Today we again took the Metro into town. One visible difference between today's Brussels and the Brussels we knew 20+ years ago is the number of homeless people, and those begging on the streets - totally unknown in the past. And an audible difference is that now we have the Tower of Babel. In 1986 when we first arrived to live here, the EU had 12 members, then 3 more joined in 1987, adding three more languages. But with the addition of 10 new countries to the EU in 2004, and 2 more in 2007, there are now 23 official languages, plus of course Arabic, Iranian, numerous African and Asian languages - it's vibrant!
We've just spoken on the phone to an old friend we haven't seen for around 17 years - we'll visit them tomorrow. And tonight we are having dinner at a Bosnian restaurant with another friend we haven't seen for about 13 years. How fortunate we are ...
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| Boulevard St Michel, our apartment |
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