My day started quite ‘spontaneous’, so to say.
I think first time I realised this was around 08:02 in the morning when the bumper decided to continue life on the pavement rather than on my car. Of course following this out-of-my-hands-decision the out-of-the-blue-jumping up and down, the yelling bad words in Danish and trying to punch blue marks on my car could have seemed quite spontaneously too - especially for the viewers (luckily, where I live, the main-vain from the highway-ring to the city meets around this park, so it wasn’t an audience I was in lack of during this outraged newbie dance that not out of nowhere came over me).
This act was followed by a spontaneously run for the bus. The bus-driver was just about to close the doors when I came running around the corner waving my arms at him and his life-saving bus hoping it brought onboard yelling freaks in long green coats. The bus-driver saw me, obviously – like anyone else did. Starring at me approaching the bus fast, he waited till I was just two meters away before closing the doors and started to drive! “What a fckin prck!” I thought “That low-life loos…” And then he stopped the bus, opened the doors and let me in. I knew he wanted me to be extremely grateful for his little ‘generous’ peak-hour performance but all I could give his Are-you-not-just-extremely-grateful-that-I-DID-stop-for-you-anyway sour look in his eyes was a sarcastic “Merci-eh!” (in this city you’ll eventually learn that there’s no such thing as generosity when it comes to treatment of customers).
Had I missed this bus, the next one would have been just behind. Trying to pay the ticket for the last 5 stops on this route, the driver showed his disapproval of my sarcastic answer by speeding up, breaking hard, speeding up again and loosely controlling the wheels in hope to see my fall flat all over the place whilst looking for the stupid 1,5EUR – for now the remaining 4 stops... But what Monsieur Prck didn’t know was that I was highly trained in balancing onboard a Brussellian public bus. Eat sht! (I was in a bad mood this morning, ok!).
I managed to keep the deadline to get to the office-building and hi-jack one of the EC Peugeot-bikes (thou not without another sour look, this time from the security-guard who needs to register you for taking the bike). In the parking where I had to get the bike, Griselda came walking out from one of the ‘secret’ doors. Griselda is temporarily working in the cafeteria and this morning was the first time I saw her after she had been gone for more than 3 months (did I just say temporarily?). Happy to see her again, I felt the sweat-spots under my arms slowly growing “Don’t raise your arm to high when being the usual little eager nerd you can be in the new class today!”
With a confused Hi and a small small-talk – as ‘Don’t Be Late On First Course Day’ was the only thought bouncing around in my head – I couldn’t keep the conversation up (that would have been any conversation with anyone this morning, but of course it had to be with the one person I hadn’t seen for more than ages). Meanwhile talking and trying hard to smile and look happy about her return I struggled getting my big bag on the back of the bike (I figured the evening before that big bags proves great interest from a student to any teacher – Jeez, I really AM a nerd!). She was luckily in a rush herself, and quickly she disappeared behind one of the other secret doors in the parking.
I jumped on the bike, and rushed out the parking, UP the hill (of course – multiplying the spots from under the arms to my back), up along Malbeek park and on to Rue de la Loi, where the daily 10 cyclists can get close to orgasms when getting faster around than the cars – and so this day I shared this moment of brilliantness of taking a bike. Proud of myself and this genius idea I cycled like I was about winning the Mountain-shirt in Tour de France – on a fancy practical biodynamic bike of course.
7 minutes later I had arrived at point B; The Entrance to the EC Courses. This day was the first day for most of the courses the EC offers. The entrance to the course-building was as busy as ants around a half-eaten ham-sandwich left on the ground.
Despite the sweat coming down from my forehead, I felt everyone was looking at me surely thinking ‘What a clever idea taking a bike!’ while I was closing the bike. But what they probably had thought was more something like ‘She seems to be rushing to a course, but she didn’t even bring a notebook and pen, at least!’
