1/18/89 Wednesday - Ercosa

1/18/89 Wednesday. My second full day at Ercosa. I am working to implement the computer system that was imported from Chemetco. Almost nobody outside of IT spoke English except Sola (office worker) and Luc Van Herpe, a young Belgium man who was a temporary worker. In the computer room everyone spoke at least a little English. I worked with Ria Martins (a young Belgium lady) and Eduardo Rubio. Later we hired Mercedes and Santi (he spoke only a little English). Adolfo Gago was in charge of IT when I came in. 

I never felt comfortable writing about work, so most of my notes are about food. The worker's cafeteria is a large room in the basement with tables and chairs and a kitchen area with a counter/bar area. People ate in 2 shifts, and the office workers usually did not eat with the foundry workers, except for Rita and I. When we sat down, the cook came out and asked which of the 2 dishes-of-the-day we wanted, and when it was ready, he brought it out to us. Rita, who has worked here awhile, said it was a good idea to order a dish-of-the-day because they were usually better than the menu items. The dish-of-the-day came with a salad, red wine, a dessert of fruit or yogurt cups and coffee or hot tea. There was a small charge but Rita and I had tickets for free lunches; we paid for coffee or tea and the tip. The daily special today was called "Rice a la Cuba", and it was really quite good. It's rice with a tomato-like sauce and over-easy eggs on top. The fried pork patty, however, was not very good. 

More work throughout the afternoon, followed by another private Spanish class in the evening. It's an immersion class - Berlitz - so the teacher only speaks Spanish. So far I'm not doing too well. After class we went out to dinner to celebrate Rita’s birthday. Rita and I arrived at the restaurant about 10 pm, which is the standard time to eat dinner in Spain. We had paella, which is a rice dish with saffron, clams, mussels, squid, jumbo shrimp and red peppers. A lot of that was new to me, but even I knew it was pretty good. We had wine with supper, then tea. For dessert we ordered whiskey cake, which was just OK.

1/17/89 Tuesday - First day at work in Spain

1/17/89 First full day at work, so I kept busy. The morning flew by. At lunchtime I ate in the cafeteria with Rita – salad and chicken. There are always open carafes of red wine on the lunch tables for everyone to share. I can't imagine a company offering wine in the lunchroom in the States, but it doesn't seem to cause any problems here.

We worked until 7, then went to Eroski. It's a very big store, a combination of K-Mart and a grocery store. They sell clothes, linen, appliances, utensils, groceries, wine, they have a large fresh fish counter and an attached restaurant. There is a big parking lot and an even larger parking deck under the store. There are at least 24 checkout lanes plus a bank-card machine which ate my card once and took about 20 minutes to return it. Like most of the people in this area, the staff at Eroski did not speak English. Eventually I learned to speak enough Spanish to get by, and until then they were very patient with me. At least once, when I when shopping on my own and before I was comfortable with the currency translation, I just held out my billfold and the cashier took out what I owed. This night we bought some groceries and supplies. For dinner that night we had fried squid rings (they came in a box, like frozen onion rings) and cheese.

1/16/89 Monday - Belgium to Spain

1/16/89 Monday – I got up around 4:30 am this day, to get a ride at 6 am to the airport with Luke, his wife, their son and Rita. We took the 6 passenger Saber Liner to Bilbao. Denis Feron owns the Chemtco and loves to fly planes; this day he was the co-pilot on our flight. The rules are that the co-pilot serves coffee, so we were served by the company president. He was very polite and did a nice job, too. It was a good flight, around 1½ hours. We flew mostly above the clouds, which looked like an ocean below, but without movement. We saw a great sunrise. The Spanish coast is beautiful, with lots of cliffs, clouds and mist. 

We arrived at Bilbao and I got another passport stamp. Rita rented a car and drove us directly to Ercosa. The foundry is in Asua, which is a very short drive from the airport. It's not very clean, but everyone was nice. And I met everyone at Ercosa, then started to look at the system. Later I has a 3½ hour meeting with Mario and Adolpho about security, work, hardware, etc. Lunch was in the cafeteria – soup, bread, steak (not good, thin and tough), an orange and red wine. I worked with Rita until 6:30, when she drove us to the company apartment to drop off our luggage. Then she drove us into Bilbao, where I attended a 1½ private Spanish lesson. We got out at 9:30, went back to the apartment and I called Randy. Wish he was here!

