J'ai la Frite, or, Rhode Trip Begins Another Trip

Brussels, Belgium to Colmar, France

The streets of Colmar.

Haven’t written one of these in a while. I miss it! We’re on a weeklong European road trip from Brussels, where I’ve been living since September. Hope you enjoy, and would love to hear from you. - Peder

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The night before we left for Italy we went to a football match in Molenbeek, at the edge of Brussels, where everything is in French and Dutch. We went with our friends from our French class in Ixelles, and ate at the stadium just before the match — fries, bratwurst, hotdogs, and ice cream — before finding our cramped seats in the concrete bleachers. The small stadium was nearly full tonight. If the Red Devils won, they’d move back up to first division after a year in second. The other side of the pitch was full of football hooligans wearing all black, lighting firecrackers and flaming pipes — I’m not sure how to describe these exactly — that filled the stands with clouds of red and black smoke, the team colors. The match started with the field covered in the thick fumes from the smoke, the sky full of pops from firecrackers, and during the match the Brussels police and yellow-vested stewards at either end of the stadium chased the hooligans back and forth between the bleachers, as those who had already been tossed kept trying to jump the fence to get back inside. A friend from French class had commented when we said we were going to Molenbeek match on Friday — C'est un club de fascistes. Fascists. I saw what he meant now.

We drank cheap Belgian beer, Jupiler, two euro fifty a cup. I sat next to an older man with a retro red and black Molenbeek scarf. Ah, vous avez les frite ! he said to me when I came back after halftime with a cone of fries. Oui. He stared at me. Voulez-vous une frite ? I asked. He nodded, took a fry, laughed, and his daughter laughed too. He was getting drunk. I offered her one, but she declined. Fries are a big part of Belgian culture. We learned in French class last week a certain Belgian saying — J’ai la frite! It means, in so many words, I feel great! To offer a fry to a fellow football fan, well, that was to try and do good by Belgium. We were down one nil at half. The rest of the game we had perhaps a dozen chances but couldn’t score. It was exciting though. The tension of not scoring was even more exciting than scoring, certainly more exasperating. I threw my beer up in the air at one point. The man I had offered the fry said to me, Parlez-vous anglais ? He had heard me speaking English with my friends.

Yes, I said to him in English.

And you live in Brussels?

Yes, I replied.

And you support Molenbeek?

Sure, I said. His English was good. His daughter leaned over to me then. She was in her twenties.

And where are you from? she asked, speaking fast. Are you British?

No, I said. I hesitated for a beat. Sorry, I’m from the U.S.

The man immediately grimaced and threw up his hands. Pas parler avec lui ! He put his hands up and looked away. I laughed, his daughter laughed, he laughed too. He glanced back at me. It was all in jest. It was all in good fun.

I love America, he said, jovially throwing an arm around my shoulder. He was lying, I knew it, obviously, and he knew it, and after that we didn’t speak again the rest of the match.

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I moved to Brussels from Baltimore with my partner Rory and our friend Sidney at the start of September. We’re studying at Belgium universities, learning French, learning Dutch, finding work bit by bit, trying to get established abroad. Going to watch football games with friends from French class has been sweet, actually. It reminds me of watching the Orioles or Red Sox back in the states. I haven’t written these sorts of travelogue posts in some time. They’re fun to write though. I’ve missed them. I find they make me a better traveler. When I know I need to come up with something at the end of the day, I pay better attention. I take notes. I look for interesting historical or political tidbits, and try to narrativize the journey, which helps makes sense of it.

We’re driving to Italy and back for Easter over the next ten days in a rented camper van, meeting with some old friends from the states and new friends from Italy along the way. As I write, we drive through Lorraine, Sidney at the wheel, on our way to near Colmar, France to spend the night, near the border with Switzerland where we’ll be tomorrow. There’s really no set itinerary. With the van, we’re flexible. Maybe we get all the way to Florence, but hope to go nice and slow once we get into northern Italy, to enjoy the dolce vita. It’s a bit funny, as our French is getting much better to point where we’ve started to make friends who only speak French, but our Italian is nonexistent. Buongiorno. Last time I was in Italy, I found my Spanish worked well enough. I suppose we hope for that again.

Last time I wrote here was also when I was in Europe, but that time as a traveller instead of living here, as a resident, or more precisely a student. After that last trip in the winter of 2022-23 I moved with Rory to Wyoming, where I worked as a reporter at the paper in Buffalo for six months. After that was up we moved back east to Baltimore and lived there for a year. I kept reporting as a freelancer and worked in D.C. for six months, while we saved up money to make the jump abroad. In September we sold most of our possessions, packed up our remaining prized possessions (mostly books), and took a direct transatlantic flight to Brussels with three cats in tow. Why Belgium? University is excellent and inexpensive, we can learn French and Dutch, and Brussels is a beautiful and under appreciated city at the center of European politics full of people from all over the world. Too often when I tell Belgians where I’m from they ask, But why Belgium, of all places? They’re incredulous that an American would chose to move there. These particular Belgians seem to think their country is inconsequential, meant to be overlooked. That’s all hogwash. The Belgians are just humble, I like to think. Belgium is a wonderful place. Perhaps I can write more on that later.

