Friday, 02-Aug-2024
The day started out beautifully, and kept the trend quite nicely.
I started at the post office, which was definitely one of the easiest post offices that I’ve visited so far in Europe. Clean, efficient, helpful… man, I literally wrote a note in my journal about how well it went. Then, after a lovely bike ride through the city, I was granted a view that left me in a bit of awestruck rapture – My first view of how singularly MASSIVE the Atomium is.
I’d been seeing pictures of the Atomium, and hearing little tidbits about it, at various spots throughout the city – it’s definitely a mascot of Brussels, and quite a few comics featured its latticework somewhere in their art. Those didn’t quite prepare me for the reality of the situation, though.
Keep in mind, I’ve never lived anywhere that’s really taken the World’s Fair seriously. I mean, I’ve visited Paris so I should have remembered that the Eiffel Tower was built as a centerpiece for a World’s Fair… and that should have helped inform my expectations of scale… But hey, bear with me here. My upbringing can only give me so many advantages.
So… I gasped, stopped the bike, and stared in rapt amazement at the sheer size of this gargantuan building. Then I walked up through the gardens, and went inside.
It wasn’t quite as simple as all that, of course. First I stood in line to get tickets. Then I stood in line to get a coffee and a snack. Then I stood in line to get my ticket checked to go in… and then continued in that line to go in.
It was… well, the Atomium is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Brussels. It’s got a few people going to visit.
The lines were worth it, though – no doubt in my mind. I got to explore the inside of the lattice structure, see my darling informational placards about its original construction and later renovation, and even learned interesting tidbits about the worlds fair and follow-on decades.
It’s neat, especially since I didn’t grow up in a city with anything really similar – New York has the Statue of Liberty, St. Louis has the Arch, but neither Boston nor Portland had a monolithic structure to walk around inside… and because of that, this was a fairly magical experience for me. The sheer scale of the building… it’s inspiring, since simple people came together to make it into a reality.
Maybe if we had more things like this in the States, we’d have a bit more of a communal feeling, with a bit more inspiration for the power of collaboration…
Anyways.
I explored. I went to the highest point, which houses a lovely restaurant, and had some lunch. I bought some commemorative coins from a machine at the top for €2.50, then saw them for sale at the bottom for €2.00. Got a bit annoyed, enough that I remembered it over a month later while writing this, but then felt cool for having looted the cool coins from the literal top of the whole thing.
I headed back down, enjoyed the turbo-lift looking lights, and make a point to turn around quite a few times after leaving to appreciate the imposing structure as it receded into the background…
