Belgium

Belgium

Beer, chocolate. Beer, chocolate. Waffle. Waffle. Bike, Pancake. Flowers. Waffle, fireworks.

Yep, that pretty much sums up Belgium!

OK, ok… here are the details…

We arrived to Brussels on Monday afternoon and headed to a busy part of town for dinner after setting up camp in the campsite behind a church. We wound up at an Irish pub and felt as though we had chosen to eat dinner at the United Nations. French spoken to our left, English (from England) to our right, German behind us, and Dutch in front. We had arrived in the capital of the EU for sure! Everyone was so friendly and fluent in English.

The next morning, we headed to the center of town to get our bearings and wound up with a pretty good base tour of the sights in Brussels. We found these amazing maps that were created for young travelers and named very un-touristy, local places to dine and entertain ourselves. We had a delicious lunch of plat du jour and when the waiter brought us out little pieces of Belgian chocolate with our coffee for desert, our smiles were so big – well he brought us about 3 more pieces each. From there, we walked through the downtown area to the museum of musical instruments in Brussels. First of all, the building is something of a spectacle, built in the early 20^th century in the art nouveau style. There was gorgeous iron work everywhere and because it was so tall and narrow, we got a great view of the rest of Brussels from here because the landscape in Belgium is so flat. We were given a pair of headphones and told a the front desk that whatever instrument on display we wanted to hear the sound of, we only needed to stand in front of the instrument and magically, music would begin to play in our headphones. I think something may be wrong with my ability to accept radio signals in my head, because I could not always get the sound to come through. JJ said that most of the time in the museum I was wandering around looking like I should be beamed up to outer-space any second. We had a nice time walking through the museum hearing everything from bagpipes (from all over the world!) and accordions, to sitars and drums of all sizes. We both enjoyed hearing different music from around the world and learning that the saxophone was invented in Belgium. From the museum, we stopped by the park in front of the Royal Palace to throw around the Frisbee and bought tickets to the silent movie at the Cinemateque for the next night. After that, we headed for a waffle and to avoid the rain that had just started outside. We waited until the weather let up and then made our way to Café Markten, stopping in some local markets along the way to admire the amazing Belgian beer for cheap prices and the most extensive amount high-quality of supermarket chocolate ever (I can only say that having sampled most of it by now!). Café Marten was very nice and relaxing. The staff there was so friendly and spent a while talking to us and hearing about our travels, so far the Belgians have been incredible sweet and so has their food (ha,ha).

The next day, we headed out on more of a walking tour of Belgium. We walked through some African and Morrocan neighborhoods. It seemed like the fast food of choice was falafel and we began to admire how many falafel and kebab restaurants there were everywhere! We made our way to the Gauze Brewery, the only brewery in Belgium brewing Lambic beer. We were lucky enough to join up with what seemed like a private tour of the brewery with a local pub owner and two representatives of Brew Dog Beers who were educating themselves about the specific ways to brew Lambic beer. The man showing us around was a Jean from France and boy, did he love Lambic beer – he seemed to know everything about it! I would say the most interesting thing (although JJ would say probably everything was interesting) was that the beer gets inoculated by the natural yeast in the air of Brussels and from the live cultures that exist in the wood of the building in only one night, pretty amazing. Then, to give the beer a strong sour and complicated taste (actually incredibly good), they store the beer in old oak barrels for 1 to 3 years before it is blended to be bottled. Sometimes they add fresh fruit like raspberries and cherries to create a Framboise type of gauze beer as well. If you ever get the chance to try this beer you should, and then sit picturing us walking through a brewery where only family has worked for over 100 years and where spiders reign the concrete walls that haven’t changed a bit over the century. As they said, it is a “live” brewery, with the brewery itself inoculating the beer, the spiders controlling the flies, and the cat’s controlling the rats (very organic). It was a very interesting tour to say the least. From there, we headed for a quick bite and then to our silent movie with live piano accompaniment. I had no idea what to expect, but I did not the chance to see a silent film with live piano came so often, so there we were. JJ was full of food and fell asleep in the first 20 minutes when we both realized that the only subtitles rarely provided in the film were in Russian and French. The film was about the rise of Communism in Russia, but that was not very clear until the very end of the film almost two hours later when an elder woman smiled as she shared her pot of potatoes with wounded soldiers. JJ was awake for that part. After walking out of the theatre, JJ promptly asked two women what the movie was about, and they confirmed his suspicions.

The next day, we headed on a morning train to the “romantic” city of Bruges, the Venice of the North. In the 13^th century, Bruges was a boom town, but then the canal leading to the central port dried up and well, the rest is history! We heard great things about Bruges from everyone though, and all in all we were thoroughly impressed! We began our day trip by renting bikes from the train station. There are canals that made up the barrier to the city in ancient times and now have a bike path running alongside, which takes about an hour to complete the loop. Within 20 minutes we found an amazing children’s playground with hexagonal blocks that JJ had a great time on across from some very impressive windmills. We enjoyed our relaxing and picturesque bike ride until it was time to go for some pancakes! Bruges has a very strong Dutch (Flemish) influence, whereas Brussels has more French influence. So pretty much – Brussels has waffles and Bruges has pancakes? Questions? Okay, I had many, but moving on… we sat down in a very cute restaurant right by the pancake making station. Flemish pancakes are made like crepes and we had a blast watching them being made and then devouring them! We had a great rest of the afternoon riding around Bruges and admiring the interesting stair-step style roof architecture, scenic canals, and quiet of the streets. We went into the city center and entered to a very old church to see Michelangelo’s Madonna and child” statue. We also watched a colony of swans for a while and then had a beer in the oldest pub of Bruges, established in 1515. Yep, that bar is almost as old as our country! We got on the evening train back to Brussels and then headed out for a “tourist” waffle. We arrived at the Grand Palace plaza where there was a sea of people and probably the most amazing and elaborate flower display I have ever seen, the size of a football field. In an elaborate pattern, a vast array of colorful Begonias were set out on the center of the square surrounding a fountain. We found out that there would be fireworks and music there later. We arrived at the famous Mannequin Piss (the fountain of the little boy peeing) and had a waffle covered in strawberries, ice cream, whip cream, chocolate sauce and well a heart attack. Just as we made our way back to the center square, music began playing and fireworks went off. We spent about an hour talking to some Americans we met who worked for NATO and then wandered around. Before heading back, we visited for a short while with a local man around our age who had wandered to the top of the steps we were viewing the flowers from also. He said that the display of the flowers had been going on for centuries and the best view was for the rich, just like in ancient times for the bourgeoisie class (upper-class aristocrats in ancient times). We asked him what he meant and he told us that in order to get the best view of the flowers, you needed to view it from a raised platform, like the stairs, and only the richest people in Brussels could see it from an office or their apartment in the square. We agreed that the view was much better from there and ended our stay in Brussels with an interesting political note, it is the capital of the EU after all! We are now on the train to Berlin, Germany! Discos get ready haha!