Belgium, Brussels, and Bureaucracy

Our final city of the trip was the home of the EU (sort of), chocolate (again, not home but popular), and some very cool museums.

Feeling quite starved of museums in the past week or so we were delighted by the super cool and cheap city museum of Brussels. This gem had some incredible dioramas of the city with really good information boards meaning the rest of our day in the city was full of context.

One funky element of Brussels's character is this distinguished fellow: Mannekin Pis. This little guy has been in the city since at least the 15th century and has developed a tradition of being dressed up for events and also for being stolen several times.

Getting yet more spoilt for museums we stopped by the military museum in the EU district of the city and were impressed by all of the dioramas. The museum had this super cool WW2 section with several recreations of various methods of combat during the war including a submarine (pictured), a tail gun of a Lancaster, a Normandy landing craft, and a parachute drop (below).

Given our silly little bikes we have been cycling around for 3 months now seeing this mini-motorbike made me very jealous.

Not only did the military museum have masses of WW2 content, and a smashing 19th century section, it had this whole hangar of post-war planes.

Just around the corner and still on top of the main hill in Brussels, who knew Brussels was so hilly, was the main EU Parliament. Very impressive to see in person but the massive signs asking for the EU to have more funding everywhere didn't exactly smack as professional.

On our cycle out of the city we came across a rare treasure in Brussels: water! Unlike its Flemish sister cities to the north in Ghent and Bruges, Brussels had covered over all of its river and most of its canals in the 19th century to avoid flooding. The gains made in flood defence though came at the heavy price of a significantly less aesthetic city centre. 

Not only is it enlightening to see the cultural differences between European countries, but the differences in regions and cities within those countries is a cool side benefit of this trip.

As the sun set on our last day in Europe and the trip as a whole, there were plenty of emotions being felt during our final night, and plenty of panicked planning for the day ahead!