Coty's Adventure to Italy and Return to Belgium: Brussels!

aaaack....I typed up this whole post and the internet went out and I lost it all! So trying again here (several days later!):

Last Friday (over a week ago now, whoops..) Antoine and I spent the day in Brussels, the capital of Belgium.

Me at the Grand Place

Ah, the memories of Brussels. The town of street-side waffles, the Grand Place, Mannekin Pis (of course!), but mostly meeting fellow exchange students Blythe and Maxine on the weekend to see

a movie in English and visit Waterstone Books, our English book store. The city to have a little break from french and relax our brains in English speaking mode! When you are immersing yourself in a foreign language, especially at the beginning, you get tired a lot, because the brain is working so hard to try and comprehend what exactly is going on. I'm glad to notice that this trip, I am not having this experience at all! I really understand about 95% of what is being said - without any thought that it is not my normal language. The brain just understands! Yay! I know French!

Anyway, Brussels. Blythe and Maxine got to be my closest exchange student friends (Blythe from Oregon and Maxine from New Zealand) and we spent many a Saturday or Sund

ay hanging out in Brussels, each catching a train from our respective towns to meet up in the center of the country. So it was good to revisit this city with my host brother Antoine and revisit the sites, although it made me miss those times I had with Blythe and Maxine!

So Antoine and I walked around and saw the Grand Place, wound our way through the little streets around the center, saw Mannekin Pis (A very small statue of a peeing boy. One of Brussels major tourist attractions.) and the Royal Palace, and generally had a good time in Brussels! Although I did have one major disappointment. There was this great little sandwich shop right on the other side of the Grand Place that I just loved going to. They had this wonderful tomato and cheese sandwich on a baguette and pressed kind of like a panini. Oh yum!! For lunch we went on a search for this place, and I was utterly disappointed to see that it had been replaced by none other than, well the picture says it all.

But disappointment can lead to a new discovery! Antoine introduced me to a very Belgian sandwich, a Mitraillette. What is a Mitraillette? Well basically some kind of meat (not sure what it was) with french fries (which by the way is actually a Belgian invention, saucy stuff, some corn, salad mix, on a big bagette. Yum!

Antoine eating a Mitraillette and a look inside.

Brussels is an interesting city and is important not only for the European Union (whose center is located in Brussels) but also for Belgium itself. As many of you know, Belgium has not had a central government well over a year now. By the way, it now hold the world record for a country without an official government, a title which formally had been assigned to Iran.

The north, Flanders, which is Flemish speaking (a form of Dutch) and the south, Wallonia, (which is French speaking) have always had tensions, but it is really at a real high right now. (Oh by the way, there is also a little part in the east that is German speaking. And this is a country the size of the state of Maryland. Brussels, which is technically in the Flanders territory is officially its on region, but more people speak French in Brussels than Flemish. I had an interesting conversation with Antoine about what it means to be Belgian (or French or American etc...). He was lamenting that in Belgium right now, people don't really know what it means to be Belgian. Yes there are waffles, beer, and chocolate, but what is it that makes someone Belgian? He said there are not strong national holidays (like for us in America) and the two main regions are not only different language wise, but also culturally. And he was really unsure if the country could really come back from this recent crisis of the lack of central government.

The Royal Palace with the Belgian flag flying on top

But Brussels plays a big part because it really ties the two regions together. It is in the region of Flanders, but is mostly French speaking, so people in Brussels for the most part wouldn't want to be part of Flanders if the country actually did split in two, which there has been talk. I remember when I was here last and went for a visit to Brugge (which is an amazingly beautiful city in the north) my host mother told me that it would be better for me to speak English there because the people would treat me better if I spoke English. That's the kind of distrust there is between the two regions. (Although on the way back from Ghent (in another post!) I talked with a lovely woman who was very happy to have the opportunity to speak French to us because she never gets to. So you can't apply these things to everybody!)

p.s. If you want to read about the history of Belgium and what has historically tied the two regions together as a country, wikipedia has a nice article HERE.

A COUPLE MORE PHOTOS :-)