Belgium

After our night’s stay beside the fields of grain on the road to Brussels, we made an earlyish start into the city. It was over 90kms to the city centre, and though we made good time on the motorways once we got into the city centre, without proper maps, it became more of a problem/Thankfully it was Saturday so the town was a lot quieter than it would have been mid-week. We still managed to drive around for a considerable time looking for a suitable park for the van. We did find signs for parking which we dutifully followed, only to find ourselves in very narrow dead end streets with a car-parking building with a height restricting barrier ahead of us. It is quite taxing trying to do 20 point turns in a foreign city on the wrong side of the road…..  We eventually decided to drive out of town a bit, find a park and then try to catch public transport into the city centre. We parked on the side of the road, couldn’t be sure we were interpreting the parking signs the way we should have been, tried at the local petrol station for parking “wheels” or coupons only to be told there should be ticket dispensers within 10 metres of our park (which there weren’t of course). Very few of the vehicles appeared to have coupons or anything so we decided to try our luck, preparing our explanation for the Belgian “Politie” should we get a ticket, as we walked. We walked and walked, having tried unsuccessfully to negotiate the Brussel’s underground system  (you need to buy a ticket from the machine but it won’t let you if you don’t have a Belgian bank card!!!! (I feel the French influence here)).   We had a road map by now, but it was huge, a good 1.5m x 1.2, trying to use it takes a lot of dexterity, strength and courage, so we instead used our brains, the few road signs and “touristy pedestrian pointing in the direction signs” and I think our DK Europe book which has a not very detailed map of Brussels with the top tourist spots on it, to find our way to the Grand Place – a square surrounded by stunning buildings. On our way we spotted a McDonalds (few and far between in France and Brussels) and stopped to check emails and charge the computer and camera. We also searched for somewhere we could park the camper overnight (with us in it) without offending the locals or any officials. I found a site that said there weren’t any camping sites for motorhomes (there is one which only takes tents) within the city of Brussels, or any parking areas (which we had pretty much discovered that morning). But (my only just adequate French comes to the fore here) it said that the local police don’t allow anyone to stay in a parking spot for more than 24 hours, (they worry about gypsies) which I optimistically took to mean that you could stay for less than 24 hours. I searched for ““aires” in the Brussels area” and found 3, one seemed pretty straight forward to get to, and on the bus/tram routes to town so wrote down the directions to follow later.

From McDs we walked to the Grand Place through narrow, pretty little cobbled streets, past shops selling nougat, biscuits, Belgian chocolate and beers. We went into a few, I was nervous after our Malaysian experience of buying chocolates from an exquisite shop so when Di and Hilary started filling a bag with biscuits I said, “remember Malaysia!!”, then we decided to buy “a few pices” of nougat. If you ever wondered what €31.60 of biscuits and nougat look like, I’ll put in a photo. (The sad thing is, though they look pretty, they taste awful!!  Two were very reminiscent of the jasmine scented washing powder we are using at the moment, and the chocolate one was, as Diana put it, “like a really bad afghan mixture”. The nougat is OK but not that exciting. We wandered around a bit more, went to the the Manneken Pis (just what it sounds like, a small statue of a naked boy piddling. He is quintessential Belgium apparently, we have certainly seen a large number of men here emulating his behaviour, not naked, mind, just piddling quite openly, out in the streets. Hils got a hot sugary, sweet smelling and devine tasting waffle (just plain) for one euro, and munched on that as we looked at shop windows and people and buildings on our way back towards the truck. It was getting on towards 6pm and we were all hot, tired, thirsty and a little hungry, so we stopped off at a Halal serving French/Spanish/Belgian restaurant with a Tunisian chef, where Hilary had a huge pizza, I had an Italian style chicken pasta and Diana had a chicken paella. It was accompanied by a huge green salad with tomato, grated carrot, lettuce, green and purple cabbage and a delicious dressing. We each had a cold drink, and at the end of our meal we were served up spearmint tea in a pretty Morrocan style pot in 3 glasses, really refreshing and good for the digestion. All this only cost 20 euro, Hilary only managed 2 of her 10 slices of pizza, Di about a third of her paella (Hilary had heaps of that), and me about a third of my pasta, but Hilary ate all the chicken out of it). So the Tunisian chef gave us Hilary’s pizza and Di’s paella to take away, it was sufficient to feed us lunch and dinner the next day!!!

