Day 5 - Brussels

Today was a much better day. Brussels is still a town covered in graffiti but it also has some of the most amazing sites. It seems as though the graffiti and such is the result of rapidly mixed cultures. Post WWII Europe actively endorse immigration from Muslim countries to provide lower class labor. The immigration still continues even despite the lack of jobs which only further perpetuates the social divide and in turn causes the problems we see to grow since the incoming population has little connection or respect for the country's history (which again hurts the tourist economy).

The touristy areas however are clean and beautiful. We woke up and had breakfast at our hotel and then headed out for some parks. It took us a few blocks to realize our notion of north and south were completely flipped which prompted us to turn around turning what we thought was a much larger city into a small one. Walking the streets is much like San Fran, except every so often you turn a corner to find a square with the most amazing 600 year old building right in the middle. On our way to the first park we walked by the Royal Palace which had beautiful gardens. Some friendly tourists helped us further gain our bearings. From that park we walked to a much bigger park with a huge arch with with large halls on either side with an aviation and car museum on either end. Not wanting to walk back uphill 3 km we hopped on the metro which put us near the Grand Place. The Grand Place is a town square where all the craftsmen guilds built their meeting places in an elaborate rivalry of the others. We ate outside in the middle of the square. The buildings were covered in gold statues and incredibly ornate decorations. It was absolutely beautiful.

After we ate we walked around a bit more and stumbled across a beer store. One of the workers was extremely helpful and loved talking about beer. He pointed out all his favorites and gave his reasons, showed us the ones he thought were too commercial, pointed out the popular ones and let us know if their popularity was based on good taste. He added a lot of fun phrases and sound effects. We spent the usual amount of money that we do when we buy beer. Overall, it was a great half-hour or so of Jacob talking to another version of himself.

After that we trucked around our 20 pounds of beer and walked over to the brewers guild house, the only still functioning guild. We watched about 15 minutes of a video in French before the guy running the place switched it to English. When that was done we walked around a little more in the Grand Place. Jacob was strangely compelled to touch a statue that people were rubbing. We then walked back to the hotel and went to Le Trappiste again for dinner. Jacob got veal kidney in a gin, mushroom, juniper sauce, and Jessica got salmon and spinach lasagna. We were going to drink some of the beers we bought, but neither us nor the hotel staff have bottle openers and we don't want to accidentally break anything.

Things learned in Brussels:
Pharmacy Apotheeks are very easy to find.
The police patrol the streets on roller blades.
Jacob is a lemming.
Toilets have 2 buttons, one for a little flush and one for a big flush. (one for pee pee and one for poo poo for those who couldnt figure that out)
The dirt around trees is either for 3 loaves worth of bread for birds to eat or rings of dirt piled up to house hobos.

Pictures arent uploading, so stay tuned.