Belgium is not really one but two separate countries, one part speaking French and the other speaking Dutch. While my Dutch is limited to the restaurant basics of red wine, white wine and check please, most Dutch speakers also speak some degree of English which made vacationing in a Dutch-speaking country easy. Even still, Elaine and I found ourselves venturing into the francophone Walloon region where I could dust off my college major. Sometimes we even went as far as northern France or into Luxembourg for the same reason. When we were strolling through Namur and spotted the poster advertising ticket sales for the Bouglione Circus at a nearby record shop, we took note of the directions and headed to the store.
Actually the purpose of visiting this record shop quickly became twofold when Elaine wanted to know if I could ask if they sold a CD by Princess Superstar. No matter that neither of us had heard of Princess Superstar before seeing her rap Bad Babysitter on Belgian MTV. Elaine still liked the song. It turns out Princess Superstar is American, but tended to fare better on the UK charts. Listen to the song, and I dare say you'll discover why. I did inquire, but the shop owner, to his credit, did not stock anything by Princess Superstar. Alas.
I had no problem scoring our tickets for the show that day but the proprietor of the record store explained that the circus started shortly and asked if we knew how to get there. We did not, and even with my wife's map reading abilities being as good as they are, I was worried that either my translation skills or my pisspoor sense of direction might get in the way of us arriving on time. And as parking spaces are a rare commodity in old European towns, we were probably at least a mile or so from the car at this point. Lucky for us, a woman in the store was sympathetic to our plight.
"If you need a ride, I'd be happy to give you lift," the woman said in her native French.
"We don't want to impose," I said in my broken French.
"It's no problem, " she assured us, "it's on our way home."
With that, her daughter, who must have been all of nine or ten years old, left the CDs in the pop music section and joined her mother's side smiling.
Now, of my wife and I, I am probably the gutsier of the two when it comes to forgoing stranger danger. I've picked up hitchhikers, I've accepted a ride from a stranger in order to fill an empty gas can and I don't mind striking up conversations in the checkout line at the grocery store. My wife on the other hand will typically not exchange more than three words with the guy sitting next to her on an airplane for fear that he end up wanting to make a woman suit out of her skin while Precious gnaws on chicken bones and the song Goodbye Horses plays in the background. My wife's not a size 14 by the way -- I'm just using this as an example. Regardless, being in a foreign country somehow invites you to let your guard down and when you come from one of the most violent countries on the planet, as we Americans do, you just are quick to bank on a mom and her kid in a record store not being serial killers. So we took them up on the offer.
Elaine and I sat in the backseat. Obviously the mom drove and the girl sat in the passenger seat next to her facing backward toward us for the duration of the ride. The daughter wanted to know where we were from, and when we told her we were American she asked us what the American euro looked like. The mother explained to her daughter that the United States, not being party to the European Union, did not have a euro coin. Then she explained to us that her daughter collected the different coins from the -- at that time 12 but now 27 -- member nations. Bully for her, I thought, for taking an interest in the Union and its currency. After all it was Belgium along with Holland and Luxembourg that invented the concept of the European Union back in the 1950s.
I pulled a dollar from my wallet and offered it to her as a euro substitute. The mother tried to politely refuse the offering, but when I assured her that it was essentially the same value as a euro coin, she let her daughter keep it. Interestingly enough, when I gave her that dollar back in April of 2002, had she traded me for a one-euro coin, I would have gotten the short end of the stick, having exchanged a dollar for what was equivalent at the time to a mere 85 cents. Were we to each have held on to our traded monies however until 2008, that kid would have taken a bath and I would have increased my investment by more than 50%. Ah, the curse of hindsight!
After a brief conversation and for the mere price of one US dollar, the mother-and-daughter team dropped us off at our destination just a short walk from the big top of the Bouglione Circus. Elaine forced me to pose for a picture with the two of them, and I obliged. The mother and I shared that we didn't much care for having our picture taken, but the daughter seemed to relish the opportunity. We exchanged email addresses as is the custom in the post-Y2K era and went on our respective ways.
Once Elaine and I presented our tickets we were escorted to our seats. Worth noting is that while the role of the venue usher has been all but quashed here in America, it's still taken seriously throughout Europe. The person who shows you where you sit expects a tip. Having already been party to a circus in Provence I was well aware of this, but another guy who was from who-knows-where refused and the scantily-clad shapely carny just stood there with her hand out asking, "De la service pour moi, monsieur?" until she reluctantly gave up and tended to other customers. I gave; He didn't. Guess who was asked to come on stage?
It was the last act before intermission and a very animated ringmaster was recruiting four volunteers slash victims to come down to the center ring, me being the fourth. There were four small stools, each about a foot high, arranged in a square and we were to each have a seat on one of them. I sat facing one direction while the guy across from me sat facing the other such that his left side was facing my left side. The other two guys were instructed to do the same so that each of us was sitting perpendicularly to the guys closets to us and each of our backs was to someone else's stool.
