Next day we headed to Brussels. Since we were still staying in Ghent, we had about 40 minutes of driving to do before 10 a.m. when the only tour of European Parliament started. We made it to the vicinity of European Village by 10, but by the time we found parking it was too late. Driving through Brussels also turned out to be quite a challenge for a stick-shift beginner, as many parts of the city were quite hilly. Add to this the need to avoid European MPs in their limos or on their bikes. (The site of men in black suits on bicycles was quite something.) We made a circle around the European Parliament building (a very fin du siecle glass structure), and decided to look for a place to park for the day. This turned out harder than we thought.

As we were circling Brussels looking for affordable parking, we came across a square that had plenty of parking and seemed to be close to downtown. To our further delight it turned out we could park there for the day. Having left the car, we went into a nearest building to ask which way downtown was. “If you are looking for Brussels, it’s that way,” we were told. “And where are we now?!” “Schaerbeek.”

As it turned out, however, that while technically in a different town, were were in fact walking distance to Brussels downtown and Schaerbeek turned out quite interesting. We walked through an immigrant neighborhood, with half the store signs in Arabic and another half in Turkish and even caught the end of a Turkish street fair. We also encountered a church that was showing clear signs of de-plastering As we learned in Haarlem, many of the churches in Netherlands used to be painted bright colors, but were then white-washed after the reformation under the influence of Calvinist asceticism. Those layers of plaster were now being removed to expose the earlier layer of paint. So, we are guessing the same happened to this church in Schaerbeek.