#194: World Cup City - Uruguay 🇺🇾
Day 28: Looking for the Rio de la Plata
Welcome to an ongoing Brussels Notes series exploring the 48 participating countries of the 2026 World Cup, without leaving Brussels. Read the explainer, check out the other entries, and then subscribe.
Av. de l’Uruguay, 1000 Bruxelles
No, this won’t do at all. The geography here is all all wrong.
It makes no sense that the Avenue de l’Uruguay feeds into the Avenue de Perou, two countries that do not share a land border, when the Avenue de Brésil is only four streets over, and Brazil actually contiguous with the real Uruguay. The proximity of the Avenue de Chile, more or less parallel to the Avenue de l’Uruguay I can just about accept, but not that of the Avenue de Venezuela, a country which is essentially at a continent’s remove from the actual Uruguay. And then there’s the obvious lacuna of the absence of an Avenue de l’Argentine.
Walking down the avenue as it slopes towards Watermael, you could squint at the buildings you pass and imagine that this one, with its vaguely Teutonic airs might be the kind of house doubling as an Amazonian hideout, or that those couple of adjoining Art Deco blocks with their chipped stucco and general air of faded, shabby grandeur might fit nicely in downtown Montevideo.
What were Brussels’ city planners thinking when they came up with these names for this cluster of streets adjacent to the Boondael train station? It’s not like they even had the excuse of the Uruguayan embassy being on the street; that building is away up on Avenue Franklin Roosevelt with the other consulates and legates. It’s enough to drive you to drink. So that’s what I do, taking the number 25 tram back into town and to Mig’s World Wines on the Charleroisesteenweg, the only shop I imagine might have a bottle of Uruguayan red on its shelves. And sure enough, between the Brazilian Alicante Bouschet and Argentinian Malbec, is a row of Uruguayan Tannats, Pisano RPF from Progreso on the Rio de la Plata.
Later that evening I popped the cork, and enjoyed a glass of robust, fruity, tannic and acidic wine (describing wine is not my forte; it was nice, otherwise I wouldn’t have drunk a third of the bottle). Did it make me feel closer to Uruguay? No. Was it a damn sight more Uruguayan than the eponymous Brussels avenue? How could it not be.
Tomorrow, we’re off back across the Atlantic again...
Thanks for reading - I’m writer Eoghan Walsh and this is my weekly free-to-subscribe newsletter about life in Brussels. If you like it and you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up here!