Touring Slow and Easy

Ah, the days slip by... Some great meals - more below - some very educational museum visits, about 11,674 miles of walking. Just what we'd hoped for!

The first touring day we got lost looking for the way from the train station to the Grand Place...and saw block after block of government and NGO buildings on our way to getting back on track. When we took the walking tour, we were seeing lots of places for the second time! A very energetic and knowledgeable Fernando took six of us in tow - two Italians, a Catalan a cheery little woman (business lawyer!) from Ho Chi Minh City and me and L - and although the basic rap was in English, he'd lapse into Spanish and Italian at key points to ensure he was understood. He was born in Argentina to Slovak/Hungarian family, and has a Belgian girlfriend. He said they spend a summer here and a summer there - I didn't ask what he was doing freezing here in December!

Anyhow, he gave us the history and politics of the place - how the French Burgundies and the Spanish Holy Roman Emmperors and the German neighbors ebbed and flowed over the place, ending up with One Country and three languages and FIVE parliaments in this little town - Europe, Belgium, Brussels region, the French language communities and the Flemish/Walloon region! Lots and lots of diplomats, attaches and secretaries, lots of temporary real estate demand, strange ethnicities, food and culture. Looking at the Royal Palace, we learned about King Leopold II who got the Congo for himself (not Belgium!), who loved columns (you can recognise his buildings...) and who copied his cousin Queen Victoria's palace gates.

Surprizes from the touring day - Art Nouveau with its leafy vines and wooden decoration was called here "Congo Style", influenced by the exotic woods and jungle experiences of the colonialists. The City Hall was built first one half with a gate at the end, then the tower and the other half. They were uneven, so the gate is off center to the tower and the gallery on the right proportioned to correct visually for the uneven size. (see pic's). The park where the beheadings took place when the Inquisition turned Belium into "Catholic or dead" was re-purposed to honor enlightenment, and ringed with statues representing the workers who came up through there to serve the rich at the top of the hill from the stinking swamp at the bottom. The Palace of Justice was built to impress - even to crush the spirit of the little people who might seek justice there. My first thought upon walking in was - a building can be big enough to inspire or ennoble. Bigger, it can dwarf or overwhelm. Sure enough, our guide showed us the long long long steps that linked the poor area at the bottom of the hill - built to discourage access. He said Hitler visited and was so impressed he asked his architects to copy it. Government or public buildings signal their linguistic identity with their flag - the red rooster for French, the iris flower for Flemish.

Finally, a lot of the historic buildings were demolished in the name of "Brusselization" - providing roads, boulevards and parking. Progress!

More later - I'll include some pictures. I'm eating the chocolate, by the way....and it's all it's said to be! The potatoes are fried twice (the best in animal fat) and the chocolate only heated once...so we're told.