The criteria to choose this places to talk about was very simple: we wanted to talk about places that makes us feel something, no matter if it makes us hate it or love it, but that makes us want to talk about it.

So, is there any other place in Brussels that makes you want to talk about it?

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Grand Place

I began my tour to grand place from the Royal Palace walked by the Old English and next to the Royal Library, eventually reaching the Grand Place. When crossing by Old English a person can see perhaps one of the nicest views of the place from the far.

Here you can clearly see majestic city hall tower, the statue in the park, and the nice houses in between the city hall and the park – it all looks amazing. The lawns look manicured and clean, one can see some ads, but they all are tastefully down.

However, as one gets closer to the place, one comes across a series of the low-price, fast-food restaurants and this tourist shops which are filled with low quality touristy goods. All this gives you impression of the place being exploited and touristy rather than historical and majestic.

All of the iconic Brussels symbols can be found on practically anything, starting from the wine-opener, to plates, to magnets, and t-shirts. In my opinion, this takes away from the integrity of those symbols by making them look like a means to an end for shop owners to get money off you any way the can.

When you finally enter the Grand Place, you see how incredible it is. The Maison du Roi with its finely crafted sculptures, in its gothic style, overwhelms your senses. The City Hall with the incredibly tall tower and the finely crafted statues on the side of this gothic building amazes you. In the south-eastern part of the plaza, there are fine examples of the Louis XIV style. However, the red and green stripped canvasses take away so much from the beauty of this place. All the sudden it looks like something that can be found in the factious streets of Las Vagas among the other remakes such as Venice or Paris. Which physically amazes you, but it feels devoid of any spirit – just an empty box in the word that becoming more and more globalised and generic. In other words, it looks gimmicky and cheap and that clashes greatly with ceremonious and grand design of the building and the place itself.

At the exit that leads to La Bourse there are more of these gimmicky shops selling all the touristy stuff that you will never use. There are few diamond stores in between. However, they look so shabby, that to this day I still cannot believe they carry luxurious diamonds. They look like cheap quickie stores back in Canada, where you can get all your junk food and pop, or make a copy of a key. In other words, they look like back street merchants, which do not inspire you with confidence, rather than prestigious diamond vendors.

ULB

They say never judge a book by its cover, but most people cannot help but to base their attitude towards something by their first impression. My first impression of the university campus was not of high regard, to put it softly. Coming here, I was expecting to find an old European university that looks something like University Oxford or University of Bolognia, or at very least like old universities in Canada, such as University of Toronto.

Before coming to the university, I looked up some photos of ULB on internet to get an idea of what the ULB is like. Pictures I saw on internet were those of the building A, and of the Library. So obviously, coming here, I had high expectations of the University. When I finally arrived here, I entered the university not from the avenue Franklin Roosevelt side, but instead from the Avenue Adolphe Buyl side. It was right away obvious to me that I did not enter through the parade entrance.

First buildings that I saw were building P and U. These buildings rather reminded me of Junior-High Schools from Soviet Union. Because the asphalt was broken and the buildings looked worn out, these buildings did not even look like a good soviet school (or even average). It looked like a school somewhere in a small Ukrainian village that cannot afford to pay for the upkeep.

Ukrainian Public School

ULB: Building P

Next, I, and some other people, went to the ‘Logement’ office in order to look at advertisements for an accommodation. Advertisements were location in the residence building, which to me looked like a building from the poor part of Ukraine. My Brazilian friend called it a favela, referring to how it reminded him of slums in Brazil. The public space in front of the residence was in the same state as the courtyard in front of my building in Ukraine in 1990s. During those times, Ukraine for the first time attained its independence, and because of this fact, the country was facing many financial problems and could not maintain public property. When I went back in 2005, all things were fixed and everything was clean (except the roads, they are as bad as always). In other words, to me, ULB now looks like Ukraine when it was on the brink of bankruptcy (except with better roads).

Next thing that affected my impression of the school was the actual experience dealing with the university. I found that there is little support for exchange students, to find out information on the special events, clubs, and other advantages that you get attending this university. This has diminished my overall experience during the first semester. In addition, I found that the bureaucracy here is a total mess. Teachers occasionally do not come to class. It is hard to figure out where the course takes place as they can sometime move the class with little or no notice. There are many different tools to find out information and two or more of them can give you conflicting information. For example, to get information about a class there are: My-SBS, MonULB, teacher’s website, and the class rep (who I never met, as I am just an exchange student). To get my exam schedule I was told to use three tools, AuroraWeb, Portail MonULB, and Gehol. However, even then, I did not found out my entire exam schedule so I had to email my classmate, who sent an email to class rep, and then I received an email with the schedule for one of my classes. It seems the school is suffering from disorganization and the problem of communication between the administration and students. The whole system is not streamlined and is very complex compared to my university back in Canada.

The new building, where most of my classes take place, also does not look good in my opinion. First, it seems so different from the overall architecture of the university you are not sure if it is a part of the same institution. Second, the light bluish walls already look old. The material that they chose to use for the wall is also very bad looking. It reminds me of the maritime houses, which look cute but feeble. To me it does not convey the message of elite business school but instead a junior-high school with no child left behind policy somewhere in suburbs.

Canadian Maritime House

The new Solvay Building

Overall, I think there are many things that this university should do to better market itself. Based on all experiences I had with the school, I would choose is as a university to do my masters at, even though I do want to do my masters outside of North America.

Rue de la Fourche

In my opinion, Rue de le Fourche is very elegant and well done. This could be considered as one of the finest examples of how marketing can positively contribute positively to the image of the city. The reason why this is so is that when you enter the street (I did it through the Galleries Royales Saint-Hubert) you know that this is a shopping street. Therefore, all marketing, which done in the gallery, is expected. Even though all the shops there are trying to promote themselves, the marketing there still does not feel violating. There is no pushy advertising jumping out on you trying to grab your attention or convince you to enter the store. Nevertheless, when you pass shopping windows you cannot do anything but to stop and look at the beautiful display of the goods stores have to offer.

