I flew out of a bite-sized airport in a city called Ancona, about equidistant from Perugia as Rome, early Friday afternoon. My train left Perugia for Ancona at 6:55 a.m., though, so it was a loooong day. I didn’t actually make it to my hostel in Brussels until about 12 hours later. Since I’d booked this so last-minute, I had slim pickings when it came to hostel choices, and I based on hostelworld.com reviews, I was prepared to experience true hostel living for the weekend. I’d been lucky to stay in comfortable bed and breakfasts and one really clean and comfortable hostel during all my other travels, but I knew I was in for the real thing this time. The bedsheets they gave me had holes in them, and they didn’t provide soap in any of the (already fairly disgusting) bathrooms. They did, however, provide a continental breakfast in the morning. Seriously, I’d rather have them give me basic sanitary necessities like soap than shell out the money for a meager breakfast. I ended up buying a bar of soap at a somewhat sketchy convenience store Friday night, just so I didn’t have to feel like I might give myself a life-threatening eye disease every time I took out my contacts!
Anyway, it wasn’t the classiest or most comfortable overnight stay, but it was well worth it to see Brussels. After I settled my stuff in Friday, I met up with Erica and Ilana and we took a little walk around the area, eventually ending up in The Grand Place. This is the main square in Brussels, and anyone who’s seen pictures of postcards from the city will have this image of it. Cobblestoned streets surround it, and the buildings all look majestic, like something out of a fairy tale (see photos). I loved the architecture of the classic buildings and houses in Brussels. So different than beautiful Italian architecture, none of the clay-colored sloping roofs and stucco and bright green shutters with laundry hanging out the window…but instead layers of brick and stately buildings with top-floor, street-facing facades that loop up and down. Like no other architecture I’d ever seen before.
The Grand Place is a tourist mecca, filled with Belgian chocolate stores, each one more tempting than the next. There were also plenty of waffle stands and French fry stands, both Brussels staples, and a couple of Belgian lace stores as well. We ate a traditional “mussels in Brussels” dinner at a restaurant Ilana had been recommended, and I got mine “au gratin,” or as the menu described, covered and stuffed with melted cheese and nutmeg. Mussels two weekends in a row, in two very different styles, in two very different places. Who would have thought?
We wandered some more around the city center after dinner, and got ourselves some Belgian waffles from a particularly delicious-looking vendor. I ordered mine covered in hot chocolate sauce and rainbow sprinkles. We also walked over to the “Manneken Pis” statue, a well-known monument of a boy peeing, that was apparently constructed after a fire in the city? I’m not sure what the story is, but it was cool to see this thing in person. Later, we went to this art museum-turned-bar, where we ordered beer, a Belgian specialty, in the unusual peach flavor. I’m not one for beer, but this stuff was actually really good. The bar was pretty unique as well…they had weird techno-ish music playing, and it was inside some historic building that had super-high ceilings and art displays of trees along the walls.
The next day we utilized the excellent city maps we’d been given (created by local people around our age, they had amazing tips for sightseeing and walking tours) and hit up a bunch of the major Brussels sights in quick succession. We followed one of the walking tour paths recommended on the map, and saw the headquarters of the European Council in Schuman Square, where they make decisions about those lovely Euros that I (and every other study abroad student) can’t seem to keep in my pocket half as long as I’d like. Oh, exchange rate, you are the bane of my existence! But at least it’s gotten better since I arrived…
This area of the city, as well as other parts we walked through later, was a lot more modern, full of shiny skyscrapers and a world away from the cobblestones of Grand Place. Brussels definitely rivaled Barcelona in its multi-faceted personality. But more on that later.
After the Euro building, we walked through Museum Park, where the history museum, car museum and army museum are all housed. It was a nice, grassy park, with an arc de triomph-type entranceway. Later we saw Leopold Park, where the Brussels Zoo was once located before all the animals mysteriously died, and eventually got over to the European Parliament, another huge, glassy mega-building very reminiscent of the USA TODAY building where I interned last summer.
