Bienvenue a Bruxelles

To the untrained, pedestrian (literally) traveler, Brussels, Belgium
(Bruxelles, is the local, more romantic spelling) is one very large
chunk of chocolate. Buildings of pale browns and beige, and architecture so fine, it could only have been carved out of chocolate.But please ignore my Pavlovian associations.



My first bonafide trip to a European country was to Belgium over the
weekend. Do not scratch your fine head dear reader for England is part
of Europe (geographically) just as it is a memmber of the amazingly
comical and amazingly amazing European Union(EU) but with a rider--
like only the English can describe so finely, in principle only. In
my, expert needless to say, opinion, Britannia is too snobbish to be
part of any club. I don't quite remember who I quote here when he says
"Put three Englishmen in a room and they will have invented a law
barring a fourth one from entering it". Which I estimate is how EU
works.



But really, most of my visit(s) have been centred around London and
this city is too cosmopolitan to be slotted as a European destination,
never mind its location. Besides, London is up there on its high
horse, commanding so much attention and intimidating you with its big
city-ness, that it fails miserably at fitting any Pentax- wielding
tourist's idea of a misty, cheery and quaint, cobblestoned haven of
warm people and warmer capuccinos.



So what was to be began with a train journey on Friday evening. We
took the Eurostar fast train from the international terminal at St
Pancras station at London to Brussels. Now you all know what a pretty
little fiasco the Schengen visa was to get and what monsters we had to
slay and what impediments we had to get out of the way. To all this,
the immigration counter at St. Pancras was the perfect anti-climax. I
expected to emerge from there, clutching my passport victoriously,
smile on face, UK border force demons under my feet and posing for
metaphorical shutterbugs but the officer stamped my visa without as
much as a glimpse. I could have stuck the Scooby Doo collectibles
stickers from some brand of pains on my passport instead of a visa for
all he cared. To add insult to injury, he even stamped the wrong visa
on P's passport. So much for all that talk about fighting terror and
hawk-eyed vigilance and our security being top priority. Wuteverr. (Or
maybe, they don't really care as long as you're getting out of the UK.
Or this could be their standard treatment of issues concerning the EU.
What? To Brussels, capital of EU? Hahah. Take that! From Britannia
with love. On to the trains now, vermin.)



I was super excited to take a train across international borders. The
trains pass through under-water tunnels. Did I expect to see sea-life?
I did. Oh what the hell. Yea, I'm who they call a dullard. There I was
thinking this will be an extended under-water sea-world type
expedition only to peer out the window to look at boring cement
tunnels. Bleh. Haven't they heard of fiberglass? (I must sound like a
literary critic at this point. Demanding a Marquez when given a Perry
Mason, and not seeing the point. What do you mean the train/prose is
just a means to an end? Form over function love!)



The train is, well, a train. Nothing beats the Indian Railways
experience, of course (this is my pacify-the-nationalists- trick) but
the muffled, constant buzz of the super-fast train (as against the
rhythmic lilt of our lovely carriages) has a strangely soothing effect
on its passengers and every one of them drifted off to sleep.
Including the cheerful businessman type fellow sitting with us. As did
Kaa and a very tired P. It seemed like the only ones on that empty
train who weren't sleeping were I, and one very smug French looking
person sitting across the aisle who, between reading about arthouse
cinema and the Haiti earthquake, paused from time to time to give me
patronising smiles. As if the book I were reading ( A Year In The Merde, an
unapologetically derogatory novel on Parisians and their way of life,
review coming soon to a blog near you) reminded him of his own days
spent as a foolish, uncouth youth.



We reached Bruxelles Midi station at about 22.30(Oh, I must sound so
kosher). We took the Simonis metro line to a place called
Louize/Louisa to get to our hotel. It being rather late and Brussels
being a city that sleeps surprisingly early, we were forced to eat at
a burger-joint called Quick. The burger tasted very exotic and my
heart went out to these people.



