Brussels for the weekend

Well after a quick trip to Bruges I am back in Brussels for the weekend and will be staying with Louise's friend, Catherine. Louise stayed here when she was studying at university. Catherine was such a wonderful host and had a beautiful house! It was luxury after staying in hostels for the last 3.5 months.

I arrived on Thursday evening and she invited me to have dinner with herself, her friend and her sister. They were dining at home and watching the football. It was a wonderful feeling, to feel at home once more. We had chicken and vegetables and bread, all French style.

After dinner I headed up to my room and received some exciting news! TMP offered me a 1-month contract with the possibility of an extension beginning the 14th of September. I then emailed Chloe to see if her room was still available and as luck would have it her friend had just pulled out of moving in, which means when I go back to London in a week I’ll have my own double bed and bathroom and a job to return to! Yeah!

So with that great news I can relax a little bit more and enjoy the weekend.

On Friday I took a walk from the house to the city. It was about a 40 minute walk and took me through Parc du Cinquantenaire-jubelpark – big park, past a comic strip festival, through the local streets and into the city centre. It was a beautiful walk, passing lots of patisseries and independent fashion shops.

This morning I wanted to visit the visitor centre for the European Union parliament. As Brussels is recognised as the capital of Europe the EU parliament sits here, but also in Strasbourg, France. The secretarial offices are based in Luxembourg and Brussels.

I was hoping to see an actual sitting, but unfortunately Parliament was meeting elsewhere Strasbourg in September so I settled for a tour of the visitor centre, and it was fabulous! I spent around 4 hours walking through the site, reading about Europe’s history and how the EU came together, the struggles and triumphs it has faced in reaching today’s group.

It’s incredibly interactive and one of my highlights was the room set up to look like parliament. There was a huge circular table with chairs and at each one was an interactive board where you could see a previous agenda, run through who was who and initiatives that the EU was investigating. There was also a 306 degree projection going on the circular walls around us explain how parliament works and pretending you were sitting in a current session.

I love the idea that all of these countries come together to build a powerful cohort. The visitor centre is a brilliant introduction and I highly recommend it.

Afterwards I took a walk into the city and stumbled across the international beer festival that happened to be taking place in the market place this weekend! There were two tents set up, the major one in Grand Place and the other around the corner new the old stock exchange building. There were lots of beer stalls set up and people drinking and dancing, there was a dj radio playing music and lots of onlookers like me standing by watching.

From here I made my way across the city towards the river looking for some shops and bars I had read about in my map. I found some and not others, but got to explore the wonderful city of Brussels. In the end I made my way back to Catherine’s house, she was away for the night. I stopped off at a local shop to pick up some cheese, bread, meat and wine and settled in for an enjoyable evening.

Whilst I was on my walking tour last week we passed a museum that was dedicated to Rene Magritte, he was a Belgium Surrealist artist. I first became aware of Magritte through the movie the Thomas Crown Affair; he’s bowler hat guy was used repeatedly throughout the movie and was a big point in the ending scene, (PS watch the final scene where they return the painting its so good!)

So on Saturday that is where I headed. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise until I got inside that the bowler hat painting, known as The Son of Man, is held in a private collection in America and is almost never seen by the public. But they did have a small collection of other paintings of his in the same style, which sufficed.

The museum was just awesome. Magritte was such an interesting guy, not only was he an artist, at one point he started his own advertising firm and created lots of ads in order to have an income. He didn’t really follow the cultural norms of what his fellow artists were doing and he often got told off for it. For example, he chose to leave Paris and move to the countryside to be with his wife, it was not the lifestyle most others lead.

I also realised that I had actually seen his work while I was at university, and got to see the real pieces of art that we had studied, which was cool. He was considered an artist of surrealism as his worked varied across multiple mediums, many of which were on display. I also really liked the video that had playing on the final floor. It went for about an hour and was an interesting look into the life of Rene Magritte. He seemed like this happy character that was also searching, always looking. But maybe that was just my take.

I quickly looked into the other museums that my ticket allowed, E4 for 3 museums! And then headed down to the centre. I came across the _____ gardens which were just beautiful and looked down over the town of Brussels. I went and had some dinner and decided I’d go and try out the Beer Festival, however ticket sales had shut for the day. So instead I grab a beer from the local shop and stood in the street listening to the DJs and watching the other revellers. I had beer festival on a budget! It was awesome!

Today is Sunday and my final day in Brussels, this evening I am heading to Liege to meet Louise and her sister. But first up I wished to visit the Sunday markets, which takes place at the Gare du Midi. These markets were massive, spread all around the train station and surrounding streets. The food area was my favourite and the fruit and vegetables looked so fresh and sweet!

I wandered here for a while before heading back to the town. Brussels on a Sunday is quiet and I was lovely. I came across the midday beer festival parade through town by accident and it was pretty fun. I waved goodbye to the city before heading to Catherine’s to collect my things and take the train to see Louise!

Places to visit
Comic Strip Festival
http://visitbrussels.be/bitc/BE_en/comics-festi…

European Union
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/visiting/en/index…

Rene Magritte – Son of Man
http://totallyhistory.com/the-son-of-man/

Thomas Crown Affair – Returning the Painting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_mtGD0zJ54

Rene Magritte Museum
http://www.magrittemuseum.be/

Belgium Beer Festival
http://www.belgianbrewers.be/en/events/belgian-…Read more