Other worlds of Brussels

It turns out there is much more to Brussels and Belgium than first meets the eye.

This weekend I lunched in St Catherine with Mattias before we went on a self-guided tour of the European Parliament, and several other parliaments for Brussels, the Flemish and Walloon (French speaking part). Yes, that is a lot of bureaucracy and I am told by Matt's friend Kristina that there are 6000 people working for the European Parliament and another 25,000 working for the Commission alone.

After this, we walked around Elsene which is one of the other 19 districts that makes up the city. It certainly has a different community feel than Brussels itself, mostly a French area, and has several good pit stops for drinks along the way. Then in the evening, it was back to St Catherine for dinner at Little Asia for Vietnamese (a successful restaurant Matt tells me, owned by a well known local, the daughter of a Cambodian refugee living a Belgian dream rather than the American dream), and drinks at Zebra in St Gery. I like these parts of Brussels. We had a good night out with Mattias' lovely friend Kristina who I met for the first time.



Elsene street scene

Today we visited The Atomium. At first I thought this was a senstational tourist trap but was surprised and intrigued to find a very retro shop and exhibit dedicated to the modernity of 1958 when it was built as part of the world exhibition held in Brussels that year.

So amused by it, I am going to share some more pics and some of their promo material (c/- the Atomium website www.atomium.be).

"1958 was the year the International Exhibition was held in Brussels and tens of millions of visitors discovered the Atomium at this world event dedicated to modernity. The optimism of modernity triumphed everywhere: in the arts, design, architecture, industry, technology, sciences… In order to pay tribute to this period marked by optimism, faith in progress and dynamic modernity, the Atomium decided to present an exhibition dedicated to the fashion and design of the 1950s and 60s."



Poster for the Expo featuring the Atomium



Barbies fashionably dressed for the 50s (the Atomium has a mini exhibit on Barbie who was born in 1958)



The smallest car - a Fiat - built in 1958