August 2

I slept poorly last night. More precisely, I slept well from 10 pm to 2 am, then not at all from 2 to 6, then well from 6 to 9. I woke up covered in sweat, not at all refreshed. I’m normally up before 7, ready for the day.

Rather than mounting an expedition in search of breakfast, I ate in the hotel. Imagine your basic complimentary motel breakfast in most of America: serve yourself scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, maybe a banana. That was the fare here, except it wasn’t complimentary. When I checked in, I was told breakfast would set me back 23€ per person, or just under 27 bucks. (When I checked out, it turned out to be 18€, or $21.) When I planned the trip, I thought breakfast was included, but even at that, I didn’t plan on eating at the hotel.

Today I widened my radius of exploration by using the subway. First was the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart, or Basilique Nationale du Sacré-Cœur. For some reason, I was thinking this was another Gothic cathedral. I couldn’t have been much more wrong. It was built only a century ago. The cornerstone was laid in 1905, but construction wasn’t completed until after the First World War. It’s not Gothic: it’s Art Deco!

It’s somewhat larger than the two churches I visited yesterday. They claim it’s the fifth-largest church in the world. I know, the internet is never wrong, but various sources I’ve found put it no higher than 8th largest. Back in 1975, I visited St. Isaac’s Cathedral in what was then Leningrad. Through the mists of time and my poor memory, I believe they also claimed it to be the 5th largest. In any event, the Basilica is a significant building, erected at the behest of the King, as a symbol of national pride.

I wouldn’t say the weather was ideal when I arrived there, but I was a bit shocked to step out of the elevator onto the panorama (the walkway around the base of the dome) into a major downpour. Luckily, it was a minor squall and passed after a few minutes.

Next, I went to the Atomium. It was built for the 1958 World’s Fair. Very crowded. I asked for a senior ticket, but she charged me to standard adult fare. Backpacks had to be put into lockers, which were coin-operated. She kindly loaned me a 1€ coin.

I was a bit chagrined to learn that pay toilets are a thing here, particularly as I still haven’t converted any money. Fortunately, the ticket to the Atomium (where toilets cost 0.70€) also includes entry to the Design Museum, where toilets are free.

I don’t know what I was expecting at the Atomium. When you first enter, there are some exhibits telling the story of the 1958 World’s Fair. After that, I don’t know what to make of it. You proceed from escalator to staircase to escalator, moving from one globe to another. There are flashing colored lights and … noises? … electronic music? I was underwhelmed and it’s a mystery to me why it draws such large crowds.

The Design Museum basically had two exhibits: plastics and skateboards. I suspect the plastics exhibit is permanent. The skateboard exhibit is temporary. I found the skateboards more interesting than the plastics, and I’m not particularly interested in skateboards. I was thankful for the free toilet. We take our victories where we find them.

Outside, there are food trucks selling waffles and ice cream. I’ve been using my credit cards the whole time, but these food trucks were the first places I’ve seen where credit cards aren’t accepted. A waffle would have hit the spot right then. They look delicious, served with a dollop of ice cream and drizzled with chocolate syrup. Seeing that having some cash might be handy, I stopped at an ATM in the subway station and got 40€.

After a short break back at the hotel, I went in search of food. My daily wandering took me by the Ferris wheel next to the Palais de Justice. There’s always been a waffle truck there. I elected to go without the ice cream. The waffle was warm, drizzled with chocolate syrup, and served on a piece of waxed paper with a paper towel. It was warm and sticky and quite tasty.

One of the places on my list of potential sights was the Belgian World Beer Experience. I had walked by it the first day I was here. It looked like a bit of a tourist trap. I went in anyway.

It’s housed in the Bourse de Bruxelles building, the former stock exchange. Before going upstairs to learn about beer, you go downstairs for an archeological tour of the site. I didn’t expect that! Archaeologists excavated the site from 1988-2012. In the 13th century, there was a Franciscan church here, with a cemetery. In 1695, Sun King Louis XIV’s troops bombarded Brussels, destroying the nave and the choir down to the foundations.

Legend has it that it’s the burial site of John 1^st of Brabant, also known as Gambrinus or Jan Primus. Gambrinus would be St. Gambrinus, who embodied the joyful enjoyment of alcohol, and has even been credited by some with being the inventor of beer.

The beer museum was more interesting and informative than I expected. I learned that hops is a distant cousin of cannabis. One exhibit had funny quotes about beer. Frank Zappa said, “You can’t be a real country without a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some sort of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” And, from Plato: “He was a wise man who invented beer.”

To top it all off, admission includes a draft beer served on the rooftop terrace. They had about 50 beers to choose from. I picked the Chouffe Cherry. It was very cherry; sweet rather than sour. Not something I’d have on a regular basis, but I enjoyed the change of pace. Sipping my beer, looking out over the old town, I heard more American voices than I had since I got off the plane.

Beer gone, it was 8 o’clock, and time to find dinner. I was hungry, it was late, and I didn’t want to take a lot of time searching for a nice place, so I ended up at the same restaurant as last night – good food, friendly staff, English menu. Why not repeat, as long as I don’t repeat any part of the meal? Instead of the stew, I went for the meatloaf with the mashed potatoes/carrots. After the meatloaf, I asked for their second-best chocolate dessert. They brought out their chocolate cake. Served with a scoop of ice cream and filled with delectable molten chocolate, it hit the sweet spot.

My travels through Brussels may sound a bit … aimless. That’s because they more or less were aimless. I had a short list of sights that I thought might be worthwhile, but I didn’t have anything like an itinerary or a plan. If I went everywhere on the list, great. I had no doubt I’d like places that weren’t on the list if I just stumbled upon them. And, with only a handful of days to explore, I would certainly get back home and think, “I should have gone there!” So my general plan was to begin each day with a starting place, then improvise after that.

