April 6 - April 7: Belgium (Brussels)

The next morning we took a short train ride, about a couple hours, to Brussels. Belgium has three official languages: French, Dutch, and German. However, most of the signs are only bilingual (French and Dutch). As I refer to Belgian things in this post, I'll be listing their French name first, and then their Dutch name.

When we were pulling into the Brussels Central (Bruxelles-Midi, Brussel-Zuid) station, it looked like a sketchy part of NYC, or west Philadelphia. I was a little confused and worried since I was expecting impeccably manicured gardens to greet me, as the AAA book led me to believe. Of course, it turns out the station was on the outskirts of Brussels and when we finally got towards the real Brussels, things improved tremendously.

Before I continue, I would like to note that in every city thus far (except Basel) in which I've used the public transit system, it's been an honor system. Yea sure, we bought a couple tickets here and there in Berlin, and in Vienna we actually bought a day pass since it was early on and we were still honest n00bish tourists. But we did take a lot of free rides in Berlin and we rode the tram in Brussels to our hostel without paying as well. We felt a little bad, but hey. Though we still saw locals buying tickets because there are spot checks occasionally. We had the luxury of witnessing one in Milan -- terrifying stuff. But I digress. Back to Brussels.

Our hostel was located in Grand Place (Grand Place, Grote Markt), more or less Brussels most well-known attraction. It is a wide open cobblestone square with lots of old, ornate, slightly gilded buildings. The two bigger buildings are a museum and the town hall. The rest are fancy restaurants and bars, with private residences at the upper stories, if I had to hazard a guess. There might've been a couple hotels too, but they would've been tucked away. The square isn't that huge after all.

This might be a hotel.


This is a museum. Our hostel is just tucked in the alley on the right in the picture. Excellent location!


Yea let's! ... Ok. This is a rare PSA-ish thing that actually makes smoking look attractive...


After putting down our bags, we hit the streets surrounding Grand Place, which are mostly lined with waffle, chocolate, beer, and souvenir shops -- in order of frequency. We got waffles at a place called Elisabeth (website is of the chocolate shop, but they have an ice cream/waffle stand adjacent to it which is what we went to). There are apparently two varieties of waffles. We got the Liège waffle, which is more chewy and doughy than the Belgian waffle (which is just like the Belgian waffles in the US). I liked this waffle a lot -- it was almost like bread, but waffle-shaped and waffle-flavored. I had whipped cream, bananas, and chocolate syrup with it. Consequently I had a severe sugar crash, but it was awesome!

Outside of the Grand Place a bit, we see the Brussels Stock Exchange (Bourse de Bruxelles, Beurs van Brussel). Lots of people sit on the steps during the day chatting with friends, eating, or just plain spending personal time.

We went to a café next to the stock exchange for dinner. Since it was only 6pm, the wait staff was a bit confused and thought we were just having "afternoon" tea. There were some language issues (a couple of the waiters we spoke to had trouble understanding English, and our French wasn't good at conveying what we wanted). Eventually they figured us out and we got a waiter who knew English. So we took a table outside in the "having a regular meal k thanks" section, as opposed to the "sipping afternoon tea and watching the world turn" section (we originally sat in the tea section so the waiter was confused when we tried ordering pasta dishes).

Belgian cuisine's not that memorable or unique. On the menu we didn't notice anything that we'd never tried before, save for some game meat. I had a linguine with pesto sauce because I wasn't feeling any of the stuff on the menu, but Ivy was brave and tried the vol au vent. It looks like a Yorkshire pudding sans filling atop chunks of chicken in white sauce. I tried a bit and I honestly don't remember what it tasted like, except a wee too salty.


After dinner, we decided to wander Brussels. The historical-ness of Brussels is mostly just limited to the medieval Grand Place, though we were only in Brussels for 24 hours and didn't see the whole city. Outside of Grand Place and on the street with the stock exchange, it looked like an ordinary city. But once we got off the stock exchange street and onto the side streets, things got more interesting and we began to understand Brussels' true nature.

Here's a shop selling a bunch of things I've seen at CMU. Yay slightly geeky toys!


But wait it gets better. Brussels is nicknamed the Comic City. This is because there are comic panels on the sides of some buildings (generally residential buildings or small businesses). I don't know if they're from real comic strips, but most of them have a Tin Tin + Miyazaki + Archie look to them. I'm not a comics connoisseur, regrettably.


The sun set in Brussels but people are still out and about, and eating. The Belgian waffle shops are still open! It must've been about 11pm when we were here.


Cafés are still very busy!

The place where we ate dinner, except it was still light out when we ate there lol.


An artist outside of Grand Place


Oh yea, forgot to mention earlier. This is the window next to our hostel's entrance... que?


We returned to Grand Place. Earlier we had been shopping for Belgian beers, since they are supposedly amongst the best in the world (a couple varieties have won World's Best Beer in the past few years so it must be good). We sat down and enjoyed them while taking in all the lights. There were other people "picnicking" on the cobblestones too. A couple young guys asked us if they could join us, but we didn't let them -- they probably wanted to drink our beers, or steal our money. Yea we couldn't take our chances.



The beers. John picked a Trappistes Rocheforte 8, which won Best Beer either last year or 2006. Jess picked the Brugse Zot, another Best Beer in recent years. Ivy took a recommendation from the beer shop owner, Liefman's Kriek. I bought a bottle of Kasteel Rouge because I loved it so much in Amsterdam. The Liefman's Kriek was fizzy when we opened it, hence the spill.


When Jess was still sitting straight up...


... but not for long.


We were pretty pleased with our cherry-flavored beers.


Later that night, this dude came by asking us for directions to the closest ATM or something. Then he came back and we all chatted with him a little more. Turns out he's also a study abroad student in our year, and he went to high school with one of John's friends at CMU. What a small world!

It was a fabulous night. The weather was perfect and we were surrounded by medieval buildings all lit up and pretty. There were other groups of young folks just sitting around and doing the same thing. At one point there was even a band playing for loose change. The whole experience was very bohemian. This is amongst my favorite memories of the trip.

The next morning, before heading for Paris, we had Belgian waffles for breakfast at the waffle shop we saw the previous evening, Gaufre de Bruxelles. Here's an awkward picture of me about to dig into my waffle. We all ordered Belgian waffles with Belgian hot chocolate on the side :). Deeeelicious!

We considered going to find the pissing boy statue (Manneken Pis), another symbol of Brussels. The Belgians like to have fun with it and dress it up in costumes occasionally. However, we didn't have the time to go look for him since we were heading to Paris! But next time... oh yea I decided I'll be returning to Brussels. 24 hours wasn't enough. I didn't expect Brussels to have more than just waffles and chocolate to offer!