Brussels, Belgium

You can't miss the Cathedral when you drive into Brussels. It's big and beautiful and like many others you see in Europe. It was raining a bit when we got there but subsided just as we went into the cathedral. When we got out, it started raining again lightly and then out of nowhere - HAIL! We ran under a tree for protection and so did many others including the couple in the picture below. I don't know if you can see it but those little white things under the tree are balls of hail.After that microburst, it was sunny the rest of the day. We couldn't resist having Belgian waffles in Belgium so we stopped and indulged.


The Grand Palace
It's probably the main tourist attraction in Brussels and it resembles a square we saw in Madrid last Summer.


Kelsey enjoyed Brussels, especially the cobblestone streets.


I enjoyed this stone in particular.


Manneken Pis
As legend has it, in the 14th century, Brussels was under siege by a foreign power. The city had held their ground for quite some time. The attackers had thought of a plan to place explosive charges at the city walls. A little boy named Juliaanske from Brussels happened to be spying on them as they were preparing. He urinated on the burning fuse and thus saved the city.

Brussels is also known for their yummy fries so we got a "cone" of fries. Too bad they just put the ketchup right on them b/c I made a mess with it! They were great though. We ended up having fries at almost every meal this whole weekend. Let's just say I'm swearing off fries for awhile now.
As the sun set on Brussels, we headed for the hotel. When our GPS told us it was 1 hour away and that we were supposed to be driving on the other side of the road, I just about flipped. We ended up getting there in about 10 minutes and drove through the Ghetto of Brussels so we thought our GPS had gone haywire. It wasn't until the next day when we typed in the concentration camp and it said it was 6 hours away that we realized we had put it on pedestrian mode! Oh well, we got to see a different side of the city and figured it out before we had REALLY gone astray.


Brussels by night
Since we had already been to the city that day, I stayed at the hotel with Kelsey and Jay (Mike & Anna's son) while Tally took the Connellys and Johnsons into the city. They said they found even better waffles than the ones we had earlier in the day. Guess I'll have to go back and try them! Thanks to Anna and her trusty Canon, we have pictures of Brussels at night! This is when the little camera trumps the big one.


Belgian Chocolate
The next morning on our way to the Netherlands, we stopped to get Belgian chocolate chips. These are not just any chocolate chips, they are absolutely delicious and each bag has 5.5lbs. of chips in them. I got two and I'm still haven't finished the first bag that my friend gave me for Christmas.

Breendonk
This is said to be one of the most well-preserved concentration camps. It's in Belgium between Brussels and Antwerp. As you walk in, there is barbed wire all over the place (not out of reach of little children) and a sign that reads:

3,500 suffered here

164 were shot

21 hanged

About 100 died of torture and exhaustion

The numbers didn't seem particularly staggering in light of how many Jews suffered during Hitler's regime, but when I heard all the stories they told about the individual people, my heart broke. This camp was known for starving it's residents. Can you imagine something like this as a meal? It gives a whole new perspective to my mealtime prayers.One of the many things that struck me was how they had to make their beds in the morning. Their beds were bags of hay and they had to make them look like pressed linens in a matter of 4 minutes. Those who did not get it right often went without food the rest of the day and were made to do hard labor while being beaten.
As you walked inside the bunkers the air was stale, the rooms cold (on a warm spring day), and the feeling eerie. Three people high bunk beds with a hay sack as a bed. As many as 32 lived in a room at one time - and they aren't that big. All the hay eventually carried lice and other critters which carried creepy diseases and the hay was never changed out. Even horses get fresh hay. The horses also had names but these prisoners were known only by a number.

In this picture, you can see the brick building is the same building shown in the black and white photograph behind it. That hill has since been flattened, but not by bulldozers. It was dug out laboriously by the prisoners to make room for more bunks. Below is a picture of the torture chamber. They said the door was often left open so other prisoners could hear the screams.

One of the rooms the tour took us to was the registration room. There were several pictures of the Nazi guards or supporters and the audio guide told their stories. I was floored by how many of these soldiers were deadbeats before the war and suddenly climbed the ranks. Several of them could not obtain employment, were not fit for the SS, or were not even found competent before they were sent to Breendonk to keep the prisoners in line. These were also the guys AND GIRLS who were the most severe in their cruelty towards the prisoners. They were not just lead to believe it was for a better cause, they seemed like down right evil people.I am slowly but surly learning German and I found myself wishing I was fluent so I could read and understand all the things on display. All the death certificates, letters, signs, etc. were in German. They were discussed on our audio tour, but not translated. I was able to get bits and pieces of the documents.

The contrast between then and now is also interesting. The landscape surrounding Breendonk is serene and picturesque. It's hard to imagine what it would have been like to live through their hell. I'm so grateful we live in a land (and are citizens of a land) where we have our religious freedom. I often think about what if it were Mormons instead of Jews, would I be able to stand up proudly and declare my faith?