Bruxelles Les Bains

I stumbled upon the annual Bruxelles Les Bains festival today completely by accident.  Wanting to procrastinate on writing my copy for as long as humanly possible, I took a walk down the street from the hostel and found Brussel's main canal (which is also pretty much its only canal... Amsterdam puts you to shame here, Belgium). Each summer, the canal-front gets gets turned into a mini-beach resort, complete with fine sand, volleyball, music, and tons of mojito stands. Best of all: it's free!

I wasn't too impressed with the goings-on at first, but after hanging around for a while (and consuming a dinner of churros to complement my lunch of frites and my waffle breakfast) I was treated to a bizzare free concert: a reggae/hip-hop show (reggae in French?) with Senegalese performers (half wearing New York Yankees caps; the other half dressed in green army jackets with Dutch flags sewn onto them. The crowd was made up of some adorable little kids, angry looking teenage bros, cool rasta chicks with green dreadlocks, and middle-aged white ladies in big jewelry and Hammer pants. After the show, a parade of nice-looking young Belgian fellows danced around in Royal Guard costumes and practiced some baton twirling. The crowd loved the whole show.

Conclusion: Brussels is an insanely absurd place, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. The nice woman at the tourist office gave me some advice my first day here, "You just have to overcome that initial fear of everyone and everything is so weird here and just love it." While I remain utterly confused by the crazy mix of cultures and languages, I'm doing my best to follow her advice. You are très bizarre, Brussels, and I suspect you like it that way. Luckily, I, along with the rest of the tourist hordes, don't seem to mind at all.