Belgium
As a whole, I think Belgium was the place that surprised me the most. While I certainly never had anything against Belgium, it was never incredibly high on my places-I-want-to-see-someday list. I think it suffers from being right next to more popular countries like France, England, and Germany, and, as a result, gets left out of the someday-I’ll-visit-Europe plans for some people (myself included). It turns out, though, that Brussels was one of my favorite places we visited (and Belgium one of my favorite countries)!
Brussels
I think Brussels benefitted from being the first city we visited on purpose (not just “traveling through” or slightly lost). At the very least, we weren’t exhausted, yet, which probably made Brussels impact us more and some of the later places impact us less.
The Grand Place is incredible. It is also kind of hard to find. It was on the to-do list for the day, but we actually found it by accident. We came out of a hallway, looking for a restroom,1 and then we were just there.
Mannekin Pis is really pretty dumb. Someone told me it would be underwhelming and they were right. Still, you kind of have to go see it.
Food
Waffles in Belgium really are different than in the US. The “Belgian waffles” we get here in the states are quite different. In the states, a “Belgian waffle” is often a just a slightly crispy regular waffle (pressed with a bigger iron) topped with fruit. In Brussels, the waffles are closer to a pastry-like texture; some almost resemble raised donuts or croissants in their texture. Inside the waffles are small chunks of sugar that has caramelized under the heat. In general, people just eat them plain, wrapped in paper. They are delicious! I had a waffle at Jamba Juice that got pretty close, but I haven’t seen many others that really do it “right.” My wife actually bought some of special sugar crystals and brought them home. We tried our hand at making “real” Belgian waffles; they were pretty close, but not quite as good … my wife is a good cook, though.
What we all call “French fries” are really Belgian. They call them pommes frites [pum freet] (or just, frites). I am not a huge “fries guy,” but I did like the ones we had in Brussels. The Belgians cut the potatoes thicker than we do and the fries have a distinctively sweet flavor (maybe they use a sweeter oil for frying?). The fries are served in a paper cone with a tiny fork and a small cup of sauce. The place we went had a few choices of sauce, one of which was pretty awesome; it was called sauce samouraï. It’s kind os sweet and kind of spicy, and mostly pretty great.
Rural Belgium
This isn’t entirely unique to Belgium, but I found the way rural communities are set up to be really interesting. Essentially, even the small towns are quite densely populated. In the US, a rural community is often very spread out with “neighbors” living hundreds of yards apart. Often, a farmer will live on their farm, meaning their closest neighbor is far on the other side of many acres of crops. In Belgium (and other part of Europe), things were organized differently. There, people live right next to each other, even in small towns. The town of Meerbeek (population 2,188), where my wife knows some people, feels like a city; there are narrow streets, alleyways, and people living right next to, even on top of, one another. Belgian farmers don’t, it appears, live on their farms. When it is time for tending to the crops/livestock, the farmer rides or drives out to the fields to tend to things, then returns home (maybe miles away) when all is said and done. Among other things, this makes the smallness of the rural areas not seem so small. It also makes the community feel more like one. In many American small towns, especially in the West, people live pretty far apart, which makes this person-to-person connection harder to make. I wonder if rural life in the US would be different if we organized our communities this way.
Bicycles
There are a lot of bicycles in Belgium. In Leuven, one of the first cities we visited, kind of by accident actually, has huge portion of the city where bicycles are the only vehicles allowed on the streets.2 I like to think of myself as a bit of a “bike guy.” I used to ride quite a lot; I rode to/from work some three or four days a week for a few years. My family only had one car and having me ride to work was a way to both keep in shape and keep the costs of commuting down. I don’t ride nearly as often anymore, but I wish I did. It has gotten harder as my kids have gotten older and have to be lots of places.
Leuven
We ended up in Leuven because we hadn’t yet figured out how to read the train schedules as they were listed in our EuroPass app versus how they were listed on the placards at the train stations. We rode a high-speed train directly from the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to Brussels3. Then, we were supposed to meet a friend of my wife’s at a station called Erps-Kwerps (outside of Brussels). But, we ended up getting on a train that went by that station but didn’t stop there. Thanks to Facebook Messenger we were able to communicate with our host who told us to meet her at the station in Leuven.
We climbed up out of the station into the center of town and it was beautiful. This was the first time we had spent much time outside of a train or station since we had boarded our flight back at LAX some fourteen hours in the past. The part of town where the train station lets out is (for certain times of the day) off limits to cars; it is a bicycles only area. There is this Kaiser Permanente commercial that is meant to show what the future could be like. In one, it shows the 101 freeway in downtown Los Angeles filled with bicyclists. The bikers are using the lanes and ramps just as cars do, although everyone is quite a bit happier and healthier since they are getting exercise and aren’t stuck inside the smoggy, grimy, gridlocked urbania we know today. This is basically what the bike-only area of Leuven felt like. There were traffic lights and the like, but instead of noisy, dirty cars, folks were getting around (and obeying the traffic lights, rules, etc.) on bikes. Since this was, essentially, our first experience “in the wild” in Europe, I think it caught me even more off guard than it otherwise would have.
Antwerp
Back in the mid–1970s, my wife’s mother lived in Antwerp for several months as a missionary. She has wanted to go back ever since. Antwerp was never on my “must-do” list. In fact, before this trip, I don’t think I knew where it was in relation to the rest of Belgium; I might have even thought it was in the Netherlands. But, it also turned out to be really great. I know I have already said this about other places, but Antwerp was one of my favorite places.
Our Euro-trip ended up overlapping with my wife’s parents’ trip. We met up with them in London, then went to Normandy, Paris, and Antwerp with them. Having my mother-in-law with us in Antwerp made our time there better, I think, than it might have been otherwise; she knew the places to go and see (and what not to go and see).
Bruges
Bruges is pretty awesome. I will say, it struck as a bit more “touristy” than the other places we visited in Belgium. It makes sense, since it’s such a charming, beautiful place. But, I tend to enjoy the “real” stuff more. This is not to say that Bruges is artificial, I simply mean that because there a lot more tourists, the folks you see/interact with are less likely to be locals. There is something really cool about knowing the less-well-trod side of things. Bruges is gorgeous, but I preferred the less-polished places I think.
Is Belgium the future?
Ever since we got back, my wife and I have been semi-seriously trying to figure out how to move to Europe. 4 Almost every time we have talked about this, I have pictured Belgium as the place we would go. Belgium has all of the right combinations of things that really make me see myself there. I ain’t messin’ around here; I already speak French pretty fluently and I have been teaching myself Dutch over the last year since speaking both languages makes living in Belgium even more likely.
I know it is probably just wishful thinking and a bit of a “grass-is-always-greener” mindset, but I have needed something to distract me as of late. Making hypothetical plans about moving to Belgium has been my most recent addiction. My wife at least claims to be into the idea, so I am running with it while I have the energy.
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Or, as they call them in Europe, the “water closet.” ↩︎
Turnsout: Leuven was one of my favorite places. ↩︎
They don’t call it “high-speed” just for marketing reasons! That thing was cruising along at 300 km/h! ↩︎
There are a lot things motivating that desire, but I’d be lying if I said US politics wasn’t among them. I have always been skeptical of “American Exceptionalism,” and the last four years have taught me just how much I despise huge swaths of American thinking and culture. ↩︎