Loving Brussels, whether you like it or not

Didn't even know Brussels had a
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

I like to think I can find some version of beauty anywhere. No podunk too dunky to find a po little piece of purty in it. And with some time and a camera, I reckon I could fill up a memory card just about anywhere and at least have myself a passable screensaver.

But Brussels. Oh Brussels.

Maybe it’s because I’d just spent the weekend in Paris, a city so beautiful you can nab something nice while putting the lens cap on wrong, but Brussels just... It just wouldn’t cooperate.

Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of beautiful things there. Old facades, careful corners, and hunks of history sitting in the sun or resting in the rain. But every single dern one of ‘em had a big heap of crap in front of it. Canine or municipal. Pigeon-piled or city planned.

Have a cute little mansion? Why not
build a giant glass thing looming over it?

But that’s just it. It’s not planned. For a city renowned and maligned as the home of bureaucracy and civil interference, Brussels seems to have grown up without any oversight whatsoever. In fact, I just learned that in urban planning, the term Brusselization means: “the indiscriminate and careless introduction of modern high-rise buildings into gentrified neighborhoods” and/or “haphazard urban development and redevelopment.”

Want a big beautiful church? Here, have seven. And each one gets a buddy, snuggled up nice and close, perhaps a neon Pizza Hut or an obese hotel that wishes it was in Miami, but usually a neo-brutalist concrete monument to capitalist dominance and sociopathic success.

Or you can just let it rot and paint eyelashes on the saints. That’s cool too.

But somehow in the chaos, the glaring glass and clumsy corners, I kind of fell in love with Brusselsian ugliness. It’s not exactly ugly, it’s just...kind of flailing. Uncontrolled and accidental. Tripping over itself and knocking over the altar. It’s kind of like life, built in steel and drywall and error.

Place des Martyrs

I’m glad not every city is scrambled eggs like this, but I’m also happy not every city has the unity of Paris, or the modernity of new Amsterdam, or the rotting Victorian urbanity of Oakland. And as San Francisco struggles with a malignant housing crisis, and the principle of supply and demand suggests we should build some modern high-rise buildings in our gentrified neighborhoods, I pray we don’t Brusselize ourselves into oblivion.

But strolling around the city, down traffic-afflicted streets with torn up cobblestones, I started to fall for the place, and by the time I sat to dinner in a sidewalk cafe with a peculiar blend of Moroccan, French, and Malaysian flavors, wouldn’t you know it, I’d filled up a memory card.

What Brussels is to me

A random street in Schaerbeek, a Brussels neighborhood just
across the tracks from the now infamous Molenbeek.

Brussels? The first memory that comes to mind is feeling like an episode of The Office had leaked into real life. These guys, with their corny jokes and awkward attempts at flirting, worked for a paper company. It was just so perfect.

I’d contacted a Belgian tour company and they’d sent me to tag along with these business trippers for an hour. I was fascinated by the improbable story of Belgian independence, but they mostly talked about sports, and the only thing I wrote down was “Don’t talk about something you can’t show.” Can’t say I’ll always obey that edict, now that I am a guide, nor can I follow it in this post

Because how can I show the swirl of emotion as very different images from Brussels slam into the news? The horror and sorrow and empathy and anger and confusion and sick knowledge that this happens much more often in a few other countries, and is no less horrible in commonality than rarity, perhaps only more so.

And fear. That’s in there too. But not fear of a terrorist attack, which I still believe is not something you or I will ever actually experience. Shark attacks, plane crashes, terrorist attacks. They are scary, they happen, but they are not factors in how I choose to plan my life. I like swimming, I take a lot of flights, and I believe there is far more goodness, more peace, in the human soul than violence.

I never did find out what was going on
with this. Somewhere in Brussels.

No, the fear I feel is that we will assist the extremists in their goals. That we will respond in exactly the wrong way. Because that conviction of mankind’s goodness is difficult to maintain sometimes. In myself, when I feel the desire to see someone punished for the violence, and the first image is more explosions, and I wait for my animal amygdala to give way to my human neocortex, which understands that violence only creates more violence.

And that fear is strong, that conviction of human goodness strained, when I watch the Republican primaries, and the bragging demonstration of a viewpoint that scorns such understanding. Scorns much understanding at all, as far as I can tell. It seems clear to me that Donald Trump is running on a platform of willful ignorance, and such arrogant idiocy has never been more dangerous.

Because make no mistake, the lunatics who killed people in Brussels would like nothing better than to see Trump elected. Their gameplan is fear, anger, reaction. Us versus Them. No comprehension, no discussion, no progress, only a devolution to a world of warring tribes and caliphates. That’s what terrorism does. It removes the evolved brain from the decision-making process. As I’ve written before, terrorism is the strategy of the weak.

Brussels is not a city of fear. This statue gives me an idea
of how I'd like to mentally respond to Trump's candidacy.

