Brussels

Wherein I See What It's Like to Be a Diplomat

In Belgium, I entered a crash course on the EU. It's incredible that countries which were at total war in the last century are now bound legally under this new and evolving entity.

The EU headquarters were quite impressive in their practicality. I sat in a meeting room of the Council of Ministers, where a member of the Office of the Secretary General explained some of the complications of the office. I sat at a seat marked in Greek. Each of the country names were, of course, written in their native language. There was Espana, Deutscheland, etc. I recognized my seat as Cyprus; Greek and Cyrillic are quite similar. After visiting the frankly opulent offices of the OECD in London, I was used to the presence of flags and the neat little microphones near the tables. In fact, both EU offices we visited struck me as unostentatious. That is, if buildings assigned their own blocks could avoid ostentation.

Along with my law school friends, I also met some law students from Norway, who came to study the EU. Norway is not a member of the Union, and it takes only five years of university to become an advocate there. sitting in on different round-tables, I learned quite a bit from the different players who spoke; we heard from a technocrat, a career diplomat, and a man whose job seems mostly to manage other bureaucrats. It was obvious that sometimes the different parts of the wheel were not really always keeping tabs on the others, but somehow everything works well enough. There were a lot of acronyms to keep track of.

Chocolate, Chocolate Everywhere

The Grand Place is one of the most beautiful boulevards I've ever seen - all flatstone steps, gallery-like windows, and glass archways. There are chocolate shops everywhere, replete with chocolate fountains, chocolate statues, chocolate in every form and shape imaginable. The sheer number of chocolate shops is a bit overwhelming, even for a chocoholic like me.

At Pierre Marcolini, I felt like I was entering a jewelry store and not a chocolate shop. I was too scared to even take the sample chocolate. The carpet was super plush.

I bought most of my chocolate not from one of the grande chocolatiers, but from the nearby grocery store, where the house chocolate was superb. I knew I had made a good choice when I bumped into one of the longtime program professors, who highly recommended one particular brand of Belgian candy. Having been on the program for several years, he knew which tourist traps to avoid and what was worth taking home - he was bringing back one brand of chocolate home and it was, in his opinion, as good as the stuff in the shop windows and infinitely more portable. I was glad to have his advice, as some of the chocolate being sold in the grocery store, particularly Cote D'or, was not what I would consider to be real chocolate. If there is any fat added besides cocoa butter or nuts (such as palm oil - I shudder), it is not chocolate to me. Do not speak to me of vegetable oil.

Belgians are Cool

The Belgians I met were just as eager to speak French as English, but they appreciated my attempts to engage them in French. I met one pair of Flemish speakers, who were eager to show me the scenic route to the art galleries. Everyone near the city center seemed well-educated and had much better English than I had French. In fact, I felt positively embarrassed when classmates spoke to locals slowly and loudly in English - only to find out that the locals spoke fantastic English. Quel surprise!

Belgian waiters, on the other hand, were not as customer-service-oriented as one would like. In the U.S., the customer is always right. In Belgium, everything goes.

The Art is Surreal

The mascot is a statue of a little boy peeing into a fountain, or Manneken Pis. There is also a statue of a little girl peeing and of a little dog, too. Bizarre and endearing.

The Magritte gallery and the Joan Miro exhibit at the Royal Place were fantastic. I remember Joan Miro from an art project in elementary school. Sadly many of his paintings look like they were done by a child, which might be why I liked him so much when I was eight. However, his series of Constellations were pretty cool. Even with the random titles, most of which involved a woman and a bird, or a woman and bird and star, or a woman and bird and [insert noun here]. S and I looked at the paintings and tried to find out where the bird/woman in each of the paintings was. It was fun, although I am sure he was bored out of his mind.

Magritte in particular was effortlessly enjoyable. Unlike the Magritte museum, the Magritte gallery was free. The surreal art matched the incongruencies of the city. Everyone knows the painting of the man with the apple in front of his face - called the Son of Man. There' another painting that complements it well - a painting of a woman in a dress, her face obscured by a bunch of hyacinth. I learned from British TV that hyacinth is the flower of forgiveness, according to Victorian-era flower-speak.

The Beers are Fantastic

Over dinner near the Belgian Bourse, I met my friend B. As always, it was raining. My friend B and I munched on croque-monsieurs and some excellent trappist beers. One of B's favorites is Tripel Karmeliet, which is available in DC at breweries like Brasserie Beck. Also worth checking out are the Belgian fruit-flavored beers. The Mort Subite Framboise, a light raspberry beer, is an excellent choice to accompany a burger. Of course, I tried the moules frites. I will just say, mussels are not my favorite bivalve, but they go very well with beer.

One of the nicest things about travel is catching up with old friends. B and I had about 12 years of catching up to do. We talked about whether fate exists. I felt that thousands of miles from home, in a dank and somewhat dirty bar, I was exactly where I should be. Even the music of the bar reminded me of home. We had grown up well. B noted that Belgium, since the PM's resignation sometime last year, had no working government. Everything was working at the municipal level - electricity, water, schools... we shrugged.

The Countryside is Beautiful

Riding the train from Brussels to Paris, I felt so free. Without any pain of attachment, I passed by the pictueresque thatch-roofed houses scattered like pebbles along a vast sea of wheat and barley. The wind turbines turned slowly in the distance. The color of the grain changed under the shadows of massive clouds on an otherwise perfect day. The cows passing were bone white and spotted with brown. As I left Belgium, I felt astounded that so much rural order and urban lassitude could go hand in hand.

Then all too soon, the orderly rows of farmland gave way to muddy tin structures, and finally the urban highrises and efficient homes which abutted the rails. We arrived in Paris.