Yesterday we left Germany behind us. We left Trier at 7:30 and drove through Luxembourg on our way to Belgium. All we got to see if the city of Luxembourg itself were the buildings in the distance, as well as a traffic jam that extended outwards to Germany in the east and Belgium in the west (morning commuters heading into the city).
By 11am we had reached the capital of Belgium (and the capital of Europe as the locals like to say, since the EU is housed here. We were able to check in early and given some free time to get our bearings and grab lunch. I went with a group to a gourmet hamburger place across the square. It was the first hamburger I've had in weeks.
After lunch we went me our new coordinator, Paolo the Italian. He took us on the subway to the city center where we went to the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU. While it was neat to be there, the visit was a letdown. All we got was a 90 minute lecture in a classroom by a long-winded Danish journalist on the structure of the commission. We already had one classroom lecture on the EU back in Osnabrück, and the German professor there was far more captivating. Here the room was too warm and it felt like someone was sucking the air out, making everyone having to fight to stay awake, myself included. Too bad, since the subject was genuinely interesting. The biggest upside was being able to use their guest wifi network. With speeds approximately 40 times faster than any we have yet seen in Europe, my phone was able to upload the entire backlog of photos that had been waiting to post to the cloud.
After the Commission we took the metro back to the hotel and met Jos, a local retired Brusseler, who gave us a very thorough walking tour of the city. We learned all about the Belgian people, their disdain for conformity and authority and how it reflects in their architecture and culture. All of the buildings in town square are built in a different architectural style, for instance. He taught us that there is no such language as Flemish (news to me), but that Flemish is just the word for Belgians who speak Dutch. It's a slightly different dialect, and they don't have the "Dutch throat disease" with all the phlegmy syllables, but the language is the same. We also learned that of the 1.1 millions inhabitants of Brussels, fully 60% of them are foreign.
Jos walked us through town, from the town square up to the central station, to the upper city (I think he said 70 meters higher as the city is built on a hill) to a massive palace and square built in the 18th century when Belgium was Austrian-owned. We finished the tour by seeing the famous Mannekin Pis statue. Jos said this is an American icon and he's not sure why. To them it's just a local fountain like any other, and other tourists want to see different things. The Chinese, for example, run immediately to the house where Karl Marx wrote his communist manifesto to get their picture taken by it.
I had a light dinner with a few others at a local fry stand. The Belgians are particularly fond of French fries, having claimed to invent them. Then I was able to stay in for the evening. I finished reading Lord if the Flies and went to sleep. And, as I said, am rewarded this morning by feeling like I can't move. That'll teach me!
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