Brussels on Foot

We considered the idea of buying one of those tickets that lets you get on and off a bus that just rides around all the hot spots, but when we looked at the route, it was much more than we could ever digest in one day and our hotel room is within walking distance of the center of the city.  So never mind. One more day of walking on sidewalks.

Our first destination was a comic book museum that was established in 1989, about Belgian comics and the art of creating them.  We knew we would recognize two of them (Tintin and Asterix) and we didn't realize that the Smurfs originated here, although we actually missed the Smurf era. The museum is in a rare building that was originally a cloth store/warehouse in the 19th c.  Wide stairways, balconies, fancy iron railings, elegant spaces.  The exhibits were in Flemish (probably), French and English.  I was happy to find that I can still read more French than I realized, but the English was much appreciated.  The narrative was about the history and purpose of comics as a form of communication, storytelling, news, education.  The structure of comic strips was first established by monks, with panels and story balloons. Who knew?

You can just see some of the architectural iron work above the Tintin exhibit.

Every comic book you could ever imagine, if your imagination stops at the Belgium border.

Every Tintin book and action figure.

Asterix definitely gets second fiddle, but you can spend €2,500 for this model.

As we were leaving, Jon opened the door for some new visitors and said very nicely, "Bienvenue!" I looked at him oddly, and he started to doubt his choice of vocabulary, and then we just cracked up on the street.  We laughed so hard our stomachs hurt.  Jon's French is legendary -- he studied it for years and never really got too smooth. But he really believes in using it as much as possible when we are in a French-speaking place.

Next stop: the National Cathedral where royal weddings and important funerals happen. This was a classic, heavy duty building, started in the 14th c. and holding up well.  Large stone columns, statues everywhere, all very familiar. The only people we saw inside were tourists.

This pulpit doesn't look like a cauldron for cooking the clergy (see Hamburg).

It was getting to be lunchtime so we had to find the downtown area. It wasn't far away.  Narrow, winding streets with cobblestones, lots and lots and lots of chocolate shops, plenty of food, some hotels.  We had thrown off the constraints of eating regional food (being in such a multinational city), so we went into a noodle shop and had some delicious Thai soup and an udon noodle dish.  There were at least four languages we could hear around us, although we can't tell Flemish Dutch from Nederlands Dutch and we can only barely tell Dutch from German. And there was an unfamiliar accent to the Spanish, so perhaps it was Castilian.

We were ready for another museum, so we headed uphill to the Jewish Museum. The security was intense.  Had to wait for them to unlock each door as we entered, went through a scanner, another locked door.  The exhibit turned out to be all about Leonard Freed, an American photographer who documented many events and cultures and eras in the 20th c.  Israel in 1963 with a focus on the Hassidim, Brooklyn, Harlem, a series on police, jails in Chicago. He had a full career, all in black and white.  It was not what we were expecting, but it was much more interesting than it might have been. After that we went into the traditional wing and saw a few rooms of a small in-home synagogue, some art by Belgian Jews, and a bunch of rooms under construction. It is always interesting to see what museums do with the Jewish story.

Could be in France.

Many bottles are displayed in their own cubicles, I imagine costing thousands each.

Running out of steam, we headed for the Grand Place. On the way we stopped for an indulgently over whip creamed Belgian waffle near the landmark statue of the Mannekin Pis, which means little pisser in Dutch. The earliest mention of its existence goes back to 1451 -- it's a fountain that people got water from in the center city. A story is that a little boy saved the city from a foreign power that was preparing to blow up the city walls, so he peed on the fuse. Apocryphal.  It is a symbol of the people of Brussels, "embodies their sense of humor and independence of mind (Wikipedia)." It is pretty odd and apparently people keep trying to steal it so the real one is in a museum and the one outside is a copy.

A copy of the copy in the window of the store in which Jon is buying a waffle.

The Grand Place was grand on all four sides. Large, old, ornate stone buildings gilded with gold, a wide open square, people taking pictures, kids chasing pigeons. After several ineffective attempts to photograph this space well, we headed for home.

We walked past so many chocolate shops and Jon kept wondering how they all stay in business. We didn't stop but everything smelled delicious.

Dinner was at a small Turkish place directly across the street from the Bulgarian restaurant. There was no English spoken, but we muddled through with terrible French. The food was not as hot as Jon would have liked, but the flavors were good.