Photos

New York has it's Statue Of Liberty, Copenhagen the mermaid and Brussels has "Manneken Pis".
When people (and there are busses full!) see this statue in a corner of the Stoofstraat, their first reaction is "look, how small he is"

He is believed to be nothing more than a decoration on top of a fountain, but there are many legends.
According to one of them, a little boy was peeing against the door of a witch and she turned the boy into a statue.
Another legend says that a man had lost his little son and found him two days later. When the father spotted his child, the latter was peeing. As a token of gratitude, he constructed the fountain with it's peeing boy.

Very often, the boy is dressed. At the moment, he has a wardrobe of more than 600 costumes, preserved in a museum.

When I walked to the Stoofstraat early in the morning, I hoped, that he did not wear a costume,
because for me, it is not the real "Manneken Pis". I came there at 8.00 am and took some pictures. On that moment, a man with a ladder
and clothes came along for the statue !
He waited for me and when I was ready, I thanked
him very frankly and then he opened the gate and
dressed the boy....