You might visit Brussels one day. Here are some things you can do there.
• Grand Place/Grote Markt
All roads lead to la Grand Place, at least for tourists. This giant cobbled square is the must-see in the centre of town, thanks mainly to the ring of ornate guildhalls that surrounds it. They date back to the late 17th century, rebuilt all in one go following a French bombardment. Imagine a football pitch with a Baroque touchline, the centre filled with foreigners wandering around with cameras snap snap snap. The lofty pinnacled tower on the south side belongs to the Town Hall, also home to the tourist information office, while the King's House on the opposite side (the one not selling beer or coffee) contains the city museum. Differentsidesglisten as the sun moves round, and the flower sellers come and go, in case you fancy coming back for a subtly different photo. [6 photos]
• Manneken Pis
A couple of minutes down a souvenir-y street brings you to Brussels most famous piss artist. The two-foot high statue of a small boy urinating was first installed almost 400 years ago, and has only been stolen seven times since, meaning that the current manneken is a perfect copy. There's no great miracle regarding his liquid supply - the tube feeding his constant stream is clearly visible. Usually he passes water, but sometimes his feeding tube is connected a beer keg instead and cups are passed out to people in the street. In addition he's often dressed up - hundreds of MP-sized costumes are stored away in readiness - which is why today he's wearing the robes of the Academic Order of Saint-Louis, and on Tuesday he'll be doing a semi-convincing St Patrick. I'm pleased to have seen him on a nude day, for ordinariness' sake, surrounded by hordes of tourists determined to take a selfie of themselves taking the pis. [2 photos]
• A cone of potato chips, or frites, is the savoury snack of choice. Usually with mayonnaise, never vinegar. But the country's Frietmuseum is in Bruges, so we'll move on.
• Waffles are the non-savoury snack of choice, and not just for tourists. A fresh battered rectangle served up in a tray, with a tiny tiny fork stabbed into the top to aid consumption. The basic grid sells for €1, if you know where to look, then toppings include strawberries, chocolate and cream, or all three if your stomach's up to it.
• The other big food in Brussels is chocolate. The number of chocolatiers is high, especially in the narrow medieval streets and elegant arcades. What with Easter coming up, many of their windows are bedecked with brightly wrapped eggs in gift baskets, but in others the emphasis is select-it-yourself luxury truffles. Despite all this Belgium has one of the lowest rates of diabetes in the EU.
• Oh, and beer. They love their beer here, and they brew it well, with an emphasis on lagers and wheat. Stella and Leffe are big, Jupiter is the biggest brand Britons have never heard of, and my favourite name has to be Bofferding (an import from Luxembourg).
• For reasons I was unable to deduce, an awful lot of men and women were going round in matching red fleeces. I thought it might be a uniform, say for local government operatives, but then I spotted other groups in a very specific shade of green, and one of you will know I'm sure. (Aha, it turns out tens of thousands oftrade union workers were in town for an anti-austerity protest, and I completely missed it)
• Things I didn't quite get used to: walking out onto striped pedestrian crossings and expecting oncoming traffic to stop (it always did)
• Things I didn't quite get used to: knowing which language to start talking in - French or something else? (I usually lapsed into a feeble English instead)
• Things I didn't quite get used to: spotting a C&A (still with Clockhouse garment branding) in the main shopping street.
• Brussels Metro
It's interesting to compare a system created in the last 50 years with London's more sprawling piecemeal network dating back to a hundred years earlier. The first underground tramways, or 'premetro', arrived in the late 60s, passing beneath the city centre in a long straight tunnel. The first metro line arrived in 1976, and the system's now up to four (one of which, admittedly, is an existing line with a few extra stations at one end). There is a circle line but it's called Line 2, one complete circuit of which takes about 25 minutes. Most stations have a single name but others are titled both in French and in Dutch, which leads to alternating destinations flashing up on the front of certain trains. The Metro's infrastructure has a uniformity you don't get in London, with straight low platforms instead of singular curves, and letterboxy concrete tunnels instead of restrictive tubes. Each underground station has a different artistic theme, from geometric twine patterns to Flemish farmhouses. And the trains are quite old, with more of a New York subway feel than anything TfL. To board you grab a metal handle and the doors open with a muted pneumatic swoosh. But the next train indicators are very clear, with lamps lighting on a board to show where each train has got to, with the number of minutes to go flashed up underneath. A one-day pass for trains, trams and buses costs just €7, which is a proper bargain.
