‘Dance like nobody’s watching’
Back-dating this to Saturday, June 1st, 2019, even though it’s June 6th 2020 by the time I’m posting it
We aren’t sure what we’re doing today, other than leaving the house later than Matthias would like on account of my dilly-dallying. After a good day and night prior, we sleep long, and eventually dress and make our way down to the square for fries. Maybe because it is the Friday after a holiday (that presumably a lot of people have taken off) or maybe because it is Friday and tourists have recently arrived for the weekend, but the frites shop has all three of its lines going, and each of them has about an hour’s wait. We wait about an hour and get two large fries—Matthias with samouraï sauce (a spicy mayo) and mine with pilipili (and even spicier sauce, still of mayo base—all of the sauces here are either mayo or mayo with something) and head over to a bar/café in the square we haven’t been to before to eat and determine our next move.
It’s warm, but not sunny, so we head back to the house to change, and scooter down towards an ATM in town for cash before heading to a cash-only spot that looks interesting. (The ATM adventure takes a little over an hour and four ATMs because Yelp/Google is apparently hopeless is Belgium.)
The cash-only place is definitely a hole-in-the-wall and very quirky. The house specialities are fruity wine and cognac, both of which (because we obviously have to try both) seem to be said spirit with fruit juices and whatnot, served in a large tulip glass with lots of ice—sort of like sangria, but not bitter at all, and utterly delicious. We stay for two rounds and take time to take silly pictures.
After that we need to eat again, so we look up options and decide to hit up a Lebanese spot for falafel and halloumi. I try to try falafel in every place I visit, but Brussels is rather lacking in this department, and the Lebanese place seems like the best bet. Before we can get there, however, Matthias makes a new friend.
Once I’ve detached him from the cat, we head to the Lebanese spot and sit at a second-story window to people-watch and witness the sky turning from evening to night.
Post dinner, we walk nearby to the square to grab another beer before heading to our next destination and find ourselves at a quirky Satanic-esque pub because Matthias is apparently a sucker for long hallways and that’s how it opens. After drinking our beers quicker than we would have preferred on account of some annoying Americans playing some sort of stripping drinking game, we set out on a trek across town to a club that Matthias wants to check out.
When we arrive it’s true to form—in an old theatre that apparently seats 1,200—but very closed. We sit and wait to see whether it will open—again, Yelp and Google are hopeless, and it’s 45 minutes past when it’s supposed to open—to no avail. We look up another spot and head there, somewhat cruelly ironically just around the corner from—a mere four buildings from—the Lebanese place where we had dinner.
I’d like to take a moment now to pause and call attention to the fact that a Belgium is a nation that venerates cartoons. Astérix et Obelix are national heroes (I don’t know, probably because there’s no one to put up there who was able to stop the Nazi’s 14-hour march to dominance); our coffee table is adorned with Tintin books. I’ll quote Wikipedia before sharing some (what I can only assume is) typical Belgian street art.
As one of the few arts where Belgium has had an international and enduring impact in the 20th century, comics are known to be ‘an integral part of Belgian culture.’
Returned from our three-mile round-trip walk about town and back at our new club destination, the Belgian club scene surely doesn’t disappoint. This place has set times of 1AM, 3, 5… We pay the cover (by card, novel) and entre through two sets of doors onto your stereotypical European discotheque…
…with the exception of a 6’1” white guy dancing completely naked alone in the middle of the floor.
‘Is this even legal?’ We wonder as we wander over to the bar for a drink, which we take upstairs to the smoking section for a better view. Figuring that I haven’t been carrying my camera around for nothing all day, I unabashedly capture the moment.
One 12oz Stella is about all either of us can stand of the smoke and the naked dancing man, so we leave shortly thereafter towards a place called You.
We don’t find You, but we do find a place with a line, so we wait in the line. At the entrance, we’re told the place is reserved for a private party tonight, so we move to a bench to find an alternative plan when we realise that we’re being called from the door to be let in.
Those playing along from home will have noticed that we’ve been imbibing a steady stream of alcohol by this point, but friends, we were not nearly intoxicated enough for what came next. The combination of walking, food, and my ubiquitous water bottle safety blanket meant that we were unfortunately sober, even at the late hour at which we arrived at this mysterious private party.
In short, this place was a bunch of bad music mixed with even worse people. We were never able to figure out what the party was, but there were self-conscious twenty something who climbed up onto one of the two recessed bars (so as to keep people doing so safe by having them nearly never with the floor?) and I couldn’t help but continue to take awkward photos.
We knew it was time to go when a white boy broke out into air guitar during the piano solo portion of Bohemian Rhapsody.