Well, between all five of us, we managed to sleep through several alarms before deciding that we really did need to get up and get going for the day. Now, the hostel that we stayed in was relatively cheap, and that was readily apparent when we got down to breakfast. They had some coffee, bread and cereal out for the day, which really isn’t much to eat when you weren’t planning on eating lunch for another 6 hours. After a very small breakfast, we walked through the park near our hostel towards the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. We stopped several times in the park to take photos and let Nolan get some shots for his vlog. The Basilica was very empty and almost completely silent when we reached the steps. We walked around the building for a while taking lots of photos, but then things got interesting.
The signs from the front of the stairs point to a side entrance that you can go to to enter the Basilica. Now, the hearse parked in front of the side entrance probably should have been my first clue that it was not open to the public on that day. To be honest, I was so tired at that point I didn’t even notice it was there. As I was approaching the entrance, the Bishop comes out with his cross, one of the long ones that are on a large pole, and was waving it and telling us to leave. Now, having gone to Catholic school, I wasn’t too alarmed, I just apologized and walked back down the sidewalk. Talia on the other hand actually ran down the sidewalk panicking, which was pretty hilarious. We spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out who the funeral was for, because you would need to be a pretty important person to have your funeral in the Basilica, but we couldn’t find any information about it online.
After that, we decided it was time to leave and head for what we hoped would be a slightly less stressful experience at the Belgian Chocolate Village. The Belgian Chocolate Village is actually a museum that comes equipped with a kitchen and a chocolatier teaching you how they make Belgian chocolate. The very best part about the chocolatier is that he gives you a lot of chocolate to eat while he is telling you about it. We got to try out milk, dark and white Belgian chocolates in addition to three different truffles the chocolatier made for us. In the gift shop at the end of the material, you can buy the bags of truffles they make at the Belgian Chocolate Village to take home with you. For my family, don’t worry, the truffles are already packed in my suitcase!
There was one part of the Belgian Chocolate Village that I took issue with. Cocoa is an item that is typically associated with poverty level wages and manual labor done by people of color in South American and African countries. Much of the video they showed at the beginning of the museum showed people of color working in the fields and white male chocolatiers working with the products after the hard labor has been completed. I do think that the video in many ways is still representative of some of how Europe still feels and recognizes their colonial history. It is a reminder that they still have a long way to go in recognizing how they intertwine racial bias with the way information is presented in museums, which is not just something we have seen at the Belgian Chocolate Village. Even somewhere like the Tropenmuseum was still struggling with finding the right language to accurately represent the colonial history they display in the museum.
I lied, I also had one more thing that I did not like about the Belgian Chocolate Village. The Belgian Chocolate Village makes no effort to educate the general public on the importance of buying fair trade products like cocoa and sugar to ensure that those who work in these countries are paid fair, living wages, have safe working conditions and that no child labor has been used. It is very interesting that they don’t really seem to recognize fair trade in one of the largest chocolate producing countries in the world, especially when their Dutch neighbors have one of the most famous international fair trade chocolate brands. When I was at North Seattle College, I worked in student leadership as a sustainability coordinator and one of the main projects we took on was getting the college fair trade certified. This meant increasing the number of fair trade offerings in things like bananas and chocolate sold on campus. The most important part about the campaign was simply educating others on the importance of fair trade, and the Belgian chocolate industry is in a really powerful place to educate a much larger group of people. I hope in the future the Belgian Chocolate Museum will acknowledge how important it is to support fair trade and use fair trade ingredients in chocolate production.
After our eventful morning in the Belgian Chocolate Museum, we headed into downtown Brussels to grab lunch and explore the city a little bit more. We came across a square called Monte Des Arts that has a sprawling view of the city, a large garden and an arch made of yellow bicycles. We were even able to see the Basilica of the Sacred Heart that was near our hostel from the city center. Since travelling in a group of nine means that not everyone will want to do the same thing at the same time, so we decided it was best to split up into smaller groups and visit wherever you wanted for the afternoon. One group went to the Royal Museum, the other an underground castle whole Nolan, Megan and I headed back to Brussels Park to walk around and take some more photos. At that point, I was feeling pretty tired and was looking forward to just enjoying an afternoon hanging out in the park.
Around 5 pm, we made our way back to the hotel to change for dinner and have a little bit of downtime. Nolan and I finished watching Crazy Rich Asians while Megan took a nap while we waited for the rest of the group to come back. It took us about an hour to try and figure out where we wanted to eat, and surprise, we decided on Italian again. While we were waiting, we discovered that Nolan knows one single magic trick with a deck of cards. None of us could figure out how he was able to guess our card from the deck on every single try, but I think that’s half the fun of magic. At the other end of the room, Zack was on his fifth try on the Thalys website trying to order our train tickets for Paris. We soon discovered that it was just their website, so we gave up and decided we would just buy the tickets at the station for our return trip.
We headed back into downtown to go grab dinner at the Italian restaurant we had picked out. What’s really fun about Belgium is that at every restaurant you walk by, there is always someone outside trying to convince you to come into their restaurant. It can be very entertaining to watch them go at it since the restaurant business seems to be pretty competitive in downtown Brussels. After another very good meal, we walked a couple of blocks to a bar called Delirium that serves famous Belgian cherry beer. The beer was absolutely fantastic, mainly because it tasted more like cherry juice than actual beer. We headed back pretty early since Jack, Zack and I would be leaving the hotel at 7:50 am to catch our train to Paris from the Brussels North Station.
In looking back over my two days in Belgium, I think I learned some very important lessons and noticed some interesting things. First of all, Belgium might actually be the exact intersection between French and Dutch architecture. There also seems to be a lot of people who still speak English, although it is definitely less than it is in the Netherlands. However, I think the most important thing that I learned was that traveling with nine people does not come without its own difficulties and frustrations. You really have to make a conscious effort to communicate and listen to one another, and I think we all learned that lesson pretty fast this weekend. It is also important to trust one another enough to break into separate groups and allow everyone to do what they would like and be responsible for themselves. Overall, I had an amazing experience in Brussels and would love to go again and keep exploring some day in the future.