02 Aug 2012:
I Ate Philadelphia
Brussels, Brussels-Capital, Belgium
H: 23 L: 14 Weather: Partly Cloudy
The awesomeness of the hostel I stayed at continued on Thursday. Breakfast was an all-you-can-eat smorgasboard of whatever was available, in stark contrast to just about every other day at a hostel. I met one of the most interesting guys on this trip that morning. When I asked him where he was from, he couldn't really say - he had moved around too much. He was a tough, grizzled, older guy, with tattoos up his arms and piercings in his ears. He wasn't an army guy, I don't think, but he sure acted like it in a lot of ways.
We got to talking, and I asked him how long he had been traveling. He figured a couple of years. I was a bit staggered, but he told me that he had some money saved up and was able to live super cheaply; he sold all his possessions (except for a couple of boxes that he left with his sister) and started moving around from place to place. And, from what I hear, he pretty much did what he wanted, traveling from place-to-place, and keeping up with the young women he met along the way via Facebook. Personally, I was most impressed by the fact that he checked weather forecasts using Weather Underground, which is my weather system of choice.
I didn't hear much about his previous life story, but he did let slip that 1) he had several huge dogs over the years and 2) he had decided to start traveling because he decided to quit the rat race and start living for himself. I've always found the second attitude to be rather odd. No one's a hermit. No matter what you end up doing, you can't just "live for yourself"; your choices will always have consequences for other people. I mean, leaving the rat race behind is different, and that's just a matter of "different strokes for different folks"; I'm happy to embrace the rat race because what I want out of life requires it, but not everyone needs to have a tenure-track professorship at a major research institution. But "living for yourself", to me, sounds like living some sort of Randian fantasy, where the more lasting pleasures that can be gained by being good to others are subsumed under the immediate gratification of today. Or something.
Still, gotta credit him for getting rid of his possessions like he did! That takes dedication.
Brussels is an interesting town; a lot of it is dedicated to international finance and government, as Brussels is the home of many of the functions of the European Union. There are a few museums, however, and during the summer the Royal Palace is open, for free, to visitors. I decided to check it out first. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. The tour they had set up led us through many of the sweeping grand rooms of the palace, where you could imagine late-1800s sons and daughters of middling German principalities dancing around and gossiping. But there was very little in terms of "personal touches". I certainly didn't get any feel for what the Royal Family was like, or what they did in their gigantic home. That was rather a shame, because Albert II of Belgium is one of the few constitutional monarchs who has been asked by basically everyone in his country to please meddle in political affairs pretty pretty please. (He did so with great distaste and then wandered back into his palaces. Belgium is a fascinating country politically.)
What I did find fascinating about the Palace, though, was that they had set up a bunch of rooms, including the Throne Room, as an anthropology exhibit, featuring masks from all over the world. I found the irony of African masks taking up much of the Belgian Palace to be quite wonderful given the history. After our tour winded its way through the rooms with masks, I started hearing loud noises, and, suddenly, I found myself in a room that had been converted into a science museum. I have no idea why they did that, but there was some sort of EEG that was always full and seemed broken (otherwise I would've tried it out, of course) and the ability for people to compose songs. Here's the EEG thing:
After the Palace/Anthropology/Science Museum, I made my way to the "Parliamentarium", one of the seats of the European Parliament. (Because the European Parliament is an outgrowth of the EU, it does not have just one place to meet, because everything in the EU is required to be as complex as possible.) I learned from the Parliamentarium that the apparatuses of the European Union have a very high opinion of themselves. The EU was credited for... quite a bit... and the scale models of each of the EU buildings were all given slavish attention. Still, as a Europhile, I enjoyed the museum quite a bit. It gave a good overview of the EU's past, and gave short shrift for Euroskeptics. (Its treatment of De Gaulle was entertaining.) It also integrated technology into the museum much better than the Amsterdam Museum had. I also had a lunch wrap with basically the vaguest ingredients ever:
To this day, I'm not certain whether I ate the city of Philadelphia, the concept of brotherly love, or the critically-acclaimed 1993 movie about AIDS. I apologize profusely to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania if the first.
After the Parliamentarium, I went back to my hostel. The owner was there along with his two kids, playing with his dog. (Did I mention this hostel was small and cute and awesome? 'Cuz it was.) The two New Zealanders and Mr. Self-Sufficient were there, as well as a guy I hadn't seen before. We got to talking; he was originally from London, and was traveling around as kind of a gap year sort of thing. His next destinations were Copenhagen and Munich. Eventually, we decided to head out for dinner, which I don't deny I felt a little grateful for—I didn't want to be eating alone, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be eating with the New Zealanders or this grizzled dude, either.
