The Pissed Off Cherubs of Brussels

My friend Andrea is very good at organising me. She does it in the way I like best. She does not attempt to make me fiscally responsible or tells me to eat my greens. Instead, she reminds me that we are entirely grown up now and that we can do what we want. Everyone needs a friend who will do that. Grown upping is a bit relentless if you forget. It’s fairly relentless even if you don’t.

A few months ago she said it might be a very good thing if we went to Paris for lunch. I couldn’t disagree with her. When we looked into it, Paris was a wee bit rioty, so she suggested Brussels. I had never been to Brussels. I had only been to Belgium once on a stressful family holiday to Oostende, circa 1985. I wanted to give Belgium a better chance of success, so she booked it, I packed it and yesterday we fucked off.

We met at St. Pancras to board the Eurostar along with droves of pensioners unable to drive a wheeled suitcase to a man, and a polo player whose bag of gear released the toothsome aroma of horse shit every time she opened her kitbag to get something. We fared better with our carriage mates. We sat opposite a woman who was talking to her companion about her job as an artist and whose conversational topics ranged from Anglo Saxon alphabets to pencil museums she had visited. We were most delighted with a group of lads, lads, lads, one of whom declared that he had never been more proud of his body than the time he went mountain climbing and didn’t shit for five days because it turns out that there is no plumbing on mountains.

We were in Brussels by eleven o’clock. I’ve never felt I lived so much in the future as when I travelled from London to Belgium in two hours on a train. When I stepped onto the platform in Brussels I was quite surprised to find I wasn’t floating about in a silver jumpsuit being served by robot guards.

We had no plans for Brussels except lunch. We set off from the station, heading vaguely towards the middle of things. Initially we seemed to be in what could generously be described as the Garment District. If you’re thinking New York, think again. More Leicester Market and don’t brush up against that dress too fast or you’ll set yourself on fire. There was a lot of nylon. Explosions of animal print found on no animal that ever graced God’s green earth, and rolling racks of jeans smelling of bleach and environmental disaster. Disappointed men in vests sat on disintegrating chairs, sadly watching the term ‘fashion forward’ moving further and further away towards the horizon.

After crossing several large roads with inconclusive markings we hit the old town. The road situation was wildly confusing, which was not helped by the fact that many bits of road were being dug up and most of the street furniture was broken. The good thing about Brussels, unlike say, Paris, is that everyone drives at a sedate pace and cars seem to be the least important road users; giving way to people, bikes and dogs of every size. There is barely any traffic in comparison to London. It’s positively bucolic.

Rounding a random corner on the hunt for lunch we found the Manneken Pis, entirely by accident. The best thing about him is that his costume changes regularly. When we met him, he was wearing what looked like the uniform of Pauline from Job Seekers in The League of Gentlemen. I couldn’t get close enough to see if he had any pens.

We lunched at Le Cirio in the Bourse district. It’s a typical Art Nouveau building, opened in 1883 as a shop selling Italian luxuries. Now it’s a bar and restaurant doing a roaring trade in every kind of croquette you care to deep fry and buckets of moules. We opted for two, excellent coffees, and moules frites which came in giant, enamel vessels with clever, deep lids you could heave your empty mussel shells into. Andrea had beer so she could be entirely Belgian. I stuck to water because I’m not even sure I’m entirely human most days.

We sat outside and watched the people of Brussels. A lady of African descent walked by in an electric blue headwrap, wearing a vivid blue and yellow waxed cotton dress. She looked like a Bisa Butler portrait sprung fully to life. An old man dressed entirely in wrinkles came up to discuss at length with the waiter what the optimum table for lunch was. A woman who had ordered some kind of salad that involved a lot of watermelon looked disappointed with her life choices and longingly at us as we slurped moules and pointed frites at each other as we talked.

Lunch accomplished we walked through the Bourse Beurs, which is the old Stock Exchange building. It is now home to a beer museum and exhibition space. It’s very grand but not my taste. I was more impressed by two emo girls who had somehow, in the boiling heat managed to maintain a full face of gloomy make up and simultaneously make pop socks look quite sexy, which is no mean feat.

We ducked into the church of St. Nicholas, which is one of the oldest in the city, dating back to the 12th Century. I was particularly delighted to read on the website that the high tower collapsed in 1714; ‘killing a man and a pig.’ One wonders if they were sorrier to lose the man or the pig. I suspect it very much depended on the character of both.

