policymaking, a dream for many of the 30,000 or so officials working for the Union's main institutions.
For a Luxembourgish law student, the EU was an obvious destination: a project built on peace and mutual understanding and an international lifestyle founded on job security, free schooling, long lunches and a safe pension.
The Eurocrat enrolled at the College of Europe in Bruges, before joining virtually all his polyglot classmates in taking a stage - or internship - at the European Commission, 60 miles away in Brussels.
It was fun in those early days. After passing his exams he became a fully fledged Eurocrat, spending evenings discussing European integration with Italian-suited young women and nights on the dancefloor with stagiaires from around the continent.
Jacques Delors, the dynamic former French European Commission president, was his idol. The single market was completed, the euro was born, state-owned monopolies were dismantled and a European foreign policy took shape: Brussels was the place to be.
When Delors left in 1995, there was a sense of emptiness. Some of the drive went out of the project; it became more pragmatic. Irritating new rules were brought in to fight corruption and nepotism in the system after the media scandalously overblew the problem.
But the Eurocrat's career continued to flourish. In spite of the scorn of ignorant eurosceptics, he constantly tried to explain that one Brussels regulation could replace 25 or more national rules and prise open the single market.
He was proud of his infamously precise definition of banana size, which he decreed should be "expressed in centimetres and measured along the convex face from the blossom end to the base of the peduncle".
Moving to the Commission's flagship competition department, he spent years mastering Portugal's steel subsidy regime, culminating in an order for one company to repay €3.5m. This was overturned four years later by the European Court because of a procedural error, but the Eurocrat was by then on an unstoppable upward path.
Until, of course, now. There are deemed to be too many Luxembourgers in senior positions, too few Bulgarians. Further promotion could be tricky; Liguria beckons. But the Eurocrat will still be celebrating the EU's birthday on Sunday, toasting half a century of peace and prosperity in Europe.
By George Parker and Tobias Buck
It has been a month to remember for the Eurocrat. At the start of March he helped to save the world with a masterly stroke of his Mont Blanc pen at a European summit; this Sunday he will share a bottle of Lafite 1957 with a few close friends and toast the European Union's 50th anniversary.
The Eurocrat has committed his life to the Treaty of Rome's vision of "ever closer union". Even his private life has embraced European integration: his wife is French, his lover is Spanish, he pays maintenance (true to the spirit of EU solidarity) to the Greek mother of his 10-year-old son.
For 25 years the Luxembourg official has laboured in the bureaucratic saltmines in Brussels, breaking down national barriers and building a "European home". To an ungrateful European public he is only another "fat cat" on the EU gravy train.
The Eurocrat resents this inaccurate and unfair caricature. But he knows that when he retires to Liguria on his adequate - but not over-generous - EU pension he will look back on March 2007 as proof that he made a difference. His moment came at the EU summit on March 8. Midnight was approaching, and Europe's member states could not agree on whether to set legal targets for boosting renewable energy.
President Jacques Chirac of France would sign up only if the low-carbon French nuclear sector was taken into account. Anti-nuclear Austria was refusing to accede to his demands. Now was the time for the Eurocrat to deploy his most potent weapon: constructive ambiguity.
"Why don't we make a reference to nuclear in paragraph 7, cross-ref it to another mention in paragraph 11, then cross-ref that to a report that nobody can remember reading?" he said, trying to stifle his excitement.
Across the table there were baffled looks: "What exactly does that mean?" asked one diplomat. "Precisely," shot back the Eurocrat. France and Austria signed up, the renewables plan was agreed and the world suddenly seemed a greener place.
The Eurocrat has worked hard to reach the pinnacle of EU policymaking, a dream for many of the 30,000 or so officials working for the Union's main institutions.
For a Luxembourgish law student, the EU was an obvious destination: a project built on peace and mutual understanding and an international lifestyle founded on job security, free schooling, long lunches and a safe pension.
The Eurocrat enrolled at the College of Europe in Bruges, before joining virtually all his polyglot classmates in taking a stage - or internship - at the European Commission, 60 miles away in Brussels.
It was fun in those early days. After passing his exams he became a fully fledged Eurocrat, spending evenings discussing European integration with Italian-suited young women and nights on the dancefloor with stagiaires from around the continent.
Jacques Delors, the dynamic former French European Commission president, was his idol. The single market was completed, the euro was born, state-owned monopolies were dismantled and a European foreign policy took shape: Brussels was the place to be.
