A Layover in Brussels

My flight to Brussels was uneventful (I even found the headphone jack and the button to recline the seat!), and they let us off soon after landing.  Transfers within the EU were instructed to go to Gate A, and I suddenly got nervous that leaving the airport would be a bad idea, that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back in.  Reminding myself of the eleven hours until my next flight, though, I resolutely followed the exit signs. 

At arrivals, I found an ATM and then a quiet area to dig through my suitcase for my toothbrush.  Dental hygiene never feels quite so good as it does after eight hours on a plane.  As I scrubbed my teeth in the airport ladies’ room, an older fellow—though not old enough to make dementia likely—strode into the room and used one of the stalls.  He clearly thought I was confused and in the wrong place as he brushed past me, but his own mistake dawned on him as he washed his hands and encountered another woman headed past the hand dryers.  Nothing much he could do at that point so, with an embarrassed shrug, he dried his hands and left.  I chuckled smugly, my own jet lag having not asserted itself quite so impressively just yet. 

That changed swiftly once I left the bathroom.  I asked at the information desk about luggage storage, and, wandering through some airport construction I found it, but the console only accepted coins as payment.  I blundered back upstairs to a café and bought myself a cup of scalding hot tea I didn’t really want, then got back in line to buy a juice I also didn’t want when the first transaction failed to yield enough coins as change.  Spilling tea on my hand, I finally got my luggage stowed.

Unburdened, I found the trains to the city, and attempted (repeatedly) to use my Visa to buy a ticket from one of the machines, despite its repeated rejections and my having read in my Rick Steves guide that those machines would not take American credit cards.  Foggily, I returned once more to the level with the information desk and asked what to do.  Clearly accustomed to dealing with the jet-lagged, they kindly suggested I use the staffed ticket counter, located and well-sign-posted right next to the machines I’d been trying to use.  Taking their suggestion, I bought a return ticket, blundered around the station a bit, assiduously collecting incomprehensible-to-me train information printed in Dutch, then found a likely-looking train and sat on it.  A screen at the door of the train car flashed upcoming destinations in Dutch and French.  Though I’ve never studied either language, I was quickly coming to find the French comforting in the absence of English—its similarity to Spanish often allowed me to puzzle it out. 

Smurf statue by Central Station

At Brussels Central Station, I got off the train and wandered empty halls, past a closed shop with a window full of statues of Smurfs and TinTin, and left the station out a door that led to a courtyard dominated by a massive (and oddly white) statue of a Smurf.  Rather than be sensible and find a street sign to locate my position on my laminated Streetwise map, I immediately scampered past the Smurf and up some steps into a large, empty plaza, then into a street market of booths selling furs, Renaissance-style clothing, and wooden carvings of goblins and mushrooms (that last booth manned by an evidently-committed fellow with goblinesque ears) but no food. 

See the ears?

I needed something to eat.  I was still hungry after the delicious, Moroccan-vegan supper on the plane, and the puny roll and fruit cup they served hours after that had hardly sated me.  But I was surrounded by tall, beautiful buildings and crowds of people, and didn’t want to stop looking at everything just to find food.  I saw a tall tower beyond the buildings around the square, and headed toward that.
This navigation strategy failed swiftly—Brussels is a hilly city, and what’s visible on one street corner is hopelessly out of sight a few blocks further on.  I noticed a massive dome in a different direction from the original tower, and tried to find that—also to no avail.
I finally decided to consult my map.  No street signs were visible, and even after some puzzling I couldn’t figure out where I’d exited the train station—no Smurf statues on my map. Still, everything around me was bright and busy, and lots of shops, full of souvenirs and chocolate and lace, cried out to be looked at.

Turning a corner, I stumbled across the Manneken-Pis, a much-vaunted bronze statue of a little boy having a wee into a large fountain basin.  He was tiny, much smaller than I’d imagined or than they had reproduced him in chocolate in the souvenir shops.  Still, I joined the crowd milling around him and dutifully took pictures. 

Manneken Pis

Continuing to wander, I passed a shop selling Belgium waffles.  Finally starving enough to pause my wandering, I got one with kiwi and Nutella, a surprisingly delicious combination.  Waffle in hand, I walked to the end of the street and came upon a huge square full of very large, important-looking buildings.  It turned out to be the Grand Place, a square full of museums and the Town Hall, much-frequented by tourists.  I leaned against a wall to eat my waffle—splotching Nutella all over my face—then took a seat on an unguarded…I actually have no idea what it was.  A trailer?  A moveable platform stage? No idea, but I sat there to plan my next step. 

