August 3

My first good night’s sleep. I woke up twice, as previous nights, and at 2:00 was worried I’d get a repeat of last night. But all was good, I fell back asleep fairly quickly and slept until 8. I almost never sleep that late.

Today is another day of semi-aimlessly wandering around on foot. Rather than sitting in a restaurant for breakfast, I was looking for a nice bakery. Last night, I thought about that segment of city wall I found and tried to get more info about it. I found that there’s an old gate from that wall serving as a museum, Porte de Hal. Google showed me a bakery between the hotel and there, and off I went.

This is a fairly densely populated area, yet I don’t see too many grocery stores. There are little shops, like convenience stores, but they sell some produce. The only true grocery markets I’ve seen are much smaller than your typical suburban Safeway store, maybe a quarter of the floor space.

Just before I arrived at the bakery, I walked through a small square where they were setting up an outdoor market. Not a farmers’ market; it had a much wider variety of food. Between the market and the bakery, there’s a bar on the corner. It’s 10 am on a Sunday, and two tables on the sidewalk are full of guys drinking beer and singing happy songs.

Porte de Hal was closed. It’s being renovated, but is still open. Except for every other weekend. Evidently, this is every other weekend. Just my luck.

Next, I headed to Parc du Cinquantenaire. The only art in my hotel room is a picture of the arches there. I had no expectations as to what I might find of interest there, but it was somewhere to go. It’s a bit of a hike, but I enjoy a nice hike.

Just before I got there, I found myself outside the House of European History. It’s not on my radar at all. Entry is free, and they give you a tablet and headphones for the self-guided tour. Their exhibits cover European history, focused mostly on recent history. Brussels is the administrative home of the European Union, so it’s natural there’d be a museum focusing on European history after World War II.

It’s in the building of an old dental school. The central staircase features a giant hanging sculpture. It’s hard to describe and nearly impossible to photograph. It is 25 meters tall (82′), made of steel and aluminium. It’s called Voxtex of European History, and rises beside the staircase to the skylight, traversing all six floors of the building. I’d say it looks a bit like a giant squid, but that’s not it. The tentacles are ribbons of metal with letters and words cut out. The ribbons snake into the exhibits on each floor and feature relevant quotations.

Most of the exhibits cover territory I’m already familiar with – the industrial revolutions, the world wars, the cold war, the siege of Sarajevo. Very well done. On my way out, I asked if they had a water fountain. Not one you can drink from – you have to have a bottle. I meant to bring a Nalgene bottle with me, but failed. And I never buy bottled water, so I was without a bottle. I was directed to some vending machines, where I used the wrong one and learned what eau chaude is. I saved the cup. It may come in handy.

There’s a whole side of Brussels that interests me, but that I’ve ignored. NATO headquarters is here, as is the EU headquarters. This museum was a nice little taste of modern history, in contrast to all the 13th-century churches and 17th-century art I’ve been immersing myself in. It was a happy little accident, finding this place.

Only a few minutes after leaving there, I arrived at the Parc. It’s a nice, big park with beautiful trees and landscaping. I headed directly to the arches.

The arches look like many other triumphal arches. I can’t just look at a set of triple arches without going through and looking from the other side. Can you? When I stepped through, I was faced with a bunch of old cannons outside the entrance to the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History. Planes and tanks! Sign. Me. Up.

I could have spent all day in there. I was hoping for a bit more of it to be World War II, but they didn’t make the place to cater to me. The large hall is dedicated to aviation, spanning from the early hot air balloons to relatively modern jets.

I’ve seen a lot of planes. There was a big collection at Falcon Field in Mesa, in hangars next to what used to be the Confederate Air Force. I’ve been to the Pima Air Museum, the Air and Space Museum. Wings Over the Rockies at Lowry. I’d like to go to the National Museum of World War II Aviation in Colorado Springs. So I’ve seen pretty much every kind of plane that I know something about. Here, most of these aircraft were ones I’ve never seen before. But I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know why they’re in a museum. Only a few attracted my attention.

Tanks, on the other hand, I seldom get to see. I want to see tanks! The only WWII tanks were American, which disappointed me a bit. Ohio is loaded with Sherman tanks outside of VFW posts. They have an M-47 Patton. They also have a few German Leopard tanks. These were developed in the mid-1960s, used by the West German army (and Belgian Army, evidently). I was a big fan of these when I was about 10 years old.

These are outside, and the ground had tank tracks on it. I hadn’t thought about it, but you have to keep these things drivable. You don’t have to keep your museum piece Spitfire flyable, but if you can’t drive your tank, you’ll never be able to move it.

They have quite the collection of WWI items, including a few tanks and more types of artillery than I knew existed (yes, I’m prone to exaggeration, but I’m only exaggerating a little). In the technical hall, some exhibits showed many (all?) of the processes and parts required to manufacture sabers, flintlock guns, and rifles. Think “exploded diagram” but with the real parts.

Stumbling across two nice museums. I couldn’t have planned it any better.

As it was a Grand Prix Sunday, my next stop was a sports bar, where I watched the Hungarian Grand Prix and had a couple of beers. I had just stepped in the door, was putting my backpack down at a table with a view of the TV, hadn’t yet gone to the bar, when an older guy berated me in French for not having a beer. Dude, lighten up. Can’t I put my stuff down first?