1/15/89 Sunday - drive along the Rhine river

1/15/89 Sunday – Up around 7 am - this was getting to be a habit! By 8:30 I was on the road again with Lou, with Rita and Mitch following. We drove along the Rhine river, through the Netherlands and into Germany, where I had to show passport to cross the border. The banks were closed so we could not get additional money; we had to make do with what we had on us. We had breakfast in a restaurant over the highway, then drove down what I nicknamed “Castle Alley”. It was wonderful! All along the way I kept thinking "Randy should be here now!" Normally tourists can go through some of the castles that overlook the river, but unfortunately it was too late in the season now. So we didn't even drive up to most of them, but just admired them from the road. We did drive up to one to walk around the outside. 

The grounds looked a bit abandoned; perhaps they are better maintained during the season.

Nearby was one of my favorite things, an old cemetery. I would like to say I didn't go into it out of respect, but the truth is, there was a fence. 

Outside the fence was an unusual monument with life-size figures in front of a very large, enigmatic figure. I couldn't decipher what this represented.

We stopped for lunch in German/Greek restaurant, where I had breaded pork chops, quite a bit like what my Mom used to make. They still have cigarette vending machines on the corners here. More driving and loving the scenery, followed by dinner at Bagets, where I had a waffle with fruit and cream. Rita dropped Mitch off before heading back; he lives in Frankfurt, around 1 hour south.

1/14/89 Saturday - a quick look at Ghent and Brugge

1/14/89 Saturday - Got up at 7 am and out the door by 8 with Lou Mirage, headed to Ghent to do some sightseeing. We started at the Cathedral of St. Baaf, which was quite large, with lots of marble. The priests’ crypts are ornate, made of marble and polished black wood. They have a Van Eyck mantelpiece here – beautiful! We wanted to see the Town Hall but could not get in. So we went to see the Castle of the Counts (Gravenkasteel), an old castle with moat. It's old and spare but fantastic.

We could walk around inside the castle. A lot of it is missing, but enough remains to feel authentic. I really love this castle.

It has not full of tourist stuff or gift shops, just bare stone walls, but I like my historic sights to show their age. There was a small torture museum inside, which I found interesting. From the castle walls I got my first good look at the tiled roofs common in this section of Europe.

On a side note, outside of the castle were a row of urinals out in the open, along a wall - this was the first time I'd seen that in public.

For brunch we had cappuccino and Belgium waffle with whipped cream.  These waffles are so much lighter than ours, and the cappuccino was very good. I bought a “Dark Tower” 1^st publication for Randy in this city. 

Then we went on to Brugge, where we had a lunch of crab salad and “soda”, which was actually bottled water. Brugge is where I first saw something close to a uni-sex bathroom, with saloon half-doors between the two sides, and each side had both urinals and closed toilets

We ran into Rita and Mitch in Brugge. Rita will be my contact, translator and roommate in Spain, so I was very happy to see her. We joined up and did some sight-seeing together. The architecture in this city is amazing.

I bought some chocolate here, and went through lots of lace stores – all so beautiful. I finally bought a tablecloth with 8 napkins made with hand-made lace for $133. In another store I watched and spoke with a lady making lace, which looks like braiding threads. She was around 92 year old; I bought a postcard of her and she autographed it for me.

We continued to window-shop; lots of furs and diamonds for sale here. Around 7:00 we drove the 1½ hours back to the villa, then out to La Cantina in Beerse for a mushroom and cheese pizza; it was pretty good, but a little light on the cheese. We paired it with some Chianti wine. Got back to the Villa around midnight. 

1/13/89 Friday - Last Day at Metallo Chimique

1/13/89 Friday - I got up at 7:15 but got to work at 9. As usual, the first order of the day was to go over my notes to see if they are clear enough. I went with Stef and Mike to hook up the warehouse system in the next building, but they do not have the correct libraries.  Apparently they need the libraries that are in Holland’s facility. So Mario drove us 1½ hours to the warehouse in Holland, where we made a backup of their libraries, then drove back to Metallo. That killed the morning, so next Stef took us to lunch in Tournhout. I had turkey that was broiled in a sauce with pineapple, then fried. They served Palm beer, which was pretty good beer. Back at work we finished setting up the warehouse system. I talked with Allan, Martina and Stef for awhile. I will be in Spain on Monday at the Ercosa refining plant, and I don't speak Spanish. There is an American woman named Rita already at Ercoso, so they taught me how to say one sentence in Spanish: "Por favor, puedo hablar con Rita?", which means "please, may I speak to Rita?". If the answer was "no", or "huh?", I would be out of luck! But I was sure it would be OK.

At the end of the day Allan and I went back to the villa, and around 7 pm Lou took us to Tournhout. It was late but some clothing stores were still open. Their clothes were about twice as expensive as they would be in the US, and I didn't care much for the colors, particularly the orange color that seems popular now. For dinner I had shark fin, snails, red wine and coffee. I thought the shark was OK but not great. Snails taste OK too, but I don’t like to eat them. Allen wanted to show us his new apartment; he will be moving from the Villa asap. He has been trying to get an apartment for 3 or 4 months. The apartment is company-supplied and they couldn’t/wouldn’t make up their minds. It was an early night tonight - we were back at the villa by 11:30.

1/12/89 Thursday - Metallo Chemique

1/12/89 Thursday - Got up at 7:30 up and just had orange juice for breakfast today. I made it to work around 8:30 so I could go through some of my notes before the day started. I worked with Stef most of the morning. For lunch Stef brought in small French breads sliced open and filled with spreads, plus peach wine. I typed a couple of memos for Mario in the afternoon and kept working on other things. At 5 I met with Mario to go over our objectives. Mike and I went to the Crest Hotel at 7:30 to met Chris Walters (Wootens?), the head of the warehouse, and Chrystal, the head Buyer. From there we all went out for dinner in Amsterdam: fried cheese, steak and fries, red wine. We had sherry as an aperitif, but I don’t care for sherry; I did enjoy the hot tea later. After dinner Chris dropped Mike off at hotel, then drove me back to the villa. He drove around 120 to 140 kph, so I got home around 1 am, when I called Randy to talk awhile before going to bed. Miss him a lot.

01/11/89 Wednesday - Working at Metallo Chemique

01/11/89 Wednesday - Up at 6:00 to wash my hair, have cheese for breakfast and get to work by 9. I worked with Stef on contracts, receiving, paying. At noon Manuel drove Mike and me to a bank to cash our American Express checks, then to a deli for ham and cheese sandwich, which we took back to work. We worked on journals, etc. until 5:00. Lou Mirage drove us to Jeff Barr’s house for dinner. Jeff made a good chicken and rice dish with saffron, and cole slaw. We had white wine before dinner, red wine with dinner, chocolate mousse and coffee for dessert. Home by 10.

1/10 Tuesday - Start working at Metallo Chemique

1/10/89 Tuesday - I was up at 6:30, which was early for me, and had cheese and chips and soda for breakfast. I was at Metallo at 8:00, and discovered that Stef and Mike were not in yet. They got to work at 9 and we went over procedures with parameters. I have just 4 days before I go to Spain to work on the computer system in the company's refining plant in Ercosa, so I have a lot to learn. 

Jeff Barr loves to cook and he made lunch for us today - fried trout, fries, served with red wine. Then back to work – we went over the links with Computron. We got off work at 5, and I borrowed Mike Kelly's car to follow Stef to the GB grocery store. You have to pay 20 francs there to get a grocery cart. I spent $50 on groceries, feeling that it should have been $40 – things are a little more expensive here. I just guessed what to buy at the deli, deciding to try Frikadellenkoek. I went back to the villa, where Lou Mirage offerted to take Mike and me out dinner to an Italian restaurant in Torenhof, where I had very good lasagna made with lots of thin noodles, plus Chianti wine and ice cream with chocolate served in a huge wine glass. Back to the villa by 10 and in bed by 11.

1/08/89 St. Louis to Brussels

1/08/89 Sunday - I left St. Louis on a 1:30 flight. Lunch on the plane was OK – roast beef & macaroni salad cold plate. I arrived at New York at 5:45 pm (4:45 + 1 hour time zone difference). My flight should have left at 6:30 but the planes were stacked up, so it left at 8 pm. I ordered the lasagna for dinner on the plane - not bad. And Danish for breakfast - it was a very long flight. 

I arrived at Brussels at 9:00 am on Monday, allowing for a plus-6-hour time zone difference. I got through customs easily - no luggage check, I just showed my passport - and picked up my luggage. Jacque Noel was there to pick me up and drive me to Metallo Chemique in Beerse. From there Allen Tamura drove me to the villa, where I met Jenny, his fiancée. I also had a few minutes to call Mom and tell her about the villa I was sharing with other employees. It was large and clean, with heating in the floors, and the toilets had a pull-up knob on the top of the tank; I'd never seen a toilet work like that before. There was not much in the villa in the way of groceries and there were no clothes hangers in the closet, but I didn't care; I took a shower and slept until 4:45, when I got up to have a dinner of grilled cheese and salami with chips and coke. I had brought a book from home, so I read from 8:30 until midnight, when I finally was able to sleep.