The country of Belgium, located between France and the Netherlands, has a complicated history - here are a few of the highlights:

The area of present-day Belgium was first invaded by the Romans around 100 B.C., at which time they found it to be inhabited by Celtic/Germanic people called Belgae. The area became the northernmost province in Gaul, and was given the name Gallia Belgica. For several centuries starting in the Middle Ages the ownership of the region was split between France and the Holy Roman Empire, but in the 17th Century most of the area of modern Belgium came under the control of the Habsburgs of Spain and Austria. Over the next century a number of wars were fought between France and either Spain or Austria, and all of them seemed to use Belgium as a battleground. In 1794 the French took over, and after Napoleon’s 1815 defeat at Waterloo (located a bit south of Brussels), the area known as the "Low Countries" (including the present-day Belgium and Netherlands) was united as the independent United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Religious differences between the mainly Protestant north and the mainly Catholic south led to the 1830 Belgian Revolution and the establishment of Belgium as an independent country. Belgium continued to be a battleground in the 20th Century, when it was invaded by Germany early in both of the World Wars. In both instances the dislodging of German forces was a bloody but ultimately successful undertaking.

Present-day Belgium is a federal monarchy, with a king named Philippe (who became king in 2013 on the abdication for health reasons of his father, Albert II) and a Parliament. The Kingdom of Belgium has a division of its own, though this is a linguistic division rather than a religious one. The people of the north mainly speak Dutch, and the people of the south mainly speak French. The country is divided into two main regions that reflect this – the north is called Flanders, and is inhabited by mainly Dutch-speaking Flemish people, and the south is called Wallonia, peopled primarily by French speakers known as Walloons. Wallonia also has a German-speaking minority located in the far eastern part of the region (where Belgium borders Germany – duh). There is a certain amount of friction between the two regions, as some of the Dutch-speakers have felt that the French-speakers have enjoyed preferential treatment in certain areas. But over the decades there has been a trend toward adoption of French by many of the Dutch-speakers, as they have found French to be a more valuable language in matters of international commerce. But overall, Belgium is still populated by 59% Dutch-speakers.

There is a third region, much smaller than the other two and completely surrounded by Flanders. This is the Brussels-Capital Region, which contains the city of Brussels and a number of other municipalities. This region is officially bilingual (the street signs, for instance, are in both languages), but only 10-15% of its people are Dutch-speakers, with most of the remainder speaking French. This was our destination, and with our minimal French vocabulary exceeding our nonexistent Dutch vocabulary, the language distribution was fine with us.

We already had some familiarity with the Cologne train station, so getting on the right train wasn’t really a problem for us.


But getting off at the right station turned out to be another matter. As it turns out, Brussels (Bruxelles in French) has three main stations: a northern station (Nord), a southern station (Sud) and a central station (Midi). We made the mistake of getting off at the Nord station, which put us in an area where none of the streets were familiar (we’d printed a map of our hotel’s immediate area). After some confusion, we were able to get back on a train that took us to the Midi station. From here we walked downhill and found our now-nearby hotel, the Best Western Hotel Carrefour de l'Europe.

After some unpacking and some rest, we went out in search of dinner. Looking in some of the store windows, it became clear that Brussels was very much about food, and not necessarily of any type that would be good for you. In particular, we found places devoted to the unofficial snack food of Belgium – French fries. Except you’d better not call them French fries, as Belgians are certain they were invented in Belgium, not France. They are simply referred to as frites ("freet"). They are usually sold with a choice of dipping sauce (such as curry, tartar sauce, mayonnaise, or, for hopeless Americans, ketchup, among many others).


This applied to the frites at our eventual choice of a dinner establishment, a fast-food burger place called Quick (or "Q" for short), a place instantly familiar to any American, despite the absence of the chain from the U.S. I ordered a large, vaguely heart-shaped burger called the Super Love Giant Hamburger, and found it quite romantic.

After dinner we walked over to a large square called the Grand Place (or Grote Markt in Dutch), probably the main attraction for tourists in Brussels. We were to spend more time here later, but stopped to take some pictures. We looked into some of the windows on the square and found examples of two of Belgium’s most popular products – chocolate and lace.



We walked back in the general direction of the hotel and happened upon a shopping arcade called the Galeries Royales St. Hubert. The stores were closed, but their windows were filled with interesting (but expensive) things.

We found a very upscale chocolate shop called Neuhaus, which has operated here since 1857 and which claims to have invented the praline. Their window had displays devoted to two Belgian inventions and icons which are also familiar to Americans – the Smurfs and Tintin. The Smurfs, of course, are those tiny blue creatures that have been entertaining American children for decades, and Tintin, invented in 1929 by the Brussels cartoonist Hergé, is an adventurous young reporter who has popped up on American television at various times (and even on the big screen, thanks to Steven Spielberg), but whose popularity never seems to have taken off in the U.S. like it did in Europe.


Intersecting the Galeries St. Hubert is a small street called the Rue des Bouchers, which seemed to be filled with restaurants and nightlife. This was another place we would be returning to later.

By this time we were coming to the end of a very full day, and we returned to the hotel to get some sleep. A full exploration of central Brussels was on our agenda for the next day. We would be starting with the area called the Lower Town.