Anneessens, Brussels
11:21 am

I had been torn between posting more quaint photos of Brussels and trying to do a post on the EU District, but I guess it's about time for the institutions. I'm going to keep it all together in one entry.

Being somewhat of a narrative person as well as a visual one, I guess I'll do my best at a virtual tour. If you take the metro to Shuman and come out on the southeast side, you will be here, with half of a roundabout behind the sign and between you and the building:

Turn around, staying on the south side of the road but walking east, and you will soon come to this little gem on your left:

It kind of reminds of some sort of color/shape matching game I think I played in kindergarden.

(Justus Lipsius Building: Wikipedia photo)

It actually houses the EU Council. For the uninitiated, the EU consists of three main bodies: the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament. Both the Council and the Parliament are legislative bodies, but the Council is much more powerful. Of course, the site was a little busier on another day when it hosted an anti-Israel protest:

The Council is directly across the street from the Commission, but we'll go back to the metro stop, were if you look to the northwest, your view would be something like this (again, I'll cheat and use a Wikipedia picture for better perspective):

This is the other side of the Berlaymont (or Berlaymonster, which many apparently call it), which I included in the last post. It houses the European Commission. Walking to its base, the Berlaymont hosts this fantastic propag--I mean, advertising:

Keep walking...

I wonder how much money they spent on this thing, because I can tell you how many people I've ever seen standing there to watch it...

If you actually do (watch it), it's even better: it cycles again and again through clips of idealistic young people trying to justify the Parliament's existence.

The famous motto, prominently displayed on another building in the area: "European Elections: It's Your Choice!" You can't help but get the feel (and rightly so), that these institutions can't be that relevant if they have to work that hard to get people to vote.

(If you know me well at all, this might be a good place to make your own snide comment about voter turnout for BYU elections, but let's be honest--that's a campus, and this is a continent!)

If you can't tell from the mirror oddly protruding from the left side of the picture, I was racing a bus for this photo.


This is the European Parliament building, located in a slightly different area from the pictures above. While not a bad structure for an office complex or maybe a really nice public library, something about this picture just doesn't look that impressive. Perhaps it's the dirty and very distracting 'no borders between brothers' "display" sitting right in front of the statute. (Probably left over from a protest.)

This might be a better angle.

Well, thus concludes the grand tour. Voila!