Visiting Brussels
Visiting Brussels Belgium has had an image problem ever since March 2016 when folks connected to the earlier terrorist attacks in Paris decided that the Belgians were concentrating too much on the good life and not enough on the ‘after-life’. It was a plan with many aspects, so to discourage people from other countries coming to express fellow feeling with the citizens of Brussels, they let their bombs off at key places for tourists, the International Airport and the Maelbeek Metro Station in central Brussels. As a result, there are now a lot of serious, young men in army uniforms carrying large automatic rifles wandering around airports and train stations and other major public places in Brussels …and Paris…and Rome!
Australian tourists have voted with their feet in 2016 by generally avoiding Europe and opting for the colder atmosphere of Canada and Alaska instead. Given that we had booked a European tour 12 months before, we were still going to Paris and Belgium in September 2016 with a defiant attitude towards our health and safety…we left on ‘9/11’ and even this portent didn’t stop us from describing our holiday as the ‘Tourist Terrorist Trail”. Any concerns were quickly allayed by the friendliness and normalcy of the citizens of Brussels.
Our few days in Brussels surprised us, not just by the architectural beauty of so many of the buildings in the centre of the city, but by the vibrancy of the culture that was evident in the streets. On the Sunday of our time there, the central area had been declared a ‘Car-Free’ Day and the local families grabbed their bikes and headed out to have fun in the centre of Brussels. Our little group was split between two activities; biking the city or riding the blue or red buses. Those who rode the buses reported that both the Blue and the Red bus tours were very interesting for the wide variety of beautiful Churches and Palaces that Brussels has to showcase. Those of us who hired bikes not only enjoyed the easy ride around the city but sampling the beers of Belgium in a gorgeous arcade with a view is hard to beat.
In the ‘Grand Markt” entertainment was on show all weekend. I was particularly impressed by the exuberant Belgian drummers who played loud, energetic drum-symphonies on both days.
One thing we did discover was that the Belgians had sweet tooths and appeared to be obsessed with Chocolate, Lollies and Cream and were determined to convert the tourists by the abundance of their Chocalateries and Confiseries (‘Artisinale’ lolly shops). The number of Chocolateries and the variety of approaches to shaping chocolates started to suggest to me that the Belgians took their life of chocolate consumption way too seriously, almost too the point of a society wide psychosis that was determined to increase the weight of the nation while destroying their health through suicidal levels of sugar consumption. The only thing that undermined my view of the seriousness of the situation was the prevalence of the one shape of chocolate that all the shops appeared to be selling…chocolates in the shape of a small naked boy. It soon became evident in the galleries and alley-ways around the ‘Grand Markt’ of Brussels that ‘Mannekin Pis (‘Little Man Pee’) was the key-seller; this was surprising given that it was in the shape of an unaccompanied male child whose parents had neglected to put clothes on him and allowed him to urinate in the main street – with a deal of smug pride at his achievement. Again my initial concerns was that I had encountered a culture that was a little over obsessional about images of urinating naked children. Coming from Australia where I presumed that if a chocolate shop was set up beside a Catholic Church and was selling life-size chocolate statues of naked boys, the place would be raided by the Federal police and the owner forced to confess to a multitude of sins before a Royal Commission for the rest of his miserable days. However I soon realised that the locals weren’t concerned by the issue of small boys ‘pissing’ in the street, they were just keen on taking the piss out of themselves…it appeared to be one, long, self-deprecating laugh at themselves.
The history of the story of ‘Mannekin Pis’ goes some way to explain the popularity of the image. There are various versions of the tale, apparently going back to the Twelfth century, all having the theme of a small, innocent child saving the day by –
• Pissing on the heads of invading troops;
• Pissing on the burning fuse of enemy explosives;
• As a lost child with the whole town looking for him, being found unconcerned by his situation, peeing in the street.
The story gained country wide approval when a small bronze statue was put in a fountain in the centre of Brussels in 1618. Of course citizens of Brussels (perhaps even their outraged enemies) have been stealing the statue of Mannekin Pis from the fountain ever since. The current statue in Brussels has lasted since 1995, perhaps because the proliferation of chocolate, life-size statues of ‘Little Man Pee’ has meant that everybody can have him on their mantelpiece for less trouble than sneaking out into the middle of the city on a dark, moonless night after midnight and stealing the bronze version of the little fellow.