Brussels 2: At the Place des Martyrs
In which I overcome my allergy to revealing ignorance, and embrace my true touron nature.
I should tell you I’m not entirely comfortable being a tourist.
For two summers during college I worked at Yellowstone National Park. We were badly paid. Our employers, TW Services, were renamed Tightwad Services. Our dissatisfaction extended to the tourists we served. While I cleaned toilets, made beds, sold fudge, washed dishes, julienned pounds and pounds of onions for onion soup, they enjoyed themselves. Or complained. Left more beer cans than tips.
We employees preserved our self-regard by scorning them as tourons (tourists+morons). Many ill-advisedly fed the bears. Some put their small children in front of moose for photos (which, rumor had it, then trampled the tots). They did for a fact disregard warnings, go off-trail and end up scorching themselves in thermal features. Every now and then someone would die in the back country.
While we, badly paid as we were, respected the environment, hiked every spare moment, explored the wilderness while leaving barely a trace. I did discover that the “us” I thought I was part of wasn’t as solid as it appeared when I got harassed as a lez by the other girls in the dorm, though that’s another story.
The point is, sneering at tourons backfired, made me self-conscious as a tourist for years, especially when I’d find myself in places with Americans honking at each other in their mid-Western accents, complaining about how no one speaks English, demanding ketchup for everything. Me, I’m not like that, I’m… I’m… I’m… I’m respectful, I’m considerate. I’m… such an idiot for thinking anyone cares. Whatever.
In Brussels, three+ decades and a pandemic later, I’m so thrilled to be unleashed I allow myself to be ignorant and curious. I gape. When we leave the hotel heading for the Grand-Place, we take a side street lined with fast food places and little bars. A small policeman comes charging out of one brandishing a pistol. He must have been four or five. A waiter, I imagine a relative, appears moments later, but the kid’s already disappeared into another door. A walk-on part as quick as a Hitchcock appearance in a movie.
A few steps later the alley opens up into in a large white silent square mentioned by exactly none of the guides I’ve read. Google maps says it’s the Place des Martyrs and we have to cross it, so we begin to—thoughtlessly—stumbling over the cobblestones, only pausing on the way out to look at a statue.
It’s of a generic soldier. With a little medallion of a man. We’re almost past it when we pause to read the inscription. It’s in Dutch, but I have enough German to make out that Frédéric de Merode died for Belgium’s independence. I didn’t know from whom. We walk around it and it’s confirmed in French on the other side.
We remember we’re on vacation, and are not in a rush. We lift our eyes and look around. See flags draped from several buildings. One’s Ukrainian. But the other doesn’t seem to be Belgian. (It turns out to be Flemish.) There’s also a monument in the center with a big statue and steps around it. At the other end are more flags and a statue that mirrors that of Mr. de Merode.
We go to look at them. Some teenagers from a nearby youth hostel are hanging out in a sunny patch on the steps around the central monument. It turns out to be a kind of mausoleum with crypts below for what Google calls the four hundred heroes of the Belgium revolution. They were apparently fighting to secede from the Netherlands in the 1830 revolution. The teens stare at us with superior, mocking eyes as we pull out our phones to take photos, google the place, reveal our ignorance, our interest. I revel in it.
I point to the flags, “I think those are the cabinet offices of the Flemish Government. Look where the other ones are. That’s a theater. It says here the whole place used to be a bleachfield where textile makers would lay out their fabric in the sun. The buildings are from the 1770’s. Neo-classical. For a while it was called, Place Saint-Michel, but when Napoleon’s forces took over in 1795, they dumped the religious names and called it the Place de la Blanchisserie. Well, that makes sense. But hey, wait. When did the Dutch get here? Shit this print is tiny. Why did I leave my glasses in the hotel room?! Fuck.”
That’s it for this time.
Stay tuned for more episodes.
Tot ziens! See you later,
K