He warned me, oh yes he did. Last night Rafaël sleeps on the left bed while I lie on the right bed listening to him snore. It is astonishing that someone so small could make so much noise...and it is not a monotonous sound that might lull but rather, like that of a talented songbird, entertaining variations on a theme. I jump back in bed the moment he leaves at 10:00 and fall asleep as I hear the door catch.

At 5:30 in the afternoon I walk off into the Jordaan to find Thijssen, the cafe where I have agreed to meet Wayne for drinks. I find it easily at Brouwersgracht 107 and then check out Vlaming, the restaurant a block away at Lindengracht 95 where Wouter cooks.

Enroute, I encounter some interesting gevelstenen, like this flying calf except that it sure looks like a horse to me even though "kalf" does not mean "calf" in any language I know:

and this, which I don't understand at all other than being clued in that lootsman is an archaic spelling for loodsman, a maritime pilot.

At Vlaming, Wouter's not working, but I go ahead and try a roasted pork loin with saté sauce and the frites (French fries). Both are very good. Afterwards, I walk over to Thijssen, encountering on the way this bizarre gevelsteen. I tear my hair out trying to figure out what archaic Dutch word or words are represented here. And what are those strange characters where you'd expect to see a date?

Finally, I give up and send it to my friend Danny, who I now understand is wasting her talents in Losser and ought to move the big city and become a famous police detective. Elementary, she says, all you have to do is read the letters backwards, which yields LINDENGRACHT, which is the street the house is on, the gracht (canal) having been filled in at some time in the past and turned into a boulevard.

Those strange characters on either side of the trunk? Just look at them upside down to see "1972." So what we have here is a twentieth-century parody of a gevelsteen, and a good one at that. Fish in a damn tree, indeed.

At Thijssen, I have beers with Wayne. He thinks Wouter is a better cook than the guy on tonight at Vlaming, so I am eager to try the place when Wouter is on.

Polymaths (and polyglots) like Wayne just delight me, but the highlight of the evening is when he compliments my "ui" phoneme in a Dutch place name. (We're speaking English because the subjects are way beyond my pitiful Dutch vocabulary, and besides, with folks like Wayne whose English is practically perfect, I get tongue tied.) His compliment makes me delirious with joy since up to now I'd been congratulating myself when I hit that phoneme close enough to be understood.

Later it occurs to me that that may have been what Wayne was complimenting.