I still call Australia home

I am not sure if I am getting home sick of just seeing things but for some reason Brussels seemed to remind me of home???

What do you think these photos are telling me?

Brussels: Biĕre and Balls

With a light drizzle bringing a shine to the grey cobble stones and just enough to make the streets move at a slightly quicker pace, we went for a quick look at the new part of town dominated by the EU Parliament. On a weekday the area would be overflowing with politicians and eurocrats consuming vast quantities of the worlds rainforest but on the weekend it was earily quiet.

Brussels is also two cities in one with everything from street signs to shop names being written in both Flemish and French. I was amazed to read about the historical divide that continues today between the Flanders people of the North and the Wallonia of the South. Somehow the country is held together with the help of the Royal Family. We stopped in at their Brussels home, the 'Palais Royal'. The doors are thrown open for 1 month a year to let the poor locals and the inquisitive tourists stare in envy at the luxurious furniture and extravagant gilded ceilings.

Another stop on the tourist circuit was the ‘du Cinquantenaire Arcade’. Really a poor attempt wannabe Arc de Triomphe without the awe-inspiring bit. Our guide book noted that it was dreamed up by Leopold II while he was suffering from Paris-envy. Continuing with the uninspiring theme, next door was an AutoMuseum. Not something normally on my list of must do’s, the kids needed a break so we went and explored everything from the first Ford to the classical Ferrari.

They had slightly better luck in creating awe with our visit to the biggest balls I have seen since my last game of nude petaunque. The Atomium is an iron molecule on steroids, magnified 165 billion times to become a unique place to climb and get a view over the City below.

Brussels has lots of other claims to fame. Now when it comes to food, the staple food item for Belgium is - as Homer would say…..”mmmmm Beeeerrrr”. I had no chance of tasting all the types of Biĕre produced in Belgium with there being more breweries than the total population of Brussels - well almost. Brussels is also famous for its bars and clubs. There was even one that I walked past with lots of friendly men who wanted to by me a drink. I am not sure why it was called ‘L’homo Erectus’.

And how could we forget one extra stop to look at a statue of a little boy peeing. Surrounded by a hoard of tourists taking photos of the Mannekin Pis, you wonder how he still doesn’t manage to get stage fright.

With the weekend coming to a close and a long 6 hour train trip ahead of us it was time to say goodbye to Brussels. I wonder if we can squeeze in one more weekend to go to Bruges…. Or what about Ghent…. Or may be we could go to……

Brussels: Moules and Music

Hurtling along at 200km/h in the Eurostar, the Belgium countryside passed by with a blur. What I could see was similar to England with a flat checker-boarded landscape of fields disappearing into the horizon.

Arriving in Brussels it was obvious that it was really two cities in one. The Old Town is all about Art Nouveau facades, narrow lanes, pedestrian squares and throngs of tourists. The new part of the town is more like drab non-descript government buildings, wide boulevards, traffic and Eurocrats.

We spent much of the first day in the old town wandering in and out of cobble lines ‘rues’ (streets). As you would expect, there were shops full of chocolate in all shapes and sizes. Adelaide had great fun going into each shop asking for a free taste. The streets were full of buskers playing everything from the violin to 2 tin cans and crowds of people watching people sitting at tables watching people watch them. The music echoed across the square and mingled with the noise of guests dining and the clink of glasses of ‘Chimay’. It gave the place an exciting buzz that somehow managed to remain relaxed at the same time.

The centre of it all is the ‘Grand Place’. Like the major centrepiece of a table, the Grand Place is a bold statement of 15th and 17th Century baroque and gothic buildings surrounding an open square. The intricate stone calving adorning the buildings giving the place an almost surreal quality.

After an exhausting day we made a beeline for one of the many restaurants, each with tables spilling over into the narrow alleys, advertising ‘moules (mussels) in wine’, ‘moules in cream’ or ‘moules in something that I really didn’t want to know’, for exorbitant prices. And to finish it all of, waffles smothered in a thick layer of chocolate drowning a lone banana.

A wonder back to the hotel through the ‘Royales Galeries Sint-Hubert’, Europe's oldest glass arcade opened in 1847. This iron and glass arcade reminded us of the Strand with expensive boutiques selling fabulous jewellery, lace, hats and bags as well as trendy cafes.

With the thought of looking at more chocolate overpowering, even for me, it was time to call it a night.