Town Hall in the Grand Place

A large botanic garden marked on the map called to my botanist’s daughter’s soul.  I worked out a path from the Grand Place to the garden, and headed off.  En route, I stumbled across a large and important-looking cathedral, which I had made a note of from my Rick Steves, but could not locate on my map.  It was becoming increasingly evident that Streetwise and Rick Steves had not consulted with one another when producing their respective products—streets Rick Steves gave in addresses for tourist info points were completely absent from Streetwise’s street guide, and large, well-marked attractions on the map had not merited a passing mention from Mr. Steves.  I did eventually find the cathedral on my map, a tiny symbol labeled with a scrunch of abbreviations calling it Saints Michael and Gudule.

Beside the cathedral was a large, modern-looking building at the top of which a strange, unlikely-functional construction of metal tubes echoed the shape of the cathedral’s two towers.  Was it modern architecture adapting to complement older structures?  An attempt to draw attention from the church to the otherwise unremarkable modern building?  A trap to confuse the truly sleep-deprived church enthusiast?  I didn’t know. 

Cathedral of Saints Michael and Gudule and echo towers nearby

Inside, the church was beautiful, but it’s easy to get tired of churches—they’re usually free, and they’re all over, so even when one isn’t planning to stop in them, one does—so convenient to pop into a shady, cool, quiet building with pews to sit in while reading the map or skimming a travel guide, even a place to surreptitiously scarf down some food out of the wind.  So I see lots of churches traveling: big spaces, high ceilings, lots of carvings, stained-glass windows, some Medieval or Renaissance-era paintings of celestial figures, an impressive cross, sometimes incorporated into tombs, and some sort of candle-bearing chandelier-type thing.  They all start to blur together—even the really impressive ones like St. Peter’s Basilica.  The real enticement for me in a church (besides the indoor place to sit) is a climbable tower, and Sts. Michael and Gudule lacks this feature.  I dutifully wandered a bit, watching a young employee with a rainbow duster and brightly-colored spray bottle of cleaner tending to a venerable, ornate wooden statue, a contrast which greatly amused me.  I tried to take a surreptitious phone photo, not wanting to be a complete jerk of a tourist to the poor cleaner just doing her job, but still wanting a visual memory—but it blurred badly, and I felt too guilty to try to take another one.
Eventually, I gave up on appreciating monumental religious architecture and left, continuing on through the Parc du Bruxelles.  I don’t know that we have many parks like this in the US, though maybe I just don’t encounter them.  There was a great fountain at the center, spoked by white gravel walkways lined with benches and tall old trees.  Grassy areas surrounded the paths.  People in business clothes and parents with babies in strollers and scantily-clad sunbathers abounded.  Joggers were everywhere—I saw them repeatedly running up hilly paths.  Belgium must be a nation of fit people, if this park was any representation.
I sat on a bench, and photographed some ducks, and eventually found my way out of the park to the Rue Royale, which I intended to follow to the Botanic Garden.  As I walked along it, a huge obelisk came into view, and I started to wonder if I’d made a wrong turn.  Rick Steves mentioned no Brussels obelisk, and my map had no monument marked along the road I was following.  A street sign on a building at a corner confirmed that I was in the right place, though, so I wandered over to see what the obelisk was about.

At its base were two guardian lions and a basin full of flames—eternal flame seeming to be a preferred feature at war memorials.  I correctly guessed this one to be dedicated to World War II, and spent some time admiring and photographing.  What really amazed me, though, was that this hadn’t merited a sentence or a label—this huge, important-looking memorial, clearly not newly-built—in my Rick Steves guide or on my Streetwise map, and both of these are detailed, helpful resources for travel.  I think that’s one of my favorite things about Europe—it is so brimful of history and culture that it’s impossible to keep from tripping over it on every corner and yet also impossible to delineate all of it to aid the traveler.  I’m sure that the obelisk is on some map and in some guide, but there is so much here that it’s possible to simply leave it out. 

World War Two obelisk on the Rue Royale

I left the obelisk and continued down Rue Royale to the Botanic Garden.  A beautiful glass greenhouse sat at the head of the garden, a lily pad pond massive in front of it.  There were green hedge mazes, spaces filled in with flowers and trees, a fountain, shady paths, benches, and statues everywhere.  I took zillions of pictures, wandering all over, trying to take in everything.

Periodically around Brussels I noticed a light floral smell, traceable to no visible flower, and here that abounded, still specifically untraceable to any of the plentitude of flowers.  I wandered by ponds among very old trees, and sat on a bench to cool myself and read the map. 