I picked my hotel because it’s in a network where I can use some points to cut a few Euros off the daily bill. It fit my budget, and it’s close enough to the center of the city that I could get around on foot. For a budget place, it’s in a nice neighborhood. The neighbor across the street is the Mission of the State of Qatar. A block away, there’s a very upscale hotel that I passed by every day. Often, a Ferrari was in the driveway. Once, a Maybach was parked out front.

August 1

My first destination today was the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. Amazing building. Construction began in the 11th century, and was largely complete in its current Gothic form by the 16th. As the national church of Belgium and the Primate of Belgium’s official seat, it frequently hosts royal weddings, state funerals, and other official ceremonies.

There are public parks all over the city. Some are tiny, some are significant. After the cathedral, I came upon one that was a little different than other city parks I’ve seen. City parks are all very well-manicured. This little park was a bit on the “wild” side – very little sign of curation other than the fountain and the paths.

Next, the sidewalk led me to the Oldmasters Museum, or Musée Old Master. It concentrates on works produced from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The museum was founded by Napoleon in 1801 and includes many artworks seized from religious institutions. This is an all too common story of museums. It’s definitely not good that museums all over the world are filled with stolen goods, but at least these artifacts are now kept in controlled environments for proper preservation (and sometimes restoration) and that they’re available to the public.

The temporary exhibit is Rene Magritte. Interesting work. I guess he did a lot of wordplay. I didn’t see a work’s title that matched the work. It’s like he played games in naming things. I saw one Magritte piece in their permanent collection – a bowler hat with a light bulb on the front. Not a painting, an actual hat with an actual lightbulb.

Magritte, like many artists, made numerous variations of many of his works. He had one, The Treachery of Images, that’s a painting of a pipe with the caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (this is not a pipe). The 1929 version of this is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In this exhibit, there’s one from 1962 called The Tune and also the Words. This exhibit also has a few other variations, including one that’s officially untitled, but is called “The Sexual Pipe”, where the stem is a phallus. He also had a thing about painting men in bowler hats, and a series of landscapes derived from an Edgar Allan Poe story I’ve never read called The Domain of Arnheim. Certain images repeat throughout much of his work, such as eggs or white balls with black equators.

The Old Masters collection is about what I expected – mostly religious. One hall was filled with giant pieces. I can only imagine how much work went into all of these. Some of them seemed somewhat anachronistic. I think of paintings of anthropomorphic landscapes as being a modern or surrealist thing, but there are a few here from the 16th century.

I had lunch at a little brew pub. I had two different beers, both tasty. I asked the bartender for a lunch recommendation. He suggested the Salade du maraîcher. I had no idea what it was; I’d never heard of it. Through the power of the internet, as I write this many days later, I’ve learned it simply means “market gardener’s salad.” I ate it without knowing even what was in it. Among other ingredients it was beefsteak tomatoes, grilled zucchini, roasted garlic, feta cheese, purple basil sauce, and a slice of sourdough bread.

After lunch, I found myself at another church, Église Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, or Church of Our Lady of the Chapel. It’s not quite as large as St. Gudula, and doesn’t look to get as much funding for upkeep, but it also doesn’t get the tourist traffic. This one was built between the 12th and 13th centuries. This church is only a kilometer (0.6 miles) apart. They’re significant structures. From what I can tell, the population of Brussels at that time was perhaps 30,000.

Both of these churches were built about the same time as the city was being enclosed by walls. I only found one small piece of the old wall (not that I was looking for it), and the museum about the wall was closed when I went. The original walls were about two and a half miles long. The defensive walls, though larger than the churches, were crude in comparison, as befits their purpose. If you think of wealth as being the accumulated surplus of production beyond subsistence, it seems inescapable that the vast majority of wealth went to the Church.

As I said earlier, I didn’t go to Belgium to eat tacos. I wanted to try at least a few traditional Belgian dishes. My very limited research suggested mussels, or beef stew, or meatloaf with mashed potatoes and carrots. And, of course, there are waffles and frites. And chocolate. At the hotel, I asked the desk clerk if he could recommend a nearby restaurant with good desserts. He wasn’t much help – he said I should find a restaurant with pictures on the menu. It’s not the worst advice for a monoglot American tourist, but I’m somewhat willing to be daring. He did, though, suggest I try something in the Sablon, a neighborhood of chic bars, fashionable restaurants, and chocolate shops near Central Place.

So I basically wandered around the Sablon for an hour, where I came across a place serving Belgian specialties that had an English menu. I had the beef stew. It was delicious. The typical beef stew I’m familiar with always has potatoes, onions, and carrots. This was just beef, and is made with beer. The side dish for the stew was frites. They recommended beer pairings with all their entrees. For dessert, I asked for their best chocolate dish. It was a mousse. Delightful!

On Blending In

I recently watched a movie where the characters were Americans in Europe, on the run from the bad guys. One character told the other to lose the backpack and baseball cap so he wouldn’t look like an obvious American. Here in Brussels, if you want to blend in as a local, a backpack and baseball cap are good, as long as the cap is for the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers. Also, feel free to wear a t-shirt with an American city name on it (New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago) or something like “East River” or “West Coast California”. But to seal the deal, to really fit in as a Bruxellois, smoke a cigarette.

I carried my backpack, rain jacket and umbrella in it, and wore my baseball cap. I wore polo shirts instead of t-shirts, and I don’t smoke. But there was no hiding the fact that I’m an American every time I opened my mouth to speak.