Brussels, March 1996

Beer drinking

My friend Sally, who spent weekends in Brussels when she lived in Amsterdam, said this [À la Mort Subite Bar"] (size 58499) was the bar she always made a beeline for when she arrived. They have pretty good food, and wonderful gueuze (The Brussels version of Lambic) which you can have flavored with fruits or straight. I took it straight with food, and then had a fruit version for desert.

Musical Instruments Museum

One of the native sons that Brussels is proud of is Adolphe Sax. The Museum of Musical instruments has copies of some of his experiments which didn't catch on. This one is called a [Tenor Trombone in Bb] (size 49300) tenor trombone in Bb.

They also have this [china urinal with flowers] urinal (size 62292) in the ladies room.

TV watching

One of the features that makes Brussels a good place to start a European trip is that everything is in at least two and more likely four or five languages. I had worse jet lag than usual, and the March weather didn't make walking as much fun as it would have been later in the spring, so I spent a fair amount of time in my hotel room watching TV. There were Belgian stations in Flemish and French, and the cable got stations from other countries including the UK, and all stations had movies in original language plus subtitles in French or English.

I had been nervous about my ability to communicate in languages besides English, but by the time I got on the train for Poland, my Tourist German was actually functioning pretty well.

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