We spent the last few days in Brussels. Got in on the Eurostar at around 1:00. We were crashing with a good friend - a teacher who worked with Devorah back in the day but left NY and is now in Brussels. The catch was that she wasn't getting home from work until 5:00 so we had to occupy ourselves until then. Schelpping around rolling suitcases usually isn't a big deal but there were two challenges.

First, schlepping around rolling suitcases is much harder on cobbled streets, particularly when it's unseasonably warm and most museums - you know - tourist attractions with coat rooms are closed in Brussels on Mondays.

We ended up at the Brussels Comics Figurines Museum.

Very cool. The first featured comic strip was The Marsupilami.

Lots of figurines and a running cartoon. Fun stuff.

There were lots more:

Some I knew like Tintin and the Smurfs and some I didn't. Lots of interesting backstory.

My favorite was, of course, Asterix (and of course Obelix):

After the museum we puttered around a bit, refueled on a waffle and made it to our host's.

We started off the next day with a free tour. Well, sort of. We went on a Sandeman tour. They're free and request you tip based on whatever value you feel you received. Devorah and Batya have used them before.

We started at the Grand Place talked a bit about it's and the city's history and walked and learned about Brussels for the next almost three hours.

Batya and I both very much enojyed the tour.

Next up, the KBR museum. This was recommended by a friend. There was some local history but mostly it was about illuminated manuscripts.

They had some history on Illuminated Manuscripts as well as on how they were made and sported an impressive collection. The oldest we saw was form the 900s. Extremely cool.

That evening we got dinner with our friend Helen and a bunch of her colleagues. Helen is now teaching in Brussels so I asked her to set up a dinner with her CS or related teachers. They don't strictly do CS, they do ICT which has some CS and coding in it but also trends to what we would cover on the CTE side.

I loved meeting and talking with all of them. Learned a bit about what it was like for them and what's going on in CS Ed in their school, Belgium and other places in Europe and I hope I was also able to share some interesting insights form our side. I might blog more about all of this at some later date but it was really a highlight for me.

Yesterday, our last day in Brussels we started at the Jewish Museum. It covered the expected intro to Judiasm, had a Holocaust section and a few exhibits by and about Jewish artists from or related to Belgium. I was particularly interested in the first two things - I wanted to see how they were covered in Europe. Very interesting and as with everything else we've seen, worth a visit. I particularly liked the information about development and histories of some of the congregations that formed in Belgium.

For the afternoon we decided to go castle hunting with Helen. First up was Grimbergen. Cool old castle but mostly ruins. We were able to walk around and liked it but it was a short stop - not that much there.

We then found our way to Chateau de Bouchout at Plantentuin Meise. Cool castle but also in a botanic garden. We walked a couple of the sections and went through a pretty amazing greenhouse. Plus teachers got free entry. Another win.

All in all three successful days of touring.

We almost had an adventure the next day - this morning on our way to Antwerp but I'll save that for the next post.