Well Belgium has been an interesting one. I definitely want to come back one day, but I can’t deny that some of this trip was too much.

Liège

Most of my time was spent in Liège. I can’t say I did a huge amount here. I explored the town, had some good food, and that’s about it. I think the main interesting thing that I stumbled upon was a carnival. It may have been an Octoberfest thing – but I didn’t look it up. It was fun to see that even in another country carnival rides and games are basically the same as everywhere else. Carnival food though has some similarities (cotton candy for instance) but theirs looked so much better than American carnival food. Actually funnily enough, they had a booth that was advertising American carnival food that I’ve literally never seen in an American carnival.

The main reason I came to Belgium was to meet up with a family friend who lives here and her parents who were visiting. It was great to see them. Mrs. Wood was my kindergarten teacher and is a good family friend. They moved out to Arizona years ago, and I saw them a couple times while I lived there, but I haven’t seen them since.

Marissa moved to Europe almost 10 years ago and now has a family. I got to meet her husband, little girl and one of her step-sons. It was a good day. We met up for brunch, walked up 10 million steps, and then went back to her place for dinner and conversation. It was good to catch up with them.

Brussels

My trip to Brussels was were it got interesting and I wouldn’t want a repeat. I do want to get back one day – to actually see the city – but this trip wasn’t that. I stayed a total of 1 hour before I headed back to Liège.

I know what you’re wondering – why only an hour? Was it that bad?

Yes, yes it was.

I made the mistake of going on October 14th when a massive protest/march was happening. I didn’t know it was happening and when I got to the station I thought there was a game of some sort since everyone was in either Red or Green. I assumed that those were team colors. I left the station, I saw the massive amount of people and immediately got a wary feeling that I picked the wrong day to come. And when I say a massive amount of people, I mean thousands grouped together, streets closed off, etc. I even sent a message to people saying that I think I picked the wrong day. But I decided to make my way out of city center and see if it calmed down. Cities are annoying when there are a massive amount of people there, so I was hoping to get away from it. It wouldn’t be the first time I had been in a city with something going on, so while I was wary I gave it a shot.

While I was working my way through city center, I crossed the march area street. For the most part everyone involved seemed very chill, but there was definitely some that were a bit more…animated for lack of a better word (hadn’t crossed into violent). As I made my way down the road to get to the next side street though the red and green started to thin out into black, and then I saw pockets of protesters in black with various things covering their faces. Eventually, I got to a point where I saw a large number of them all together and chanting. I knew at this point that I needed to get out and took the first street I could find away from it. It ended up leading to a stairwell and as I started to walk down it, I realized that some of the yelling was coming from that area.

There was a small group of protesters in black who were yelling and running up and down the stairs while a small group of police where yelling back at them. I immediately picked up my pace to get down the stairs and away – I decided against going back the way I came since there were even more protestors that way. Since they were all talking in French, I don’t know what was being said – but suddenly the protesters were throwing some stuff at the police, and then the police started to throw the items back at them. This included some glass bottles that broke on the stairs – though away from me thankfully.

There was even what looked like a cast iron pan thrown back and forth between them a couple times. Then the police seemed to call their coworkers back, and they retreated back to their station while the protesters were making their way back up the stairs. They were still yelling at each other, but soon the protestors disappeared up the stairs (at this point I was down, and out of the way), though the police were definitely ready in case they came back. I think at the end the police were ready to deploy things like tear gas, if the protesters came back, but I saw one of them gesture at me and a lady that was walking up the steps – so I think they were holding out on that as a last resort since there were people who were clearly not involved in the area. A couple streets over, I ended up seeing the same group of police riding by on their bikes, they rode down a little past me and then did a U-turn and made their way back. I don’t know what the purpose was – but it did make it clear that the altercation was done since when I walked away they were still waiting to see if the protesters came back.

I saw a couple people recording the incident – so I’m sure it’ll make it’s rounds on social media. But this was apparently a tame situation as after words I found out that they had to use tear gas and water cannons a couple times for those protestors that were more violent. Either way, as I made my way through town and kept seeing more and more people, I decided to head back to Liege. With tensions so high I didn’t want to be there and get caught up in anything else.

Apparently, there were 80-120k people in Brussels just for the march. From the information on the internet, it was mostly about possible cuts to wages, pensions, social welfare programs, etc. that the government had put forth. However, from being there I know that there were some pockets that were not about that. At least a couple groups were there about various things happening around the world. I heard one person with a bullhorn chanting about freeing Palestine. I also so some other flags such as the Ukrainian flag, so like any large group, there were those that came for either multipurpose or alternate purposes.

So yeah. That was my experience in Brussels. Not the best and definitely not a good representation of the city itself so I’ll be coming back one day for a real visit. I took a couple of pictures of things that I passed, but I didn’t take any pictures of the protests as I was more concerned about getting past them than stopping and taking pictures. If you’re curious, look it up online, there are plenty there.