Once you pass the Gallery du Roi you hit onto Rue de Grétry, a street filled with charming little restaurants. Each one of them are trying to convey a message of comfort by displaying an inviting atmosphere, yet at same time, each one of them tries to be unique in hopes of attracting customers. The host standing outside the restaurant and trying to convince you to come in and eat was unpleasant for me, since I have never experienced anything like that in Canada. However, overall, the positives of the street outweigh the negatives.

In the end, the reasons why I like Rue de la Fourche compared to other places such grand place are simple: when you enter the area, you are aware of what is in there so you are ready to face it. Still, the marketing in Rue de la Fourche is tacked away and does not get in one’s way hence you do not feel that it violates your privacy and space. It is there if you choose to pay attention (and if you are not too busy), however at the same time, you can easily ignore it if you have other things on your mind or looking for something else, like architecture etc.

ULB:

From the first day of my erasmus, everyday I faced with different experiences in Brussels. The big experince is ULB. First of all, this university is like all other universities with its coffe stops, fast-food shops and restaurant. The environment is typical university that you can see around the world.There are some students activities news on the notice board. In the early morning of course you cannot see anybody, but it is full of students at midday. There is a tradition in ULB that I am not good with. They call is TD Parties. The second week of my Brussels adventure, some of my friends took me to a party that called TD. It is a very important tradition in Brussels. In the party, I was not good with this tradition. People from TD wear a different clothes like only made of cloth. Everybody throws beer to the crowed and they relly have good time with that. At the time that I was out of the party, I was so angry and nervous. I realised that, for local people this takes a big part of their culture. In my idea, it was so ugly that I never have been in a TD party again. In the anniversary day of ULB I realised that there were many old people drinking beers with young TD students. And they have the same hats that the students wear all the time. In that moment, I realised that it is one of the most important tradition in Brussels. There are some pubs that only serves to university students. I mosty see TD students in these places with their own clothes and hats. I think this is one of the marketing strategies that is also used for Brussels. They have their own parties, in their own style. Also, it is not easy to be one of them. You have to face with many difficult eliminations to be one of them. But when you click on Google and search for pubs in Brussels, most of the official travel advisory web sites emphasize on TD students and the special student pubs. Even their entertainment style is so different than I prefer, they keep it strong and use it for their marketing ideas. They creat their own image and most of the people like that image. Obviously, it is crucial to gain the loyalty of customers' to be successful in the long-term marketing. In my opinion, this is one of the examples that I faced with.

Place Flagey:

Place Flagey is one of the place in Brussels that shows the soul of the city. One day I was on my way, but don't know where Iwas going. The third day in Brussels and I was walking just to see the city sights. I came to a big square that has everything inside of it. There are some water ornaments in the middle of the square. The water comes from the ground directly and there are some children who tries to catch them, play with them. There was a bus-stop that looks like a bus station. One of my favourite place is the corner that there is a fries shop. They have delicious fries and I eat from there everytime I go to Flagey. The best part is the bazaar on Sunday. They open I big bazaar to the square that includes many stores. It reminds me a old style of village. When you look from the outside, it looks like everybody knows each other name by name. There is a butcher, a flower seller, a clothes seller, many kinds of little mobile little shops. At the corner of Flagey there is old building called Maison de la Radio, that has many kinds of art events as movies, musicals etc. This place is full of memories and old buildings. But there are some specificchanges that changes the old style of the place. For example, the shopping market Delhaize is the first supermarket in Belgium and Isaw one of its old photos and they changes the old style. If I never read about it, I would never now it. I think the basic reason is based on the idea of what is beautiful and what is ugly. In my opinion, keeping the old style is always beautiful. In his articleRelationships Among Experiential Marketing, Experiential Value, and Customer Satisfaction,Yi-Hua Yuan and Chihkang Wu claimed that, "Moreover, the overall outcome suggests that experiential marketing should induce customer satisfaction through emotional and functional values provided by feel perception, think perception, and service quality." (2008, pg. 389), the marketing of the city sights and the beauty of the city should include the idea of showing the value of the city and not to change it.

Grand Place:

As an erasmus student in Brussels, one of the first place that I wanted to see was Grand Place. I saw many photos of the square, but it was amazing to see it closer and experience the beauty of the oldbuildings. The Grand-Place is an outstanding example of the highly successful blending of architectural and artistic styles that characterizes the culture and society of this region. The nature and quality of the architecture and the outstanding quality as a public open space, it gives the sense of city sights beauty. The most important reason that I love this place because I like to live in a city that has the historical buildings and life style combined in the daily life. I am from Istanbul, Turkey. I love Istanbul, because everyday I took the tram to go to my university and on your way you can see the old buildings. The life goes on within those buildings, like it happens in Brussels. The historical buildings are not only the place to take photos and watch. They have the feeling of living and surviving by the time, getting more beautiful. Around the Grand Place you can find many pubs and specialised stores for chocolates, beers etc.

In my culture, beer is important but not much as Brussels. So, it was amazing to see many kinds of beers in one store and many products based on as I called 'beer culture'. Also I realised that fries is so important for Belgium people. Before I came here, I liked fries. But it is not a very special delicious food for me. Actually it is good because it is cheap and the smell of it is disgusting. The first time, I realised that it is such a big deal in Brussels, I gave up to see it as an easy, cheap fast-food, but it is also a part of tradition. It is important for local people, and they really care about their food. In old times my face was always in a ugly when I took the smell of the fries. Now, I eat alot and actually I really like it.