In the 1960s, much of Brussels’ historic architecture was lost to functional but ugly concrete highrise.  Fortunately the heart of the city was spared.  Around Grand Place, the 15th century Hotel de Ville topped with a gold statue of the city’s patron saint and the impeccably restored guildhalls built between 1697 and 1705 have earned the square a UNESCO listing.

Impressive, ornate and very crowded.

Rubbing the statue of Everard ‘t Serclaes, who liberated Brussels from the Flemish in 1356 only to be assassinated in 1388, has become a local tradition.  Touch his right hand for luck.  For a year of happiness, run your left hand from his forehead to the head of the dog at his feet.  And to ensure your wish comes true, find the three mice hidden in the garland that hangs beneath the statue.

Just off the square, Galleries St Hubert, opened in 1847 by King Leopold I, was Europe’s first shopping arcade.

It’s full of high end fashion and jewellery boutiques, chocolate shops and Belgium’s famous biscuit maker, Dandoy which has been nurturing Bruxellois’ love of cookies since 1829.

Manneke Pis (Dutch for ‘little pissing man’) is possibly the most famous symbol of Belgium.  He’s a small bronze fountain sculpture of a small boy peeing.  City documents dated 1451 seem to be the first written reference to him, but he may be much older.

According to one legend, in 1142 the army of two year old Duke Godfrey of Leuven placed the infant in a basket and hung it from an oak tree as they prepared to fight the troops of the Lord of Grimbergen.   The campaign wasn’t going well until the infant rose up and urinated on the Grimbergen troops and victory was secured.  Maybe they just wanted to get home and into fresh clothes.

Another legend has a small boy urinating on a burning fuse attached to explosives which otherwise would have blown up the city when it was under seige in the 1300s.

As early as 1615 he was put in costume on celebration days.  Nowadays he is dressed up a couple of times each week by a not for profit organisation which manages his wardrobe.  Every year it receives hundreds of proposals from which it selects a small number of outfits to be produced and used.  He now has over a thousand, some of which are on display on rotation in a dedicated museum, Garde Robe Manneke Pis.

The current window display celebrates the Boy Scout movement.

He even has an Elvis outfit.

We suspect his image isn’t the subject of copyright.  You can find him on every variation of tourist tat.

He features in graffiti.

And if you really fall in love with the little guy, you can even take home a life-size chocolate mould to make your own version.

He’s not the only peeing statue in Brussels.

Jeanneke Pis (“Little Pissing Joan”) is a similar sized bronze of a young girl squatting to pee in a fountain hidden down a narrow lane.  Unfortunately when we saw her she’d been shrouded in plastic as some kind of protest against child labour so it’s impossible to see the full effect.

And there’s also Zinneke Pis (“Mutt Pissing”), Zinneke also being a slang term for someone living in Brussels who wasn’t born there.  A ring-in.  Zinneke isn’t official and isn’t a fountain, but he still draws a smile from passers by.

As do the murals dotted around town which reference Belgium’s famous comics.   Tin Tin, the Smurfs, Lucky Luke.

In the mid 20th century Belgium became Europe’s leading producer of comics.  Even now it has the highest density of comic creators and illustrators in the world.  40 million comics are published here every year.  Comics account for an impressive 60% of all publishing revenue.  There’s a comics museum in Brussels but we preferred to go looking for the murals.

Ok, that last one is Asterix and Obelisk who are French, but they started life in a Franco-Belgian comic book.

Some of the best reasons to visit Brussels aren’t in Brussels at all.

As lovers of Tin Tin, a visit to the Hergé Museum in Louvain, an hour by train from Brussels, was essential. It covers the life and work of Georg Remy, aka Herge, creator of the much loved Tin Tin and his loyal side kick Snowy.

Ironically, Herge was more fond of cats than dogs, hence this bronze in the museum’s gardens.

With an interest in military history (both of us) and being an ABBA tragic (Julie), a visit to the Battlefield of Waterloo  was equally important.

At the site of the battle which ended Napoleon’s attempt to retake power in 1815, is a huge grassy mound known as the Butte de Lion (“Lion’s Mound”), built on the spot where Prince William of Orange, heir to the throne of France and commander in chief of the first corp of the Duke of Wellington’s army, was wounded.  Built between 1824 and 1826, it is 41 metres high and was almost entirely constructed by women carting baskets of earth by hand.

At the apex of the mound is a plinth supporting a cast iron statue of a lion which honours the soldiers who died.

Under the mound is a museum opened in 2015 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the battle.  It gives a broad overview of Napoleon’s rise to power, his impressive achievements in furthering the social and economic life of France and his doomed 1812 campaign against Russia which led to his banishment to Elba.   It then moves to a detailed exposition on his return to France in 1815 and the Waterloo battle itself.  It’s rather good, even for visitors who aren’t military history fanatics.

Visitors can climb the 225 steps to the Lion.

From the top you can see the battlefield which undid Napoleon and changed the course of European history.  Reduced to a mud bog by torrential rains in the lead up to the battle, Victor Hugo described it as the Morne Plaine (“bleak wilderness”) but these days it’s rolling farmland.

For one month only, there’s a highly incongruous alternative way to see it, while eating lunch suspended high in the sky.

Napoleon vastly underestimated his adversary, famously saying “Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad troops, and this affair is nothing more than eating breakfast”.

Oddly there’s no memorial to the Duke, whose tactics secured the victory.  Wellington lived for another 37 years after the battle.  Back in London he had a dinner every year on the anniversary of the victory to which he invited the senior officers who survived.

Despite being threatened with certain death if she so much as hummed ‘that’ ABBA song, Julie wondered aloud if the Duke regaled his guests with “My, my.  At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender.  Oh yeah!”

To which his guests may have responded, “Wa-Wa-Wa-Wa-Waterloo”.

Knowing he had no chance of distracting her from the topic, John capitulated and started proposing scenarios for Waterloo – The Musical.   Mainly this involved Napoleon serenading the Duke of Wellington:

“My, my.  I tried to hold you back but you were stronger.  Oh yeah!”

or maybe:

“Waterloo
I was defeated, you won the war.
Waterloo
Promise to love you for ever more.”

Good grief.  Time to get out of here.