Summer (Festivals) in Brussels
About the author: Mireille Vargas ’21 is an FSI The Europe Center Intern at the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Brussels, Belgium. She is currently an Earth Systems major at Stanford University.
It’s Saturday afternoon and I am walking to Parc du Cinquantenaire, a popular park that I tend to frequently visit in the past six weeks I have been here in Brussels. I had just come back from visiting a cultural festival at Bois de la Cambre, another park situated on the edge of the Sonian Forest, a 4,421 hectare forest at the edge of the city. As I enter the gates, I notice a flyer advertising Brussels’ Game Festival. Intrigued I take a detour and cut straight to the center of the park where the Belgium flag stands swaying in the slight breeze. As I get closer I come across various white tents where gaming tournaments are taking place and where families are walking out with bags of board games. Next to the tents are food trucks and booths where more games are set up. At one point, I see a Quidditch game happening on the grass. Upon reflection I realize that having my Saturday afternoon consist of attending a summer festival and later to stumble across another sums up a large portion of my time in Brussels.
I will admit that I first thought Brussels to be a quite city with little happening, but with time passing by (and spending a bit too much time on Facebook searching up events in Brussels) my perception has changed. Summer in Brussels is filled with festivals. Film festivals, cultural festivals, gaming festivals, music festivals-you name it and there’s probably a festival in Brussels for it. The first festival I went to was as early as the beginning of my second week in which my roommate, another Stanford student, and I went to Parc du Cinquantenaire and relaxed on lounge chairs as we watched the thought-provoking movie, “Snowpiercer.”
A particular favorite was the Brussels Summer Festival, a five-day music festival bringing artists from all over Europe to the center of Brussels. I’m not one for going to concerts, but getting to see artists I listen to for a fairly low price in a location only twenty minutes away from me walking was too good to pass up. I enjoyed singing along to MØ, rocking out to Rudimental, and belting out Spanish songs to Alvaro Soler. Although still feeling energized from the concert did not help in going to sleep at a reasonable time for me to feel rested the next day at work, but it was fun to later exchange stories with one fellow coworker who had also gone with her kids. When not stumbling into festivals, I spend my days walking around the various food markets on the weekends or joining in on the free outdoor fitness classes. No matter what, my weekends and most weekdays are filled with an event to go to. After six weeks of being here, I can say that Brussels has something to do every day.
