Manneken Pis Party

A few weekends ago, before the job in Gelsenkirchen was completed, we took a road trip through Belgium and stayed in Brussels. The last stop on our city tour was the popular tourist attraction "Manneken Pis." You may recognize this naked statue of a boy peeing, as we did in the tourist books. As we approached the area of the statue we saw that there were tons of people crowding the streets around the statue. We just figured they were all there to see the cute little bronze tyke. However, when we arrived we were shocked at what we saw - Manneken Pis was wearing clothes!

His little hooh-hah was still providing a nice fountain stream, but what was with the frock and pink elephant? After looking around we noticed that not everyone was there to admire the statue. They were across the street enjoying free beer, compliments of Delirium Tremens. It took us a second but we finally made the connection between the Delirium Tremens logo (a pink elephant on a blue background) and the outfit that little Manneken Pis was wearing. The statue was all dressed up as a part of this big promotional party.

Not being the type to turn away free beer, we grabbed a few drinks and joined the crowd in the streets. At this point we noticed another hilarious part of the beer promotion. A crazy looking older guy (I'll explain more about him later) was pushing around a cart with a replica of Manneken Pis on top of it. With the push of a button the replica could spray unsuspecting passer-bys. Occasionally the guy operating the cart would begin to chase through the crowd spraying any and everyone in his path.

Needless to say, this was completely hilarious to watch. We are not exaggerating when we say that we watched clueless tourists being chased and sprayed for over an hour!

An event like this certainly brought all of the crazies out of the woodwork. They were probably all attracted by the gentleman chasing people through the crowds with the Manneken on a cart. If there were a contest for the world's craziest moustache, this guy would win hands down!

Some of our other favorites in the crowd included this young woman who danced to some great 90s tunes,

and this guy who, well, we're not really sure what to say about this guy!