Bruxelles

The next stop was Brussels, or, as it's known in French, Bruxelles. There was the necessary stop at the Mannekin Pis, with the requisite photo op. Yup, it really is that small (or Jeremi really is that big, or some combination of the two.)


Nearby we were sucked into buying some expensive yet incredibly delicious waffles, a display of which can be seen here. (There were lots of shops selling waffles, chocolates, and fries, thus fulfilling every delicious Belgian stereotype I had.)
Here we were admiring the lovely town square...
...including the old town hall, which was covered with hundreds of statues. We were joking that if you worked in the mail room around the time of construction, you probably got a statue of yourself up on the facade somewhere.
Here I'm adding to the series of Jeremi's favourite photos of me, when I strike the pose of animal-like statues. (See the previous entry in an old post from Vienna.)
We stopped for supper (mussels, and other yummy food) at a restaurant nearby where everyone except for me got to sample some delicious Belgian beers (though I did have a couple sips). Instead, I ordered some grapefruit juice, which happened to be from the brand "Looza", and so poor Julia got to drink "Looza juice" while everyone else had delicious beer.
And then our last stop in Brussels - the Atomium! Are you wondering what this is? I was. When Calin first mentioned going to Brussels, he said that, of course, we'd visit the Atomium. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, and he assured me that all Europeans knew about this most famous structure, built for the World's Fair in 1958 - I should ask my colleagues. Except then I mentioned it to his wife, Susanne, and she hadn't heard of it. Maybe it's just really famous in the Netherlands?

In any case, it's a pretty cool, weird building, composed of giant steel balls (18 m in diameter each), attached together in the body-centered cubic crystal shape of iron. Most of the balls are open to the public, and house rotating exhibits. While we were there, we saw an exhibit about the polar regions, and some history about the structure and the 1958 World's Fair.

Here Susanne and I were working hard to hold up the enormous structure...
...which Jeremi found quite amusing when taken from another angle.
And that was the end of our trip to Brussels. The general consensus - better than expected! Somehow Calin and Susanne had had the idea that Brussels wasn't the most interesting city, perhaps because it's the base of the European parliament... Nonetheless, a pleasant surprise.