Belgium

We arrived in Brussels Tuesday night where we stayed with Cindy’s aunt.

The next day her cousin took us on a tour of the city. We went first to see the Mannekin Piss, a fountain of a little boy urinating. I had heard about it before but didn’t realise that he’s usually dressed for some occasion. When we saw him he was wearing the uniform of the Barcelona soccer team because of an upcoming match. They must have just dressed him because there was a crowd standing in front, holding a banner, singing something. After lunch Cindy’s other cousin took us to see the lesser-known counterpart to the Mannekin Piss, the Jeannkin Piss -- a more recent fountain of a little girl squatting. Freud would have a field day with Brussels!

We went to the building of the European Parliament but you can’t go into the chamber. There was an info office providing literature on the EU in all its languages so Cindy took a copy of the EU charter of rights in each language.

Cindy insisted on having lunch at Quick, a European version of Maccas, mainly because it’s so famous in France for being Belgian. It was slightly less greasy than Maccas and the burgers came on whole grain buns but it was still fast food. That evening Cindy’s cousin’s boyfriend asked me (in French that sounded like Dutch) if I had tried real Belgian pommes frites yet. He was horrified when I said, “Not really, unless you count Quick,” and proceeded to tell me about his friends who own a friterie and do it all by hand. I asked him about the mayonnaise thing and he replied that you can have ketchup or any number of other sauces and rattled off a list of creamy sauces, “Tartare, andalouse...”

He seemed to know what he was talking about so when he suggested we have dinner in Leuven we let him lead us there. Leuven is a very beautiful city, reminiscent of Florence with its restaurant-filled piazzas connected by cobbled streets.