• Things that aren't big in Brussels: the river's not a touristy destination in any way.
• Things that are cheap in Brussels: everything at the moment, because the euro's weak.
• Things I didn't visit in Brussels: any of the museums, not this time (next time a Brussels card will get me in for nothing)
When the Worlds Fair came to Brussels in 1958, the organisers sought to build a landmark building to wow the crowds. They nearly plumped for a massive mast, what with telecommunications being big at the time, but instead an engineer called André Waterkeyn persuaded them to erect something much more startling. His creation was the Atomium, a giant sculpture inspired by the structure of an iron crystal, its name a combination of Atom and Aluminium. Eight giant aluminium spheres mark the corners of a rotated cube, with a ninth at the centre, and twenty tubes join all the orbs together. The whole thing rises to 102 metres high, which is approximately two Nelson's Columns, if you're measuring in Imperial units. And I'm torn between whether the best thing about it is howitlooks, or the fact that you can wander round inside.
The Atomium stands in the northwest corner of Brussels, in a wooded park alongside the Heysel Stadium, aligned perfectly symmetrically at the centre of a grassy boulevard. Turn up on a sunny day and itgleams, thanks to the outer layers being replaced by stainless steel when the building was restored ten years ago. The addition of a visitor pavilion at ground level, and the creation of various exhibitions within, has helped to turn the hasbeen structure into a top attraction. So when in town, as I was on Wednesday, the Atomium was top of my list.
A Tintin lookalike in a plastic head greets you on the way in, shakes you by the hand and then poses with you for an obligatory photo. That trial over, the first of your ascents begins. This is to the uppermost sphere, accessed via what was (in 1958) the fastest lift in Europe. A glass panel on the roof of the lift allows you to look up the shaft as you rise, which is either thrilling or unnerving. And then you step out onto an observation deck with a 360 degree view over Brussels and beyond... or more immediately the former exhibition ground below. The Palais des Expositions at the end of the boulevard was built for the Brussels International Exposition of 1935 and is remarkablyimposing, and still used for exhibitions to this day.
Probably the most interesting thing to stare down onto is a unique model village called Mini-Europe. It contains scale models of 350 European landmarks from over 30 countries, and has been up and running hereabouts since 1989. Notre Dame and the Acropolis were easy to identify, but I struggled to pick out the UK section because the largest exhibit turns out to be Bath's Royal Crescent, and that's not immediately obvious from above. Mini-Europe's precisely the kind of attraction I'd like to have explored later, but unfortunately it only reopens after its winter break on Saturday, hence the only people inside this week were those giving the turf and buildings a last-minute spruce-up. Dammit.
Having peaked in the top sphere, the Atomium tour heads straight back down again in the lift so you can go up again. This time it's via escalator, first into the lower globe where an exhibition outlines the history of the structure. Everything about the design, the old documents and the associated Expo paraphernalia screams 1958, which I really liked, though some of the younger visitors a little less so. After a couple of floors it's time to ascend to the next ball, accessed via what was (in 1958) the longest escalator in Europe. Portholes along the way remind you you're inside a giant strut, almost unimaginable from the outside, but the only way to climb.
In sphere 4 they host temporary exhibitions, which at present means OrangeDreams, a retrospective of 60s and 70s interior design. Every exhibit is plastic and every exhibit is orange, which I liked even more, lifted from a local collection called the Plasticarium. A globeful of video I enjoyed rather less, and the next was accessible only to children - school parties get to sleep here overnight. When finally the tubes and staircases return you to the ground, you're faced by the photo (and associated keyring) snapped earlier, which is unceremoniously binned the minute you say you don't want it. And then it's out to gawp at what you've just been round, the entire structure suddenly making much more sense.
If the Atomium was in London it'd be the talk of the city. Instead it's become the symbol of Brussels, even of Belgium, with its message of scientific hope beaming forth from the 1950s. A finer folly you'd have to look far to find.