I for one do not want to live in that kind of world. I’d rather live in this one, where awkward businessmen in semi-fitting suits can ignore tour guides while I sit in the back of the bus, a peaceful piece of person afloat in a beautiful world, because even though that world has its problems, I have faith that humans are determined to make positive progress towards a better future.

Or you can vote for Trump.

It's all ending; it's all beginning.

On the night I left for Nicaragua, a year and a week ago exactly, I took a moment on the drive to the airport to take my hands off the wheel (the road was clear and it was just a moment) as an acknowledgment to the gods of Travel and Chance (who are cousins) that I was not in control of the world, then I took the wheel to start piloting my way as best I could.

This time I have no illusions; I am not remotely in control. The foundation of my life as I know it, the incarnation that began four years ago when I became more the person I am today, has crumbled out from beneath me.

I've made mistakes I never thought I would make, and I don't yet understand how. Four years ago I changed who I was, and I thought that meant I knew myself. Turns out I was wrong, I'm not yet there. I've had blessing beyond belief in this life; love and friendship to make the angels cry, but there is something missing, something in me that I've lost sight of.

I don't know exactly how to find it, but my path starts now. I am sitting in a corner cafe in the airport in Istanbul, where they charged me more for the orange juice (whose price is not obviously listed) than they did for the sandwich (which is), and looked uncomfortable when I remarked on it.

I guess that's the lesson: it's easy to be good when everyone is watching, but it's what you do when you can get away with it that counts.

K gets here on the next flight, T minus three hours and counting, and leaves on Sunday, D minus 3.5 days and counting.

So the next few days will be an Eden of company, then a Hell of farewell.

And after that?

I have no idea.

Walking in the world

They spoke Dutch when I got on the train and French when I got off, though the ads were always English.

Brussels North Station is next to the Red Light District and surrounded by neighborhoods of Middle Eastern immigrants, so you quickly go from women showing most of their skin to women showing none.

On the street I heard Turkish, Arabic, and Farsi, though I confess I cannot always tell the difference between the last two.

I started off walking but it was farther than I thought, and I was running by the time I found the embassy I needed, between those of Ghana and Lesotho.

Walking back, I heard Spanish, saw a note posted above a mailbox in Polish, and bought a piece of the tortilla-like flatbread I used to eat in Morocco, which I remember being called msemin, though I can google no confirmation of that.

As I ate, I passed a corner store called “Madina-gsm” (Americans: gsm is European for cell phone), which advertised calling cards to Kenya.

I stopped to take a picture of a blue door, and the names on the mailboxes were Azzaimi, Garcia, Deryckere, Ahmed El Kamoun, Boeckx, Tsuranova, and Baschirov.

Brussels gets a bad rap in my opinion (though I wouldn’t necessarily want to live there) but as I walked back to the train station with my visa for Myanmar in my passport, I was in love with the brazen internationality of it.

That’s a good sign, since I’ll catch a flight to Turkey in three days.

I thought this was about a job interview, but it's really mostly the trains.

Brussels has three train stations, all connected in a nice straight line (unlike some of those other, sillier cities where to get from North to South you have to go East for an hour).  I have usually used Central Station, an unnecessarily functional and dull place which inexplicably only has 6 tracks, set next to each other in an undecorated and somewhat stale cellar.  This in the (administrative) capital city of Europe.  I guess the “Eurocrats,” as the locals call them, don’t have to use such vulgar things as trains.  (Versus the Central Station in Antwerp, which is referred to as "The Cathedral of Train Stations" for good reason.)

On Monday I went to Brussels Noord (North), which is an industrial-scale transit point, 12 (I thought I saw 17) tracks, which purportedly shuffles 200,000 commuters per week, though on my couple visits it always seemed to have only mediocre traffic, escaping through oversized and relatively irrelevant halls where lightly crushed fast food soda cups and candybar wrappers accumulate in the corners.  (Note: not my picture, found it online.)

(Historical note, the first train on a public railway on the European continent departed from the original Brussels North station in 1835.  First train on the continent, and they built that station with 17 tracks; now that's confidence.)

Leaving out of the side exit I was faced with a giant cartoon woman, naked, fuchsia nipples matching the color of the words “peep show” and “live nude girls” covering the massive tinted windows across the street.  Other than that it felt like a normal business day afternoon, black and dark-gray sedans on the streets, individually packaged businessmen on the sidewalks going about their business in a less-beloved European capital…which it is.  The chlamydic grit of Paris’ Pigalle, with the architectural blandness of a Warsaw suburb.

Within a block or two it began to feel very much like Dar Es Salaam and a bit like Tangier.  Pavement ended under red and white construction tape that had long ago fallen down and accumulated with a serpentine writhe in a corner, worn footpaths between uneven heaps of sand on the raw street beyond.  Old radios with extended antennae poured voices wailing in any of several languages over speedy rhythmic music, men strolled around in full-length djelaba robes and matching headwear, and small clusters of women hurried past in robes of strictly conservative design and gaudily audacious colors.