When Delors left in 1995, there was a sense of emptiness. Some of the drive went out of the project; it became more pragmatic. Irritating new rules were brought in to fight corruption and nepotism in the system after the media scandalously overblew the problem.
But the Eurocrat's career continued to flourish. In spite of the scorn of ignorant eurosceptics, he constantly tried to explain that one Brussels regulation could replace 25 or more national rules and prise open the single market.
He was proud of his infamously precise definition of banana size, which he decreed should be "expressed in centimetres and measured along the convex face from the blossom end to the base of the peduncle".
Moving to the Commission's flagship competition department, he spent years mastering Portugal's steel subsidy regime, culminating in an order for one company to repay €3.5m. This was overturned four years later by the European Court because of a procedural error, but the Eurocrat was by then on an unstoppable upward path.
Until, of course, now. There are deemed to be too many Luxembourgers in senior positions, too few Bulgarians. Further promotion could be tricky; Liguria beckons. But the Eurocrat will still be celebrating the EU's birthday on Sunday, toasting half a century of peace and prosperity in Europe.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
How I miss teaching...
If ever I start to regret my move away from the classroom, all I need to do is watch the following - a surprisingly accurate representation of some of my French lessons...
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Spring arrives!
What a tiring, but good, weekend!
Yesterday afternoon I cycled to Sluis in Holland. It's only about 20km away, but there is something very cool about cycling to a different country. The route there is beautiful as well - along a quiet straight canal all the way. It's not the first time I've cycled across a border: I had that pleasure a couple of years ago in Strasbourg when I crossed the bridge over the Rhine to Germany. But nonetheless it's still a strange concept. The ride there was really pleasant - warm sun, a clear blue sky and a gentle tail wind pushing me along. The strange thing about arriving in Sluis was I didn't even realise I had crossed the border until I got there. There were no signs or anything. You're just suddenly in a different country. At first glance, Sluis was no different from Bruges - the style of buildings is similar, there are canals etc. But over the course of the hour or so I spent there, I gradually noticed things that made the place unmistakably Dutch. First there were the tall blonde men in tight t-shirts with fat necks and earrings. I don't know why, but that is very Dutch to me. There was also a distant whiff of marijuana in the air at one point. But the real giveaway were the sex shops. We don't have any in Bruges that I know of - or if there are, they must be tucked away. And Bruges has 120,000 inhabitants. According to Wikipedia, Sluis on the other hand only has 1020 inhabitants, and yet I noticed 6 sex shops/cinemas. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't looking for them - there could have been more. It was pretty unmissable when there was a cluster of 4 or so right in the middle of the high street, with families walking past, kids gazing at the windows, and couples walking in there. Not that this shocked me - I've been to Holland before, and in Germany it was pretty similar. But it surprised me how it stamped this tiny place, only a few kilometres from Bruges, as Dutch and not Belgium (even though there is no direct land connection between that province and the rest of Holland - it's either a ferry across the Schelde or a trip via Belgium).The ride back was a lot harder - that tail wind was now a headwind and it was quite tough going all the way back to Bruges, but still quite invigorating!
Yesterday evening, Antonio, Helena, Lavinia, Jakob and I stayed in with a bottle of wine and played Kill Doctor Lucky, which was good fun. Before bed, Helena and I went for a stroll - around 1am Bruges was so peaceful - the canals extremely still and mirroring perfectly everything. We stood on the other side of the canal outside Gouden Hand (where I live) for about 20 minutes, stargazing and admiring the beauty of it all.
Today, the four of us (as above except Jakob) went to Antwerp for the day. I had never been there before and I was extremely pleasantly surprised. I'm sure the fantastic weather helped - it was about 17 degrees and sunny all day. It was nice enough at points to just be in a t-shirt. We had a good first impression - Antwerp Central station is beautiful and extremely grandiose. We were all a bit giddy to be in a "real" city, and then we went and had lunch at Wagamama!! Helena had been before when we were in London in November, and so she was as happy as me. Antonio was sceptical at the start, but it was such a joy to see him converted. Lavinia said I was amazing for having brought them there. So, fair to say, it was a hit all round. And my chilli chicken ramen was delicious! As if that wasn't enough, we went to Ben & Jerry's for desert. Ok, it's a bit full on with the multinational chains, but try living in Bruges, where they are non-existent... We had a wander round the rest of the city centre, which was beautiful - the architecture was fantastic. The whole place had such a buzz - as if everyone had decided to come out and walk around and enjoy the first warm day of the year. The street cafés were there, but there was not a table to be had: everyone had had the same idea. But we didn't care - it was such a lovely afternoon. Lavinia took about a million photos (she's quite a paparzzo), so I'll put some up when I get them from her.