The next day, I woke very late, on account of my legs' point blank
refusal to move. We lazily dragged our feet over for breakfast ( I was
by now a little more enthusiastic, for obvious reasons) just as the
staff were looking to clear tables. I will not say much about the
spread. As little as European food has done for me thus far, I refuse
to antagonise the divine continental breakfast routine. These people
aren't stupid. What better way to start a day than with a
brain-pickling sugar high? Croissants, pains, buttered toasts, french
fries, tomatoes, mushrooms, fruit, yoghurt, syrupy juices, strong
coffees and WAFFLES! (I ate everything. Yes! I know!)



We started out to visit the European Union Parliament which is at the
corner of a sprawling park. The building itself is rather
disappointing. A tasteless glass building (I naively expected a 17th
century castle) which only looked like a prototype of any arbitrary
construction in Namma Bengaluru's Electronic City. All we could do was
stop and wonder at each point what any part of the structure housed
and what purpose it served, while speculating how Silvio Berlusconi
might use it. You get the idea.



By now, the terrible weather forecast was beginning to show itself in
true form like only grim forecasts seem to do. To beat the chill (It
was between 2 and 5 degrees with a chance of rain in the city), we
hopped on to one of its clean and comfortable buses and Brussels
showed itself to us.



Sitting here and writing this hours after returning home, Brussels, it
seems, was the pleasantest surprise one could have asked for. I didn't
expect a lot from this trip. It had been, in fact, reduced to a
formality because this was the port of entry of choice. I couldn't
really name any places of interest in Brussels before this and all I
knew about Belgium was that the chocolates were great stunning
devices.



It turns out Brussels is also famous for beers. And Belgian waffles,
which come topped with chocolate, whipped cream, strawberries, and
other fruity miscellany, hawked at street corners and every
boulangerie worth its baking soda. Brussels also has lovely towering
buildings and overwhelmingly beautiful cathedrals. I will always
remember the city by the sight of the Grote Markt-- The central square
flanked by the Town Hall and The City Museum. Around it are many, many
bars and brasseries where you can do anything from play card games to
savour crepes and the ubiquitous Belgian Waffles.



All the signs/ announcements in Brussels were in French and Dutch. The
Metro stations had all been beautified in different ways. One station
we saw had gothic sculptures. Another had very intelligent wall
graphics combining art, statistics and information about global
warming. London and its Tube being my only standard for comparison, it
seemed that the underground system in Brussels was (naturally) a lot
less frenzied. The people didn't seem to mind tourists too much and
are generally less stone-faced than your average Londoner on the Tube.
You can see punks walking around in mohawks spitting around with
reharsed disregard for public property and practising what seem to be
secret-handshakes. Ok, not so secret. And almost no busy area seemed
to be spared from graffiti and spray paint vandalism. My heart, it
sinks.



The Galeries St Hubert near the Grote Markt warrants jaw-dropping in
quite another way. Supposedly Europe's first shopping mall, this large
building houses posh designers, antique stores and busy coffee shops.
It has glazed roofs that filter sunlight onto entrants as slender shop
windows call for your attention to their classy wares. We got out from
one of its side exits to a street, hold your breath, full of roadside
cafes.



The marketing strategy of these cafes is quite simple. A waiter stands
outside the cafe and shouts, hollers and or flirts with prospective
customers noisily to coerce them into choosing his cafe. With us brown
people, they took to shouting out "Shah Rukh Khan", "Kuch Kuch Hota
Hai" and "Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham" to get our attention. I was all
doubled up with laughter. I even got one of the waiters to sing on
video for the camera.



That done, we visited a few beer shops. It seems that Belgium has more
chocolate and beer fountains than plain water fountains, and it's just
as well. This is what makes them special right? This store we went to
had over 250 kinds of beer!



