Postcard From Brussels (the complete unabridged version)

Day One
So nice to hear the music of the French language over the throaty noise of the Dutch. Alas I can barely hear anything above the rattling drone of my little Trolley Case being dragged over cobblestones. I am walking from Brussels central station to my hotel a 10 minute walk that takes me an hour and a half as I am sidetracked by ornate architecture and seduced by chocolatiers. I’m drawn to the Grand Place which is a beautiful central square surrounded on 4 sides (hence a square) by 15th and 17th century buildings with gilded statues. One building is crowned with a golden horse and triumphant rider raising a sword and others with Romanesque statues in classical poses, another has a Roman chariot being pulled by cherubs. Extravagant and breathtaking.
I am hot and frazzled having checked into my hotel. This is because I have no internal GPS (Sean usually does that), I get lost and the hotel is on a hill. I have not seen a hill for weeks (Holland is pancake flat) let alone trudged up one pulling Trolley Case.
But now free of Trolley Case who is resting at the hotel, I go to Musee Magritte which houses 150 works by Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte (1898-1967). His works are poetic, mysterious and his intent is to raise questions. It is not necessary to glean a meaning from them. For example one painting depicts a giant green apple filling the entire space of a room; in another a huge stone floats as if weightless next to a cloud in the sky. Another called “The Treachery of Images” depicts a pipe and beneath is written “this is not a pipe” (except it’s written in French). Other random objects that feature prominently in his paintings are spherical bells, bird-plants (sort of half bird half plant) and himself in his black coat and iconic bowler hat (often viewed from behind or with a bird or a pipe in front of his face). You would think perhaps that Magritte had a sense of humour however he was absolutely serious in his art. An intelligent man who had read all the philosophers he said “the art of painting is the art of thinking”. The perceptive centres in my brain do a double-take time and again and I find his work addictive. I walk around thinking “what’s next?”
My brain slightly aches and I am starving after Magritte so I succumb to a Belgian specialty - waffle with chocolate sauce from a street vendor. It is fried batter perfection, sweet and crunchy and nothing could have tasted better at that moment. Simple pleasures.
I am underwhelmed by Manneken Pis. The statue of a little boy relieving himself in a fountain is seriously overrated. An hysterical throng is eagerly snapping away at this little statue – it must be only about half a metre tall. And to top it off they have dressed the imp in suit and cavalier hat. The crowd milling around the base of the fountain is blocking the street (is it like this every day?) and I am waiting for the Pythonesque moment when little Pis yells “but I am not the messiah”. Ironically the legend goes that Manneken Pis was sculpted in 1619 in tribute to a little boy who saved the city from burning down by doing a wee on a flaming wick. So in some ways Manneken Pis is the saviour and deserving of my devotional adoration.
“Bonjour Mademoiselle, you speak English. You are so beautiful, where are you from?” I am hot stuff in Brussels. I have had no less than 5 ‘romantic’ approaches in my first afternoon here and my potential suitors range in age from about 18 to maybe 60. Subtle rejection has little effect but turning on my heels and walking in the other direction while they are mid-sentence works, as does shouting “DON’T TOUCH ME!”This must be an insanely good hair day or perhaps it is just Brussels. Don’t tell Sean (I am pretty sure he doesn’t read this).
Brussels also has more than its fair share of hirsute homeless psychos muttering angrily to themselves. One self proclaimed bearded homeless man has put up a notice in the Grand Place in English calling for an army to end the current civilisation. He signs off as ‘Leader of the World’.
The Les galeries Saint-Hubert is a beautiful arcade with cafes, jewellers, lace shops and chocolatiers all proclaiming to be purveyors of THE FINEST Belgian chocolate. Around this area are humorous and entertaining buskers. Another bearded one (Santa?) plucks a guitar and sings ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Midnight Sun’ – not very Europeanish. But the ambience picks up with the accordion players and the statue people.
Heading down a laneway choc a block with restaurants and their spruikers, I go to a serene restaurant called Vincent precisely because there are no spruikers. There are sadly no mussels – it is out of season so I have perfectly poached salmon and artistically presented potatoes which is lovely.
Back at the hotel I talk with Sean on the phone. I tell him how handy it is having all my toiletries decanted into miniature containers for this trip. He tells me about old Sarajevo, how he expects to come upon Jesus in his manger but finds badly repaired shell damaged buildings from the Sarajevo war.
