Brussels

Today, I arrived in the city of Brussels in Belgium. Belgium has three official languages: French, German (small section of the country), and Flanders which is a dialect of Dutch. Brussels is actually in the Flanders area but because of its historical importance to the Belgian Monarch, it became primarily French speaking.
Most of the day was taken up with tours. I did a free walking tour of the city that was really cool. Our tour guide, Dee, was fantastic. She is from Ireland but talked about Brussels like she was a native. Because of how good she was I decided to join her group on a beer tour later in the evening.
The tour met in the town square. The town square is arguably the most impressive area of the city. The architecture is incredibly ornate. The oldest building, is the gothic Town Hall. It was built to be very ornate because all of the guilds were building ornate buildings and the town hall needed to reflect the importance of the city.

The second oldest building is built opposite the town hall. It is in Neo-Gothic style and was built to be the house for the King of Belgium so that everyone would know that he was the most powerful man in Brussels. (building on the left)

The rest of the square is pretty impressive as well. The French destroyed all of the guild buildings during an attack on Brussels and when it came time to rebuild, restrictions were put in place so that the guild buildings were all in the same style and would complement each other. The result was some beautiful Baroque buildings that make the square looks complete. The house of the Brewers is particularly impressive because they were a very important guild. The river Seine was undrinkable back in the day so the Brewers made very low alcohol content beer so that people could drink. As you can imagine, being in control of the water supply gave the Brewers quite a bit of wealth and power.

After this, we headed over to the most famous statue in Belgium, the Manikin Piss. This statue of a little boy peeing has many legends and is surprisingly small. I always thought the statue would be much bigger but our guide made the point that if it was any bigger it might be pornographic.

We continued our walk around the city and saw some cool buildings like an old stock exchange and the royal galleries. The royal galleries are in a cool building that basically is just housing shopping but were really cool to see.

We walked over and checked out the cathedral. The building is massive. Unfortunately, we didn’t go inside because it is a walking tour and the cathedral is paid entry, but it is pretty on the outside.

Later, we headed over to Brussels Park. It’s a park the separates the royal palace from parliament. In this way, it was very symbolic as a separation of power.

We walked by the Royal Palace. An imposing building, you can tell that the person who lived there had both wealth and power. It is facing towards the Parliament buildings on the other side of the Park.

We ended our tour at the knot garden. At the end of the knot garden there is a statue of Albert I who was King of Belgium during WWI. He was able to delay the German advance through Belgium for far longer than anyone thought was possible. He famously said, “I rule a country, not a highway.” The delay allowed France and Britain more time to prepare and may have been an important factor in the outcome.

I did a beer tour with the same tour guide later in the day. I tried four different Belgium Beers, including one Lambic beer, which is a specialty of Brussels. I enjoyed all the beers that I tried. The dark beer that I had was surprisingly sweet and the first blonde beer that I had was 9.5% alcohol.

Our guide also took us to see the girl version of the Manikin Piss. My photos didn’t turn out too great because it was dark but here are the ones that I have.

After this, I ended my day by walking back to the main square to get at night photos. The square is beautiful at night. I had a great time in Brussels and tomorrow; I am headed off to Berlin! I’ll end this blog with the photos of the square.