Being on center stage in a big top makes for quite an interesting perspective. For one thing it smells different than it does when you're sitting up in the stands. Sure, back in my original seat I enjoyed being surrounded by the aroma of cotton candy and my wife's sugared popcorn, but once on stage I had to breathe through my mouth just to avoid smelling the sawdust and animal dung. Spotlights shone on me also so even though I couldn't really make out anyone's face in the audience because of the glare, I knew that all eyes were now on me, so I didn't want to do anything to make me look goofy. Well, at least no goofier than I already looked sitting catty corner to three other guys in the middle of sawdust and circus excrement.
The ringmaster motioned for us to raise our hands above our heads, demonstrating with his own arms what he wanted us to do. Then he walked around our formation making small adjustments to our arms, basically just making a show and building suspense for the audience. Once he was satisfied with our posture he quickly went back around the circle only now as he passed each of us he put one hand on our forehead and took us by the hand with the other. As a slide whistle from the band played a descending glissando, the ringmaster gently pushed us backward so that now each of us, while still perched on our respective stools, was leaning back with our heads in the lap of some other guy we didn't know from Adam. So much for not looking goofy.
The audience loved this judging by the sound of their laughter and as silly as I might have felt I was chuckling too. So were my other three costars, one of whom made some comment in French I couldn't quite make out. Though socially awkward so far it was a pretty easy stunt to perform. Then there was a drum roll that I knew must have been foreshadowing some show-stopping feat that was going to involve the four of us. Indeed I was correct.
Again the ringmaster paraded around the four of us as the band's percussionist continued his drum roll and watched for his cue. Then, accompanied by the crash of a cymbal, the ringmaster swiped the stool out from under the first guy and tossed it aside. Guy number two? Same thing. Again with three and finally me. There we were, four strangers with our heads resting on one another's laps and each of our weight being supported by the guy whose lap we were laying in. More audience laughter.
Holding this pose wasn't terribly uncomfortable at first, but I could tell from the moment the last stool, mine, was removed from the equation that I was going to be limited in the time my leg muscles would endure this. This slight tension reminded me of a high school gym class exercise a coach would make us do where we had to sit with out backs up against a wall and our thighs parallel to the floor. I hadn't thought to size up the other three guys to see if maybe there was one of them who was less fit than I was, but somehow I doubted it. I'm not one of those self-deprecating Americans that thinks of Europeans as somehow more cultured and better than us, but they are on the whole more physically fit.
None of this would have mattered except that because I'm rather fair skinned and these guys were all three swarthy complected, I knew any audience member could have easily pegged me as the American in the group. I might have gotten away with passing for British, but Brits tend to wear clothes that look more like what the rest of Europeans wears while I wear typical American clothes with the signature Turget circles. To put it succinctly, I didn't want to be the weakest link in the chain whose knees buckled first. It was a matter of national integrity.
Apparently I was not alone in my patriotism. The other three men held out as long as I did. And so after about ten seconds, which apparently was starting to cut into the scheduled intermission time, a handler brought out an elephant into the ring. There was more laughter and applause from the audience which might have served as stamina for my staying power, but lucky for my legs another one of my three allies gave in. Because this formation is only as strong as the weakest link the rest of us lost our balance and came toppling down. Yet more laughter, more applause and then the music cued the intermission.
Elaine and I looked for souvenirs but the only things offered as I recall were children's toys that either sparkled or made noise. Nothing that denoted the circus we had gone to and basically all things that you could have bought at any circus on the planet. No posters to be found which is what we were hoping for. My wife was sure to snap several pictures though.
Once the circus was over Elaine and I decided it was time for dinner. After a leisurely walk down the hill which thankfully was guided by a Scottish woman who lived in the area with her Belgian husband, we found our way to a restaurant there in town called Brasserie Henry located at 3 place Saint-Aubain. Their business card also has a website which I'd link to if it still worked but apparently it doesn't. Oh wait, the powers of the google have led me to discover Brasserie Henry now has its own domain name. You can check them out by pointing your web browser to brasseriehenry.net. This place must be popular because we hadn't so much as sat down for five minutes before a large group came filing in. Then Elaine said, "Hey, aren't those the people from the circus?'
I wasn't quite sure at first but once I pictured these diners in glitter and grease paint I realized that Elaine was right. Indeed several of the performers from Cirque Bouglione were dining alongside us at this same restaurant. Always the table hopper, I didn't hesitate to go over to thank them for a such a wonderful time. We chatted briefly. One woman also spoke good English and was quick to tell me when I get home I should see her son who was at that time performing in a circus in New York. To outsiders, when you introduce yourself as American they often think New York is right around the corner and Hollywood is down the street.
Circuses do have a certain allure about them that I think is due not just to their entertainment value but also to the mystique they carry. I know some would find it unbecoming to travel in trailers and live around exotic animals. Some people I know couldn't get past having to attend weekly meetings with guys in bright wigs and floppy shoes. I on the other hand have always thought it would be an adventure to run away and join the circus. Sadly though I don't think there's much call for a contortionist whose abilities are limited to putting his feet behind his head and turning his tongue all the way around. Nor is anyone I know looking to hire a not-so-strong man. There's always the band.
Did I mention I can play the slide whistle?
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