Essential information about Luxembourg

• If you start walking from Luxembourg, Iceland and Belgium are in the same direction.

• Do not consider attending mass in Luxembourg, the cathedral is generally heavily crowded.

• Geo time: Luxembourg borders with 3 different countries (Germany, France and Belgium); it’s smaller than Samoa, but bigger than Réunion.

• Luxembourg has 3 official languages: German, French and Luxembourgish. Yes, Luxembourgish is a language.

• Luxembourg had two major floods, one in 1756 and and another in 1806. Take that global warming.

• Last but not least, General Patton –the guy who failed capturing Pancho Villa– is buried in Luxembourg.

July 21

In less than a week we’ll be celebrating Belgium National Day and for the second year in a row, wohoho, we don’t have a Government. But what the hell, we have bought Budweiser, who cares.

Spain reconquers Belgium, temporarily

Andalucía, to be more precise.

This was the Atomium one week ago:

This is the Atomium today:

(C) Istratov Alexandre, SABAM, ASBL Atomium

The Euroferia has just started and unfortunately I’m gonna miss it this year. But it’s for a good reason, tomorrow I’m jumping to the other side of the Atlantic puddle. Olé!

The dark side of Brussels

We construct the building, we put the frame for the window, the bar… but ops, we forgot the window:

Did I say I wanted a door here? Forget about it:

Instead put the door over there, wherever you want:

Aha, typical souvenirs from Brussels: mugs, dishes, coffee… coffee?:

The 12th floor in the elevator, fine… but the building only has 7 floors. Is that heaven?:

You love it, or you hate it, but you don’t try to understand Brussels.

Post FOSDEM

FOSDEM 2008 is over, and what a pity! Choosing among 200+ talks turned out to be a sweet puzzle which required thoughtful planning. It’s been two days jumping from room to room with a broad variety of topics and a common characteristic: quality content and crowded rooms, this FOSDEM thing is really a big event… the problem now is to get time to review all the notes.

I liked specially the Mozilla developer room (it was too small the first day, great decision to exchange spaces with openSUSE on Sunday). The Mozilla people are developing really interesting things, not only Firefox 3, also Prism, the Calendar, Songbird… and I love their “please don’t hurt the web” campaign.

The Drupal room was also pretty cool; finally I could put some faces to the names I’ve been reading these last months. I’m really looking forward to pushing Drupal contributions, it’s a pity I can’t make the Boston conference.

Not surprisingly, Pieter and Benjamin have launched a new wikisite on patents.

I’m glad to see that GNOME is plenty of activity (and glad to see people like Rodrigo and Ismael around). I saw a strong web component and I liked it. On the other hand the new desktop effects are neat, I hope to see this stuff soon mainstream.

The lightning talks (15 min max) are a great idea, however I think I had bad luck with the ones I tried (like Alfresco). Or maybe I was too tired on Sunday afternoon: I didn’t get the sugar in CakePHP, and the idea of managing forum flames with Greasemonkey + Track was way too much!

The organization was impeccable; everything was well thought and deployed. The timetable was respected, and the stands were informative (and with nice merchandising ;-)) … you FOSDEM people rock!

À la prochaine.

¿FOSDEM?

Esta entrada va especialmente dedicada a la comunidad española, que a los belgas ya los tengo más o menos localizados. ¿Vienes a la FOSDEM? ¿Te vas a pasar por el pre-evento cervecero en el Delirium Tremens? ¿Tienes pensado asistir a alguna de las 228 charlas? Pues no te olvides que estoy por aquí disfrutando del exilio, prometo ser un buen anfitrión.

The mystery of the sauce andalouse

I’ve been all my life living in Andalusia and I never heard before about the sauce andalouse, however I knew about it as soon as I arrived to Brussels. Well, actually it was the first time I ordered French Belgian fries, but both events happened more or less at the same time. The thing is that they have something called Andalusian sauce than can be found everywhere. In the fries, as I said, but also as a dressing for salads and meat.

But if you go to Andalusia and you ask in any standard bar or restaurant anything with salsa andaluza I bet they’ll look at you like an alien. “¿Qué pollas dices?“, I’m afraid they’ll politely answer to your innocent question.

