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Published: August 24th 2006
Grand Place
The central square of Brussels, surrounded by imposing guildhallsAh, Belgium.
Perhaps I was expecting too much, perhaps a certain 'Belgian' friend of mine had been a bit too indulgent in his praise of his country's magnificence.
From what I had seen of the Belgian countryside during the train ride from Frankfurt, it really does look quite beautiful. But as we neared the capital, Brussels, things soon turned ugly. Brussels is a slum. It's supposed to be the capital of the EU, so I was expecting things to be pretty - well, pretty. But yeah, it's a slum, venture just a little outside of the miniscule centre around the Grand Place, and things get grimy pretty quick.
I was also looking forward to getting sick on fine Belgian chocolate, but unless you know exactly where to go, you might as well be buying imported Belgian choc back in your home country.
Anyway, on my first night there I arrived in the late afternoon, got completely lost looking for my hostel. The directions were quite vague, and I walked around a park about 3 times looking for a particular street. Anyway, I found it eventually and was greeted by an overzealously friendly Dutch host. Once I had
Grand Place
Another guildhall settled in I headed off to check out Grand Place and the centre for a while, but I was pretty beat so I came home early and went to bed.
The next morning as I was leaving, I met Vincent, an Ozzie guy from Melbourne (The first of a long line of Melbournians) who had just arrived and we headed off together to wander around Brussels, the Dutch guy drove us to the Brussels Stock exchange, which is right in the centre of town and we spent the rest of the day perusing chocolate stores and sampling beers in the many interesting pubs around Brussels.
As the day progressed we realised that Brussels doesn't really have much to offer in terms of things to do, so we decided to go to Bruges the next day.
Bruges was quite a remarkable place, in fact, in hindsight it might have been a better place to stay than Brussels. It's a medieval town, and the way it's built is incredibly fortified, everything is made of stone and brick, and there are many canals running through and around the town. It's very pretty. It also has a Grand Place, one that
Brussels Cathedral
Pretty impressive, I must admit. is in fact more impressive (in my opinion) than Brussels'.
There are loads of restaurants around the Grand Place, and we stopped and had a 3 course set menu at one of them, I've gotten the impression that Belgians are quite frugal, we had to pay extra to get bread for the table, and also, when we had a beer at Grand Place in Brussels, I had to pay 50 cents to use the goddamn bathroom. What a joke. So yeah, that's really affected my opinion on Belgians.
Anyway, we spent the day strolling around Bruges, and had a few beers in the oldest pub in Belgium, open since circa 1515. Very cool little place. After which we headed back to the station to go home to Brussels.
That night I was up till 2AM trying to decide where to go and find a hostel with availability. I settled on Paris... I mean, I'd only been there once in a 1yr period, so why not?
I departed ways with Vincent the next day at the station as he headed for Antwerp and I headed for Paris, and as I said farewell to one Melbournian, I found
Manneken Pis
The great hero of Brussels, he saved Grand Place from being destroyed during the French bombardment by pissing on a bomb fuse a quick replacement as I met the the Melbourne girl sitting next to me on the train.
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Sara-Beth
non-member comment
I agree
I think Bruges was much better than Brussels. How is your trip going...ok here but I am not much for Spain or the people. Too bad because it is a beautiful country, if you like arid habitat but the people lack a certain kind of decency for me. Lisboa, although covered in dog shit was nice because of the people. Hope you are well.