I hadn't been to Brussels for a long time, so this weekend has been a good opportunity to acquaint myself with the town. Driving down in driving rain on Friday night, I ended up in a state of confusion around Antwerp when there were two roads marked as leading to Brussels, the A12 (I think) and the E19. Of course, I should have taken the latter, but I took the former. It was not too much of a problem, but I do think the Belgians need to invest in clearer signage. Then as I wound my way into town, I was greeted with a police roadblock. A whole host of police cars, lights flashing and several policemen with machine guns standing around as they were checking cars for something or other. I was waved through, but machine guns? Why? Are roadblocks really that dangerous that the police needs to have that much firepower? Or is it just a way of intimidating the populace?

There's some fantastic architecture in Brussels spanning several centuries, including some wonderful modernist buildings from the early 20th century, such as this pair of buildings on the Stefanie square on the Louizalaan. There's also a lot of absolutely atrocious architecture there from the Concrete Era of the 1960s and 1970s. The Belgian Finance Ministry further up on Louizalaan bears an eerie resemblance to its Dutch counterpart in The Hague. Cold, ugly, impersonal monuments to an era blandness when being heavy handed was seen as the golden future. But building gargantuan structures is a constant throughout history as the Palace of Justice shows. Although meant to show the magnificence of the Belgian state, its superhuman scale just serves to make the point that the state can build big things. Really, really big things. In fact, if we can build things this big, we can steamroller right over you. Symbolically, it's a Borg structure, the Belgian state's way of saying "Resitance is Futile." All in the name of the people of course.

The Belgian state also seems to be confused about the difference between public and private. In front of the Palace of Justice, I found this hilarious sign. It says "Private State Property." Apparently it's the kind of state property that belongs privately to the state. You may have paid for all of this with your tax euros, but it's not yours anymore. It belongs to somebody else, the State.

The best thing about Brussels is the amount of chocolate that is present. Every other shop sells chocolate. Chocolate shops are almost as common in Brussels as ski stores in Vail, but not quite. In order to ascertain whether the quality control processes in the Belgian chocolate industry are up to scratch, I had to conduct several chocolate-consuming experiments. I even brought some experiments home with me. And I also visited the best-smelling museum in the world: The Museum of Cocoa and Chocolate. The aroma of cocoa is overpowering when walking into the building. The museum itself is fairly small, and I was disappointed in the content. To bring the exhibits alive, they should have more interactive displays where customers could experience the chocolate more directly. They do have some interactive chocolate items (they taste good), but more would have been better.