Brussels #1of3

During our first visit, near The Grand Place in Brussels we found the life-size statue of the little boy, Manikin Pis. The name tells it all. Tourist stores in the neighborhood sell replicas and statues ranging in size from a few inches to a few feet high, that can be installed on a bar counter-top or as a fountain in your garden, wherever you would like.

Teen aged girls sometimes have little off-hand comments they use for no good reason. That year Daughter Linda said, from time to time, something about a “big ’ol hanging thing” when talking about a huge Cathedral, a bridge or whatever. Wonder if we will ever let Linda forget her comment, “I thought it would be a big ’ol hanging thing,” when she saw the very little fountain on the very natural statue of the very little boy. We never heard that phrase again, ever.

During our next visit to Belgium we drove here and there across the countryside, then to Brussels. The City Hall and other buildings around the Grand Place in Brussels make it one of the fanciest, and most exciting town squares in Europe. In August each year, they decorate the Grand Place with thousands of pots of colorful flowers, placed in a very meticulous design. One year we missed the flower show by a few days, but chalk marks, used to arrange the flower-pots in precision patterns, were still on the pavement. We found a parking place near downtown and walked around for awhile.

Belgium is at the center of a long-standing struggle between the two linguistic communities, the Walloons and the Flemish. Just about every city and street in Belgium has two names, one in French, and one in Flemish or Dutch.

One evening in the Brussels campsite, we heard some shouts and saw the tent next door was on fire. I grabbed the RV’s fire extinguisher and ran and put the fire out. The man had burns on his face, and a little boy had a minor burn on his ankle. The supplies from our First-Air kit were applied as needed, but I think they were unhappy that I messed up the tent and their dinner with the fire extinguisher. No way I was going to sit and watch a tent on fire, right next door.

Of all things, a downtown Brussels mall had a store containing only Marilyn Monroe memorabilia. Luckily for us there was also a Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors ice cream parlor.