We even have the sun in Belgium

"We even have the sun in Belgium" - that's what a colleague says every time the sun appears, which is actually more often than the dire stories about Brussels weather would have you believe. He also says "see you later alligator, after a while crocodile" (yes, both halves) almost every time he leaves a room.

While winter wasn't particularly onerous this year - I think it snowed three or four times here, without really sticking - I am a happy camper because Spring is most definitely springing! Today it was sunny and 16 degrees, perfect weather to explore the EU quarter and even enjoy an icecream in the park.

Buildings around the Schuman/Ambiorix/Marie-Louise area

Lots of countries have their embassies around Marie-Louise Square, although I don't know if this is one

The EU parliament building

Parc Leopold II

Place Marie-Louise - I looked at an apartment in one of the (less attractive) buildings facing the square. Spacious but pricey!

Statue in Place Marie-Louise

Did you know there's a piece of the Berlin Wall outside the EU parliament?

Yesterday was also nice, and we started off the day with a visit to the newly-opened Chagall exhibition at the Musée des Beaux Arts. This runs until the end of June, so if you're planning a trip to Brussels in the next few months, it's worth a look. It includes over 200 works, so definitely substantial without being overwhelming. There were a few too many people there, on the second weekend it's been open, but not too crowded. And since we're friends of the museum, we got to go for free :) Our favourite works were the series of illustrations he did for the fables of La Fontaine - I'm currently in the middle of collecting a faience dinner series also featuring the fables, so it was cool to see them in a different medium. I'm just sorry they didn't have prints of them for sale in the gift shop!

One of the illustrated fables. Source

After the museum, we walked down to Place Saint Catherine to try Ellis Gourmet Burger; Pretty good, although I had a bit of burger envy since I think Jules's bacon burger was a touch tastier than my chicken burger. I was too scared to order the bacon burger since in these fancy places I always worry they'll come out bloody unless I order well done, in which case it'll probably be fried to a crisp. But Jules's medium-cooked burger was actually fine.

We were also in the neighbourhood last week, to grab a bite at Nordzee (quality was a bit off this time) and do some shopping. We used to drive in to the centre, but this week and last we took the metro and it is actually really fun to wander around on foot and not have to worry about parking and finding our way (particularly for poor Jules). It was sunny last weekend too, and we walked up from Saint-Catherine to the Mont des Arts. Brussels isn't walkable the way somewhere like Tours is, of course, but it is actually really easy to walk around large chunks of the centre. Yay for compact European capitals!

View of Brussels from the Mont des Arts

The Old England building, which now houses a museum of musical instruments

On the tenth floor of the museum is a terrace which you can access without paying for the museum. We went up and took some photos, but it was really crowded and smelt like eggs, so we didn't stay for a drink. Maybe if you're looking for a spot to chill mid-week though

Buildings on the way up the Mont des Arts

Going back in time a little bit, the most notable things to happen in my life of late (explaining the radio silence on the blog) are that Jules fixed my shower - THANK GOD, because I suffered through a whole winter of a shower with all the power of the Mannekin Pis and frequent cold spells thrown in to boot. If only I'd known that all it needed was the head changing, we would have done it long ago! But I thought it must be something more serious (plus it got steadily worse over time), since I still don't understand how that affected the temperature?? And thing number two, I got a chic table and bar stools to sit in the corner of my living room so I don't have to always eat my meals on the couch like an animal. (I mostly still eat my meals on the couch like an animal, but I like looking at my fancy new table.) Here it is bedecked with roses and champagne on Valentine's Day (lucky me!)

And just to underline the lovely weather we're having at the moment, a couple of photos of the snow in Luxembourg from a month or so ago. Pretty, but I'll be glad to enjoy some more sunshine and blue skies from now on!

Walking the dogs on a sunny but cold day in Luxembourg

Early-morning panoramic view from Jules's back terrace

 Okay, that's a wrap! I am out of the habit a bit of doing these sorts of everyday posts, but then I thought life in Brussels is not every day for everyone, so maybe some of you will be interested in what there is to see and do in these parts (thinking especially of my mum and sister who will be visiting separately and sans moi over summer!) Very excited for March, trips to Champagne and Tours coming up, followed by Easter travels in Alsace, Freiburg and Lake Constance. Yay!

Reading between the lines

Hello mes ami(e)s, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and are looking forward to the new year. I spent Christmas in Luxembourg with Jules's family. They do a family dinner on the 24th, with present exchange (this continued in bits and pieces through the night, between courses and so on). I think my presents were well-received, phew, and I got some nice ones too. On the 25th, they hosted dinner again with the extended family - aunt, uncle, three cousins and their girlfriends. This one was a bit more trying. Everyone is very nice, but it's hard to sit there for five hours while people speak a language you don't understand and (mostly) ignore you.

We came back to Brussels on the 26th, to give the cat some pats and fresh water. On the 27th, it snowed for the first time this winter.

Excited for snow!

