The first time I heard of Brussels was when Jun Ji Hyun whined that she only had 1 can of Brussels Sprouts in ‘You Who Came From the Stars’. Don’t laugh, but that was how SUA GU I was! I knew Belgium existed but I didn’t know that Brussels was a city in Belgium! But through this weekend trip down to Brussels, I began to learn more about the city.
For those who are interested, The history of Belgium is very much like Singapore in the Malay World. Before 1830, Belgium was always part of a greater territory (Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg or France). Because of its strategic location (FAMILIAR HOR), it was often used as a battleground between the territories and as a result, Belgium did not have its own identity. In 1830, the Belgian Revolution successfully gained it independence.
During our stay, we tried out a free sandeman tour around Brussels and we learnt a lot more from the guide:
1) Belgium is a city flourished by trades (post independence).
2) During its construction phase, in order to receive funding from neighbouring countries, Brussels agreed to be neutral during a war and not participate in any sides. This pact still holds.
3) Belgium do not have their own language and culture. In fact, the country is split between a few cultures – Dutch, French, German. While French is the majority and the official language of Belgium is French, it is quite cool to see the country mixing in the other languages, i.e. they say Danke (thank you in german) rather than Merci.
So where do I start? Well, we always wanted to visit Belgium someday but we ruled it out during the XinsonEUnison trip because of its chaotic security then and we did not want our parents to worry. It was only till recent weeks where we became more familiar with the European environment that we decided to give Belgium a shot. We booked Megabus and began on our 7 hours non-interrupted journey to Brussels. Or that’s what we thought; apparently to go from UK to Belgium (on bus), the only way is to cross the sea – via ferry or train. This means that the bus would be docked on the ferry/train as well. Of course, this also meant that we needed to wake up multiple times to change between the transports. So in total, we probably slept like 3 hours for the journey…
Even after 3 hours of sleep, we weren’t really welcomed in Brussels – the morning of Brussels was cold and desolated. The winds were piercing through our skins and it was definitely much colder than London. We simply underestimated the climate and wore what we had worn in UK… Cold and hungry, we headed for the nearest Macdonalds before we check in to our accommodation. The Macdonalds in Brussels is not fascinating and after learning my lesson in Rome, I decided not to order the Big Breakfast, which is just salty scrambled eggs with the two buns. I had hotcakes though, but they were not really hot. Macbreakfast in Europe is simply crap..
After which, we put down our stuffs at the accommodation before heading down to the old town. After the sun rose, the city became much warmer and in a way less painful to walk. First thing that we noticed was that the streets are quite dirty and you can literally see dried up spits everywhere. Brussels does give off a pretty young vibe like Barcelona.
We walked up to our first stop, the all-famous Manneken Pis! While you imagine the icon of the country to be humongous like Effiel Tower and Sagrada Familia is, Manneken Pis is just.. a statue of a peeing boy and is no taller than 24 inches… Seriously, even the Sandeman tour guide was disappointed by it too haha! However according to the guide, Manneken Pis is a timeless landmark and it was dressed up occasionally with costumes that represented the current affairs that affect Belgium/the world during that time. You can see below (I googled those)
The next thing that caught our eyes are just along the stretch of road beside Manneken Pis – a whole stretch of 1 Euro waffles shop! This is the epitome of PERFECT COMPETITION, where you can just hop from one door to another and see that all the plain waffles are priced at the same price! We kind of fought and resisted the temptation of getting one cause we believed we will be able to find a better waffles subsequently. And indeed, we managed to find tons of waffles shop in the city centre. In actual fact, the whole city centre smells like BELGIUM WAFFLES! We got two that had the longest queues in the city centre. After having both waffles, we concluded that waffles are everywhere, but the good ones are the ones with the longest local queues (not tourists). Note to all going to Brussels, try and get the plain waffles (usually glazed in sugar) or just a sugar waffles. Adding extra toppings just make you a tourist and what you will be eating is the Tourist Waffles and not Belgium Waffles (according to the net). Some toppings can easily double or triple the prices of the waffles too, so don’t get scammed!
We then walked to the famous Grand Place, aka the Grand Market where trades around the world used to occur. It is to note that this place is particularly beautiful in August every two years where they would lay out an enormous flower carpet! We joined the free walkabout tour held by Sandemans and we followed them for awhile (see top for takeaways). Also bumped into a group of NTU students there haha!
*Grand Place is very crowded and there are a lot of Gypsies around asking for money, do watch out for your belongings!
That’s not all, we continued to glutton on ICE CREAM that gohjing recommended us. There is this Brussels chain called Maison Dandoy and we tried out their Senior cup (it’s actually 3 scoops but they called it a senior scoop to discourage egoistic tourists from getting it). We got Speculoos (yea, that’s a Belgian thing too), pistachio and cookie vanilla. All of them are super creamy and rich, and they totally reminded me of Gelateria de Teato in Rome. And the cost for the three scoops are about 4.90 Euros. Not too shabby! Funny how we keep complain that it is cold and we still went for ice-cream instead (cause Limxin has a bunch of sweet teeth)
And that concludes the end of our Brussels trip over the weekends. Kind of a rollercoaster one with all the random little events that cause our trip to rather heart-throttling! But overall, this weekend has been really relaxing and I really look forward to more trips over the weekend. Stay tuned to more updates! This coming weekend will be home (UK) bound 🙂
CinqeMinte 