I turned around and grabbed the emptiness from the back of the bike. HORROR!!! THE BAG!!! I continued the spontaneous desperate newbie dance from just 15 minutes earlier “SHIT, FCK, PIS, LORT RØV OG NØGLER, EDDERMAMENE I MIN NUMSE OG ALLE HANS PISSE-UNGER HVOR ER JEG DOG BARE FOR FANDEN SKIDE-PISSE-HAMRENDE UHELDIG! PIS MIG I ØREGANGEN FOR TRE SATANER I HELVEDE! (do you? Do you really want the translation of that? Piss, shit, ass and keys, prcks up my bottom and all his shitty kids how fcking bullshit crappy unlucky am I??? Piss me in the ear for three devils in Hell). I figured swearing in Danish would mean much more nothing to most of the people starring at me – except that they most likely did understand I was swearing a flow of bad words in some unrecognizable language. And what can I say, how fckin right they were! My stupid shitty heavy-weight bag had fallen of the bike somewhere between the Charlemagne building and rue Guimard.
SECOND FLASH OF HORROR; Phone, money, make-up (yes, women!) droven over by a million fckers in their cars whilst probably getting their orgasm of why exactly one should NOT cycle in rue de la Loi – or any other place for that matter!
Flying around one corner and then the next I was examining the streets like I was paid for it; “Time, time, time, time!” – no, I don’t particularly stress myself more in existing stressful periods, I totally freak myself out! (Yes, this may sound familiar cos that’s what women in general do, so what?!).
To my extreme happiness in the middle of this apparent continuously stream of un-luck, I spotted a security-guard on his knees stretching out his arm and with two fingertips tried to get hold of the strap of my bag while two other security-guards were hiding behind a van only showing their top of bald skulls. The hero of a security-guard probably first thought he was about to loose his life in duty when this assumed bomb-bag would blow up, until I approached rather quickly screaming on the top of my lungs “IT’S MY BAAAAAAAAG!!!” He jumped up and in a flash second his facial expression read “seek cover with the others behind the van NOW!” (kinda looking like his eyeballs were falling out of his head while still starring now deeply horrified at the heavy-weight bag) - when he saw me. Not pleased at all he grabbed the bag and handed it over to me saying some parenting thing about being more careful with my things etc, in French.
And I? I couldn’t care less about the Spread-Love-kinda-action I always seem to try implementing to these sour service-folks in this city. So my second sarcastic “Merci-eh!” flew out between my lips while turning the bike in a professional routine and headed back to the bloody stupid why-had-I-signed-up-for-this-in-the-first-place PERFECTIONNEMENT English course.
Now, where did I not have sweat coming from? Starring in the mirror in the toilet at my tomato-red face with a fine white line around it as if I just had fun dipping my face in a bucket of red paint, and the blackness under my eyes after the mascara had chosen to hang around there rather than on the eyelashes and then my hair looking more like a bomb than my bag had done just a minute ago, I praised the Lord (even that happens for a non-religious Dane) for night-cleaners filling up napkin dispensers during the night. And so they should do again the following night, as one after the other were placed in my arm-pits and several others used for stopping the sweating; how that is just not possible. SIGH!
Head up, deep breath and then I walked down the hall looking like I’ve just emptied half a economy-sized tube of gel into my hair and found the class-room.
To my great relief my eyes met with one of my colleagues from DG Enlargement, poor to become-victim and poor nerdy image, when I totally ignored the teacher walking into the end of the class-room and sat down next to Marine telling her all about my horrified morning, finishing the story 10 minutes into the class with the line “and then it’s even my birthday today, can you bloody believe it?!!”.
She felt sorry for me, and this was good, cos this was exactly what I needed. Someone who understood my morning nightmare - which was completed by herself 15 minutes later when she had to introduce the person next to her and realised that all she actually knew about me was that it was my birthday today (fair enough, I couldn't blame her for not re-telling the above story), and so everyone starred at me followed by a burst-out of a Happy Birthday-song with a notable Frenchie-accent.
My only real pleasure from this course was 4 hours later when I left everyone believing I had just turned 21 years old. Sckers!
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