Yesterday afternoon I cycled to Sluis in Holland. It's only about 20km away, but there is something very cool about cycling to a different country. The route there is beautiful as well - along a quiet straight canal all the way. It's not the first time I've cycled across a border: I had that pleasure a couple of years ago in Strasbourg when I crossed the bridge over the Rhine to Germany. But nonetheless it's still a strange concept. The ride there was really pleasant - warm sun, a clear blue sky and a gentle tail wind pushing me along. The strange thing about arriving in Sluis was I didn't even realise I had crossed the border until I got there. There were no signs or anything. You're just suddenly in a different country. At first glance, Sluis was no different from Bruges - the style of buildings is similar, there are canals etc. But over the course of the hour or so I spent there, I gradually noticed things that made the place unmistakably Dutch. First there were the tall blonde men in tight t-shirts with fat necks and earrings. I don't know why, but that is very Dutch to me. There was also a distant whiff of marijuana in the air at one point. But the real giveaway were the sex shops. We don't have any in Bruges that I know of - or if there are, they must be tucked away. And Bruges has 120,000 inhabitants. According to Wikipedia, Sluis on the other hand only has 1020 inhabitants, and yet I noticed 6 sex shops/cinemas. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't looking for them - there could have been more. It was pretty unmissable when there was a cluster of 4 or so right in the middle of the high street, with families walking past, kids gazing at the windows, and couples walking in there. Not that this shocked me - I've been to Holland before, and in Germany it was pretty similar. But it surprised me how it stamped this tiny place, only a few kilometres from Bruges, as Dutch and not Belgium (even though there is no direct land connection between that province and the rest of Holland - it's either a ferry across the Schelde or a trip via Belgium).The ride back was a lot harder - that tail wind was now a headwind and it was quite tough going all the way back to Bruges, but still quite invigorating!
Yesterday evening, Antonio, Helena, Lavinia, Jakob and I stayed in with a bottle of wine and played Kill Doctor Lucky, which was good fun. Before bed, Helena and I went for a stroll - around 1am Bruges was so peaceful - the canals extremely still and mirroring perfectly everything. We stood on the other side of the canal outside Gouden Hand (where I live) for about 20 minutes, stargazing and admiring the beauty of it all.
Today, the four of us (as above except Jakob) went to Antwerp for the day. I had never been there before and I was extremely pleasantly surprised. I'm sure the fantastic weather helped - it was about 17 degrees and sunny all day. It was nice enough at points to just be in a t-shirt. We had a good first impression - Antwerp Central station is beautiful and extremely grandiose. We were all a bit giddy to be in a "real" city, and then we went and had lunch at Wagamama!! Helena had been before when we were in London in November, and so she was as happy as me. Antonio was sceptical at the start, but it was such a joy to see him converted. Lavinia said I was amazing for having brought them there. So, fair to say, it was a hit all round. And my chilli chicken ramen was delicious! As if that wasn't enough, we went to Ben & Jerry's for desert. Ok, it's a bit full on with the multinational chains, but try living in Bruges, where they are non-existent... We had a wander round the rest of the city centre, which was beautiful - the architecture was fantastic. The whole place had such a buzz - as if everyone had decided to come out and walk around and enjoy the first warm day of the year. The street cafés were there, but there was not a table to be had: everyone had had the same idea. But we didn't care - it was such a lovely afternoon. Lavinia took about a million photos (she's quite a paparzzo), so I'll put some up when I get them from her.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Hob-nobbing in Brussels
Sitting in my room, about 2.45 yesterday afternoon. Train to catch at 3.02. I should probably leave. Let's just check my appointments first - two MEPs to interview - first is Hans Blokland at 4.30... no, wait, at 4.00. Shit! I'm supposed to be in an MEPs office in Brussels in just over an hour and I'm sat in my room in Bruges, on the other side of the country. (Ok, I know Belgium is a pathetically small country, but still.) Ironically, I make myself even later by finding Blokland's number so I can phone from the train. Ok, it's now 2.51. Train in 11 minutes. How far is the station? About 10-12 minutes on the bike and then another couple of minutes to the platform. Shit! Off I go, suited and booted, racing like a madman through the cobbled streets of Bruges. Traffic jam. No matter - onto the pavement, cut up the bus, pedestrianised street, wrong way down a cycle lane. Misjudged the lights and almost got run over by a bus. Dumped my bike in one of the literally thousands of bike parking bays in front of the station, paying no attention to where (will I ever find it again?) Running through the station, practically pushing people out of the way. Platform 9. Why do they always use the far away ones? Dash up the stairs as the whistle is blown. Jump through closing doors. Phew, I'm on the train. So, just late now instead of stupidly late. Catch breath. Phone Blokland. No reply. Ok, so now let's actually read his bio and decide what on earth to ask him, and the other guy. Quite productive 50 minute train ride, punctuated by unanswered phone calls to Blokland. Gare du Midi. Where's the metro? Wrong exit. Shit. Eventually find it. Slow ticket queue. Stupid tourists. Metro to Trône, and then one of those half walks/half runs (trying to be dignified and not sweaty but still wishing your legs would move faster) down Rue du Luxembourg to the Parliament. Check-in. Blokland comes to meet me at the entrance. He had been held up in a meeting and so didn't mind at all that I was late. Phew.
