Category: Life in Brussels

Brussels journalists and baby showers: odd thoughts on random subjects, 01.03.2021

  1. Färm is where they sell organic four-cheese pizzas picked straight off the vine.
  2. When spring comes to Brussels, the drunks come out to sing.
  3. Like many from Europe’s glorious south, Borrell tends to explain a bit too much, but that’s OK because you’re not quite sure what he’s getting at anyway, even if you feel that you’d probably agree with him.
  4. I like Von der Leyen’s look at press conferences. Even the hair helmet. The helmet says, ‘Punk, I will bitch smack you for that question’
  5. Fun times when enthusiastic EU journalists, determined to hold power to account, ask long-winded open-ended questions that are really just versions of ‘where’s my goddamn vaccine’ and the Spokesperson counters with something like, ‘Yeah that’s cute’
  6. A fun thing about watching journalists at online Commission press conferences is guessing where they live in Brussels based on the views outside the windows behind them.
  7. If it’s cloudy outside, they’re probably in Brussels.
  8. If it’s sunny outside, they’re not.
  9. Also, you know Brussels journalists work hard because they have ZERO time to arrange a posh background. It’s all whitewashed walls and Ikea furniture and sometimes lightbulbs hanging from ceilings in lieu of proper fixtures. The ‘lifetime graduate student’ look.
  10. Also, no time to figure out how the audio software works. So the mic connection drops, and they have to figure it out, somehow they do, they ask their question, and the work gets done. We’ll do it live, WE’LL DO IT LIVE!
  11. There’s a life-cycle to Brussels journalists: 15 years of slave labour, and then, hmmm, look at this person, babe town, then, oh shite, KIDS! COMMISSION PRESS JOB NOW! Aaaand things are much better. We have purchased proper light fixtures from Bolia.
  12. Speaking of babies, Irish baby showers via Zoom are a thing to behold, particularly when the pregerred-in-question is the brilliant and omni-talented @MevMav.
  13. Her baby shower had the feel of a little baby auction. The person giving the best present gets the baby, or at least visitation rights.
  14. Pregnancies, like jobs, should have a probationary period after the birth. After six months, if things aren’t working out, everyone involved can walk away without fault, and babies returned to storks for placement elsewhere.
  15. My wife, who is Spanish, didn’t quite understand the baby shower. But that’s because in Spain, ‘baby showers’ are events where black-clad women come together to pray, and cry, and mourn the child’s arrival into a world of suffering and hunger and guilt and eventual martyrdom.
  16. My wife intervenes: ‘It’s really because the mothers will tell the daughters what to do, and will not accept any advice competition from friends’
  17. I still don’t understand the ‘shower’ aspect. ‘Showered with babies?’ No. ‘Shower the baby?’ Not yet. ‘Shower the mother with the attention before she disappears into six months of screaming baby hell?’ Maybe.
  18. My Spanish mother-in-law, incidentally, recently acquired a Roomba. At first, it terrified her. I think she thought it was demonic. But now she yells at the poor little robot like it’s a naughty, naughty little boy.

Introduction

This is a blog for North Americans who are fascinated by Europe, or for Europeans who are fascinated by North America, or for those in one group who are a bit frightened or suspicious of the other. It’s also a blog for those about to travel to Belgium or Europe more generally, and who want to know more about the best places to go or eat, and the more interesting things to do.

I grew up in Kentucky, an American treasury of high European culture. Following a year abroad in Spain in 1988/89 that changed my life, I pursued studies in international relations and ended up working as a speechwriter for the NATO Secretary General. I left that job in 2015, but remained in Brussels to stay with my partner, who works here. This blog is meant as an outlet for my interests including topics as varied as transatlantic security, climate change, and the problems inherent in creating meaningful political language that appeals to people while actually addressing real problems. (Today, more often than not, those two characteristics have little to do with one another.) But I also hope to give my readers information that they might not find elsewhere — or, at least, a take that connects information in a way that more mainstream media outlets do not.

Below, find some of the blogs that I’ve written over the years and imported into this site. They’ll give you a sense of my style, and the sorts of things I like to talk about.

If you sign up using the widget on the sidebar, then every week or two I’ll send you a short newsletter with interesting notes about North American-European relations, European Union, and local Belgian affairs. This newsletter won’t repeat widely reported mass media stories. (As you may have noticed, most daily morning newsletters from big media outlets tend to say more or less the same thing.) Instead, I’ll try to pick out stories that flew slightly under the mainstream radar. There is, of course, no charge for this newsletter, and you are welcome to forward it around.

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Best,
Patrick Stephenson

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