That night I dream of shaking off irritating little dogs snapping at my ankles (the Belgian Casanovas?) while riding my weightless bike through the clouds in the sky (Magritte?).

Day Two
First thing I take a run in Parc de Bruxelles (Park of Brussels – but I am showing off). This is a formal and open park ornamented with statues including busts of Roman Emperors, immaculate green strips of lawn and paths fanning out from its centre. Quite beautiful.
Over breakfast of coffee and baguette with chocolate spread, I read the news of the plane crash in Libya that killed over 100 people including 70 Dutch Nationals with the only survivor little Rubens a 9 year old Dutch boy who lost his parents and brother in the crash. It’s so sad. When you are in a country and do not speak the language current affairs kind of seems surreal.
I am too early. Nothing opens until 10am so I wander. I get lost outside St Catherine’s church and some Belgian workers assist me with a map. “From what country are you? Ah Australia, kangaroo, eh?” One of them flops his wrists and makes kangaroo paws with his hands. I am forever getting lost but it’s OK because there is always another magnificent architectural marvel to gawk at or some Belgian to discuss marsupials with.
Brussels has a million museums (give or take) including a beer museum, lace museum and a bank museum but the first I come to that piques my interest is the comic strip museum which explores well known Belgian comic strip artists including Herge creator of ‘Tintin’ and Peyo creator of the ‘Smurfs’. Everything is mainly in French or Flemish (Dutch) but I take away an English version of “The Adventures of Tintin: Flight 714” whose first caption reads “A Qantas Boeing 707... Flight 714 from London arrives in Java, last stop before Sydney, Australia...” Can’t wait to read it. Belgians love their comic strips especially Tintin. He and other comic strip heroes are painted onto the external walls of buildings in the city and there is even a Tintin shop. Tintin is an everywhere man not only in Herges comics where he travels the world but also in Brussels city.
The Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (that is Belgium’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts) includes both Ancient and Modern Art collections. The Ancient art museum includes the Flemish Primitives (15th century) where the majority of works are oils painted on wood as canvas was fragile and did not last, and then covered in varnish so brush strokes are not apparent. These are generally portraits or paintings of religious or other narratives such as the horrific and violent stories of Saints (including Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara). Peter Bruegal and his ancestors are the main attraction for me out of the 16th century art because I like the jaunty, happy scenes displaying village life in his paintings. There was a Rubens room with at least 8 gigantic paintings by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). I’d say the canvases were 6 by 4 metres. Rubens was a genius of the Baroque genre known for its elaborate detail and clear emotion in its subjects. All of these paintings were religious stories featuring muscular males and fleshy women draped in sensuous fabrics of intense red, gold and blue. Cherubs with blushing bottoms descend from the sky as heaven and earth merge.
Works by other artists who worked with Rubens were present including Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) and Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) who also had paintings of largish proportions (?2 metres square) featuring religious, mythological and history scenes. Expressive faces, fleshy females and bottoms with cellulite featured in Jordaens work. In the Modern Art museum I liked Leon Frederic (1856-1940) who painted large canvases of Belgian peasant families: course bearded men and fair women and children with rounded stubby noses, fingers and toes all with melancholic expressions going about their laborious daily lives. There were also Rembrandts, Van Gogh’s, Gauguin’s and a Rodin sculpture to name drop a few.
In my thus far microscopic amount of experience living in Europe, Europeans seem to have less respect for the custom of queuing than Australians. I maybe wrong but this is my experience so far. I feel that I must ferociously guard my spot when I am waiting for service and I believe I have developed my assertiveness skills and in doing so created a new “don’t mess with me” persona that I can use when the need arises. Only last week in Amsterdam, a man pushed in front of me in the line and I picked him up on it. I said “I have been waiting longer” and he said “that’s not the way we do things here” and I said in a BIG VOICE with contempt and derision “PARDON ME, MY MISTAKE”. Unfortunately my nasty persona didn’t get me anywhere because he would not budge. In Brussels today at the museum, I watched a middle aged couple walk from the street and stand straight in front of me in the queue in which I had been waiting 20 minutes already. I did my best death stare and pushed in front of them. (Possibly my bag touched them too so “that’ll teach them” I thought). So, then the middle aged couple are behind me and after a few minutes the youngsters behind them can’t stand it any longer and approach the couple who I clearly saw jump the line. The whole argument occurs in French but is very amusing. The middle aged couple actually deny that they queue jumped and insist they were in line the whole time. The cheek! But the youngsters gang up on them (strength in numbers and all that) and the middle aged couple are forced to join the end of the queue. The youngsters cheer.
