Today was definitely a day to list as odd. Very last minute Kate and I got in touch with each other and she decided she was going to come to Brussels because it would have been very long for her to get to Amsterdam. My initial intention had been to go to Amsterdam but with this happening I had to stay in Belgium. I was happy with the idea for what it was worth. If you don't recall, Kate is the German girl I met in Hong Kong. She was supposed to leave for Australia right as I was getting into Belgium but she changed her plans and will be in Germany for longer than I am in Europe now. Certainly I was happy with the idea because she is fun to hang around with and talk to. When things were basically sorted out I opted to walk downtown and increase my knowledge of the surrounding territory. I visited the park I had passed a few dozen times by now and never entered and walked down to a church I had only seen in the distance and visited Le Botanique as well. My travels brought me back to the center of town eventually and I decided to have lunch at an Italian restaurant I had eaten at last time called Pizzeria Etna. I had a pizza margherita and a Grimbergen brun as well. The pizza was enjoyable. While eating I received at text from Kate that she had a hard time with trains and she was going to drive out with her brother and his girlfriend and she hoped I didn't mind. Truthfully I figured it would be awkward but I didn't mind.
After lunch I walked around for a short time more then walked back to the room and relaxed for a while until they were supposed to arrive. I watched a little bit of television and surfed the web a bit while I was waiting. Eventually I got a call that they were lost. They had a GPS but it didn't have the appropriate information for Brussels apparently. So they found a place to pull over and gave me the street names and I walked out and found them. From there we found them a parking space that was safe just outside a park near the hotel and walked downtown to see the sites. The odd thing was that both her brothers came no, just the one along with his girlfriend. None of them said much at all to me and I don't think they spoke English well at all. I had some students from Germany in one of my classes late last year and this sort of felt like them. The whole time Kate and I were going around and talking they all stayed back about 5 paces and just followed us. It was strange.
We walked downtown past the Royal Palace. I kept on calling it the Imperial Palace because I had the Imperial March from Star Wars running on my head because I felt her brothers were like the Imperial Guards from the Star Wars Movies, you know, the ones with red uniforms... In any event we headed downtown and walked around a bit. I probably haven't already mentioned that today was apparently the gay pride parade of Brussels and they were starting to set up for it during the week already. As we neared the center we were heading in towards all the stuff they had going on. I wanted to take them to a restaurant that was across the other side of the parade route, but Kate's brother refused to get even to distance sight of the parade so we had to turn around. With all that it was decided that they were not going to eat in Brussels apparently for some reason and I just went with it because I really didn't have much choice though I was hungry by this point. So basically we walked away from the parade (which certainly didn't bother me either, but then it wasn't that big a deal to me) and walked around the city going a couple places I hadn't already been before along the way. After a few hours we headed back to the car and Kate came up to the room for a few minutes to trade pictures and then I walked her back to the car and sent them on their way.
After that I walked back downtown for the third time and ate at Le Char D'Or (The Golden Chariot) and had a Leffe Brun and Stoemp and Sauchisses, which the Brits would basically call Bangers and Mash except there were carrots in with the mash. I ate at about 9:15 when all was said and done. Much later than I normally do. After that I walked back to the room to crash for the night. I was tired after all. It was good to see Kate honestly but the circumstances were just too weird for me to have really enjoyed it.
The pictures from today can be found here.
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