The bells woke me up at dawn so I took advantage of the early start and the beautiful sunny weather to jog out of the town and around the canals. We’re in Bruges for a management board seminar. The idea is to get us all away from our desks and our offices and to oblige us to spend an afternoon, an evening and a morning together, reflecting on longer-term and strategic objectives and challenges. Smart phones and wifi mean that we will probably never again give our undivided attention to the meetings we find ourselves in but, still, we benefitted from each others’ company and remoteness from the office by having two days’ of rich, enjoyable and productive discussions.

For five years I had the immense privilege and pleasure of teaching at the College of Europe in Bruges. This evening, once our work and our meal were both over, I wandered around my old haunts. I was standing outside the College, on the Dijver, when a lot of splashing and flapping in the canal behind me attracted my attention. The title of this post sounds like a fable from La Fontaine or Aesop, but what I saw was a large eel and a much larger cormorant engaged in mortal battle. The eel’s primary defence was to wrap itself tightly around the cormorant’s neck, threatening to axphyxiate it. The cormorant’s – risky – tactics were to dip its head and let the eel go in the water so as to encourage it to uncoil itself and then to grab it again with its beak. But each time that it re-caught the eel the eel re-wrapped itself around the bird’s neck. They made quite a commotion and the struggle lasted for a good five minutes. Finally, perhaps with more luck than judgement, the cormorant managed to fling the eel into the air and caught it, head first. Now the eel was halfway down the bird’s gullet but it still put up quite a fight before eventually sliding down out of sight. Not having seen anything like that before, I thought it must be a rare occurence. But back at the hotel I did an internet image search with the key words ‘eel’ and ‘cormorant’ and discovered that it is a frequent sight and that the cormorant’s technique of flinging the eel up into the air is also common. I am not sure I would like a live eel wriggling around in my stomach but, then…

The Bruges hotel I am staying in is a relatively modern construction. Building work was much delayed by the discovery of the remains of an old church, St Donatus, where the foundations were to have been dug. The church was pulled down and the rubble auctioned off in the eighteenth century. Gradually, people forgot about the old church – until the modern building works got under way. The quite extensive ruins can now be visited in the basement of the hotel. They are accompanied by a small exhibition displaying pots, pans and other artefacts dicsovered during the archaeological excavations. It is not the first time I have stayed in this hotel and I like to get in a visit to the ruins. What I particularly like are the frescos rescued from the interior of three tombs (one is in my picture). They are simple affairs, but they are pretty and the colours are still vivid and they represent religious activities still visible today (in the case of this angel, swinging an incense burner).

To La Monnaie this evening for a most enjoyable performance of Mozart’s (and da Ponte’s) politically incorrect Cosi fan tutte. As we now almost inadvertently expect, the singing and the acting of the cast and the playing and conducting of the orchestra were of a very high quality. But Cristoph Kanter’s deceptively simple set plays a particularly important part in this production’s success. The curtain opens on a broad, marble-paved living room, with steps leading to a glassed-off terrace. We see reflections of characteristic yellow stucco and green shutters, but we are completely inside a grand house, and it is here, in the room or on the terrace, that all of the action takes place. Behind the terrace is the suggestion of a garden and a port, and beyond that is a distinctively Neapolitan sky that slowly darkens as day turns to night (and as the plot similarly darkens) until stars twinkle. On one side of the room an inbuilt fridge-cum-bar is frequently visited by members of the cast in various states of desperation and on the other an open fire and a long sofa provide spaces for more intimate scenes. Curtains are sometimes drawn to enclose the room. And that’s it. The actors inhabit the forward space very cleverly (full marks to director Michael Haneke), with the choir restricted, as frequent onlookers, to the terrace outside. Through the simple device of the room, the audience are also cunningly turned into voyeurs. The cast wears a mixture of period and modern costume and that also worked very well. Haneke is having none of the libretto’s ‘they-all-lived-happily-ever-after’ ending and the audience is left in no doubt that the legacy of Don Alfonso’s supercilious wager is the creation of two warring and jealous couples. (For some reason this line, sung by Fiordiligi and Dorabella, seemed particularly relevant to me (I wonder why): ‘Ah, che un mar pien di tormento E la vita ormai per me!’) A most enjoyable evening.

