FANCIFUL BRUSSELS

            In Belgium, you can go from 12^th century castles located in the middle of an old downtown, to silent WWI trenches winding their way through birdsong-laced fields, to urban poverty on a breathtaking scale – all within an hour of each other.  It is history and modern day,  old affluence and current impoverishment, on a compact scale.

 

Our house exchange house in Brussels and its neighborhood are good illustrations.  The house is located near the Noord Station, the North train station.  We arrived at the Noord Station early Sunday morning after an overnight flight from DC via Montreal.  We collected our big backpack suitcases at the airport, got a train into the Noord Station, and walked out of the train station into a bright Sunday morning street in the middle of a red light district.  We walked by a young woman sleepily donning her best Sunday g-string in a streetfront room, and she smiled as we walked by.  All around the run-down street are Muslim neighborhoods that are a mix of down-at-their-heels Victorian houses that are 4 and 5 stories high, and art deco mansions.   

It would have been quite a different experience if we had walked down that street on Saturday night, not Sunday morning, weighted down with our big backpacks and traveling exhaustion.  As it was, the Sunday-quiet street had only a few pedestrians trudging through the left-over paper and garbage from the night before.  Incongruous amidst the scene of urban licentiousness were the shops that lined the main street.  All Turkish.  Shops selling samovars, corner markets offering trays of Turkish-labeled fruits, and stores with clothes catering to a middle-Eastern clientele. My favorite was a shop with a stunning window display of burkas.  Mannequins were draped in burkas, modeling styles hot off the old Testament runways.  

It wasn’t as if the mannequins had much to work with in the way of cleverly styled ladies wear.  A burka is basically a bulky tent of material draped over a woman’s body and head.  Its only accessory is a face covering that leaves only the eyes uncovered.  There’s not a lot for a burka designer to work with.  It’s not like there are kicky summer burkas, or French-cut burkas, or mini-burkas, burka capris, or burka skorts.  The hemlines don’t rise and fall with fashion’s dictates; the waists are not pinched or belted; the material doesn’t range in color and design much past the blue-black-brown color spectrum and tent-like drapes.  So in the window were a row of Western-skinny, pinched-faced pale mannequins draped from head to toe in figure-shrouding material.  Next to one of the burka shops was a store called “Anatolia’s nuts” selling every type of nut.  I liked the juxtaposition.   

Once we branched off the main street and up the side streets, the commercial businesses gave way to big Victorian houses, scruffy in some parts, better kept in others, or falling apart in some instances. The houses are insanely tall:  4 or 5 stories, with big front doors where the doorknob is eye level, making you feel like Alice after she’s drunk the liquid to make herself very small. 

Our house exchange house is 5 stories with a full basement, so I guess technically 6 stories.  The ceilings are 15 feet high, and some of the old features of the house – stained glass window, carvings along the ceiling -- are gorgeous.  But to get to the room where Max is sleeping is on the 5^th floor:  quite a long haul!  The rooms are good sized with the high ceilings but they are crammed with the family’s belongings, making it challenging to use the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen area.  But it’s a free place to stay in Brussels, and elements of the house are lovely, and the house is only a 5 minute walk from a tram that whisks us into downtown Brussels, so it all balances out. 

Downtown Brussels is an interesting welter of then and now, wealth and poverty, playfulness and seriousness.  The old medieval square, the center of the old downtown, is gorgeous, with towering, ornate buildings from the late 1600s through the early 1900s.  Around the square are narrow winding medieval streets, now lined with restaurants and cafes.  A wonderful art deco shopping arcade branches off one old street, the arcade lined with high-end shops that nestle in the wrought iron embellishments and beauty of the art deco design.  Art deco is a major decorative motif of Brussels.  A towering art deco building, once a major department store, that is near the Royal Palace has been turned into the Museum of Musical Instruments.  What an idea:  collecting and showcasing ways to make music through the ages. 

Brussels has wonderful quirky sides, my favorite being its homage to cartoons.  It is considered the cartoon capitol of Europe, and in the 1990s, the city government began commissioning murals of famous cartoon characters on the sides of buildings throughout the city.  These are not Minnie and Mickey Mouse murals.  These are home-grown heroes, some of which are famous outside of Europe – Tin Tin and Asterix, for example – and others I’ve never seen. 

We bought a little walking guide to the cartoon murals, and Max led the way around the city. We went through genteel neighborhoods and dodgy areas, past murals on the sides of lovely old houses and murals on the walls of school playgrounds.  It is the art of the people, positioned for the people.  Brussels is at once the headquarters of the European Parliament, and the headquarters of comic book art.  A contradiction that makes for very interesting viewing!