We used our handy maps to loop into another suggested walking tour, this one taking us through “Little Africa,” a neighborhood with African grocery stores, hairdressers, bars, you name it. Apparently 40-something percent of Brussels residents are foreigners (the map says so) and I think a good portion come from Northern Africa. This neighborhood obviously had a totally different feel than the ones we’d previously been through, and it again amazed me how versatile one city could be. And most strange to me in Brussels was how these polar opposite areas could sit one right next to the other, colliding into each other without any sense of where (or how) one ended and the next one began. This happened when we walked into Avenue Louise, the “snobby shopping” district of the city, with high-end boutiques galore. This came right after the slightly decrepit Little Africa area. We walked over to the Palace of Justice and took a glass elevator up and down next-door, for some cool panoramas of the city, and then metro-ed over to Atomium. This is kind of like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or Eiffel Tower of Belgium. It’s an enormous metallic atom that was made for the 1950-something World’s Fair, and today it sits strangely outside the city center next to a big parking lot. We took some pictures outside and saw crazy people hang-gliding from the top of it.
Erica and Ilana had to catch a train to their next destination, Bruges, after lunch, but since my plane didn’t fly back to Italy until the next morning, I went on my own to check out more of what Brussels had to offer. I followed another of the trusted map’s suggested walking tours, this one taking me to the canal area, where it said I would see one of the trendiest shopping areas in Brussels on one side, and the Moroccan neighborhood on the other. Instead I found myself in a neighborhood that looked pretty much shady in all directions, but after walking a bit I could see a few of the ritzy shops the map was referring to. Still, it was so intertwined with the depressed part of the neighborhood that I didn’t want to do much exploring. Instead I found an area near the St. Katherine Metro Station and happened upon an extremely intriguing-looking chocolate shop. Having not yet tried a Belgian chocolate, I indulged myself in a few handmade truffles at Frederic Blondeel, which turned out to be the most adorable little chocolate venue. Not a chain, like all the other places I’d seen in the main tourist area, but a place owned and operated by the guy it’s named after. These were some of the best chocolates I’d ever had. Feeling satisfied with my Belgian chocolate experience, I took the Metro over to the Royal Palace and Belgian Parliament buildings, which are situation on either end of a really pretty park, reminiscent of the park near Buckingham Palace in London. The Royal Palace was particularly impressive. After that, I walked back in the direction of Grand Place, passing the main cathedral which I’d seen the night before, a really ornate church very, very similar to the Notre Dame.
I set off in search of the “best waffles” in Brussels according to my city map, and serendipitously found the place, Mokafe, without meaning to. It was hidden among the stores in the Gallery, the big high-end, indoor shopping center that runs like a hallway connecting the Grand Place area with the area closer to the Cathedral. Despite its location in the pricy shopping mall, Mokafe had super-reasonable menu choices, and I got the most fantastic waffle, covered in bananas and powdered sugar and served with a piping hot bowl of hot fudge that I could drizzle over it to my heart’s content. I also ordered some kind of fruit drink with fresh banana in it that was equally incredible. I’ll also admit that later that night, after walking around Grand Place and window-shopping, I made a trip to Haagen-Daaz for some ice cream. I just couldn’t resist. Yes, I should be about 500 pounds right now. Gotta take advantage of the good metabolism (and lack of Diabetes) while I can, right? And besides, you only live once! When in Belgium, there’s no such thing as too much chocolate. Or at least that’s what I’ve decided. The same could go for pizza and gelato in Italy.
My waffle:
A few of the chocolate-store displays I couldn't stop snapping photos of:
One thing that really struck me about Brussels was the aspect of language. The fact that the city literally has everything written in two languages- French and Dutch- including street names and Metro stations and advertisements and menus. Almost everywhere people also spoke some English, and it just seemed in general like a city full of multi-lingual people, which really impressed me. Maybe it’s just Europe in general that’s that way…even tourists flipped back and forth, speaking in their native language to each other and then switching to French when a waiter came to take an order. I feel like an idiot for only being truly fluent in one language, when these people are able to master several and alternate back and forth like flicking an on and off button on a light switch. As I’ve written before, this semester has really given me a sense of how fascinating the concept of language is, and this visit to Brussels was just another experience that made me think about how much I would love to learn more languages. I’m really amazed at how comfortable I feel with Italian, and what a short period of time it took for me to feel that way…so who knows, maybe I can get French and Spanish to the same level as my Italian in the not-so-distant future.
But for now, Italian is my priority. With less than a month left in this country, I can see these last few weeks (only two before my parents/Melissa arrive!!) speeding by. I’m getting a bit nostalgic thinking about it already. There are some things about home (mainly the people, and the comfortably familiarity of it) that I can’t wait to go back to, but despite the challenges of this semester, there will be a long list of things, some intangible, that I know I’ll miss all the time once I’m gone.
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