Suzie wrote:Logging my monthly update a bit earlier than usual, because I've just hit a small milestone with my French reading, and it feels like a good moment for a pit stop.
Congratulations!
Read Part II of "La grande histoire de la Belgique" (37 p.). This part dealt mostly with the feudal system and was a bit boring. One sentence made me giggle though; the author described how the state of the Roman roads considerably deteriorated throughout the Middle Ages. Poorly maintained roads, that is a genuine Belgian brand just as beer and chocolate. In my quest to discover the origin of Belgium, have I found the missing piece?
Yeah, you definitely found something profound, that is still up to date and reaches more than just the roads. In Belgium, there are a lot of regionally independent things. Ok, something to accept. But it can be really weird, if the general state of the same autoroute changes several times, while you're driving on it. Including stuff like one part having had the normal light maintenance done, and the other having grass and bushes overreaching into the road! Or one part of a damaged section gets fixed, the other left alone.
And yeah, it might also be one of the reasons, why they still insist on just 120 km/h on the autoroutes. Why bother improving stuff, if we can just slow everyone down, make everything less efficient, and annoy people instead. Very Belgian
The normal roads were of varying quality, but the way things were getting (or rather weren't getting) fixed was weird. In my town, everything was crippled by a construction of the tram. A very slow and long construction, with huge parts of the construction just blocking everyone while nothing was being done for months... And then they announced a plan to first let the tram circulate without passengers as a test for 8 months!!!!
Sometimes I wonder, how did Belgium even manage to get out of the Middle Ages at this pace Definitely not driving!
Looking forward to hearing of your reading of the next centuries. I should buy something on their history too. So little free time, so many interests!
Reading was a bit less than in April (468 p.), but I had anticipated that; a rheumatoid flare had me spend too much time on the couch in April, whereas the flare is over now, and I am happily catching up with gardening work instead of reading. I still made good progress. 3600 pages read and exactly 200 pages/month left.
Wow!!!! I really need to up my SC rythm! You're a hero!