Many people would find it hard to fill the back of a beer coaster with the names of famous Belgians. And despite the fact the country is still partying hard in the wake of its 175th anniversary, Brussels primarily springs to mind as the headquarters of the European Union rather than the capital of a nation that embodies some of the best of Europe.
Brussel to Flemish residents, Bruxelles to its French population, Brussels is a multilingual, multicultural, dual-faceted metropolis, seemingly Gallic down one street but with strong Dutch nuances the next. The bureaucratic monolith of the EU takes up a lot of space but for much of the time it's ignored by the populace, for whom the icon of their home town is not a multistarred flag carefully conceived by a pan-European committee but a justly famous little boy carelessly relieving himself in the street.
Anyone venturing onto the streets soon realises why Belgian drivers have a reputation for being, well, forceful. The traffic simply hurtles, with every driver seemingly a Thierry Boutsen-style grand prix racer in the making. In contrast, as if to emphasise the city's dual personality, the bicycle lanes are packed with machines piloted by young mothers with babies on board, sedate gentlemen exercising their dogs and muscled, Lycra-clad speedsters.
Hiring your own two-wheeler is the perfect way to tour the sights and blend in. The obvious starting point is the Grand Place, the magnificent central square, which dates from the 12th century and is filled with baroque guildhouses. Yet it can only be reached by winding lanes filled with al fresco restaurants, bars and cafes, and strolled by buskers (and a fair few drunks) playing anything from bongos to bagpipes. It's worth stopping to look up at some of the many churches, often adorned
with gargoyles so grotesque they could populate the nightmares of the juvenile Manneken Pis. It's not widely known that Brussels' most photographed non-sex symbol - who is popularly supposed to have put out a fire - has a sister sculpture, Jeanneke, who has crouched contentedly at the Impasse de la Fidelite for 20 years. She is less a blow for sexual equality than yet another typically Brussels jeu d'esprit.
Art in one form or another throngs the streets and historians might be tempted to argue that Pierre Culliford - creator of the Smurfs - and Georges Remi, better known as Herge, owe much to more classical artists such as Pieter Brueghel, Paul Delvaux, Peter Paul Rubens and Rene Magritte. Belgian antecedents link the minds that conceived The Apotheosis of Henry IV and the Proclamation of the Regency of Marie de Medicis on May 14 (Rubens) and the adventures of Tintin, Captain Haddock and Snowy. Brussels' artistic tradition is continued in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts and the more low-brow Belgian Centre for Comic Strip Art. If not for its contents, the latter is worth visiting for its home: a former department store created by the doyen of the art-nouveau movement, Victor Horta, full of light and wrought iron and the perfect home for cartooning.
There's no doubting Brussels' continuing affair with anything to do with comic books. Bookstores are piled high with Tintin, Asterix and lesser-known heroes such as Suske and Wiske, while even sober-suited diplomats are only too happy to describe the antics of The Family Snoek, first encountered in childhood and avidly followed since.