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We left Brussels on a beautiful Saturday morning. We’ve learned through bitter experience that for five months Brussels is rainy and gray — la drache — and then in the spring the sun comes out and all the Bruxellois flock to the terraces and parks to bask in the sun. We live in Ixelles, in the south of the city, and here on an evening walk along the sandy path that circles the Étangs d'Ixelles I frequently hear French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and, of course, English, all in the span of a few minutes. French predominates, but the city is officially bilingual with Dutch. The language politics of Brussels and its plurality reflect well the principal institution that the city hosts, the European Union. Brussels the city (forgetting, for now, the European institutions) is full of messy, complicated, conflicted politics, of which I’m only just beginning to scratch the surface of understanding.

On our drive out of the city we passed through the Étangs d'Ixelles, by the pedestrian streets full of joggers, past the parks where families played bocce and groups of young men drinking beer on blankets, parents with their children, kids running around, speaking French and German and Dutch and English, too, for that matter. It was a beautiful blue morning, nearly hot but not so, with the night’s chill still strong. On one side street one man played volleyball with his son, the yellow and black spiraling up into the clear blue sky.

We turned onto the wealthy Avenue Louise, full of the luxury shops, the grand houses, the tram line to the city center. Runners passed us wearing red and yellow, calling to each other in accented English. At a convenience stand on the corner Le Monde and Le Soir stood proudly on the racks, a photo of Trump in the Oval Office on the cover of each.

On the edge of the city, we entered Forest (Vorst in Dutch, every commune, street, and place of public interest in Brussels, has both a French and Dutch name) and pass the parks and the old, still-functioning jail that looks like a castle, and then past the old Audi factory that shuttered in February. The same kind of deindustrialization that’s happened in the United States has happened here in Brussels too — Belgium was once the most industrialized nation in the world. The Audi factory on the edge of Brussels had made over 8 million cars, as a sign on the side of the gray walls proudly pointed out. The factory was huge. I was reminded of the drive Rory and I made back from Wyoming through Detroit last year, when we passed the huge Ford factories outside of Detroit — at the time UAW was in the midst of striking, and Biden had just walked the picket line. The Brussels Audi factory closed after the company argued the finances made no sense anymore. A bunch of unions in the country went on strike. That’s common in Belgium. The trains stopped running for a week. The factory is still closed.

We left Brussels, passing into Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. The houses became square and utilitarian, brick and concrete, the signs all in Dutch. We passed Paulwel’s sauce factory, maker of Belgian frite sauces. Minutes later we passed further south into Wallonia and all was in French again. We hadn’t even left Belgium, but it was as if we were traveling into a different country. It’s the same trek the three of us make nearly every day, as we head back and forth between our home in Brussels and our universities in Flanders.

The Wallonia countryside is beautiful in spring — fields of yellow poppies, cows in green fields, rolling hills and, later, the dark forests of the Ardennes to the south and east. I feel as if we’re driving through Vermont, or when the hills round out, Wisconsin. At roundabouts, the tulips are out in full force, white, pink, orange, and yellow. Kids play beside the canals, stringing lines on sticks into the water.

We got on the highway and sped out of Belgium, through Luxembourg fast (the roads were much better there, it’s a rich, rich country) and then quickly across into France. Luxembourg felt smaller than Rhode Island to me, but perhaps we crossed it the wrong way, as Rhode Island has its narrow stretch too. We must have been into France in 20 minutes.

We listened to Hotel California through Alsace, passing more old factories, past Metz, near to Verdun, and through a long tunnel near Colmar. It’s only after the tunnel that I felt as if we were beginning to get into something approximating more rural country, as if we were finally past Chicago, getting somewhere West. Flat farmland and then the hills rising up in the distance, slowly getting dark, slate gray skies, a lone bird above the straight lines of budding trees. It’s a long first day of driving — near six hours — but we’re already nearly to Switzerland.

Near nightfall we pull into Colmar, a city near the German border. The language is French, the architecture German. We eat tarte flambée for dinner, crunchy pizzas, a regional speciality. My French fails me big time, however. Vous êtes français ? The waitress asks. Oui, c’est bon, I say. I thought she had said, Parlez-vous Francais ? She gives me a look, asks if we need another menu, points out the German translations.

Night’s fallen by the time dinner’s over. We walk around Colmar, planning to revisit in the morning. Sidney drives us into the hills and towards the forests around the city, to find a place to park the camper and spend the night. Tomorrow, across the Alps.

Our street in Ixelles.