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Before I begin, I should note that arriving in Belgium from Africa should always hold some sort of a stigma. The King of Belgium, Leopold II, took the Congo as his private and personal property in 1885. By the time that it was stripped from him in 1908, twenty-three years later, it is estimated that up to 10 million Congolese had died as a result of his ruthless, destructive and tyrannical plunder of the nation for his own wealth and profit. You may note that that that figure is more than the number of people estimated to have died during the Holocaust. It should not be forgotten, as it is also a reminder of the influence that colonial Europe in general has had on the world, including Australia.

Anyway, on that sombre note, we re-entered Europe for our final few days before leaving for America. Taking travel time into consideration, we knew we had one full day and an evening in Brussels, and the same in Amsterdam, which would hopefully give us a brief snapshot of both.

As it turned out, in the short time available to us, we managed to see quite a miraculous amount of Belgium; so, instead of Brussels-in-a-day, I feel entitled to label our experience Belgium-in-a-day. Here’s how we did it.

On arriving and checking into the excellent Jacques Brel Youth Hostel in Brussels (named after the famous Belgian – not French, as many think – chanson singer), we immediately set off for a quick visit to the Comic Book Museum. I knew that Belgium had a strong generalised comic book culture, but I’d be lying if I said we went for anything other than Tintin. In fact, I immediately took a fancy to Brussels on arrival as the Midi Train Station has a giant frame from ‘Tintin in America’ painted to a wall. Anyway, our visit to the museum was not in vain, as it contained many interesting Tintin exhibits, as well as many, many other fascinating and striking other comics. The shop got the better part of our attention, though, and I must admit that it is directly responsible for the third package now making its way home via the post to Melbourne, as it contains my first (and probably only) extravagant purchase for the trip. Yes, nostalgia got the better of me and I bought a diorama of the cover of Tintin and the Red Sea Sharks (which hilariously in Flemish translates as ‘Coke en Stock’).

I should also mention something about Flemish here. Certainly, we’d just arrived back from chaotic and very un-European Fes that morning, but taking the bus from our cheapo RyanAir ‘Brussels’ airport (it’s really quite a distance out; in fact, it’s in Wallonia while Brussels is in Flanders. Still, being on the other side of the country hasn’t stopped RyanAir from calling Charleroi ‘Brussels South Airport’. Yeah, right. It’s ‘Brussels South’ in the same sense as Melbourne might be ‘Brisbane South’) was an illuminating experience. First of all, the countryside was about as similar to Britain as you could get without thatched houses, Indian takeaway joints sellling chips with every curry, and thirteen ‘Oldest Pubs in Britain’ every mile. Secondly, our bus driver sounded just like he was a Mancunian, or perhaps even a Liverpudlian – except that he was speaking something which sounded like English gone through a potato masher.

It’s really quite amazing. I’m told that Flemish is a close relative of English, being a Northern Germanic language (like English) and being influenced by French and Scandinavian languages (like English), but there is something just not quite right about it. The big sign thanking us for our visit to the airport even read something like English, like “Dank u for ur wissite.” This is obviously an approximation, as I can’t remember it, but it was definitely something like that, and certainly mutually intelligable to English speakers. Still, the written word might be one thing, but speaking is not, and unless English morphs to include the occasional desperate hacking sound, it will never be easily understood.

The next morning, we did our sightseeing of Brussels. Many people had disparaged Brussels to us before we got here; not least Bill Bryson in his book ‘Neither Here Nor There’. We were expecting a grey, ugly, unfriendly city that would only be a sleeping point for Bruges. Not so. True, we really didn’t stay for long, but from what we saw, we really liked Brussels. It seems like a really nice, relaxed city with enough culture and sights to keep things interesting and suitably European (especially given that it’s the headquarters for the EU). The central square is really lovely, with wonderful statues and buildings, and really, any city that paints Tintin murals en mass is fine by me. The old arcades are were also lovely; in all, it reminded me very much of what Melbourne might be like if it was in Europe and was a little more dull. Certainly, with Belgian restaurants closing at 10pm you’d be hard-pressed to mistake it for Melbourne, but there are definitely some similar other elements. I should probably also mention that little statue of a boy cheerfully taking a leak into a fountain, being Brussels’ international symbol and all, but I think you’d have to know very little about Europe not to know about him.

Then we enacted our central plan for the day, and our second city. We took a train to Bruges, and were there in under an hour. Bruges is a lovely city, but like so many we’ve been to, it’s just a pity about the tourists. For a city of such small size, there seemed to be far more of them than the locals, even on a sleepy afternoon, and most shop signs were in English, or even German and Spanish and French too, and blatantly aimed at tourists. Still, as a medieval town you can’t do much better, and I’m sure we could have spent some serious time lounging away in one of the parks, or at a restaurant. We also sampled some French Fries from one of the famous Brugeian chip-stands (fries are, believe it or not, a Belgian invention), which funnily enough tasted more-or-less like any other chips I’ve ever had. We indulged my ‘In Bruges’ (as in the recent film) tendencies and went to the top of the Belfry, which yielded excellent views but not quite as much suspense as the film. We also visited that funny old church which claims to have a phial of Jesus’ blood in it, which if it was in any other country than deeply respectable Belgium would probably be regarded with a healthy degree of raised eyebrows. I have to say that after Abraham’s walking stick from 7000 BC in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, this was nothing on the ‘grossly-unbelievable-historical-artifact’ scale.

After spending a fair bit of time looking at the many swans and signets that live in Bruges, and after a Belgian pancake for Tash and a Belgian beer for me, we took the 25-minute journey to the halfway point between Bruges and Brussels that is often overlooked by tourists – Ghent. Our feelings towards Ghent were much like Brussels, yet more so: it is a beautiful, beautiful, unrecognised city. What more could you want? It has lovely canals, a medieval district, beautiful churches, buildings, even a UNESCO-listed view from a bridge, and about as good a castle as you could ever hope for in the town centre, looking to all the world like a mid-1990s LEGO set. All it needed was a draw-bridge, and some scallywag with a feather in his cap clambering over the top to rescue a maiden, and we’d be set. In all, we didn’t spent nearly enough time in Ghent, and if we’d had the time over again I think I’d ever rather spend more time here than in Bruges, despite the headline-grabbing power that Bruges has over the tourist population of the known universe. Like so many cities we’ve been to on this journey, it feels like a place where you really just want to be; to relax and enjoy your time off the beaten path.

Finally, we returned to Brussels and our leftover pasta from the night before, but with the added bonuses of leftover Belgian chocolate for dessert and an excellent dark Belgian beer from the bar before bed. Though we were rushed, our Belgium-in-a-day had been good, and all three destinations had been very good to us. Belgium was never that high on the list of destinations for this trip, but after that day, we did wonder if we’d perhaps overlooked it unfairly. It almost made us want to cancel our next destination, and the subject of my next post – Amsterdam.

To view more photos of Brussels, click here.
To view more photos of Bruges, click here.
To view more photos of Ghent, click here.