Weekend in Brussels

So we just had Pentecost (fiftieth day after Easter Sunday, feast celebrating the Holy Spirit coming to the disciples), which meant that Monday was a holiday. Three day weekend! I spent mine in Brussels with my friend Stephanie who's been studying in Mulhouse, France (blog here). We arrived Friday evening and left Monday afternoon. 

Friday we didn't do much. We found food (doners) and chatted, and then we went to bed. We stayed at this pretty nice hostel, called the Hello Hostel. It was clean and the manager was nice. The breakfast was terrible, but it was free so no complaints. 

The area we stayed in

Saturday we got up pretty early, which ended up being a pretty good thing as we spent way too much time trying to find the atomium. Lesson: don't just assume that an arrow on the map means it's nearby or that you are headed in the right direction. Always look up exact locations for anything you want to see. We ended up giving up on it until we could figure out exactly where we needed to go and headed for the comic strip museum. It was awesome. Everything you could ever want to know about the history and development of European comics in French, Dutch, and English. It wasn't exclusively european, per se, but frankly, the creators of the museum clearly felt a little bias. Interesting stuff though. Many comics I had not heard of, partly I think because I'm only 21, and partly because many comics don't bridge the Atlantic. I did get to learn about the Smurfs though. They're actually a Belgian comic strip, so when we got to the gift shop I couldn't help buying myself a souvenir: a copy of the first book of smurf comics, in its original french. Les Stroumpfs. 

Outside the comic strip museum

After the comic strip museum we headed over towards La Grand Place. There are many Places in Bruxelles (the Museum Place for example) but this is the big one. It's huge, and the buildings are centuries old and ornately decorated. It's filled with tourists of course. We decided to have lunch there and settled on sharing an order of moules frites (a very good idea because they give you a lot). Moules frites (or mussels and fries) is almost a national dish. It's sort of a "must-have". It was delicious. Stephanie ordered a beer, which I tried (because you can't go to Belgium and not have any beer), which was not delicious. Whenever I took a tumble in the waves at the beach my relatives would laugh and say "well now you know the ocean's still salty". Well I took a sip of the beer and it still doesn't taste good. 

La Grand Place

Moules Frites!

Following lunch we headed out to find the Mannekin Pis, the famous statue of a peeing boy. I have a thing for strange or funny statues so I was looking forward to this. Sadly, it's a tad anticlimactic. It's really small, and on this sort of side street. We almost missed it. It was sort of like, well, ok, I guess I'll take a picture...Not that cool. Not sure why this is so well known. We next went to the bourse (or stock exchange) and then took the metro to the stop for the Atomium and Mini-Europe (thank you free brochure from the comic strip museum). 

A random parade/procession thing that went by

the Mannekin Pis

La Bourse

Next stop: the Atomium. The Atomium is this giant metal structure representing an iron crystal built for the 1958 world fair. It's sort of akin to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. You mostly go for the view. Which was worth it. It was also worth it just to get a picture of a giant iron crystal. 

Atomium

Mini-Europe is a major tourist trap. Just a warning. It is especially attractive to families with small children whose parents are overly indulgent and incapable of discipline. That's all I'm saying. It was fun though. They had representations of all the different EU countries' well-known cities and landmarks. They even had little miniature people and moving parts. Each country also had a button which played it's national anthem, but they all sounded the same to me. 

La Mini Place

That sort of rounded out Saturday. We had dinner at a little Italian restaurant on a street indicated by our map as having lots of food. The street is literally one italian restaurant after the next, with pretty much equivalent menus and prices. You can either just pick one or allow the Maitre D's to fight over you. The Maitre D's are hysterical. They stand outside trying to convince people to eat at their restaurant and pick playful fights with each other ("Don't eat there! They'll poison you! Don't listen to him! He's french!). We just picked one and ate off the 12 euro menu. Pretty good, and it included dessert. 

Sunday. We slept in a bit more knowing things wouldn't be open for a little while but we headed out around 10. First stop: Le Palais de Justice. Unfortunately, it seemed to be undergoing some maintenance that requires scaffolding to be placed over the entire front of the building. So I only got side shots. Across the street though was this neat looking war memorial commemorating the soldiers who had died in the first or second world wars. At least, I thought it was neat until I turned the corner to look at the other side and realized it was a tomb. Then it was just creepy. 

Le Palais de Justice

War memorial/tomb

We then headed towards the royal palace. On the way, we stopped at the fine art museum and went through like a gazillion exhibits of mostly religious art covering like 4 centuries. We walked away feeling very cultured and continued on to the palace. I love castles, palaces, mansions, you name it, so if there's a royal palace to be seen, I'm going to see it. No tours though. You can look from the outside but that's it. Sad day. Guess that's the downside of still having a royal family. 

As close as I can get to the Royal Palace

After the obligatory picture taking, we headed through the park towards the Belgian Parliament building. On the way we stopped for these: 

Belgian waffles!

You knew it was coming. I couldn't go to Belgium and not get waffles could I? Stephanie got pistachio ice cream on hers; all the white fluffy stuff on mine? whip cream baby. Be jealous. Another obligatory picture of the Belgian parliament and on we went. EU Commission: rather boring. EU parliament buildings: also rather boring. Belgian Arc de Triomphe: not boring. 

EU building

Belgian Arc de Triomphe and one of the wings

 I'm not sure what is in the left wing, but the right wing houses an enormous history museum. I know it's enormous because Stephanie and I went through all of it. It was very interesting, but you can't help but start to yawn at some point. It's a lot of stuff. But we left feeling very cultured. By that point we were getting rather tired, and running out of stuff we wanted to do. We had made what we thought was quite a long list, but we got it all done. So after dinner (I got a croque monsieur) we hung out in La Grand Place for a bit before heading back to the hostel.

In our wanderings we came across this, and I needed a picture.

We had one more morning in Brussels. We looked at the maps. We looked on the internet. We looked at the brochures. According to everybody, we had done it all. Now what? I'll tell you what. The Chocolate Museum. It was small, and not overly informative, but it had plenty of free samples, and a demonstration by a chocolatier. Worth it? Yes. Thus ended our Belgian adventures. Train rides home for both of us, in different directions. Fairly uneventful, though one of my trains ended up being defective so I got on another train to Hamm, though I had already missed my connection, and then took another train to Paderborn. A very full train. I had to stand the entire last leg of the journey (like an hour), squashed between a bike, a baby stroller, 8 other people, and a family with a dog. Between one set of stops it was so crowded I stood on one leg so the poor dog could lay down. Good to be back.