Le Botanique in the Botanic Garden

After I’d had my fill of the Botanic Garden, I made my way to the Cartoon Art Museum, an unusual attraction that Brussels boasts to the delight of comics enthusiasts such as myself.  It resides in a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright style building, lovely itself, and was quite well-done.  I had hoped for some Bill Watterson, but to no avail.  Though acknowledging the Hearst/Pulitzer/etc. newspaper competitions that gave rise to the funnies as they are today, Belgium has its own long and rich comics history.  TinTin and the Smurfs are the ones to have made it overseas (neither of which are particularly familiar to me), but there are many, many more.  The only American comic besides The Yellow Kid and Little Nemo in Slumberland to be featured was Beetle Bailey, oddly given as an example of a “press cartoon” offering commentary on current events.  Indeed, despite their Smurfs, the museum had a decided preference for realism in comics—there were long sections devoted to war strips, and the display about graphic novels was positively condescending, insisting that only those with “real-life” stories were worthwhile, declaring the medium not “well-suited to works of pure fiction.”  This seemed a peculiar snobbery for a cartoon art museum to evince; perhaps an attempt at claiming a legitimacy generally denied to the medium?

The Cartoon Art Center from the balcony

 As I got deeper into the museum, the description were less and less frequently offered in English—they quite clearly couldn’t imagine a visitor who spoke neither French nor Dutch having that dedicated an interest in strips exclusively in those languages to persevere so far.  I took advantage of my linguistic ignorance to climb on one of the displays, only 95% certainly intended for that purpose. 

It was completely okay that I sat there, right?

Despite this benefit and my determined persistence, I slowly tired of looking at fascinating but incomprehensible comics, and gave in and used the offerings of the museum all could appreciate—free bathrooms and wifi.  I tried to squeeze in a little architectural appreciation, but my photos inside buildings are usually uninspired, and I was exhausted and starving.

Heading out to find food, all the places that had looked easy and cheap earlier were either nowhere to be found or closed.  I was tired and hungry to the point that making decisions was hard, so it was quite fortunate when, back by the botanic garden, I came across a grocery store.  I got myself a triangle sandwich (the best kind of sandwich) and a pastry, and stumbled back to the garden to eat. 

Triangle sandwich

After relaxing there a while and watching a small girl feed a hedge Mentos while her mother looked on fondly (mother had another baby with her; she may have just been grateful the toddler wasn’t feeding the baby Mentos), I headed back towards the train station, coming across it much sooner than I expected, and in a very different place from where I thought it ought to be.  I found a train going to the airport.  Once again, my ticket went unchecked before, during, or after the ride—€17 spent entirely on ethical principle, something which doesn’t carry quite as much weight when you’re feeling jet-lagged and exhausted as it does when feeling more refreshed.

At the airport, I went through a great deal of bother and wasted €2 struggling with the luggage lockers and a change machine, but finally retrieved my suitcase and hauled it through customs.  Inside the airport, I tried to arrange my luggage contents without being a disaster or thief-magnet, and located the gate on my boarding pass.  Having seen several young people crouched in awkward places, tethered to an outlet by a charging cord, I found one for myself (fortunate—I was nearly desperate enough to unplug a vending machine) and began slurping up electricity while waiting for my flight to board.  I wore my Yoga Toes while I waited, to ease my aching feet and draw stares.  

Electricity slurping!

Yoga toes

I realize it has now been several months since I returned from my trip; getting myself to get material together for this has proved harder than I originally thought (and I didn't imagine it would be easy).  As it turns out, brevity is not among my virtues, so transcribing journal entries written during the trip produced manuscripts longer than several term papers from college.  I'm working--not terribly successfully--on cutting down their length to something that at least I can read through in one sitting.  While I try to get better at that, I will also try to share.  Please forgive the extraordinary length.  

I will be traveling this summer!  I plan to visit Denmark, Germany, France, England, and Belgium over a month, traveling sometimes alone, and sometimes with friends.  I loved keeping a blog on my last extended trip, for a study-abroad program, several years ago, and want to do it again this time.  Looking back at my blog from my Oxford experience (http://crazyormediocre.blogspot.com/), I feel quite intimidated—at the time, I was reading extensively and writing regularly, both for myself and for my professors.  Now, most of my writing is either private journaling in a notebook, which I rarely so much as read back over myself, or Facebook-style posts, short one-offs that can’t possibly do justice to the capitals of Europe.  Hopefully having this blog will motivate me to work on improving my writing so my travels’ chronicles are worth looking back on.  

I will not be carrying my laptop with me, so updates will be spotty while I’m on the trip, but I will handwrite essays in a blank book to transcribe upon my return.