Brussels: in the city - A Flanders Fling - CycleBlaze

June 1, 2017

Brussels: in the city

We had one more errand to take care of before we got into any serious sightseeing. Janos wanted a replacement for the cell phone that he had sat on at the beginning of the trip. So off we went to Media Markt and found a nice Samsung that wasn't too expensive, quite similar to the old one, but better because newer. Janos could now reconnect to the digital world.

The unboxing
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That was already a lot of walking. Our next obvious errand was to buy a three-day pass for two, a partner pass, for the public transportation system. And then we had to figure out how to use it. The card contains a magnet that opens the turnstiles in the subway. I wondered how two were supposed to get through with one card and tried to slip through with Janos ... and got walloped by the arm of the turnstile. I guess that was not the way to do it. First one person goes through, then hands the card back for the other one to use it.

We didn't do much else than wander around, a bit aimlessly, taking in the atmosphere, while Janos played with his new smartphone. We also experimented with the public transportation system.

Tram and Tin Tin with his dog Snowy on top the building - Tintin is the protagonist of one of the most popular European comic book series, The Adventures of Tintin, which was written by the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, better known as Hergé (1907–1983).
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We are at the Place Rogier where we then descended into the underground.
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In the subway looking up
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In the subway looking down
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And down
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We were sitting in a pleasant outdoor restaurant for our evening meal, enjoying our big, cool white beers, when the man from the neighboring table asked us which beer on the menu we had ordered. And so we got to talking. He was from Florida, a doctor, his wife from Brussels. They had met here 20 years ago when he was a student. It was a pleasant conversation. We talked about the weather, the obvious global warming it being such a hot day, and in that context I mentioned Trump - oh, never talk politics with strangers.

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