On the way to the supermarket Jules got a warning light on his car and drove to a nearby dealership where they told him the garage was shut and he should call for roadside assistance. Informed that it would take some time, we took refuge from the snow and ice in a Greek restaurant that actually turned out to be pretty good. We were worried that Jules might be called away from his yummy beef, orzo and feta stew (youvetsi) (I had cod and squid ink risotto), but two hours later we decided to just give up and drive to the supermarket so he could top up with coolant himself. Upon which the roadside assistance guy called to say he was there and couldn't find us, obviously. But what could have been a major miserable pain in the arse if we'd just sat there waiting in the car turned out to be a lovely lunch, so we weren't too bothered :)

The 28th promised to be (below-)freezing cold but sunny all over Belgium, so we decided to drive into the countryside to see the Reading Between the Lines church/art installation I featured in my Buzzfeed list of Europe's most beautiful churches. It was pretty hard to find; we had an address from the internet but that just took us into the vicinity (eventually, after two false starts due to closed roads) and we looped around a few times before some locals actually reversed their car to give us unsolicited directions. I knew it was in the middle of a field, but thought you'd be able to see it from the road. Turns out you have to park (for reference, I think we parked on Sint-Truidersteenweg near Grootloonstraat in Borgloon, but you can also come to it from the other side) and then walk a bit on a path, and it's actually really quite small. But beautiful, and we managed to stay there for at least half an hour or so by ourselves, since people conveniently left just as we got there and arrived just as we were leaving. We were hoping there would be plenty of snow on the ground, but although it rested around Brussels, there was only a little bit on the ground here. But it was still a lovely landscape, and I think the bright blue sky definitely showed it at its best.

Driving - yes, driving - in the woods near Borglon

Slightly snowy fields on the way to the church

First sight of the church melting into the landscape. In general, it looked more transparent from further away, and more solid close-up

Who needs a selfie stick when you can do the old "self-timer on a fencepost" trick?

Inside

Really inside

We tried a few jumping pictures, mainly realising the truth behind "white men can't jump". *Nice up-to-date reference to a movie I haven't seen and don't know what it's about other than presumably basketball and the travails of "reverse racism"

Let me out!

Really see-through from this side

I know, I know, I took too many photos

It's modelled after the traditional village church in the background

After I'd finally taken enough photos from every conceivable angle, we drove to nearby Tongeren for lunch. We missed the weekly antiques market, but had a nice lunch sitting outside in the sunshine (near a space heater), visited the pretty basilica and climbed to the top of the one remaining medieval gate. It seems like a nice place - there's also a large beguinage and a Gallo-Roman museum to visit, but we didn't have time because we wanted to get back to Brussels at a reasonable time so Jules could relax and have dinner before driving back to Luxembourg.

Statue of Ambiorix and the Tongeren basilica

View of Tongeren from on top of the medieval gate tower

There you go, fun thing to do in Belgium #5. Happy New Year and see you in 2015!

And the award for least creative blogpost title goes to...

In Bruges!

And indeed I was in Bruges about a month ago - and when I got back home I watched the movie In Bruges, which is pretty good, although I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that since even I had heard good things about it and I manage to watch about one film a year. This year, I've already smashed my average by watching In Bruges and Django Unchained, so I'm probably done until 2014. It was definitely extra fun seeing the places I'd been to just days before in a movie though (this is more thrilling for those of us who grew up far from the bright lights of New York, Paris or LA).

I've wanted to go to Bruges for ages (before the movie even). I lived for five months in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France, literally half an hour away from the Belgian border, but while I got to go to Belgium about once a week on average (for work), the fact that I was working up to 16 hours a day, 6 days a week and the difficulties of making the public transport schedules work for me meant that I never made it to Bruges despite being relatively near by.

So when I had to go to Brussels, I knew I had to take the opportunity for a quick trip to Bruges. Since my train tickets (to Brussels and back) were on the IIO dime, I didn't want to take the piss by staying too long after the interview, so I only had from early evening on Wednesday to mid-afternoon Thursday to see the city. As with Bologna, I feel there are definitely more things I would have liked to have seen and done if I had more time, such as going up the tower in the Grot Markt or seeing the collection of Memling paintings in one of the museums, but it was great just to have the chance to see the place at all really.

I was expecting a very chocolate-box, fairy-tale feeling as I set out to explore the city on the first evening - I love the Middle Ages, and Bruges is meant to be one of the best-preserved medieval cities in the world. At first though, for whatever reason, I wasn't really feeling that magic. Maybe it seemed too touristified, despite the fact that it was very cold and snowy and picturesque and definitely not the high season. However, I wandered into a deserted snow-covered courtyard outside the Archaeological Museum and a carillon of bells (is that a tautology?) from the nearby Belfry started playing and it did feel a bit like a magical movie moment.

More next time on the specific sights of Bruges, first here's some photos from around the city:

The aforementioned Archaeological Museum at night

Statue on a bridge with the Church of Our Lady behind

The Basilica of the Holy Blood

Judgey bear (?) knows what you did

The Burg square

Town hall in the Burg square

Dude in the canal! He seemed to be in there deliberately to break up the ice, but damn, surely there's a better way! Or at least you put on a hat or something!

At least ice kitteh has her fur to keep her warm

The 122 metre-high spire of the Church of Our Lady

Frozen canal

Frozen canal with a view of the Church of Our Lady

If there's one thing they love in Bruges, it's light pollution

The Grote Markt

Me in front of the Belfry

A snowy square with that omnipresent Church of the Lady behind

Pavilion near the Groeningemuseum

Snowy statue near the Archaeological Museum