For dinner my restaurant of choice is Les Chapeliers on Rue des Chapeliers off the Grand Place. At first I am the only one there – I wouldn’t have entered if I had’ve known that but I am already inside and the waiter wearing a black waistcoat and bowtie and white apron finishes his own dinner and charmingly convinces me to stay. The restaurant is tiny with exposed brickwork, rough tiled floor and dark stained timber joinery – it was probably the same a couple of hundred years ago. Soon the restaurant is filling up and I chose from the menu Fricasse de Lapin a la Gueze et Pruneaux, Frites which the waiter says is Rabbit Stew in beer with plums served with fried potatoes. Bon Appétit Madam!
Later at the hotel, Sean and I talk on the phone. He is waiting for his steak in a Sarajevo restaurant with a multicultural conglomeration of colleagues – Canadian, Welsh, Polish. He says tomorrow he is going to see a cave. This is something to do with work I assume.
That night I don’t dream but fall into a coma from museum fatigue.

Day Three
After I wake, I lie in bed for 45 minutes wondering what to do with Trolley Case because today I must check out, but I don’t want to go home straight away and I don’t like dragging Trolley Case around with me everywhere. For breakfast I have baguette with chocolate spread again because the other choices are jam (ho hum) or pate which is bright pink and looks scary. When I ask the concierge if Central station has lockers to accommodate Trolley Case he says “Of Course Madam”. Problem solved.
After I have checked Trolley Case into a locker, I go to the Museum of Musical Instruments because I have heard good things about this internationally renowned centre. It is housed in a late 19th century Art Nouveau building designed by Vicor Horta who designed many buildings of that period in Brussels. I am given some headphones and due to a special infrared system when I stand next to a musical instrument in the museum a piece of music is played into my headphones using that instrument. Hence everybody in the museum is dorkily bopping or tapping or swaying in their headphones without knowing they are doing it. I see one boy playing ‘air flute’. The collection is extensive and includes ivory horns from the Congo, sitars from India, lutes and fiddles from Armenia and Turkey, Zithers (a long wooden stringed instrument), a hurdy gurdy (played by blind beggars in Belgium in the 19th century apparently), shepherds bagpipes from Bulgaria (aha, not just Scottish then) and panpipes from Slovenia. There is Brussels court music from the 16th century, the music of Adolphe Sax (1814-1894), the Belgian who invented the saxophone and musical instruments from the time of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 –1791). On the top floor of this distinctive building which used to be a luxury department store when it first opened is the museum restaurant which has what must be the best view of Brussels. I order the least expensive item on the menu so I can take in the panorama. It is a chilled gazpacho with bread rolls of the type that leave an embarrassing dusting of white flour on my nose and chin. But the view – gothic spires, green tinged domes, little red and dark grey rooftops with multiple chimney spouts and over to one side the gleaming 100metre high chrome look atomium. Built in 1958 for the world fair it is silver balls joined with struts into a cube shape and looks like something that has fallen from space. It’s futuristic appearance makes the city of Brussels look even more ancient.
On the street again in an unnamed shop on Rue de la Madeleine, I meet a Belgian cliché. The proprietor of the antique map and book shop where I buy some Brussels postcards from the 1950’s wears black trousers and starched white shirt and black vest over his portly abdomen. The pièce de résistance is running across his top lip – a black permanent marker like line of a moustache. He is an Hercule Poirot or Inspector Jacques Clouseau in real life! “Merci Madam”.
Outside the Les galeries Saint-Hubert again, there is an illusionist doing something funny with a glass ball and I watch for a while but what has got my attention is the number of beggars in Brussels. Men sit on the street with upturned caps and women with a child on one hip proffer paper coffee cups in their opposite hands towards the faces of tourists. There is a man whom I have seen a few times with 3 golden cocker spaniels under a blanket with a sign “Please my dear people. Have no money for food”. But today he is lucky and I see him eating a waffle with ice-cream which is what I would eat if I was homeless on the street of Brussels but I am lucky I am not.
A voice from a cafe grabs my attention: “Mademoiselle, where are you from? Ah, Australia, I love the skippy!” and he hops.
Time to go home. I feel like being ignored again in The Hague. I collect Trolley Case from Central station, miss my train by seconds and wait for the next one.