Science is made of this kind of enigmatic challenges, so I have conducted a serious investigation on the topic and the mystery is no longer a mystery. Ladies, gentlemen, it’s my honor to introduce you the recipe of the sauce andalouse:

Ingrédients

• 1 tasse de mayonnaise.
• 3 c. à soupe de pâte de tomate.
• 2 c. à soupe d’oignons.
• 1 c. à soupe de jus de citron.
• piment vert ou rouge.

Préparation

1. Mélanger avec conviction tous les ingrédients.
2. Mettre au réfrigérateur.

OK, this was easy. Now we know the how, but what about the why?

I have no clue.

I have to admit that after a very dedicated research (approx 10 min in Google) I haven’t found any plausible explanation. All I’ve got is that something cooked à l’andalouse is “a French term describing dishes using tomatoes, pimientos and sometimes rice pilaf or sausage” and, in particular, the Andalusian sauce “refers to mayonnaise mixed with tomato puree and pimiento”. So, all I got is that it seems to have a French origin.

My theory is that the word andalouse actually refers to Al-Andalus, the Arabic name given to the parts of the Iberian Peninsula ruled by Muslims before the Reconquista. As you know, a subset of this territories became later the current Andalusia. Therefore, Al-Andalus influenced people in closer regions who eventually emigrated to France.

This could have happened for example with Tunisia, a former French protectorate with large Al-Andalus influence. But it can be even simpler. We know that the mayonnaise (necessary ingredient for the Andalusian sauce) comes from Mahón (in Spain), under French control at the end of the XVIII century when they defeated the British troops (who conquered Minorca during the war of the Spanish succession). Mayonnaise from eastern Spain got influenced from the western Al-Andalus heritage and then brought to France. And from France, to Belgium. Voilà.

Or maybe I’m totally wrong, is there anyone in the room with more information?

Well, with this deep reflection I’d like to close the 2007 edition. I wish you all a really fruitful new orbit around the sun! See you soon.

Back in Brussels

I Only Came Here for Six Months

It’s fantastic when you discover that someone else has written what you wanted to write, better:

Living in Brussels is like living in a golden cage – you feel trapped and you dream of escaping almost every day. But you never do because you know life will be more difficult, more complicated and more expensive on the outside.

I should know. In 1993 I came to the Belgian capital to do a five-month traineeship at the European commission. Fourteen years later and I’m still here, complaining about the squally weather, lousy service and infuriating officialdom, making plans to move to Britain, the United States or the south of France but secretly suspecting that the most likely way I’ll leave Brussels is in a coffin.

I am not alone. Virtually any expat you speak to has a similar story to tell about outstaying his or her welcome. In fact, playwright Alecky Blythe fashioned a whole drama around the everyday twittering of Brussels’ expats in 2005. Unsurprisingly, the title was ‘I Only Came Here for Six Months’.

Continue reading “Slow seduction in Belgium“, in Guardian Abroad.

(¡Gracias Lola!)

Belgium breaks its own record

Yesterday I read that Belgium has just broken its own record without Government: 149 days (and counting). That means we’ve been living five months in a perfectly functional country –at least the metro is punctual every morning– that needs no Government!

This is a serious problem. Look, I love demonstrations, however, against whom do we demonstrate now? It’d be stupid to complain about an interim Office that has already lost the elections… I don’t know why the anarchists aren’t in the streets telling everybody this is the proof we don’t need a damn system (well, maybe that three guys are already there but I haven’t seen them).

What’s the solution to the problem? It’s an easy one. The north of Belgium automatically annexed to The Netherlands (and that small bunch of people speaking German, well, to Germany). The south can be bought by France (sorry, Dutchies don’t have enough money to buy Flanders). The problem is Brussels. I’d give it back to Spain, honestly, it’s really better than selling it (although probably Luxembourg and Monaco are willing to do it).

Oh, wait, there’s a better solution. We can divide Brussels between Wallonia and Flanders. How? We can do what they did when separating the library of the Catholic University of Leuven into the Université catholique de Louvain and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (yes, this is true). Those books with an odd-numbered shelfmark stayed in Leuven, while the even-numbered ones moved to Louvain-la-Neuve. Therefore, streets with a Döner Kebab go to France, the rest to The Netherlands. Fair enough, right?

OK, too much coffee today.

Update: Ops, things are getting worse: Belgian crisis deepens after collapse of coalition talks :-(