We asked the hostel owner for a place to eat, and he suggested one to us that was a little bit of a walk away. But it was so worth it! We had been wanting to get some authentic Belgian cuisine, and this place had a completely indecipherable menu to an outsider. My London friend (named "Alfie", which made me think of Theon Greyjoy for obvious reasons) even knew some French and he couldn't piece it together. Regardless, though, the prices were decent, and the place seemed full of people from Brussels. Scanning the menu, I saw the word "Waterzooi" and immediately decided that that was what my order was going to be, because, with a name like "Waterzooi"... how could it be anything but interesting? As I learned, Waterzooi is a delicious, savory stew that, in this case, was full of chicken. Alfie and I both ended up getting it and liking it very much.
After our dinner, it was back to the hostel for a relaxing sleep in comfortable beds. I was ready for Germany!
I didn't hear much about his previous life story, but he did let slip that 1) he had several huge dogs over the years and 2) he had decided to start traveling because he decided to quit the rat race and start living for himself. I've always found the second attitude to be rather odd. No one's a hermit. No matter what you end up doing, you can't just "live for yourself"; your choices will always have consequences for other people. I mean, leaving the rat race behind is different, and that's just a matter of "different strokes for different folks"; I'm happy to embrace the rat race because what I want out of life requires it, but not everyone needs to have a tenure-track professorship at a major research institution. But "living for yourself", to me, sounds like living some sort of Randian fantasy, where the more lasting pleasures that can be gained by being good to others are subsumed under the immediate gratification of today. Or something.
Still, gotta credit him for getting rid of his possessions like he did! That takes dedication.
Brussels is an interesting town; a lot of it is dedicated to international finance and government, as Brussels is the home of many of the functions of the European Union. There are a few museums, however, and during the summer the Royal Palace is open, for free, to visitors. I decided to check it out first. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. The tour they had set up led us through many of the sweeping grand rooms of the palace, where you could imagine late-1800s sons and daughters of middling German principalities dancing around and gossiping. But there was very little in terms of "personal touches". I certainly didn't get any feel for what the Royal Family was like, or what they did in their gigantic home. That was rather a shame, because Albert II of Belgium is one of the few constitutional monarchs who has been asked by basically everyone in his country to please meddle in political affairs pretty pretty please. (He did so with great distaste and then wandered back into his palaces. Belgium is a fascinating country politically.)
What I did find fascinating about the Palace, though, was that they had set up a bunch of rooms, including the Throne Room, as an anthropology exhibit, featuring masks from all over the world. I found the irony of African masks taking up much of the Belgian Palace to be quite wonderful given the history. After our tour winded its way through the rooms with masks, I started hearing loud noises, and, suddenly, I found myself in a room that had been converted into a science museum. I have no idea why they did that, but there was some sort of EEG that was always full and seemed broken (otherwise I would've tried it out, of course) and the ability for people to compose songs. Here's the EEG thing:
 |
| The players had to compete to enhance the activity in certain frequency bands. Alpha, I think. It was weird, though, and I think the player at the right was always penalized due to the system's defects. |
After the Palace/Anthropology/Science Museum, I made my way to the "Parliamentarium", one of the seats of the European Parliament. (Because the European Parliament is an outgrowth of the EU, it does not have just one place to meet, because everything in the EU is required to be as complex as possible.) I learned from the Parliamentarium that the apparatuses of the European Union have a very high opinion of themselves. The EU was credited for... quite a bit... and the scale models of each of the EU buildings were all given slavish attention. Still, as a Europhile, I enjoyed the museum quite a bit. It gave a good overview of the EU's past, and gave short shrift for Euroskeptics. (Its treatment of De Gaulle was entertaining.) It also integrated technology into the museum much better than the Amsterdam Museum had. I also had a lunch wrap with basically the vaguest ingredients ever:
 |
| EN Ingredients: Wraps, 'Ganda' ham, Philadelphia, curly lettuce |
After the Parliamentarium, I went back to my hostel. The owner was there along with his two kids, playing with his dog. (Did I mention this hostel was small and cute and awesome? 'Cuz it was.) The two New Zealanders and Mr. Self-Sufficient were there, as well as a guy I hadn't seen before. We got to talking; he was originally from London, and was traveling around as kind of a gap year sort of thing. His next destinations were Copenhagen and Munich. Eventually, we decided to head out for dinner, which I don't deny I felt a little grateful for—I didn't want to be eating alone, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be eating with the New Zealanders or this grizzled dude, either.
We asked the hostel owner for a place to eat, and he suggested one to us that was a little bit of a walk away. But it was so worth it! We had been wanting to get some authentic Belgian cuisine, and this place had a completely indecipherable menu to an outsider. My London friend (named "Alfie", which made me think of Theon Greyjoy for obvious reasons) even knew some French and he couldn't piece it together. Regardless, though, the prices were decent, and the place seemed full of people from Brussels. Scanning the menu, I saw the word "Waterzooi" and immediately decided that that was what my order was going to be, because, with a name like "Waterzooi"... how could it be anything but interesting? As I learned, Waterzooi is a delicious, savory stew that, in this case, was full of chicken. Alfie and I both ended up getting it and liking it very much.
After our dinner, it was back to the hostel for a relaxing sleep in comfortable beds. I was ready for Germany!