Next we went to the St Micheal's Cathedral. A huge stone building
which I cannot begin to describe. The cathedral bears a marvelous
dichotomy. It has a very formidable high ceiling, but its stone
carvings and sculptures are decidedly petite, finer and very richly
detailed. The sculptures I saw in Belgium are very different from the
ones I saw in Britain. This is much finer work. Where architecture in
Britain (Roman) uses up spaces, the grandeur in these buildings lies
in its innate richness. St. Micheal's Cathedral was spellbinding with
its high ceiling, chiming bells and exquisite stained glasses. Like it
often happens, the becoming enormity of the architecture and
commanding waltz of light shushes one into a respectful silence. I was
only too happy to comply. To me, these buildings, each sheltering so
much history, witnessed piecewise, year by year, and in all its
physical being, the accomplishment of thousands of people is what art
really is. To go any further in trying to describe what I felt will
ruin the thought completely. We'll let pictures do the talking.



Lunch was at a brasserie called Magic Rubens, some place where
magicians performed in the evenings, going by the general scheme of
things. I loved the restaurant. Lively yet subdued and rather happy.
Time, it was, for more cheese and fries. They served a tray loaded
with five different kinds of beer, all local specialties. Erm, learned
as I am on the nuances of liquer, the most I can do to describe the
taste is that they all ranged from slightly bitter to very bitter.
Special mention-- the white beer(never seen it before) and my
favorite--fruity beer(Passionfruit we guessed).



We took time to visit Manneken Pis(Literally, boy urinating/pissing),
the famous statue of the cherub-like boy pissing with gay abandon(read
that like you used to when you were ten). This is a tiny statue which
everyone has seen some or the other variant of. Legend has it that the statue is of a little boy who went missing and to look for who, an elaborate search party was arranged. After an entire day of frenzied searching, they boy was found behind a bush, peeing to heart's content.
Another legend goes that Manneken Pis is the statue dedicated to the courageous boy who doused a fire threatening to raze down Brussels with his pee. Perhaps the Kannada proverb "Murthy chikkadadaru keerti doddadu" was coined with this bit of stone in mind. I hear there is a
Manneken Pis museum where the boy is dressed up as Elvis Presley,
Micheal Jackson, Santa Claus amongst others. All this for one tiny
statue from the millions in Europe. Brother!



The rest of the evening was spent in general touristing and in
welcoming the cruelly sombre weather. Dinner was at a Thai restaurant
with an overtly cheery waiter who patiently listened to our requests
and said "I understand" like we were sub-human retards. It was a good
day living up to someone's formula with all the ingredients for a
memorable day-- a sliver of surprise, a sprinkling of fate and a whiff
of new things.



The next day's visit was to the Atomium-- a 160 m tall metal structure
of large globes interconnected like the representation of atoms in
an organic compound. Each of these "atoms" houses exhibitions from
time to time. The topmost atom has a restaurant and offers a panoramic
view of the city. The gods of touristing decided to go off and have
tea and we were left with a long queue for the elevators, boring
exhibitions (one was on Belgian popular art or something, which
although interesting, was a little irrelevant to us tourists) and the
city blanketed in thick fog thereby panning what was to be a panorama. The Atomium
was pretty disappointing, but anybody could see that this place would
be far prettier in Summer (more crowded too). Opposite the Atomium,
some European Auto Expo was on at the convention center, and this
seemed to have attracted a zillion other cars to its parking lot. All
this was quite a view from the highest levels.



 After circuitous wandering, we had lunch at a falafel place which had
(Hurrah!) Internet. It was by now evening and we shopped for souvenirs
and chocolates and ate some more waffles (such joy, this tasting of
local delicacies). Then it was back to Bruxelles Midi for our evening
train back to Londres. This time, traveling with hundreds of other
passengers, including at least forty six men in oversized spectacle
frames, an entire rugby team, and an assortment of Belgian gentlemen
each of who I seem to have roguishly jostled to get to my seat, all of
who,hence, gave me derisive looks through the rest of the journey. I
also read of Brangelina's impending split. Oh dear lord. That's too
much for a weekend.