On a recent trip to Belgium I cajoled my crew into visiting Brussels’ most well known landmark and no, it is not the battlefield at Waterloo. Most visitors pose, as my giddy friends and I are doing here, before the Manneken Pis, a 2 ½ foot bronze statue of a little boy in apparent joyful exhilaration, relieving himself into a public fountain. This is actually a replica as the original was so often stolen that it has been placed in a local museum for security purposes. There are a number of legends as to the source of inspiration for the sculpture. The only one with any real basis in fact concerns a battle between the forces of the Berthouts, the lords of Grimbergen and the troops of the 2 year old Duke Godfrey III of Leuven. Soldiers loyal to the little Duke apparently hung him in a basket from a tree over the battlefield for inspiration. Keeping himself both comfortable and entertained he relieved himself on the enemy Berthouts, an act fairly common to anyone who has raised a male toddler or been a male toddler. In fact we have been endowed with the ability to drown bugs from yards away, put out campfires, and make really cool splashes from riverbanks and boats. I would caution the less experienced that these acts should be carefully administered when in the vicinity of an electrified pony fence. Trust me. Anyway, the battle took place in 1142 and the moistened Berthouts were defeated. And in the spirit of equality a Jeanneke Pis “sister statue” was created in 1987. The impish pigtailed girl stands, or squats, about a hundred feet up a small alley on the Impasse de la Fidelite (Fidelity Alley) and attempts to emulate the actions of her male cousin but with less accuracy. She also serves another, perhaps more important purpose. Little Jeanneke’s statue marks the entrance way to the Delirium Café bar. It has 3000, yes I said 3000 different brands of beer and is the Guinness Book record holder. So with an appreciation for the historical significance of our actions, my friends and I sampled as many as we could while often ceremoniously reenacting visits to the facilities, which I guess were not available to little Menneken and Jeanneke.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 18:38:22 +0000
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