As I walked to archive this past Thursday, I came across a person taking the unofficial symbol of Brussels a bit too much to heart. Now, Brussels has not one, but two Pis statues. First is Manneken, the famous little boy (see post below). Well, in the 1980s, to keep all things equal, a second statue was set up: Jeanneke Pis, a little girl doing her thing into a fountain. Now, I haven’t seen this version and, well, I don’t think I ever need to....
As I turned down Rue de Ruysbroeck, the street the archive is on, I saw a Roma (better known as Gypsies) woman. That’s not unusual, the Roma are all over Europe (mainly in Italy and, specifically, Rome) but they are here in Brussels, too, often sitting outside churches or at metro stations.
Anyway, as I walked along I saw another Roma woman, um, impersonating Janneke Pis right there on the cobblestone street. I just sped up to walk by the two, but I could hear them laugh a bit and I most certainly made my discomfort obvious via my face.
So, there you go. Sometimes as you walk to work, passing the grand Justice Palace, the great synagogue of Brussels, and a historic Gothic church, you may run into a person taking a pee in the street at 8:30am on a Thursday.
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First, EW GROSS. Second, this is the second story I've heard in the past 24 hours of people seeing other people "mannekin pissing" on a city street. I really hope this isn't some sort of epidemic in the making!!
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