>Brussels, a capital, a patchwork

It has been already two years since I have paid this place my first visit. It was the CD house that provided me with accommodation in that time. I was the early morning of my arrival when I took a stroll around the corner in order to get some products from a nearby supermarket. The sun was raising and people were moving around the streets. I have looked at the architecture of the houses I have been passing by and paid special attention to their roofs. I asked myself: “Would this a place to stay for me?” I have not answered this question in that very moment and the obvious feeling of having asked a rhetorical question has remained in me. Many months had to pass by until I have found myself in the same situation with a slightly changed question. The form was the same, I have just deleted the rhetorical aspect of this question and shifted it into a way more practical direction. This time I started to think about an answer.

What kind of place is this, where I happened to live? Definitely it is a city with a thousand faces. Many people might share the imagination of Brussels – being the so called capital of Europe – as a very clean and organised city. The house of the Eurocracy, the face of the European bureaucracy must be reflecting somehow this European organism. Experiencing it with the help of the own senses will quickly change this imagination into something more real. Let us start from Schaarbeek, the district in which the CD house is situated and which, with its own commune, is actually an independent city. It is the city with the highest relative density of immigrants in Europe and one does not have to invest a lot of time and effort to be proven that this might be very true. A tram ride with number 55 to Gare du Nord might be a perfect illustration of this situation. But turning around and walking towards the eastern side of Schaarbeek will lead us sooner or later to Schuman, a significant roundabout   that is the heart of the European institutions. Look at the building of the European Commission and imagine this to be the head of the European executive power. A obviously modern building shining in different shades of silver and glass reflections. It need a few steps around the corner in order to spot the building of the European Parliament just a few streets further. Although the shape might differ, the similarities in the colour and reflections are… not suprising. A traditional Belgian dinner can be eaten not too far from here at the Place Jourdain in the Maison Antoine, a place to eat french fries. Someone once said that these here are the best in town and this simple phrase is enough to turn this snackbar into a destination for pilgrimages. People are waiting in a long cue in order to try the taste of the fried gold with a big variety of sauces.

The most prominent symbols of this city are the already mentioned the french (by accident they did not happen to be called Belgian…) fries, a small fountain consiting of a boy peeing, chocolate, waffels and beer. This is already a very graphic illustration of the city and its country. It is a patchwork, bringing together all possible styles, taste and the lack of taste, different cultures and mentalities. Probably this fact makes Brussels to be the perfect “capital of Europe” as probably there is no other city that would symbolize it so well. Brussels like Europe is a patchwork and it although it was considered to be impossible, even unimaginable for centuries, it surprisingly works. Sometimes well, sometimes less well and sometimes simply strange.

The life in Brussels resembles Europe as it is. Between multiculturalism and the striving for a national identity, between posh houses and poor districts, between a great linguistic variety the European citizen is finding his/her place to live.