Quite interesting interview, if slightly like getting blood out of a stone and against my hypothesis. (Why can't people just support my theory, dammit?) After that, then on to Richard Corbett (UK, Labour). He is late, but his friendly assistant Ben keeps me company. Again, half-good, half-annoying interview. But he was from Southport. Bonus.
Ok, enough of the Parliament for one day. Wander slowly through the evening sunshine of Parc Leopold. (Ha, that probably sounds really nice unless you've been there.) Arrive at Rond Point Schuman. Why is the world and his wife of the media world here? Ah yes: European Council on Thursday and Friday. I should know that sort of thing really. 15 minutes early for meeting Frances. Go and sit on random wall outside Berlaymont and start to transcript my Blokland interview. Get really weird looks from *everyone* who goes past. Obviously no-one ever sits on this wall. Whatever.
6.30. Meet Frances (mwah mwah), and then get metro to De Broukère and then go to "my favourite restaurant in Brussels, if not the world", where we meet Rupert. He is a Cambridge graduate a few years older than us, and has set up a think tank for people who "have a problem with modern life". An interesting concept, certainly. A delicious meal later - joined half way through by Anne the American journalist. Another bar. More drinks. Anne and Rupert leave us. Another bar - this one a converted corn exchange. Very nice. More drinks. Rip-off toilet woman. Interesting proposition (no more on that here so as not to jinx it!). Another bar (gradiose vieux Bruxellois). No drinks because we don't get served and the clock is ticking for my train. Gare Centrale. Train back to Bruges - home by 12.30. Busy but really nice evening!
Quite interesting interview, if slightly like getting blood out of a stone and against my hypothesis. (Why can't people just support my theory, dammit?) After that, then on to Richard Corbett (UK, Labour). He is late, but his friendly assistant Ben keeps me company. Again, half-good, half-annoying interview. But he was from Southport. Bonus.
Ok, enough of the Parliament for one day. Wander slowly through the evening sunshine of Parc Leopold. (Ha, that probably sounds really nice unless you've been there.) Arrive at Rond Point Schuman. Why is the world and his wife of the media world here? Ah yes: European Council on Thursday and Friday. I should know that sort of thing really. 15 minutes early for meeting Frances. Go and sit on random wall outside Berlaymont and start to transcript my Blokland interview. Get really weird looks from *everyone* who goes past. Obviously no-one ever sits on this wall. Whatever.
6.30. Meet Frances (mwah mwah), and then get metro to De Broukère and then go to "my favourite restaurant in Brussels, if not the world", where we meet Rupert. He is a Cambridge graduate a few years older than us, and has set up a think tank for people who "have a problem with modern life". An interesting concept, certainly. A delicious meal later - joined half way through by Anne the American journalist. Another bar. More drinks. Anne and Rupert leave us. Another bar - this one a converted corn exchange. Very nice. More drinks. Rip-off toilet woman. Interesting proposition (no more on that here so as not to jinx it!). Another bar (gradiose vieux Bruxellois). No drinks because we don't get served and the clock is ticking for my train. Gare Centrale. Train back to Bruges - home by 12.30. Busy but really nice evening!
Sunday, March 04, 2007
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