Rome has the Trevi Fountain, New York City has the Statue of Liberty, and Brussels has the Manneken Pis, a statue of a little boy wetting the ground in front of him. As civic monuments go it’s not a terribly noble one, although there are stories that the statue depicts the historic actions of a boy insulting enemy soldiers or, alternately, extinguishing a fire. The statue is smaller than you’d expect, that is, smaller than a real boy, and stands on a high pedestal in a tiny gated corner garden. Visiting dignitaries often come by to pay their respects and dress the statue in their national costume. In the past he’s been dressed in the robes of a Tibetan monk, various football (that’s soccer) team jerseys, and a rhinestone-embellished Elvis-style pantsuit.

The entire tourist district seems to have sprung up around it.  Just across the road are a restaurant called Manneken Pis and a chocolate shop called Manneken Pis. And the curio shops up and down the small cobbled streets sell all sorts of ridiculous souvenirs with the little guy on it, including figurine corkscrews with the screw placed you-know-where. One friend in Belgium, who has lived there for two decades, observed that there was a “chaotic” element to Brussels, something unique to the culture. I think that any city that accepts a pissing boy as their mascot must have a healthy respect for the chaotic, and for the ridiculous and the self-mocking too.  They’re are all rather marvelous qualities.

It’s hard for structures that try to capture the future to retain their appeal.  So many, like the Unisphere, and a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright projects from the 1950’s, quickly seem out of date; they look even older than they are.  The Atomium in Brussels, a monument constructed for the 1958 World’s Fair and now a lookout tower for tourists, has escaped that trap.  Over fifty years later it still seems stylishly futuristic, and has an appeal that’s remarkably free of kitsch.

The structure, intended to replicate an “iron crystal,” was dreamt up by engineer André Waterkeyn and architects André and Jean Polak.  From the outside the Atomium, which was just restored, is a big, uncomplicated bliss-out.  Visitors can drive underneath, walk around, climb inside, and take lots of pictures.  It’s not really a building and not really a sculpture, but something informal and in-between that’s unburdened by the need to be useful or beautiful or represent anything in particular.  It’s exactly what it is, a brilliant folly.

On my last day in Germany I visited Sanssouci, the summer castle of Frederick the Great from 1747, in Potsdam.  I expected to find the rococo architecture overwrought and tiresome but instead I found it powerfully expressive, an impression enhanced by the drizzly weather and empty grounds, which made it feel as if the place were a marvelous ancient and abandoned city.  The most outstanding feature of the buildings are the much-larger-than-life figural sculptures that grace the pilasters, posts, and roof ridges.  They exceed ornament and become full-blown characters, clinging to another, enchanted world.

The buildings are perfectly grounded in designs by the German landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenne.  In back the main house drops off into terraces growing grapes, plums and figs.  The gardens beyond are laid out simply, on flat lawns, with a grand, central axis to the New Palace, built by Frederick William II in 1769, and curving walkways to smaller but no less striking accessory buildings, like the gilded China House.  The landscape, amazingly, manages to be natural without being romantic (like Hampstead Heath) or picturesque (like Central Park).  Walking the gravel paths, flanked by stately, ancient trees, I felt deeply connected to both the ground and the sky.  And I felt as if I belonged to the place.  With all the recent fuss over royal weddings, it was a curious affirmation.

An American’s dreamy notions about European train travel are dispelled by Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof, the city’s huge new central station completed in 2006.  The great glass shed, just across the River Spree from the capitol buildings, is a nexus for both local and long distance lines.  But it offers no public space.  There’s no central hall, and the main entrance leads you right out into the street.  (Landscaping, anyone?)  The Hauptbahnhof is basically a bunch of train tracks running through a shopping mall.

On a very hot day I took refuge outside along the east side of building.  There were cascading steps in the shade, and groups of locals were sitting, eating lunch and talking.  From here I could look across the water and see the dome of the Reichstag floating in the distance.  The first time I visited Berlin, fifteen years ago, the Reichstag was covered in scaffolding.  Then the last time I visited Berlin, three years ago, I walked up Norman Foster’s great glass dome and wondered what precisely I was supposed to feel when I reached the top; it was an empty, pretty spectacle.  From the vantage of these shady steps the Reichstag felt much more comfortable, and so did the train station.