The City of Brussels

Statues at the Brussels Stock Exchange

Statues at the Brussels Stock Exchange

It seems that the only way for us to get to Brussels city center was through the airport bus at Charleroi. It wasn’t exactly cheap at 18 euro but it seemed to be the only choice we had. That isn’t entirely true as we later found out that there was train going to the this smaller airport. I was under the impression that the airport was just outside the city but I was still a fair distance away. It took us about an hour to drive from the airport to town. All the way, I was trying to orient myself to this new place. Cars all drive on the right and roundabouts all go the other way. I won’t be driving this trip but it pays to know these things.

Arch at the Brussels Stock Exchange

Arch at the Brussels Stock Exchange

We will be getting off at the last stop of the airport bus – that is the Brussels Zuid/Midi station. Apparently this is a major train station and everyone seems to be getting off here. The train station area was actually not that bad. The station itself was quite modern was well as the surrounding buildings. We will be walking to our hostel which was still a thirty minute walk. I managed to procure a local sim card which gives me 2GB of data. This is probably more than enough for our navigation needs. It is through the help of our satnav that we were able to fine our way to our hotel. Along the way, we managed to see a bit of the city of Brussels.

As it turns out, the way to our hostel isn’t exactly the prettiest part of town. I noticed immediately that there seemed to be a lot of people from other parts of the world. I wasn’t sure if that is the make up of the entire country but I was struck how many migrants there were in Brussels at least. I was starting to think “where are the locals?”. Turns out they are the locals. To be fair, at no point in time did I feel unsafe walking through the area. It seems everyone else is just from everywhere else and people seem to be getting along fine there. I wonder if this the case elsewhere in the country or in Europe for that matter.

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