On our latest ground study to UK, we had two stops in Brussels, where the Eurostar holds one of its connection to the British island.
And of course, I spent some hours to see the European quarter in the east of the city.
I started my walk at Café Belga, having had a pistolet americain (what a strange thing), and I was wondering how small this city actually is, because it only took me 15 minutes to walk all the way up. I wondered even more, as I only saw the european quarter when I actually WAS THERE. No announcements, no entries, no glamour, no concentration of power in no way. In one hand I was puzzled, in the other amused about that.
As I approached the plaza in front of the European Parliament, I saw a lot of concrete. A few tourists strolled over it and gave it the air of a closed fun fair, somewhat lifeless, though "managed". Ok, it was vacations. But somehow I felt that these buildings and the whole place do not fully represent the idea of Europe. Hidden far away from the centre, with the royal grounds and Belgian government between, it seems as if the European quarter is too shy and too far away to be proud of it.
Though I know how much has been and still we be achieved here, I am convinced we need a stronger connection with this "administrative and parlamentarian capital" of Europe.
And though I know that Brussels will never be the same for Europe as Rome is for Italy, Paris for France or Warszawa for Poland and so on, I think we need to know better and more about what is going on here and what this place really means to us Europeans.
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