Inside the church was a giant model of a town, replete with scary faced puppets. It looked a bit fighty so it could have been a recreation of the wars with France or, as it is a church dedicated to traders, it might have been a particularly feisty market day. It wasn’t entirely clear but I very much enjoyed it. There were lots of excellent paintings and statues of saints. There seemed to be a hierarchy of saints in which regular ones just have plain tea lights you can offer up at a euro each, but the big hitters get the full monty with a five euro candle with a picture of the saint on the front. All the votive candles come in big boxes and are shipped in from Killarney in Ireland. It may be one of Irelands greatest exports after Guinness and novelty hats with shamrocks on.

Leaving the church we headed up to the Grote Markt which is the big, showstopper square where all the busiest architecture comes to preen. It’s also where lots of people like to pose for Instagram with waffles as big as life rafts to prove that they have ‘done’ Brussels. Afraid of being crushed to death by out of control waffles, we kept to the edges, skirting round the town hall, which the website says is the only remaining medieval municipal building on the square. Then we moved on to the King’s House, which is a model of the Neo-gothic revival and now houses a museum. We didn’t go into a single building. There was more than enough to keep us entertained on the outside alone.

We particularly enjoyed the wide range of corbels, bosses and gargoyles. No stone has been left uncarved in the search for architectural greatness. There was a folded up woman with a cross face doing some excellent pointing. I very much loved a man fiercely stabbing another man in the shoulder whilst also licking the back of his head. There were angry swans thinking about breaking peoples’ arms and men pointing at books while other men refused to look at books and other men just pointed. There was a lot of pointing.

There were also a huge number of cherubs in every ornate building we entered or passed by. The cherubs all seemed very weary of being cherubs. I’d say most of them seemed downright angry. Some were clearly finding holding up heavy saints very taxing. One was mopping his brow. Others were done with the whole affair and refused to pose for the chiseller at all. You know at least half of them would have flounced off and the devil take the hindmost if it hadn’t been for the threat of a smiting.

Leaving the square, we headed for the Cathedral. Neither of us are religious, but churches are always interesting and when the weather is roasting hot, they are also sources of cool and shade. The cathedral wasn’t particularly thrilling but I did get very excited at the chapel that announced it had a relic of Pope John Paul II. I was hoping for a finger on a stick, encrusted in jewels. I got a half inch square of skin, smaller than a postage stamp in a gold frame that looked like it was on sale at Homesense. 2/10 on the relic scale. Would not recommend.

After considerably more walking around, taking in the quartier Bande Dessinee and discovering that Waterstones in Brussels is on a road littered with sex shops and porn cinemas, we needed ice cream. We stopped at Cafe Metteko because it had a promising menu. We drank home made lemonade with grapefruit and fresh raspberries, which was as refreshing as it sounds. I had a sundae that involved banana ice cream, nuts and lots of whipped cream. Andrea had a Dame Blanche which was chocolate and vanilla ice cream and came with a small jug of warm, chocolate sauce. It was messy and delicious.

Invigorated, we picked up the pace, discovering the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, which is a series of beautiful shopping arcades which, when they weren’t trying to flog you chocolate models of a pissing manneken, had some beautiful shops including the infinitely superior to Waterstones and less sex shop adjacent bookshop Tropismes. I was also very taken with the nearby Grasshopper toyshop, which had a window full of Smurfs and many terrifying dolls. We poked about in the Tour a Plomb cultural centre, enjoying their urban garden and commanding tower. Shortly after that we found lots of interesting looking cafes and bars but were too full to go into them.

After that we simply wandered the streets, stopping in small squares to watch people drinking wine and comparing dogs, checking out any variety of fountain and marvelling at Brussel’s beautiful decrepitude. Brussels doesn’t seem to give a shit what you think about it. It’s much more relaxed than other capital cities I’ve visited. It’s got a Miss Havishamesque vibe about it I really enjoyed: deeply mad, will do stuff for cakes, wears what it wants, doesn’t worry overly about crumbs. I realised we only visited a very small part of it and only for a day. We went in no museums and did nothing of worth, so my opinions, as with all things I opine, are to be taken with a hefty dose of salt, but it’s a great place. It’s a place you can imagine living in, rather than showing off in. I liked that. Just don’t piss off the cherubs.