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So many people I know have told me to avoid Brussels. 'It has no charm', they say, 'Go to Bruges'.
Now, for some reason or another, I have ended up in Bruges three or four times in my short life, and each time I have to keep noting not to return. An idyllic town certainly, but I go to university in Durham, and it's effectively a flatter, foreign replica of where I live. Also, I keep going there with various relatives, and quite frankly, the charm of Bruges is starting to wear thin.
It was to my surprise that when I finally ended up in Brussels, I had an absolute ball. The train went through about a million stations before it stopped at Bruxelles-Midi, which is where you want to get off if you want to end up in the centre of the city. It was market day, and with not one white, Belgian in site, I spent a happy half an hour poking through oriental foods stacked up colourfully outside of the station. The smell of sweet oranges and fresh vegetables pervaded the normal capital city smell of petrol and dirt. This was surprising: the market outside the international station into Brussels had made the city feel laid back, and to some extent Asian. If I alighted the train at St Pancras and found myself in a similar situation I would have been concerned that the Eurostar had turned right and ended up in Beijing.
Brussels, for it's importance actually feels like quite a compact city. My friends were keen to head for an antiques market, whereas I was more interested in heading to the René Magritte museum. We started by ambling away from the station, and the beauty of this city is that it's incredibly well signposted, and it really would be very difficult to get lost. The buildings are beautiful, and are just as lovely as those in Amsterdam, Bruges or Maastricht: the dichotomy between French and Flemish is noticeable everywhere, especially in the cafés, where meaty is juxtaposed with delicate patisserie.
Travelling with two Korean friends opened my eyes to Europe from a different perspective. They found the African influence in the Matonge district very suprising for such a bureaucratic city, which show that preconceptions can and should be broken. Their excitement at finding the Godiva chocolate shop was infectious: soon, I was posing in front of the counters making 'v' shapes at the camera and pretending to eat strawberries dipped in Godiva chocolate. We got a dark chocolate frappucino to share, and although I was less excited than Su-Jin, it was fun to walk through the sun drenched streets, cooling myself down with iced hot chocolate.
As we only had several hours to make the most of this laid back, unbelievably beautiful we headed up towards the Grand Place, where the musée of Beaux Arts and the Magritte Museum were situated. As we were waiting to cross the road, we noticed a small garden, beautifully kept, wafting pungent tulip odour over the footpath. Inside the little fence was a little waterfall, ornate iron benches and bed after bed of manicured bushes. Although not old enough to trult appreciate flowers, we found ourselves just standing there, in this pocket of peace in the centre of the political capital of Europe. It was a surreal moment.
In a similar vein, just a street away was the park opposite the grand place, and people were taking the morning off to play games such as quoits and croquet. Having to pinch myself incase I found I'd stepped back a century, I was equally surprised when an excitable Belgian waved us over.
'Come and play! Where are you from?!' Feeling that this wasn't aimed at me, I let the Koreans introduce themselves and I asked one of the men why they came here to play quoits. He told me that this park was their garden, and he gestered to the apartments that circled this beautiful patch of green. Handing me a 'palet' we passed a pleasant ten minutes throwing this rings at stumps, and sharing some beautiful ginger biscuits that one of the men had baked earlier that morning.
Brussels was a shock: it felt like England, but it held that element of continental excitement that isn't present in London or other big cities in the UK. And yes, the René Magritte museum was worth every 2 Euros that I paid for it :D
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