Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Kriek and Elevators (September 19, 2005)


I have a new love; it's called Kriek and it's a cherry flavoured beer. It tastes like a rather nice cough mixture I used to enjoy in my childhood, but better, probably due to the bubbles and the fact that it's not cough mixture.

Gert and I have developed a little Sunday routine (sigh, routine - he's ruining me). We catch the tram to the city, wander the streets for a while before visiting the international magazine shop and buying a big fat old weekend Observer newspaper. We pop next door, to the old Jazz pub called 'Muze', to read and drink Belgian beer. It's experimental work, of course. .. for science. And, of course, I want to see if my love for the Kriek can be maintained over the winter, or if it is merely a summer thing ... and then there is the endless scientific experimentation to be done with the 100s of good Belgian beers.

Today has been a day spent indoors and studying .. the elevator is broken, and that's worse than you can imagine. The stairwell seems more seriously vertical than anything excluding the belltower in Damme. It might be a dietary hallucination, but I think I can hear the repairman out in the elevator shaft, so I've put off the supermarket walk in the hope I can glide effortlessly back to our top floor apartment.

My last Istanbul apartment stairwell look more 'artistic' than sturdy. I wish I had photographed it ... it was almost beautiful in its fragility. Ugly fragility, but fragile all the same. Second floor living was definately simpler.

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