It's surprisingly easy to take a tour of the European Parliament. Admittedly you have to make your own way to Brussels in the first place, which might take (for sake of argument) two hours nineteen minutes. But once in town all you do is wander over to the slightly dull eastern side of the city, find the correct entrance and a free tour is yours. [8 photos]
The hub of our continental democracy, architecturally speaking, has a bit too much of the 1990s about it. A cluster of greysteel and glass buildings hogs the skyline beyond Luxembourg Square, all vehemently symmetrical, and fairly hard to spot from any distance away. Each of the main buildings fulfills a different purpose, and each is named after a European politician of historical note. They're gathered round an open plaza, now a favoured spot for skateboarding, plus a good place to site a single chunk of Berlin Wall as a long term reminder. Down by the main entrance armed soldiers stand primed, while the flags of every EU nation droop or flutter depending on the wind tunnel effect. A commemorative Euro statue sits to one side, a little forlorn, and the entrance to the tour is badly signposted off to the left.
You have to turn up at the right time (either 10am or 3pm at this time of year), and on the right day (not a weekend or a public holiday), but then the lady on reception slaps a special sticker on you and you're in. There's no need to book in advance, which means the tour size can get pretty massive, but they've got ways of coping with that. Every participant gets an audio-visual guide, which hooks onto your ear in a spatially-challenging way, and then you pick your language and you're off. Everything at the European Parliament happens in 24 official languages, so no matter who turns up the tour can accommodate their needs.
Past security is another run of flags and a series of free EU literature (alas the set in English is currently out of stock). And then it's up in the lifts to the fourth floor to take a look at a wavy metal sculpture hanging in the main atrium. By this time I was struggling somewhat with the audio guide, having initially tapped 'Greek' by mistake, hence was receiving running commentary about two minutes behind what I was actually seeing. Still, the electronic guidance means that only one lowly security guard is needed to shepherd the entire party around, so that helps keep your taxes low, which is nice.
The next stop, and indeed final stop, is the Plenary Chamber you've probably seen on TV. Hundreds and hundreds of MEPs sit in a 'Hemicycle' layout, at identical orange desks laid out in pleasingly regular concentric rings. I assume the daily tours are timed to fall outside the times of regular debates, but the chamber was so devoid of scattered notes and paperwork that it appeared no debating had been taking place of late. Ministers have special seats at the focal point and behind them is a wall of 24 translation booths that help to keep the continent's language graduates in employment. It's impressive to be in the actual chamber, if only squashed into part of the public balcony, and even if all you then get to do is listen to a sequence of recorded information to explain what precisely happens here.
And that's it, it's not a long tour, more a fifteen minute taster of the building and the role it plays. All the real work agreeing climate change targets (or fixing the maximum bend of a banana, depending on your prejudices), takes place in countless offices, meeting rooms and chambers upstairs. I stopped off in the toilets on the way out, where I discovered a laminated A4 sheet explaining precisely the ten steps I should follow in order to correctly wash my hands. Back of hands, between fingers, back of fingers, thumbs... it would be extremely easy to ridicule this kind of euro-prescriptiveness in the tabloid press, if only there wasn't something remarkably similar in washrooms the continent over.
Once finished, you could go out the back to Leopold Park for a nice sit down. But the Commission's recommended option is to visit the Parlamentarium, which is a free visitors centre located underneath the Willy Brandt building. This again requires a security check before entering - indeed I was getting pretty tired of emptying my pockets for yet another arch-and-x-ray scan by the end of the day. And then it's time to slip on another audio-visual guide, because this helps solve the otherwise almost intractable problem of how to present museum-type displays when every piece of written text might need to be in 24 languages.
What you get, once inside, is a reminder of the conditions that first brought the Council of Europe into existence, then a long chamber recounting the EU's growth and history since 1950, which I have to say I found interactively interesting. I was less taken by the 360-degree cinema, and the giant map round which you wheel pods with viewing screens, although the school party following me round loved both of those. Nigel Farage appears twice, in the cinema montage and in the portfolio of MEP mugshots that covers one wall - I'm sure he's delighted. A slighty worthy cafe and a livelier gift shop complete the circuit, and that's your democratic hour complete.
And I mention all this not because I think you'll go, or indeed ought to go, but because it's good to know that our European governance operates in a transparent way for visitors. There are much more interesting things to see in Brussels, unsurprisingly, but one should never turn down the opportunity to see how the important stuff works.
• Manneken Pis
