A Motley Collection of Visitors

---

Bonjour,

Another little Brussels update.

The day I flew back from France, July 21st, was also the National Day in Belgium. I had forgotten about it until the flight attendants made an announcement on the plane that they would be handing out chocolates in celebration. It was quite funny actually as they made the announcement in three languages. There were many cheers on the plane after the French announcement (I was one of them because I understood the French), then there more after the Flemish announcement and then the remaining holdouts cheered after the English announcement.

I dropped my stuff off at my house and then fought what seemed like all of Brussels in order to get on to the metro to head back downtown to the celebrations. I got off at Gare Central and wandered around for a bit before heading to Grand Place. There were many Belgian flags hanging out of windows and along balconies, and it was interesting to see the national pride that the Belgians have.

I met up with Claude, Christina, Laura and Edith and we walked to an area near the Royal Palace. There was a massive Belgian flag draped over one of the buildings and it had a picture of the king and queen on it. In the square, there were many tents that were giving away samples of champagne, chocolate, smoothies and beer. Guess which tent had the longest line up? That’s right, the smoothy one. The line up was so long that I didn’t even get to try one so I was disappointed. The skies decided to open about then, so we only caught a bit of the flyover from the myriad military planes that had descended on the city but it was cool none-the less.

The group of us continued to walk down the main street towards the Palais Justice. There were thousands of people, 125,000 to be precise, milling around the street visiting the food vendors, face-painters, beer sellers and balloon animal makers. I also saw my favourite hats ever. They were inflatable crowns in the national colours of Belgium (black, yellow and red). I wanted to buy one but something tells me that people just would not appreciate me wearing one back home.

We continued along the street, deftly avoiding the marching bands and people in costume. They don’t clear the streets of people before they have a parade in Brussels, they just expect you to get out of the way. My favourite marchers were the people who were dressed up like jesters and had protrusions coming out of their upper chests for some reasons. The atmosphere was fantastic and the day was a lot of fun.

This past weekend, I had some visitors in town. Paula, one of my former co-workers from TRB came to visit from Hamburg. Rom, an Aussie friend who I had met in Berlin also happened to be in town for the same weekend. Our meeting point was a joint party for Mark and Taylor that was hosted by Xavier. Everyone dressed up and we, Cris, Monica, Mirjam, Gerlinde (my roomies), Paula and I, went out to the party. It was an awesome party with many people dressed up and some great music playing. It was also the last time that everyone who had worked in Brussels would be together in the same room before each person went back to their respective cities. Rom also came to the party with a couple of friends and it was cool seeing him again. It was funny though because people kept coming up to me and asking if I knew everyone at the party because I had brought so many people with me (8 in total). It’s nice being the guy who knows everyone for a change.

On Saturday, after far too little sleep, Paula and I headed off to Bruges. There is a bar that I love in Bruges, probably one of my favourite bars in the world, but it did not open until 4pm and we would have too much time in Bruges before it opened so Paula suggested that we go to the coast first. I hadn’t been to the coast in Belgium before, having visited the coast of France and Malta already, nor did I really want to go but Paula insisted and we drove to a little place called De Haan. It’s a small resort town of maybe 10,000 people and it is located amongst the sand dunes right on the water. The town has some beautiful Belle Époque buildings as well as many large houses so we decided that it may be the coastal beach get-away from some wealthy Belgians. The beach was nice and sandy and there were many kite-surfers out having fun with the wind on the waves. The water was warm as well. Even though I had just returned from the south of France less than a week earlier, I still enjoyed the Belgian coastline quite a bit.

We hopped back into the car and headed to Bruges next. The town is so beautiful every time I visit (this was my third time), but there are far too many tourist. It seethes with them and they all like to sit or stand right in the middle of great photo opportunities. The one saving grace about the tourists was that they drove me to seek refuge and I was able to find some pretty parts of the city, narrow streets, little courtyards and abandoned canals, which I had not seen on my previous visits. We walked through the Markt and then through the Burg before we went to the magical, special bar that I love so much. It was magical and special once more! I took Paula on my extended tour to the areas where tourists don’t tend to venture, and I managed to find my lavender purple door and the coolest patio ever en route. The patio has already featured in the blog, under the “Bruges” entry and the lavender door was purple to match the flowers growing around it. I came across a sketch artist who had some fabulous work, but he did not sense that I was still somewhat of a student and thus I could not afford the 50 euro asking price for his work. We then went to my favourite store, and I stocked up on beer, beer glasses and chocolate before heading back to the car and back to Brussels where we ended the evening in Place Flagey with a Duvel at Café Belga.

The next day we just visited Brussels. We met Rom and Palais Justice and I gave him and Paula my patented Brussels tour which, apparently, is quite international now as I have given the tour to Americans, Canadians, Maltese, Romanians, Germans and Aussies. I should really start charging for it. When we went to Grand Place, we tried to get someone to take a photo of the three of us. We have come to the conclusion that there are a lot of people walking around with cameras, but not a lot of people who know how to use them. When you take a photo of someone, you try to get the upper third of the body, their heads, and as much of the background as possible after that. For some reason, people think it necessary to cram everything from the shoes up to the sky into a photo, thus leaving the subject very small in the image. After having four people who apparently suffer the same poor photo talking syndrome, we continued on to Place Sainte Catherine and a pretty Baroque church nearby that I had not had the pleasure of visiting before.

We said goodbye to Rom, who had a train to the Netherlands to catch, before wandering through the EU buildings and back home. I said goodbye to Paula and then she headed back to Hamburg for work the next day. It was great seeing both Paula and Rom again, as it had been about a year since the last time I saw either of them.

Bye for now,

Peter

Things I learned in Brussels:
-Kite surfing is going to be the next sport that I will learn
-Inflatable crown hats are infinitely cooler than Napoleon hats
-Apparently chasing people over cars is something that stops at the German border

---