Our first protest...

This belgium cow is saying "equitable milk"

In saying "our first" I mean Anne and I. Yesterday Joe called me saying his boss told him that tomorrow there will be protests and that farmers are protesting over the soaring fuel prices, and to complain about the high cost of living. Also there would be truck drivers and taxi drivers protesting fuel price that they can not pass on to consumers. Joe thought it would be a good idea if I go and take photos for my blog - yes he wanted me to go to a protest. A couple of weeks ago fisherman protested in the EU area and it turned violent not to mention my dad wanted to go to protests when they were visiting but I told him no (even though they were more controversial and could possible turn violent).

Anne and I started by doing a couple errands and came across the taxi drivers protest - it was lame they drove around for a couple blocks honking their horns then went back to their taxi lines.

Then we took the metro to the merode stop and popped up just in time to see the tractors entering the parc cinquantenaire round-about. They were honking and waving. It was like a tractor parade - however the thing I didn’t like was they were lighting fire crackers, and some tractors had big tubes on the front like a cannon shooting off big and loud fire crackers. As I took a few pictures my batteries died and I had to buy some more quick to capture this crazy event for you all.

We watched for a while then walked up to the area where they were parking. Yes we were watching out for if they got crazy because I didn’t need to be in the middle of a riot.

They had a little BBQ area set up and were cooking, drinking and chatting with the media. We also scored some t-shirts. The farmers left them out for people to take - it was basically to show support for them.

As we walked back down the street the tractors were still coming into the city honking away. By this time it actually felt normal to see huge tractors driving in the city.

We had a yummy lunch only a block or so off the main street where the tractors were. It was so quiet you couldn’t tell there were tractors driving and honking nearby.

This time we walked back to the area with the plan to go to the top of the arch…thinking like rational beings they probably were not letting people to the top. OH NO not here, the top was open…in the US that would have been closed but the poor men working at the museum looked really bored because there were no visitors. We counted about 400 tractor from our aerial view.

I got some great photos then we decided to walk through the parc to the EU area and take the #60 bus home…Yes this is the bus line I really have problems with. As we approached Schuman we noticed there are a lot of cops here…there were not any police at the tractor protest. Then we noticed the water cannon truck, huge police vehicles and the men dressed in riot gear. Not to mention the rows and rows of barbed wired. I looked at Anne and said what in the world did we walk into. We got to the bus stop and noticed the sign said the bus service would be cut off at 2:30. It was 2:35…but thank god the #60 bus is never on time and we waited just about 5 minutes because we could see a bus in the distance. Sure enough it was our bus and it was packed. I guess everyone was getting out of this area. We still don’t know why or what was going on but hopefully I will have an update tomorrow.

Hope you enjoyed our crazy day…please don’t try this at home we are trained proffessionals.