Postcrossing Blog

Here are the Little Mail Carriers again, to tell you all about the second part of their adventures in Belgium (here’s part one in Dinant, in case you missed it). This time, they went to Brussels – Europe’s comic art capital! Here is their report of the exciting trip:

Hi everyone! We were invited by Ghislaine and Sylvie (aka Sylor) to visit Brussels, the capital of Belgium… how could we pass the opportunity?!

We started the day with meeting the local mail carrier, or as they say around here, “Le facteur”. He’s really nice and brings Sylvie and Ghislaine lots of postcards.

Our first stop in Brussels was the Atomium, which we had only seen in photos and in stamps. It was built in 1958 for the World’s Fair (Expo 58) and has the shape of the cell of an iron crystal… only 165 billion times bigger! :D

On our way to the city, we noticed this statue of a policeman, whose leg is being held by a boy climbing out of the sewer, causing him to trip! What a fun sculpture to put in the middle of the square! Ghislaine told us it is called “the Vaartkapoen”, and it is inspired in “l’Agent 15” from comic strip “Quick & Flupke”. The boy holding his leg represents the rebel spirit which shakes the authority.

The city is filled with this kind of funny sculptures from Tom Frantzen, who describes them as “zwanze”: “a unique form of humour which he thinks is characterized by the absurdity and surrealism that stem from the mixture of languages so typical of Brussels”. Oh, look, there’s another one:

It’s the “Zinneke”, peeing on a street post! Zinneke means someone of mixed origins in Brussels dialect, and it symbolizes the mixture of people living in Brussels. Doesn’t he look cute?

Well, enough of culture! It’s time to have a break and try some local specialties! The chocolate and waffles were fantastic, but our favorite were the belgian frites! Yummy!

Aaaaah… so good! We noticed there were many brands of beer available – they really take it seriously here!

And some shopping, we arrived at the Grand Place, a Unesco World Heritage site. It’s very imposing and features the Brussel’s Town Hall, the Maison du Roi and several buildings from the Middle Ages named guildhalls.

Once a year, they make a huge flower carpet here in the Grand Place – we’ve seen it in photos, the whole square gets filled with colorful flowers… it’s really impressive!

Brussels lace is also very special… and expensive!

Belgian people have a great relation with la bande dessinée (comic art), so we had to meet some of their famous characters. Tintin, is probably the most popular of them all, so it was a big honor to shake his hand! Created by Hergé in 1929, he’s a reporter who goes on risky adventures around the world with his dog Snowy (or Milou, in French). Together, they always manage to save the day!

Another of our favorite BD heroes are the The Smurfs (les Schtroumpfs) by Peyo. Their language was a bit hard to learn, but I think we’ve smurfed it! :D

Oh look there… isn’t that the Manneken-Pis? They say the statue of the little man peeing is a must-see in Brussels, and represents the legend of the young boy who was awoken by a fire and proceeded to stamp it out by peeing on it! Now it’s just a funny fountain.

He was naked on the day we visited, but we were told he has a really nice wardrobe, with hundreds of costumes! On special days, they dress him up to celebrate a certain date or occasion.

That was a great visit! Sadly it was time to wave bye-bye to Sylvie and Ghislaine as they gently dropped us on the postbox… who knows where we’ll go next? :)

That was great! Thank you so much Ghislaine and Sylvie for this lovely report! Safe trips, little ones, see you soon!