So, anyway… after spending a pleasant, if cash-strapped, day in Payottenland, we got the bus into central Brussels (after a brief worry that our last Euros wouldn’t be enough for the fare. Yay for Belgium’s cheap public transport… only 80 cents each).
My last experience of Brussels (1996, I think) was of a jaw-droppingly beautiful main square, an incontinent little boy and a huuuuuuge building site. It was a rainy day, too, and we got lost, walking miles out of our way, so maybe my memories were somewhat jaundiced. However, they were building a whole load of new EU buildings, so all the good bits were somewhat overshadowed by the mess and disruption.
Now, though, there’s a lot more shape and form to the city, although it’s pretty obvious that Brussels is (despite its administrative status) no different from London in the way that new buildings are slapped onto older buildings with no concern for context or continuity of form. The good bits are still very good; any tour of the city must start with the Grand Place…
And then of course there’s plenty of cafe/bars to explore, punctuated by old churches, art galleries and more bars. And yes, the Manneken Pis. But there was still that problem of money. Even in the heart of Brussels, we found a surprising number of bars where credit cards were just not accepted. No problem, we thought, we’ll just get Euros from cash machines; after all, if we get too much, we’ll have plenty of other opportunities to use them. That is, of course, if you can find a cash machine that takes anything other than Belgian cash cards. No kidding… there are very few cashpoints in central Brussels, and of those, we only found one (the Citibank near the Gare Centrale) which would accept Visa cards. I mean… Brussels, Europe… HUH?!
But never mind. It might be an odd place in some respects, but Brussels has a lot of charm. It’s difficult to say just how much of the city would exist without tourism and the EU (a lot of the highly recommended cafes seemed to have a passing clientele which would briefly appear en masse as the guided tours stopped and started; we were unusual in wanting to stay for two or three drinks) and it’s a shame to see just how much of it has been unsympathetically rebuilt over the years. For a country so small (anywhere is day-trippable) Belgium has an impressive array of stuff to see and do… Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, WW1 battlefields, the Ardennes, Brussels. Okay, most of that would be a downright turn-off to the sort of person who just wants a relaxing week in the sun with plenty of cheap lager on tap, but they can find that elsewhere.