The women, either old or young, none of seduction-prone middle aged, moved quickly through the streets without ever looking up, only their faces showing, while above them women from Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa sat on stools behind windows in bikinis, red lights not visible in the afternoon sun, lazily tapping on the glass with large acrylic fingernails at passing men, none of whom ever look up.

On the back of an envelope I had sketched out a path from the train station to the luxury hotel where I had an appointment, but as I so often do, I inexplicably changed path and headed off in a different direction.  I do not understand why I do this.  I was hoping for a predictable grid-structure to the streets, which of course did not exist, and the atmosphere was not noticeably changing from scuzzy to fancy.

I was considering the wisdom of backtracking when I turned a corner and found the four star hotel, ground floor a chic restaurant with ridiculous prices and stylish furniture filled with butts in expensive suits, butts’owners sipping stylish drinks, a different language at each table.  The website for the hotel shows an entirely different building, set next to a large park, it is not clearly labelled as some other major landmark in the city, though that pic is no longer on their website.  Instead I found this one of the couch-thing we were sitting on.  (Again, not my picture, and am I supposed to formally state the hotel name and website, or would doing so be the problem?  I think the name on the glass is outdated anyway.  Why is the world run by lawyers?  I do not represent the pictured hotel, have no ties to it whatsoever.  Please don’t sue me.)

I was there to meet with a lady who runs a tour guide company.  I want to give that a try.

A couple weeks ago I found a website where you can basically list yourself as a tour guide.  There were only three for Belgium, two in Brussels and one on the other side of the country.  I emailed both the Brussels people, asking if they would like to collaborate, since I live in the northern part of the country, including the waaaay more attractive cities of Antwerp, Gent, and Bruges.

One of them responded that she was interested, and I should join up with one of her tours, so we could all check each other out.  I spoke with her on the phone and she told me how they specialized in small groups, from a couple people to a family, maybe eight people max.

I recognized her from her profile picture when she came in, joined her, and found myself sitting on a not-comfortable-enough-to-linger-on, rectangular-block, sorta-suede couch-thing, vaguely not-talking to nine professional guides about today’s tour, which was for 150 businessmen from across the European Union, who would be packed onto three tour buses and taken to different points in the city before converging like SWAT teams on a high-end restaurant downtown.

Hokay then.

I tried to make myself useful by keeping track of the businessmen as they climbed onto my assigned bus.  They were bland in the way that only businessmen can be, and the other guides lost count.  I used units of ten corresponding to fingers stuck out in my pockets to keep the yuppie-guppies straight in my mind.  (Businessmen/commuters strike me as schools of busy little fish, all in matching gray suits, swimming past, mouths gaping for water, tiny briefcases clutched in fins, though I just looked up what a guppy actually looks like and they are surprisingly stylish fish.  But "yuppie-sardines" isn’t as catchy.)

Oh, and because the universe is Beautiful, they came from some sort of paper company, in town for a paper company conference.  I am proud and disappointed that I refrained from Dunder Mifflin jokes the entire time.

For the next hour I followed along with the tour, not helping, maybe learning?  I was clearly not a guide, and I was clearly not a businessman.  They wore silky suits and loafers, I wore jeans and Cons.  I was neither sardine, nor cleaner shrimp (seems like a logical parallel for the guide, no?) but I’m not sure what I was.  A remora?

Luckily it takes more than simply being out of place to make me uncomfortable any more, so I rather enjoyed the experience.  I  think I could potentially be a good tour guide, and I learned a bit about Brussels, which hopefully I will remember until next September when my parents come to visit Belgium.

There was a non-tour guide conference coordinator, directing the guppies across Europe.  He was Christian Bale, but substantially French.  At the end he said I was invited to stay for a drink with them, and did not try to dissuade me at all when I said I had to go.  I grabbed a falafel and headed to Central Station.

I had 45 minutes to wait, so people-watched in a little courtyard outside the station.  It was one of those perfect evenings, just on the opening edge of summer, the air soft as only air in that season can be, the city not asleep but calm, its mutterings just below audible.  The sun was gone, but the sky was still visible, dark blue, 10:00 PM.

A few travellers came and went, their suitcase wheels sounding the same note across the cobblestones.  Two older tourists in pristine backpacks walked past, cameras held in front of their bodies and looking at no one.  A group of students studying abroad strutted by, chatting louder than Belgians ever do about where to go for a cheap meal.

Under an archway stood that night’s greatest gift.  He was slightly balding, and played that violin with a patient and durable passion that lifted the wait from acceptance to pleasure.  I would have gladly leaned against that wall until he went home.  But I had my own home to return to, so I headed to track six, and swear I recognized the green teddy bear graffiti on the side of the train as it pulled up.  The way home was a broad U, passing through Antwerp, so I ended up coming home on the same train I normally do, just two hours later, last train of the night.  No cars on the road.