02 MAY 99 Bruxells, Belgium...
Well, here we are. The gear is in the workspace, no problems with the airlines or customs house so I am very happy. We had rushed out so fast I thought that there may be some unexpected difficulties with one or the other. There may still be when the gear comes home, but we have the stuff now well before the gig and that's all that is important. We got all of the gear in the workspace after some wrangling with NATO security over the truck, and letting the truck into the compound, and letting the driver and helpers into the compund, and letting us park the truck and open the doors closest to the workspace. It's probably a small microcosm of the daily rifts and compromises at NATO, the collective creation of policy and making it happen amongst a bunch of states with different interests and a superpower that can't seem to figure out what its interests are! So with the gear in the room, we go off to the Grand Plaza to find some lunch and some sunshine.
The Briefing room at NATO; a little known place before Kosovo, now seen daily around the world
Lunch today was part beer tasting and part menu roulette as we cautiosly figured out the French based on previous experience and a touch of fluency in Spanish. The best part was the people we met (a theme throughout the entire trip). Sitting next to us in the cafe were two Italians, Rafaela and Elena, who were in Bruxells for an environmental conference. Since becoming the capital of the European Union (and NATO and God knows what else), the old backwater colonial capital that nobody gave much thought to is now teeming with buerocrats and burghers of various rank, enough to put Washington to shame!
Lunch in the Sun (L to R): Joanne, Elena, Ben Johnson, Craig Savage, Rafaela, Jennifer, and Gene Zimmerman
Rafaela and Elena were school teachers. Their students had been doing a research project on water quality, both as part of their curriculum and as scientific research. Students at other schools around the EU had been doing the same, and the teachers were all here in Bruxells to present their findings and, umm, confer I guess (whatever it is we all do at conferences).

The other two were Joanne and Jennifer, who were from the UK. Joanne worked in an enginnering office, and Jennifer worked in an operating theater as a nurse. They had come to Bruxells to see a concert by Cliff somebody or other (popular before my time I guess). This Cliff person seems to have quite a following; I kept seeing middle aged women walking around with his concert tee-shirts on.

We made friends amongst all by getting different beers and passing them around. Some of my favorites, the fruit tainted beers some call "Lambic," were not enjoyed as much by the group as the tradional lagers and stouts. After we had made our way through a few samples, Jennifer started on about the "Friday Special."

Monday through thursday Jennifer assists on the usual array of surgeries common today. And on Friday the men come in for the "Friday Special." Hearing about the procedure in clinical terms sents shivers down the backs of Gene, Craig, and I, and sent howls of laughter from the mouths of the rest of the group (all women). Most interesting was how they deal with the 20 percent or so who "stand at attention" during some part of the procedure.

Oh, and speaking of the beer... The beer here is absolutely to die for. I've had about six different brands so far, and all of them have been outstanding. The "blonde" and "double blonde" brews local to Belgium are amazing - smooth and tasty! Also not to be missed are the fruit beers from the Lambic region. They are mainly made by Trappist monks, who brew a regular wheat beer, add about a pound of real fruit for each bottle, and ferment the mix again. Truly one of the nectars of life.
We are setting up in a restaurant at NATO headquarters. We have a lot of work ahead of us as far as cable runs, but stuff seems pretty straightforward. We did have a bit of a scare last night when the pool had a bit of a hiccup. They started talking about significantly scaling down this stop in Brussels, and re-deploying us to Bonn, Germany. So we had a work stoppage last night while we waited for the pool to figure everything out. And low and behold they all decided to keep us here. So we promptly went out and had a great dinner on a absolutely beautiful warm spring night in the rennaisance main square of town. Which was a good thing since we wouldn't have another one until the work was all done (on the teardown end of the trip!).
The Grand'Place in Bruxells
Left: Squeezing a moment in on the Grand Plaza (LtoR) Craig Savage, Estelle Pratt, Gene Zimmerman
Above: restroom at our hotel, the Sheraton Four Points (have a taxi take you to the Cadett hotel, what it used to be). I found it very disconcerting having the walls watching me do my most personal of business!
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