Had a terrific day in Brussels today. First step was coffee in the Grand Place and watching tour groups being told facts that they will never remember!. I took a few pics of people taking pics! From there I walked to the Parliament of the EC. You can see why the Brits decided to leave. What an amazing display of how to waste money. One image below has a pile of chimneys on the roof (possibly to exhaust all the hot air generated by the 300+ politicians that decide what happen's in Europe and the EC's 40,000 employees). The main visitors area is the Parlamentarium which was just an exercise in self promotion of the EC. Thank goodness it cost nothing to get in. It took me about half an hour to get the technology to work, so I probably missed a lot of information. Next door was another interesting building called "The House of European History". This museum (also with free entry) begins with the myth of the goddess Europa, exploring Europe’s ancient roots and the continent’s heritage of shared traditions, before Europe’s dramatic journey towards modernity in the 19th century and rebuilding process following World War II. So basically you get the whole history of Europe over 5 floor's and it takes about 3 hours. There were stacks of interesting things on display - The gun that started WW1, the actual draft agricultural bill (that resulted in farmers destroying over production and the butter wars), the EC's first agreement between the initial 6 countries and there was also some bits of the Berlin wall. There was a big "negative" display on Neoliberalisim, which is kind of funny because that's kind of the philosophy and behaviour that the EC parliament has adopted e.g banning some ag chemicals due to feelings, not facts. I then walked up to Arts History museum and then checked out the Monument du Cinquantenaire (Triumphal Arch). After 20,000 steps I enjoyed a Belgian beer.
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