TAXI jungle

Today, Monday 18 was the day of the national strike also in Belgium, but the fun unexpectedly started already last night. We were coming back from The Netherlands and after Visé, the contrôleur checked our tickets and said 'good luck tonight, there will be no more trains in the direction of Brussels after ten o'clock!', so we asked whether there were bus or any other alternative to get home...and he, helplessly, replied 'Mais non, c'est la Belgique!'. It was 21.30. We can just make it, we thought. But once arrived in Liege, where we had to change train, we realized that all trains were being cancelled, and it was not yet 22:00. All employees of the nmbs (National Railway Company of Belgium) had it written on their faces: help yourselves, we're going to bed. All happy about it :-/

So, there was no bus, no service, dubious people seeming to profit of the situation...but plenty of taxi's. When asking them how much they wanted to bring us to Brussels, their first reply was 200 euro...which eventually got down til 125euro. Do-able. In the general confusion people asked one another where they were going, taxi drivers were even offering themselves to go to Maastricht, Leuven or any other place. People were creating teams and taxi-drivers were making agreements with groups of people (such as: 'Wait for me here, I'll take them to Maastricht and then I come and take you to Brussels'), unbelievable. 

The best part came when we had found our "Brussels' buddies" and a taxi driver was willing to drive us to the capital. While we were walking to his taxi, another taxi-driver came saying that we had to go with him because we had agreed with him before. Mr A replied that no, he was first. Mr B insisted that he had been the very first. A Ms C suddenly popped into the discussion saying that we had also taked to her. But Mr A insisted that he had been the first we had talked to and Mr B replied saying that it could not be the case because he was the first in line. Ms C then was supporting Mr B reminding to Mr A that there are rules taxi-drivers are bound to. Enlightening and threatening, she said 'C'est la gare!!!'. Apparently we had violeted all rules of taxi conduct at train station. They were fighting and screaming to each other. Mr B's words: 'I'm from Iran and you're from Morocco, but I was first in line!'. Despite Mr A was really the first of them we had talked to, Mr B didn't want to hear anything of all that. To my surprise they insisted fighting between them, but they were not lowering the price to convince us who to go with. To my dismay, we were in difficulty, a hundred kilometers away from home, in the cold of the night, and no one seemed to care about that.

After a while, Mr A got tired of that and walked away saying to Mr B 'alright, they are yours'. And we could finally go. Mr B was really silent on the way to Brussels. He was sorry and proud at the same time. 'Did you really talked to him first???' he kept asking...honestly, the only thing I wanted was to get over those 100km and be home. Luckily the Congolese guy travelling with us was full of good humor and made us laugh by commenting how bad were Belgian roads even compared to the ones of Congo! Finally, we got home. Before closing my eyes I mentally calculated that the Belgian strike had costed me like ten one-way Ryanair offer-tickets from Sicily to Oslo...

Successful multilingualism?

I ended up in Luxembourg by total accident. One of those typical Italian things, I'd say, which made my blood boil at first, but then turned out to be the coolest experience I could ever imagine. The chance to discuss about youth, democracy, arts and culture with a group of leaders from five different countries was unique and highly inspirational. Bloody lucky, I repeat. 

Though what I wanted to reflect upon on this blog, is the funny multilinguistic experiment Luxembourg appears to be. The first thing that struck me was the fact that local newspapers were litterally bilingual. One side French, other side German. Whereas in Belgium they are either in French or Flemish. The two together, never. Luxembourgish people speak three languages, French, German and Luxembourgish, the latter being an interesting sort of German with a lot of French in it, and with an equally interesting history. Funnily enough, some (few) locals, despite trilingual, may speak no word of English!

Having said that, the population of Luxembourg is very much international, with almost 40% of the total population coming from abroad. The Portuguese and Italian communities are visibly the biggest ones and Portuguese newspapers are available even at a bus stop. Now, imagine this: you are Portuguese and married a Serbian who came to Luxembourg as asylum seeker from former Yugoslavia. Your kid speaks Serbian and Portuguese at home, the three official languages of the state at school and in society, and he can of course speak English...so six. Six languages he didn't even choose to learn. They were a given. Just fantasy? Nope. This case is actually reality. And I am amazed!

The pleasure of doing NADA

Today I've done nothing all day and it has been a lovely day. I woke up at 12 am and before I realized it was already 12pm. What I have done is to skype and chat with friends all day long! Virtually, I've brought friends around this lovely little house we've got, shared a chocolate mousse with Jola in Den Haag, sensed the emotions in Brazil before the elections, and then jumped to Rome picturing myself five years younger. I've made a tour on the map of California with my rockstar cousin and checked how much was a bus from Paris to Brussels (too cheap for not having been there yet). And when I was looking for the Jasmine tea bags, I found instead the Estonian liquor Tatjana had brought us from Tallinn. So, I didn't move a foot and yet my day has been quite international. Olé.