It was noon on Sunday, December 16, 2018 when the second third of this adventure began. I had just boarded a train to Brussels which took off from Amsterdam Centraal station. This was another slow train, an IC (InterCity) which was just like the EC that I had been on the afternoon before. It took something like four hours to get me to its destination, the train station underneath Brussels Airport. You know, even though my ticket was only good up to the airport, I probably could've stayed on all the way to one of the stations further in the city like Midi without getting caught. After about 20 minutes waiting for a downtown bus I started to regret not doing that. But eventually that bus showed up and started slowly and painfully carrying me downtown as the sun quickly set and I started to realize that I was not going to be able to hit up any of the photogenic spots in this city, like the Atomium and Manneken Pis, on this trip.
During my sadly brief sojourn in Brussels, I found it reminded me of two other cities I've visited before, for different reasons. The first is Toronto, because of the bilingualism.
When I visited Toronto little more than a year earlier, I noticed that practically all signage and consumer product labeling there was bilingual in English and French. Brussels is no different, except with the languages being Dutch and French. Belgium is a country without a unique language of its own; half the country speaks Dutch and the other half speaks French, due to certain accidents of history. Brussels (Brussel in Dutch, Bruxelles in French) was historically a Dutch-speaking city but after becoming the capital was overrun by French-speaking newcomers in the late 1800s, so today it is officially bilingual but with a solid French-speaking majority. Still, most old neighborhoods and suburbs have names like Anderlecht and Schaerbeek which betray the city's Dutch origins. But back to the bilingualism: on that long bus ride, just like on any other bus ride in any other big city these days, there was an automated voice announcing each upcoming stop, but this one without fail announced each one in both French and Dutch. And on top of that, at the stops outside the bus I could often see ads in both languages.
Many of the bus stations in Brussels were named after various European cities. One was Bâle (Basel, Switzerland), another was Genève (Geneva) and the end of the line was Luxembourg. This can be confusing to someone like me fresh off the train. "How far does this bus go?!?" I thought when I first looked at the route. Well, "Luxembourg" is actually right in downtown Brussels. I stepped off the bus in "Luxembourg" as the sun was setting, and started hunting for a place where I could get a nice fruit snack. In my desperation for a fresh banana I think I wandered right past the European Parliament without realizing it. Eventually I did find my way to an Albert Heijn's market and bought myself some Bosc pears (I hadn't had one of those since before I left Texas!) and some gum. After devouring two of the pears it was time to get to a bar or restaurant and have some delicious and strong Belgian abbey ale. I've later discovered that I was in the neighborhood called Ixelles.
I stopped at a certain restaurant nearby called London. I'd had Belgian beers the previous night in Amsterdam, so it was kind of poetic to stop in a place called "London" in Brussels, the night before actually going to London. The first thing I had was an abbey ale called Grimbergen, which I'd never heard of before. Instead of a real dinner, I just ordered a small appetizer plate of salami and another beer, I forget which, to go with it. You can tell I'm a little too crazy about beer if I'm shrinking my meals to make room for more beer.
After London, I just ambled next door to Grapevine and had another abbey ale, Leffe Ruby. Now, I've seen plenty of Leffe in Texas; you can find it in H-E-B in fact. But I don't remember ever seeing the "Ruby" variety specifically there. I tried it and it was super strong. It didn't taste like a strong beer, in fact it tasted like little more than carbonated fruit juice. But after a few sips...WOAH. Drink it too fast and it'll have your head swimming. So after that, what did I do? Order a Leffe Bruin, of course, and get even more intoxicated. Good thing I wasn't driving a car...
Leffe Ruby
So, my fast train to London was leaving early (7:55) so I couldn't stay up all night. Time to get to my hostel. I looked it up on Google Maps and it was in a neighborhood called Anderlecht (that sounds familiar) but right next to another neighborhood called Molenbeek (that sounds familiar too, but not in a good way).
Anderlecht, isn't that the name of a soccer team? (It is!) And Molenbeek...well I remembered that being all over CNN two years before because the perpetrators of the Brussels terror attack lived there. Thankfully I never bumped into anyone like them.
I got on a random subway car that deposited me in the general area of the hostel. And this is where I finally mention the second city that Brussels reminded me of, that being New York City. While I was riding the bus several hours earlier, I passed by a neighborhood full of row homes that looked pretty much exactly like the townhomes that are so common in Manhattan.
Then that night, when I was searching for the hostel in Anderlecht I walked up and down block after block of row homes that made me feel like I was hiking through Brooklyn or Queens. Really. There are places in the UK that look like this, but Brussels has to be the only continental European city I've thus far visited which was at all reminiscent of NYC.
Of course, finding the hostel was not easy. At one point I stopped in a café to get some coffee to power me through more hiking (I won't lie, I pretty much had Leffe ale flowing through my veins at that point). Just like the last night, the maps on my phone still mostly worked without internet. I found my way to where the hostel was supposed to be, but I couldn't see it anywhere. Finally I just called their phone number, some guy answered, he told me where to go and also that he saw me. He was standing outside putting something in his car!
The place was called Holidays Hostel Midi and was pretty nice. On the inside the building seemed to be unfinished; if you've ever been in a building in which they weren't finished painting and you could still smell the drywall, you know what I mean. Trying to find a specific room was hard though, the place was a little maze-like. I did meet a few other people passing through the city, including one fellow Germany-dweller, though I think he was originally from India or Pakistan, who showed me the WiFi password. And the room I stayed in was pretty much a loft apartment. A loft with plenty of bunk beds, but still. My bed wasn't even a bunk. The room was really spacious, and there was a kitchenette (which I didn't use, except for the sink). If you ever find yourself in a hostel like this, savor it, because this is exceptional.
I woke up when it was still dark out and checked my phone to see what time it was. Something like 5:30. Say...don't I have a train to catch in like two hours? Maybe I should get out of bed?? If I had had one less beer the night before I might've had the foresight to set an alarm. Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to wake up at that point, so I dragged myself out of bed and prepared for the day ahead.
I had to catch the Eurostar leaving at 7:55 leaving from the station called Bruxelles-Midi. Now how to get there from Anderlecht? I had no idea. I ran into another guest in the hostel lobby who didn't know. So I just went to the nearest subway station--Clemenceau--and, what luck! Bruxelles-Midi was literally the next stop on the line! (Protip: a subway station named after a train station is not always the same station: it's often just named after it because it's nearby.) I wound up in Midi with way too much time to kill. I had a Bircher Müsli and yogurt breakfast not unlike the previous day. And then I decided I needed to have a waffle, since I was in Belgium and that is something this country is known for. I got it from Häagen-Dazs, which isn't exactly authentic (Häagen-Dazs is an American chain with a made-up pseudo-Dutch name) but I can say I had a waffle in Belgium now.
Finally it was time to make my way to gate 2, and that's when I discovered that the Eurostar train, which goes through the Chunnel, is a bit more like a plane than a train. Probably because the UK is not in the Schengen area, there was actual security here; I had to wait in line to walk through a metal detector and put my backpack through an X-ray machine. And then there was border security; there was a sign there saying "UK Border" and a checkpoint right there where British agents examined and stamped my passport.
And with that border crossing, the British part of this journey shall be continued in the final installment.
One final note about Brussels: at all the bars/restaurants I visited, I ordered everything in my accented fourth-language French and, with the exception of the Häagen-Dazs in Midi station, at none of these places did they people there switch to English! Quite a change from Montréal where they switch to English upon hearing a hint of an accent.
Other articles in this series:
