Well, at least I didn't have to ask if they missed me..............

[DFW]

Last night, I spent the night in a hotel in Sprout City that I usually stay at 30 nights a year. It is halfway (kinda, sorta) between Paris and my city of Düsseldorf, and spares me hours of travel per week. Years ago, my outfit gave me the green light to stay there overnight instead of leaving home at 5 AM, getting back at 11:00 PM, and getting up again at 5 to be in Belgium the next morning. The staff at this hotel is very international, and I learned most of my Tagalog from them. I also get to practice my few words of Turkish, Portuguese, Macedonian, Swahili, Romanian and Arabic with those employees to whom those are native languages. On of the Arab women even speaks Catalan! She lived for a while in Barcelona, as I did.

Now open again, but with much of the staff on furlough and the restaurants closed, the hotel is trying to survive by wooing their regulars back with low tariffs and a few small perks. Breakfast is not longer their fabulous buffet (for which I cried bitter tears), but rather a voucher for the Exki across the street (oh, well). Anyway, there were only few staff on duty. When I got to my room, I looked at the bed and blinked. I must be imagining this.

In the middle of the pillows on the bed, there was a pillow with my name on it and a logo of Belgian Fries (there is no such thing as "French" fries, even if House Republicans never understood that) underneath, plus the words (in English), "For all your nights in Brussels, Welcome back." Not inked in by hand, but actually part of the pillow design!!! I had to laugh at that one. I had only reserved the room a week ago. Someone acted fast!

I almost wanted to take it with me and amuse my wife, but I don't steal stuff from hotels I stay in. This morning, as I was checking out, I saw the manager, who is one of the two or so real Belgians who work there (the previous manager was German). She is Flemish, so we speak Dutch with each other. She asked if I liked the pillow, and I said yes, it was a great surprise, and that I almost wanted to take it with me. Surprised, she said, "you mean you didn't?" I said, no I usually don't take pillows away from hotels I stay in. She said," but this one you were SUPPOSED to take with you!" She went behind the counter, got my room key, re-activated it, and went up to my room, got the pillow, put it in a waterproof laundry bag and gave it to me. My wife laughed her head off when she saw it this evening when I got back to Germany.

"Toto, I got the feeling we're not in America any more." Welcome back to Europe.

Take THAT, you stupid "My Pillow Guy." THAT is how it's done.

[BlueMTexpat]

1. What a

lovely story!

[Ninga]

2. ❤️

[elleng]

3. Wunderbar!

[DFW]

7. Hotel managers in Corona "hotspots" do not have it easy at all these days

I don't know how many people she had to lay off or furlough, but I'll bet many of them depended on thair jobs in order to pay their rent and eat. It must have caused her some real agony to lay them off. Some of the Filipinos on the staff are people I have known for fifteen years. I didn't see a one of them. The hotel only recently opened back up. The trains from Germany to Brussels, usually so packed, you end up standing if you didn't reserve a seat, have maybe 5 to 10 people in a car. Scary.

Funny side story: on the train over to Brussels on Tuesday, I spied a guy who looked familiar, but I hadn't seen him since 2008 at the Democratic convention in Denver. At the time, it was at one of a couple of receptions for Joe Biden, who was, of course, still a Senator, then running for VP. I saw this guy, and thought, wow he has double in Germany as a Green member of the German parliament. I told him he had an exact double who was a German politician. In flawless American English, he answered, "no, I AM that German politician."

We started talking in German, but I said I had to get to a phone to call in to a German radio news broadcast that was expecting a live report from me. It was midnight in Denver, 8 AM in Germany. He laughed, and said he did, too! But different stations. Mine was in Düsseldorf, and his was in Berlin. I didn't see him since then. And here he was in a train to Sprout City! I said hi, reminded him where it was we had last met, and then unfortunately had to jump off the train, as I had to get off in Brussels North, and he was going on to Midi. On a day that would turn out to be (we all hope) three weeks to the the day before the day on which Joe Biden is elected president, I meet up with a German politician I hadn't seen since the last time I had met Joe Biden in person.

if you believe in omens, that seems like a pretty good one as omens go, wouldn't you say?

[elleng]

9. I'll take that omen!

Again, wunderbar!

[niyad]

39. A very good omen, one fervently hopes!

[saidsimplesimon]

4. Greetings to you and your lovely wife

I always enjoy your posts about life outside our US bubble. Stay safe and well

[DFW]

8. Thanks!

Today, I heard that all but four of the fifteen or so people who work at my Dutch office have Covid-19. Staying safe has just gotten a little more than just a slogan!! Good thing I didn't have to be there last week!

[SWBTATTReg]

5. Wonderful. Service w/ a smile and a pillow!

[DFW]

10. That really knocked me for a loop

What a cool idea. I didn't dare ask, but I can't imagine her head office would have authorized such an expense. She must have done it on her own, and let the higher-ups know later. What a GREAT manager!

[Doreen]

6. Europe is so nice.

I lived in Berlin between.the ages of 8 and 10. I absolutely loved it. It was the happiest time of my life. I wish I was allowed to move back.

[DFW]

11. My wife and I met there

Back in 1974, when dinosaurs roamed the earth! We were 22. We are 68 now. Where HAS the time gone?

[Doreen]

12. I was there sowhere in the late 70's. I am just about to turn 53 next month.

I lived just a few blocks from where they had the van run into the Christmas mart a few years ago. I can not spell the word Christmas but I can say it.

[wnylib]

29. Weihnachten

Actually, Christmas Eve.

[Doreen]

30. Yeah, pretty close to what I thought but I just did not want to look like an idiot.

[wnylib]

36. My mother was first generation

American. Her parents were born in the German Empire of Kaiser Wilhelm II and came to the US as very young children. We always celebrated on Christmas Eve, in the German custom, opening gifts at home after the children's Christmas Eve pageant at church (where there was also a gift exchange between friends and relatives after the service). The one night of the year that we were allowed to stay up as long as we could hold out.

Christmas morning, we slept in.

[Doreen]

37. I have a friend who is first generation American.

I can not remember where they are from except it was the Russian part of Germany. If that makes sense. His sister and oldest brother were born there and his older brother and him were born here. Of they did traditional German Christmas I do not know. I never asked.

[wnylib]

41. There was a German section of Russia

in the 1800's. It was in the southwest part of Russia. It was established when the Russian Czarina, Catherine the Great, who was German-born, invited German Mennonites to settle there as a buffer against expansion of Muslim states and territories into southern Russia.

The German Mennonites in Russia flourished there for a few generations. One of their villages was named after the German village that my great-grandparents came from, which is how I learned about it. (My g-grandparents were not Mennonites and remained in Germany during that period.)

But European wars, pitting Germans against Russians, later got those Mennonites exiled. Some returned to Germany, but a lot of them emigrated to Canada and the US.

[Doreen]

44. OK, he explained his parents places in Germany to me. I guess I was mixed up.

His mother is from the German part of Poland called Selisia Slosky in Polish. Her town ws called Mosdorf.

His father was from the German part of the Czech Republic. His town was called Oelstadtl in Czech called Olejovice. The town no longer exists. His dad came from a region called Moravia.

[Turbineguy]

13. It gives

"Tot Uw Dienst" a whole new meaning.

[Doreen]

32. OK, I am curious. I can read and pronounce that but what does it mean?

[Turbineguy]

42. Basically it means

"At your service"

[Doreen]

43. OK, thanks.

[GeoWilliam750]

14. Charming!

[DFW]

23. The thing that touched me

In this time of economic hardship, and heartbreak at having to reduce staff, the management thought to take this little step, maybe even paid for it out of their own pockets, as a gesture of thanks for trying to save THEIR jobs.

[erronis]

15. Amazing. You won't find that in a US hotel chain - unless you are a +1,000$ night

[DFW]

17. Oh, but you can

This WAS a US hotel chain, and I have NEVER paid anywhere near $1000 a night ANYWHERE. Probably never even half that.

However, this was a Brussels location, and the managers (evidently) are give a lot of freedom to conduct business as they see fit.

[George II]

16. What a nice story. By the way, I think the days of breakfast buffets and salad bars....

....are long gone, at least in our lifetimes.

[DFW]

19. That would be a shame

This place had a FABULOUS breakfast buffet. The food in Belgium is pretty fine in general.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

18. I have a question about Belgian Dutch (Flemish).

I've been watching some Belgian and Dutch stuff on Netflix and elsewhere, and I can hear a difference between Netherlandish Dutch and Flemish but I can't put my finger on what it is. I can articulate the difference between Swedish and Norwegian but that's a little more obvious; Netherlandish Dutch sounds harsher than Flemish, almost like Danish but not as strangled. Is there more of a French influence on Flemish, or what?

[DFW]

21. I doubt it's a French influence, but rather a historical and geographic one

The southern Dutch-speaking provinces were separated from the north by geography (usually water) long before Belgium was carved out of northern France and the southern Netherlands.

There are some parts of Vlaanderen (Flanders) where the dialects are so dissimilar, people from one village can barely understand people from villages 30 KM away. That will happen if there has been no contact between them over a couple of centuries. For example, if the Spaniards ruled one village for a hundred years in the 16th century, but not the village 30 KM farther away, which was maybe under Austrian domination, e.g.

Flemish definitely has its own rhythm and cadence, as well as a few fundamental differences with most modern Dutch. I find modern Dutch much easier to understand, actually. But I learned from someone from the Netherlands whose own native language was not Dutch. He is from the far north, where they speak Drenths (various spellings). Because that is his native language, when he speaks standard Nederlands, he speaks it with the clear and precise pronunciation of someone who is completely fluent, bus as a second language. Very much like the Catalans of Barcelona, who speak a clear and easily understandable Spanish because it is not their native language.

In the Netherlands, you will also hear distinct regional differences. In Limburg, they speak with a distinctly Flemish-sounding accent. In the big cities of the West (e.g. Rotterdam, Den Haag, Amsterdam) they have a harsh city slang. In the east, such as in Arnhem and Utrecht, they have a clear, distinct and easy-to-follow accent. The difference is that NL is so small, to drive from the "west" to the "east" takes about an hour!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

31. Interesting!

Languages and their origins fascinate me. And it's interesting how dialects can very so much in even a small country. I've been taking a Norwegian class for a few years, taught by an instructor who speaks standard Olso Bokmål (though technically Bokmål is only official as a written language), and one day we had a substitute who was from Stavanger, and although she was also speaking Bokmål, at first we could barely understand her at all. Then there's Nynorsk, which is really hard to understand if all you know is Bokmål, not to mention a zillion old dialects out in the hinterlands. And here in the USA there's Alabama. I used to work with a guy from there and I could never understand half of what he was saying.

[Ron Obvious]

33. To add to DFW's excellent explanation

You're right that Dutch is harsher than Flemish, largely because of the pronunciation of the letter 'G'. In Dutch, they refer to a hard 'G' vs a softer, more German sounding 'G' in Flemish.

Ironically, it takes more phlegm to pronounce that in Dutch than in Flemish.

[alwaysinasnit]

20. Great story! Thanks for sharing.

[DFW]

22. I thought it was time for a "meanwhile" n/t

[alwaysinasnit]

24. Too true. In the midst of this horror show, life goes on. But it's nice to share thoughts and

stories that cause one to smile. Thanks for the one you gave me.

[DFW]

25. Glad it worked! n/t

[wnylib]

34. Your first sentence reminds me of

a little plaque that I bought a year ago because I liked the message. Little did I know then that it would soon have such meaning for me. It says:

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain."

It hangs in my kitchen to remind me to make the best of things every day.

[alwaysinasnit]

35. "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain."

A lot of wisdom in that.

[Lonestarblue]

26. Wonderful story and experience.

I have always had such wonderful experiences traveling in Europe, and I’m sad that I can’t travel just now. Aside from the marvelous sights, it’s often the people who make a trip memorable. I remember a trip to Paris when we had arrived late and I went into a restaurant to try out my most imperfect French to ask whether a table was available. I was so astonished when the maitre’d answered in French that I immediately switched to English and ruined my opportunity for at least a short conversation!

On another trip where I had rented an apartment for a few days, my hostess invited me to join the for lunch and I spent much of the afternoon having home-cooked food (and more than a bit of wine). I’m eager for this virus to be contained so we can travel again.

[Hekate]

27. Thank you for something we can read that's not grim!

Stay well...

[DFW]

28. And that's why I did!

And thanks!!

[spooky3]

38. Very cool! Nt

[niyad]

40. Thank you for a truly lovely story about truly lovely people. Smiling here.

[DFW]

45. A smile these days is a reward in itself. N/T

[DFW]

46. I forgot to mention

The hotel closed in March or April, and though I'm usually there once week except in the summer, I hadn't been there for half a year.