Not a Great Day for Democracy
Belgium has the oldest compulsory voting system in the world, and goes to great lengths to enforce it. Matthias received a ballot and voting instructions all the way in the States for the election that was held here on Sunday (we voted last week, and it was kind of fun researching the fourteen-something political parties here). If you follow the news, then you already know that super far-right/populist/discriminatory parties surged on a day that’s being referred to as #zwartezondag, or Black Sunday. Blame the Flemish. Complicating matters, the French-speaking Walloons voted for entirely opposite parties and policies, which will make forming a government fun.
Perhaps not coincidentally, we get our first racist gaze as we step into the park around the corner on our post-breakfast constitutional (…it was 16:30, and we had frites and beer for breakfast). We go to check out the car museum, but it closes at 17:00, so we resolve to visit it another day and turn under that great arch to face the park.
Matthias wants to walk to the Royal Palace, conveniently located at the end of this long stretch of road directly in front of us.
We walk to the royal park, and can’t tell if it’s open. We hop a fence around a building in search of the fountain that we can hear, but are thwarted by a taller fence and realise that we have not picked the best area to break into. We walk back around and finally realise that the fountain was accessible from the next gate down all along.
You can cross as long as you love each other. 
You have to wait, and love each other. 
Tidy trained trees 
Perhaps not the most ideal building to hop a fence around.
On the way we check out some protests, we think for Julian Assange, and even Matthias—famous for mean-mugging exclusively in pictures—cannot contain his excitement at being allowed a picture with the military police. There were apparently some other protests yesterday with those odious yellow vest protestors. We have inadvertently managed to stay right around the block from the European Commission, and there is apparently a summit on, so there is plenty of protest activity in the streets.
Matthias wants to check out an arcade that turns out to be way too real of an arcade. Note: French arcades are intense, and appear to be where actual nerds go. We decide to leave almost immediately after entering.
When in doubt, beer, so I bug Matthias to go to the somewhat touristy Café Delerium, where they have the world’s largest selection of beers available. Someone decides to order us the 75 cL (25 oz, a pint and a half) first round, so the pictures pretty quickly taper off.
The menu, a magazine 
M section of 2,004 beers (last they counted) 
God for under 40 € 
Apparently this is what I look like when I am telling stories.
After Delerium, I decide we need vegetables, so we take a car home to get Thai food 20 minutes before the spot closes. (We really need to be better about going out earlier…) Perhaps in gratitude, the proprietor offers us a free round of drinks as we wait, so we sip some wine unhurriedly as we talk with him about Boston and Brussels.
It turns out the similarities are even more pronounced than we realise. After eating, we take the equivalent of the T into town. It is super tidy—probably the tidiest public transportation I have ever been on that wasn’t a tram (decidedly not a similarity). We go to three different spots in search of night life—which a not-entirely-sober patron of Delerium had convinced Matthias existed—to no avail. Despite smoke machines, laser disco balls, loud music, and Irish bar names, we fail to find a suitable dance floor and eventually head home. There was some small consolation at the first place we tried, which we entered entirely because they refused admittance to a man who apparently failed to meet the dress code (we wanted to see whether we’d be let in, and we were): the Sox were on.
Turns out a Monday night in Brussels is just like a Monday night in Boston after all.
