I have just returned from dinner. It took me a long while to work out where to dine as there was plenty of choice between Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, Spanish and just plain pub grub, but with the added benefit of Belgian beer. After circling round a few times I settled on Spago on the Rue Du Pont de la Carpe, Karperbrugstraat 13. There were candles on the table and a generally relaxed vibe and I wanted something simple that was not going to keep me up all night.
Fortunately, I had the latest issue of Private Eye to keep me company as there is nothing worse than dining alone unless I have something to read or a smart phone to play with. I was asked if I wanted to sit at the bar and of course I did not so they directed me to a table in the corner by the window. I opted for the seat facing into the restaurant, rather than stare at my reflection all night, and when the menu arrived I perused it and then chose Parma ham with melon followed by fillet of salmon.
Whenever I order Parma ham and melon I am always taken aback by the amount of ham they pile on the plate, but I always manage to eat it. Odd that I can eat Parma ham with melon but gag at the thought of pineapple on pizza. The main course was wonderful, served on a rectangular white plate and accompanied by boiled potatoes, artichoke and baby vine tomatoes. I asked for a Merlot but the waiter just about understood "red wine" and I was too tired to take the conversation any further.
All was good but the service was a little slow when it came to ordering dessert, so I simply did not bother and asked for the bill instead.
I wandered around for a bit afterwards and considered two things: a Belgian beer in one of the many bars close to the hotel; and secondly, a haircut in one of the many barbers that are open late here in Brussels. In the end I did neither and instead returned to the hotel to try and work out how to the type the "at" symbol in order to access this blog. After about half an hour of getting steadily more frustrated, just like last night, I managed to copy an "at" sign, so here I am having great difficulty writing on what I have just learned is known as an "azerty" keyboard. Trust me, it is really infuriating.
And now, having reached the end of this post I've found the apostrophe key, but I'm not going to go through the post changing the text, I'm going to leave everything in place to remind myself of the irritation. To type a full point, for example, I have to use the shift key.
Allow me to give you another example of this ridiculous keyboard. Here goes:
?y nq,e is ?qtthez ?oggridge qnd Iù, the quthor of NoVisibleLycrq; itùs q blog qll qbout cycling ,qinly; but zith q bit of trqvel stuff throzn in for good ,eqsure: Iù, auite obsessed zith ,y blog so i,qgine hoz qnnoyed I zqs zhen I discovered thqt I hqd left ,y lqp top chqrger behind qnd hqd to rely; like noz; on zhqt is knozn qs q "azerty" keyboqrd: Still; I ,qnqged to zork out hoz to type qn "qt" sy,bol; qlthough the reqlity is thqt I copied qn "qt" sy,bol: I still hqvenùt zorked out hoz to type one: Zell; I better sign off qnd hit the sqck; not thqt I need to qs I donùt hqve qn eqrly stqrt: Iùve got to check out qnd heqd for ho,e:
See if you can work it out: Goodnight:
Postscript: On the morning of my last day I was told that to type the @ sign (as I just did) I need to depress control plus alt plus zero. You live and learn. But all the other keyboard hassles remain (see above).
We ride our trusty bicycles most weekends. This blog charts our adventures and records our thoughts as we ride through the rural lanes of Surrey and Northern Kent – and there's some world travel thrown in too
Tuesday 17 October 2017
Still in Brussels...
I was moaning about the hotel in the last post and the fact that the computer keyboards are different here in Belgium than they are in the UK: the A key is where the Q should be and the M is where the L can be found and so on. It makes life very difficult. Let me try and give you an example:
"Noz is the ti,e for qll good ,en to co,e to the qid of the pqrty:"
That should read: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party." But I am getting used to it, although I cannot find the apostrophe key so I have to write out the word "cannot" instead and I have to write "I am" rather than the abbreviated form. It is not a major problem and the more I use this keyboard, the easier it becomes.
There is little more to say; I am used to the hotel, where the breakfast is good and the bathroom works fine, not to mention the television, which has both BBC1 and BBC2, so I cannot complain of being out of touch. Getting back to breakfast, I have made a point of having CoCo Pops everyday along with a cup of coffee. Not tea? No, because the cups are too small, which is a little annoying. I have enjoyed fresh fruit daily; yesterday I enjoyed melon and pineapple and today it was orange.Today I had a croissant too and a banana.
The hotel is a little on the noisy side. I am not sure why, but I think it has a lot to do with the acoustics of the building. Everything makes a noise louder than normal; unless it is down to the fact that my ears were recently sorted out at the surgery (I cannot use the word "doctor" in the possessive as I cannot work out how to type an apostrophe) . There is a noisy bastard in Room 108 across the hall. He is quite happy to be half dressed and have the door open as I pass and quite happy to speak loudly with his partner or girlfriend or wife, who knows? But outside of plain noisy sons of bitches, it seems that everything makes much more noise than you might expect and by and large it goes on through the night: Somebody dragging a suitcase to his or her room seems to make one helluva noise and I can hear doors closing and children wailing and the sound of laughter; and you know what? I kind of enjoy it; there is something very friendly about this place and if, like me, you find yourself alone in a hotel room, sometimes the noise of other guests can be comforting.
I have walked everywhere and avoided taking taxis, which is a good thing. It is roughly 25 minutes to walk from where I am now to my hotel and then another 25 minutes back to Brussels railway station where I catch the train to London. Tonight I am alone, which is good. I will take an early dinner somewhere followed by a walk around and then, finally, I will stroll back to the hotel and hit the sack.
It is nearly 1500hrs and I really ought to be moving away from business centre and start to formalise some sort of plan for later:
"Noz is the ti,e for qll good ,en to co,e to the qid of the pqrty:"
That should read: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party." But I am getting used to it, although I cannot find the apostrophe key so I have to write out the word "cannot" instead and I have to write "I am" rather than the abbreviated form. It is not a major problem and the more I use this keyboard, the easier it becomes.
There is little more to say; I am used to the hotel, where the breakfast is good and the bathroom works fine, not to mention the television, which has both BBC1 and BBC2, so I cannot complain of being out of touch. Getting back to breakfast, I have made a point of having CoCo Pops everyday along with a cup of coffee. Not tea? No, because the cups are too small, which is a little annoying. I have enjoyed fresh fruit daily; yesterday I enjoyed melon and pineapple and today it was orange.Today I had a croissant too and a banana.
The hotel is a little on the noisy side. I am not sure why, but I think it has a lot to do with the acoustics of the building. Everything makes a noise louder than normal; unless it is down to the fact that my ears were recently sorted out at the surgery (I cannot use the word "doctor" in the possessive as I cannot work out how to type an apostrophe) . There is a noisy bastard in Room 108 across the hall. He is quite happy to be half dressed and have the door open as I pass and quite happy to speak loudly with his partner or girlfriend or wife, who knows? But outside of plain noisy sons of bitches, it seems that everything makes much more noise than you might expect and by and large it goes on through the night: Somebody dragging a suitcase to his or her room seems to make one helluva noise and I can hear doors closing and children wailing and the sound of laughter; and you know what? I kind of enjoy it; there is something very friendly about this place and if, like me, you find yourself alone in a hotel room, sometimes the noise of other guests can be comforting.
I have walked everywhere and avoided taking taxis, which is a good thing. It is roughly 25 minutes to walk from where I am now to my hotel and then another 25 minutes back to Brussels railway station where I catch the train to London. Tonight I am alone, which is good. I will take an early dinner somewhere followed by a walk around and then, finally, I will stroll back to the hotel and hit the sack.
It is nearly 1500hrs and I really ought to be moving away from business centre and start to formalise some sort of plan for later:
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