It is hard to find fault with a country known for waffles, chocolate and beer. In fact, the only thing that bothered me about Brussels at all was the weather. It was very cold, and even though I brought warm clothes I did stop at thermal underwear, and I could have used them on this trip.

In my family, I am the traveler. Andrea is probably second, as no one else really travels, at least outside the country. Her aunt Bobbi used to, and over Christmas, Bobbi said that Brussels reminded her of Newark. That wasn’t encouraging, and on the rather expensive cab ride from the airport I was afraid she was right. We kept passing large, generic gray office buildings.

But my hotel was in Brussels proper, and that was a different story. Close knit cobblestone streets with interesting shops, restaurants and bars were the norm.

My usual routine when arriving in Europe is to try and nap for a few hours as soon as I arrive, and then go to dinner and stay up until a normal bedtime. I got to the hotel around noon, unpacked, and slept until 5pm.

While I have done many trips that were just business and I spent a lot of time on my own, in Brussels my contact Thomas had offered to meet me for dinner and show me around. Thomas is a little older than me and he is Belgian born and bred. He asked me what I wanted to eat and I said “anything” and he then asked “Do you like Syrian food?”

I love Syrian food.

It turns out that his wife Halla is from Homs, so among his six languages he speaks Arabic. We headed off to see some of the sights and to get dinner.

Dinner was amazing – he ordered a lot of small plates and we had some Lebanese wine and talked about both life and business. He told me a bit about the history of Belgium, and explained that while Brussels was mainly French speaking, it was an island in the province of Flanders, which was strictly Dutch. In fact, while he lives in Leuven, he works in Louvain-La-Neuve (New Leuven) which was founded when some French speakers wanted to be free of the Dutch speakers.

After dinner we wandered around in the freezing cold. I got to see the Manneken Pis (literally “Little Man Peeing”) which is a very famous small statue in a fountain in Brussels. It was too cold for even him to pee, so the fountain was off. Next to it was a shop where I bought my first Belgian waffle (hot and covered in strawberries and chocolate sauce). We wandered around the Grand Place, the main market square that includes the town hall. The huge spire of the building is off center (count the windows – five to the left, three to the right) and legend has it that the architect leapt to his death when he discovered this. (I thought I had pictures but it must have been too cold to take them).

One very unusual place we stopped in was a bar that used an actual coffin complete with authentic human skeleton as a table ([Le Cercueil][6]). Not exactly my scene but it was interesting in any case. We found a more normal bar where we had some coffee (and I also had a beer) before calling it a night.

I made it back to the hotel about midnight and managed to sleep pretty well. The next morning I had to make my way to the Central Station to catch a train to Louvain-La-Neuve to meet up with Thomas to talk work.

We worked until about four, when he drove me to his home town of Leuven. You could see the signage change from French to Dutch (the border is well defined) and I was surprise at how close Dutch was to English. I thought German was close, but it is considerably different. For example, the Dutch “dank je” (pronounced “dank you”) is closer to “thank you” than the German “danke” (dahnk-ah).

I got a tour of Leuven. At lot of these towns have a similar structure, with a central market square that also houses the “state house” or town hall, although the one in Leuven was smaller than the Grand Place in Brussels. We wandered around a bit then had a few beers before I caught my train back to Brussels.

I just made the train I wanted, but in a panic I couldn’t find a ticket machine. I finally asked one of the train workers (nowhere in Belgium did I find a person who wouldn’t speak English – they were all quite friendly – but of course most of the time Thomas was doing the talking) and he said to just buy a ticket on the train, but that I had to look for the attendant as soon as I boarded.

The problem was I couldn’t find an attendant. Since I was already there, I just sat down and waited, with a few euro coins in hand. About ten minutes later a young woman walked over to me, looked down and just stared. I stared back until I realized that she was the attendant. She had a colorful scarf over her gray uniform and she wasn’t wearing a hat (the hats are quite distinctive). I told her that I wasn’t able to buy a ticket before boarding but the guy on the platform said I could buy one here, and she scolded me for not buying one as soon as I got on the train.

But, I replied, I didn’t see you. You don’t have a hat.

She laughed and then pulled her hat out from under her arm where she had been holding it. I didn’t have any issues after that.

While it was still early when I got back to the hotel, I was pretty tired and I just wanted to be warm. So I called Andrea and then crawled into bed. I had to get up early on Saturdays to make my train to Amsterdam.