Brocante!

If you spend any protracted time with me, sooner or later we end up at a thrift store. This is because when I was born, there was a fairy floating around Upper Manhattan who granted new baby wishes at St Luke's Women's. Like a social worker, basically, but more wings. My mom traded me having early onset grey hair and astigmatism for lifelong luck in second-hand deals, and we have never looked back. I can find it, buried in a pile, in a stack, on the restocking rack, under a broken toaster, and it will be solid gold, and I'll get it for half off of the nothing it cost to begin with.

I was entirely unaware of the brocante tradition here in Brussels before moving, which is one of those things that makes you feel like the city you randomly selected in which to live was indeed a very good choice after all (see also: Atlanta, GA, 2004, Your DeKalb Farmers Market). One of my new colleagues told me about them, during a sit-down session where she was kindly giving me a number of Brussels insider tips, and despite that we also covered health care, I moved faster on the brocantes than I have on finding a physician. As far as I can tell, "brocante" loosely translates to flea market. They are on the weekends, usually in the fall, although there is apparently a legendary one sometime in May as well. They can be enormous and take over whole neighborhoods and have carnival rides for kids, like the one in La Petite Suisse d'Ixelles, or be on a smaller, town square scale. Sometimes they just advertise that they are coming up with a home-printed sign on a lamppost, and sometimes they make it into an online round-up. Sometimes they have rules that nothing can cost over 20 euro. The way they work is the seller spreads out a tarp or puts up some racks and then just hangs out all day long on a folding chair, with their petit chien, haggling and selling. They might give better deals at the end of the day, but by then the best stuff might be gone, so you've got to decide which time you prefer to hit it up.

If I need something I can probably find it at a brocante. If I didn't need something, I can also find it at a brocante. One thing I really wanted to find was a radio. When we were staying at Heidi's in Roetgen, there was an old school cassette player boom box and I found a nice classical music station on it that occasionally also spat out American Top 40 Hits from the 1980s. It was kind of like a spasm--you'd be listening and it would be Schubert Handel Schubert Bach, then suddenly the rains would come down in Africa. After a week or two here in our house in Brussels I noticed it was really quiet and I missed having music playing. I missed Phil, I missed the cat and the dog, and I missed my neighbors, and my kitchen, and I missed putting on the stereo, especially in the morning. So Miles and I were on the lookout for a very classic, very simple radio, so I could find some decent stations and listen to music. Within maybe a street or two of the Ixelles brocante, there it was. The sellers told me I could take it down to a nearby cafe to make sure it worked; I did, and it did and our house has been infinitely improved since then.

The brocante we went to last weekend was a more posh neighborhood than Ixelles so there were some really incredible finds--I found a brand-new cream-colored wool cable knit Soeur sweater, which I actually needed because, boys and girls, it is cold here in Brussels already, and I am ill-prepared. Also a classic blue French work shirt for two euro, for serious, and it fits like a dream. Miles found a typewriter which he bought with his own money, then realized we were on our bicycles (it was car-free Brussels day actually). He tried to buy a bungee cord to secure it on the rack from a nice lady but she just gave it to him. "For you" she said, with a very sweet smile. He pulled this already once at the last brocante--asked how much a book on Napoleonic warfare cost and the guy just gave it to him. People in Brussels are often super nice to kids.

We also had to figure out how to get a hot pink deer head with blue antlers home, but that is a tale for another day.