This evening I was delighted to take part in a Round Table, intended to help launch a book entitled Experiencing the European Union: Learning how EU negotiations work through simulation games (Rubbettino), by Marco Brunazzo and Pierpaolo Settembri. The latter was once one of my students and then my assistant at the College of Europe in Bruges and shows every sign of becoming a prolific author and teacher as well as an excellent Commission official. In addition to the authors (Brunazzo is a Professor at the University of Trento) the other Round Table speakers were Mariolina Eliantonio (an Associate Professor at Maastricht University) and Albert Alemanno (Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law, HEC, Paris), and our discussion focussed more particularly on different ways of teaching about the EU and bringing it to life for students. Simulations, as set out in the Brunazzo and Settembri book, are one very effective way of doing that. I had looked out my Bruges course notes. I developed a silmulation of a conciliation procedure and reminded Pierpaolo that he had once played Signor Volpe, MEP, and managed to convince his fellow MEPs that a bridge should indeed be built across the Messina Straits! Eliantonio spoke to us about another approach, problem-based learning, and Alemanno spoke about an American import that he is in the process of adapting, an EU policy and regulatory affairs clinic. The point I made in my opening remarks is that such ‘games’ are not just good for students. I am sure that policy makers and legislators could render their negotiations and decision-making much more efficient if they gamed outcomes before taking on the real thing. And simulations give a fresh sense to the concept of learning on the job. As for the students, an abiding lesson drawn from the experience was surely that the strongest hands did not always win and the weakest hands did not always lose – ask Signor Volpe!

It is extraordinary how a thin cloak of mist can change a landscape. Early this morning the dog took us for a walk out at Berthem. The mist deadened the sounds around us, obscured the horizon and blurred outlines. I thought we’d seen the last of the hares, but we saw no less than six of them, quite deliberately silhouetted on the crest of a ridge. In the picture is a favourite tree, a fairly young oak tree that stands alone and seems to drift among the fields, though actually it is by a dirt track.

As modern public administrations we care about the well-being of our staff. That care extends to encouraging colleagues to eat and drink well and to stay fit and healthy. This morning the two Committees’ medical services, together with the EMAS team, again organised a little exercise in the Bertha von Suttner building. Those who wished to participate had their pulse, blood pressure and blood oxygenation measured on the first floor, and again after they had walked up either to the fifth or the tenth floor. The picture shows me on the way to the tenth floor. Taking the stairs instead of the lift is such a simple way of staying fit as well as saving energy. There is a slight nuance to that in the Committees’ flagship Jacques Delors building. The lifts there were recently given a major overhaul and have become ‘green’ lifts. Now, whenever somebody takes the lift down, the lift conserves the energy generated in order to take people up. Still, unless you are in a hurry, taking the stairs is a simple way to keep fit.

This evening I met composer friend Nigel Clarke for a beer and a chat and, as usual, he broadened my musical knowledge significantly. Maybe I should have known all about Anton Reicha, but I shamefully admit I didn’t. Nigel gave me, as a present, a new disk of Reicha’s string quartets, played by the Kreutzer Quartet, which includes his good friend, Peter Sheppard Skaerved. Later, I listened to the quartets and several were very familiar. What was not so familiar, though, was Reicha’s life. He was a contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven who studied with Salieri and taught Liszt and Berlioz. Constantly dislodged by Europe’s endless wars, he was born in Prague and lived in Bonn, Hamburg, Paris, Vienna and Paris again. Among musicians he is as well known today for his theoretical work as for his compositions. He hoped for success with his operas, and I wonder how long it will be before L’ouragan is revived.

I have run the Brussels 20 k every year now since 2008 but this year I was afraid I wouldn’t make it. I got a bad back – the curse of middle-aged joggers – in the US last summer and only started running again about a month ago. Still, I planned a rapid build-up and managed to keep to my programme, getting up to 10 k last Saturday and again on Sunday. I would, I told myself, be happy to get around. In the event, the weather was cool this morning and I somehow managed to start off in a fairly rapid field, getting to the 10 k mark in 53 minutes. The twin problems, as all regular runners know, are the traffic jams on the Boulevard de Souverain and the killer hill of the Avenue de Tervuren 3 kilometres from the finish. Still, when the official time of 1 h 54 was posted I found it a little difficult to believe. That sounds like boasting (and, of course, it is boasting) but this ‘victory’ was much sweeter than the other four. All athletes plagued with injury wonder whether they’ll make it back and when I crossed the finishing line I felt more than a little elated. It has been a long slog back to fitness, but I have made it – for the time-being, at least! And, as usual, the atmosphere was great. Well done, Brussels, and well done everybody else who competed in or completed the run.

We attended a christening this afternoon. It was a joyous occasion. The liturgy had been carefully prepared. The readings were perfect. The parents were great. The baby was mostly serene. However, potentially there was a slight challenge. The couple were Italo-Spanish, and their parents and families were present. But the Belgian priest who officiated at the ceremony took both languages admirably in his stride, striking up conversations with the youngsters present and dividing his sermon equitably into Italian and Spanish. I was interested to learn that he is one of just three Bollandists left in the world. If this is true, then we were effectively listening to one of the last representatives of a dying association, a living link with the seventeenth-century founder of the association, John Van Bolland. But just as interesting is the nature of the Bollandists’ work. Even if they were not a shrinking association, the number of saints is constantly increasing, and so their work would aways be unfinished, even if they continued. I am sure there is a metaphor in there somewhere. Anyway, it was a lovely occasion.