Belgium is a surrealistic concept, very, very hard to explain even to a Belgian.
There are three official languages Flemish-French-German. So Brussels = Brussel-Bruxelles-Brûssel.
So in the Flemish part of Belgium you can see panic stops by French (drug)tourists returning from the Netherlands on the highway nearby a traffic sign that indicates 'RIJSEL' not knowing it's Flemish for the northern French city 'LILLE'.

BTW ; Flemish is the same language (officialy by treaty) as Dutch. ( I'm sure Nomad will flame me on this)

When you ask a Belgian, how many governments we have , you have a 90% change he or she will answer: "I'm not really sure" Well the real answer is not clear since we always have problems like 'who is responsible for what?' The answer is : about 7 (seven). Don't try to figure it out , the Belgians can't.

Real estate and price : are you rich? Then there is no problem. in any other case; one rule: don't trust any website, go look for yourself and discuss the price with the owner.
There are indeed 19 communes in Brussels: keep in mind the population is very diverse and very international:
we have the EC and NATO headquarters with their personnel (thens  of thousends) , almost 50% is first or second generation immigrant . There is a large Congolese group, concentrated in "Matonge" but also more than 150 other nationalities.
Food : you find everything in Brussels, from McDonalds to Pizza Hut; from Thai to Marocan, from Argentinian to Nepalese even Texas T-bone steakhouse. Lots of very cheap restaurants ( Greek are very good)

Useful links with info, maps, webcams.....:
Food and drink
Organic food
Food and beer
Brussels by Intel
Living in Brussels
Services

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)