We eventually got back to the truck, no tickets or signs that we had done anything wrong, so we had interpreted the signs correctly I suspect. We followed our huge map  to the address of the “aires” I had found on the internet, navigating through narrow streets lined with fruit stalls, and people of I would guess African descent, up a hill and around many corners. We got to the address and there was nothing like an “aires” as we know it, (a large, free parking area for trucks and the like, where you can stay for the night). It was a very small house/flat/apartment in a jam packed residential street. The only blessing was that the area had a large wooded/ semi forest area and a park (of the tree and grass variety) so we drove on a bit further and found a quiet, flat spot outside the Moroccan Embassy where it appeared (to the untrained eye) that it was OK to park. We set up the truck there, using our new chocks for the second time, which allows you to level the truck with the placement of them under a side or end as the terrain requires. They have 3 steps on them, and you drive the truck to whichever step it requires in order to make it level. We have 2 spirit levels attached to the dashboard one lengthwise and one width wise so you can ensure you are on the level (or the truck is at least). We stayed there for the night, very pleasant quiet urban street, unpestered by anyone, though we always attract long stares from the French and now Belgian citizens. I had a medium sized walk in the forest after dinner, it feels more like a planted park to me of course because all the trees are of the type we have in parks, sycamore, oaks and the like. I discovered a large grassy park, a nice view, and some interesting buildings, lots of dog poo (these guys, like the French, have lots of dogs, and don’t know about picking up their droppings. Makes for a hop-scotch type of gait as you walk around the city.

The next morning we walked up the steep grassy slope by the truck about 50 metres and caught the bus into town (€2 each for me and Di, Hilary was free). It is nice to be driven around the city on a bus, you get to see so much and it is completely stress free, I thoroughly recommend it. We were headed for a few parks, large old, ornate buildings and the modern glassy European Community buildings. The bus took us to within 100 metres of the first park (The Parc du Bruxelles)  which we explored, sat by the fountain, used the toilet, and Hilary had a play at a play area while Di and I watched and wrote postcards. The park has lovely large trees, and some tidy geometric patterned walkways which are pale, fine limestone covered.

There is a large plain but impressive, fountain at the end of one of the long avenues through the park, sending high gushes skyward and fanning out to splash down into the surrounding pond, a soothing sound which also helps muffle the engines of the passing motor vehicles. We also admired the sunken garden in front of, and the building itself “Palais Royal”.

We walked about a kilometre west from this park to the part of the Parlement Europeen  an area for meeting and office space. Lovely modern, glassy buildings, with interesting shapes and colourful flags flying.

We lunched in Parc Leopald another few hundred metres west again, sitting on a grassy slope (beware of what you are sitting on!) in the hot sunshine, beside a pond which had turtles, moorhens (with ugly chick), geese and very large carp in, putting on a performance for us.

We walked again, slightly north-west to the Parc du Cinquantenaire where Hilary had a short play on some climbing equipment, we ordered and devoured glace, me vanilla, Di – fraise, and Hilary vanilla and citron. The vanilla was creamy, but the citron and fraise more a sorbet type consistency, everything cool and delicious on a hot day with lots of walking though. There are a collection of museums butting onto each other at this park, the one we visited though was a Motorworld Museum with great cars (mostly European) from early models to modern, though mostly 1930s to 80s. We all enjoyed different parts of it, even though we were all pretty tired and our feet ached from the heat and walking.

It wasn’t late but we decided to catch the bus back to the truck so we could move on as we wanted to visit an area in the north of Brussels called Bruparc which is outside the inner city the next day, and had been told by a lady at the information centre it was possible to park out there for the night. So after a cup of tea we set out on what looked like a pretty simple route to there. At a roundabout about 10 minutes from our start we took the 3^rd exit instead of the fourth I think and after about 5 minutes of driving down an ever narrowing very suburban feeling street I asked Di if we were on the right road. She said she didn’t know. You can imagine my mature response. We pulled over to the side of the road and I eventually worked out where we were, and where we needed to go (we were 90 degrees off course and about 2 kms in the wrong direction. I continued with mature comments as we drove along. I must admit I find driving the truck in big cities very stressful, especially as it is on the wrong side of the road, and the street signs are all in funny languages (if there at all), so I expect perfection from my navigator, and advanced warning of direction changes. It would help also if the navigator could be relied upon to mean left when she says it, and right when she says that, but quite often it’s the wrong way around. Diana says it’s a developmental thing, one of those critical periods of learning and if you don’t get left and right sorted at that critical stage you never will. Great!!!! I say!!!! So anyway we missed another turn (important one) by which time the air was blue in the truck and any semblance of pleasantness completely gone. Thankfully there were road signs now pointing us to “expo” which is on the same site at Bruparck, and the huge Atomium beaconing or maybe even beckoning us,  so we managed to get there. It was quite chaotic there being a football extravaganza on between a number of African looking teams, and a music/festival atmosphere, combined with the Sunday afternoon revellers who were at the various attractions on site. We parked where there was a long enough parking spot for us, and many other cars parked, beside a bus, and started dinner preparations.  A politie car roared up and a very blonde Belgian policewoman got out and came and told us we were in a bus only park. We apologized and said we hadn’t realised, we would move as soon as we could (there was a car parked behind us, and a bus beside us, and another car on the other side). She said that was OK, and gave everyone else tickets!!!  We drove back down the hill to a big flat area in front of the “stade” which is a huge stadium where they have sporting fixtures as well as music concerts and the like. There were heaps of trucks parked in an otherwise empty expanse or parking lot I guess though there weren’t meters or places painted on the ground. Anyway we stayed there the night, amongst the truckers, and with another campervan which arrived later that night.  I went for a walk around the complex while the others played cards and chatted, the police were back ticketing the next lot of cars in the bus park.