Boppin' Around Brussels
- Nov 20, 2017
- 9 min read
Disclaimer: If you are a parent who has a child abroad, or really just a parent at all, you might not want to read this one. This is a story of how I did everything I was always taught not to do... but I'm alive!
Belgium! Land of french fries, beer, chocolate and waffles. One day I decided to google the cheapest weekend trip I could find, and lo-and-behold the $40 round-trip to Brussels, Belgium was born! Maddy, my amazing friend who is very forgiving and kind and goes along with my whimsical ways, hopped on board immediately so we booked a cheap hotel and began to practice our French! (We actually didn't think about the French bit. We should have.)
Here were the logistics of the trip as we thought them to be:
We would depart the Copenhagen airport @10pm and arrive in Brussels right before midnight. We would check into our hotel, connected to the airport, and sleep. On Saturday we would wake up and eat some hotel breakfast, and then take a shuttle into Brussels City Center, where we would visit all of the main tourist attractions (my friend Kara gave us a full schedule of recommendations from her trip the weekend before!). Our flight home would depart @6:15am Sunday morning, which was why we strategically booked a hotel connected to the airport. Fun!
And then there's what actually happened:
We realized Friday afternoon that our flight was actually at 8pm and I had miscalculated by about 2 hours! I blame military time. We rushed from class to Maddy's room so she could pack, drank some mead, and Maddy kindly told me I could leave my laptop in her room so I didn't have to lug it around Brussels. "Good point!" I said, and we left for the airport.
On the Metro, about halfway to the airport, Maddy asked once more what time our flight was (reasonably), which ended with me shouting "We have to get off!" and bolting for the door. Outside, waiting for the Metro back, Maddy came up behind me and calmly said "You forgot the boarding passes didn't you?". I had. So our trip began with me sprinting about a mile to fetch our boarding passes past confused strangers, but we still made it to the airport with plenty of time!
We navigated the airport and got on our flight, where we sat in our seats a few rows apart and I settled down with my Duolingo app trying to learn some French basics before we took off. We were told to buckle and prepare for departure, and suddenly my phone rang from Maddy. I peered over the chairs thinking it must be an accident, but instead saw Maddy visibly panicked and motioning for me to pick up.
"Yeah?" I said. Then Maddy said the 5 words that would haunt my dreams for the next week; "There's two airports in Belgium". I turned again and saw the look of horror on the eavesdropping man seated next to Maddy as she said "And the airport we are flying to is not the one in Brussels by our hotel". "Oh shite," I said laughing, "We'll figure it out!". I hung up laughing at my small blunder, and Maddy sent me a picture of the gps, which showed the distance between our hotel and the airport we were flying into.
We were to land at 10:30, hotel checkout closed at 12, and it was a 3 hour bus ride, 5 hour train ride, or an 11 hour walk to the hotel.
I stared at the evacuation diagram on the seat in front of me, wondering if it could entertain me for two hours, when finally I decided it wasn't too late! As we taxi'd down the landing strip, I swiftly searched for, found and began booking a hotel room by the correct airport, but alas my debit card was in my bag in the overhead baggage thingy and I don't know my card number by heart. So I did the rational thing, and sent my mother a panicked string of messages asking for my card number! Then I realized my phone had memorized the number, I pressed book, and lost connection. (Still sorry mom!)
I sat in peace when suddenly Maddy was buckling herself into the seat next to me. "What, can you do that?!" I looked around frantically. She looked at me confusedly and said "I don't see why not, the seat belt light went off". I noticed tears in Maddy's eyes, so I said vaguely "I took care of it". I explained to her that we had a hotel for the night and we both laughed hysterically at the whole ordeal while the man in the aisle next to us tried not to laugh as well. Then Maddy, because of the beautiful human that she is, pulled a full size bag of potato chips out of her backpack and said "It's okay, I have chips", at which the man next to us gave in and laughed along with us.
Once we landed we had to address the issue of getting to this new hotel, which would still be a 2 and a half hour walk, so we went outside and stumbled around for a while trying to find people who spoke English and then a cab. This was another rough patch, as most people had booked taxis beforehand, but we just kept showing them our address until one man finally accepted us. During the ride I noticed the driver speaking Arabic on his phone, so I told him (in Arabic) that I was studying the language and we were able to have a lovely conversation.
When the taxi finally came to a halt, the driver said we had arrived, and Maddy and I looked outside to see a small cottage. All Maddy managed to say was "No", which I followed up with "But.. um.. it's supposed to be a hotel". The man kindly drove us around until he found the hotel, where he bid us good luck and we said our farewells in Arabic.
We checked into our room and breathed a little easier for the night, laughing as we re-counted our adventure to Maddy's boyfriend on the phone. Once we had settled in Maddy said we should look at our agenda for the next day, and when staring into my backpack I finally said "Uh, I just remembered why I was bringing my laptop..." and Maddy laughed in visible pain.
The next morning we woke up and got ready, in the wrong hotel, in an unknown location, and missing our complete agenda which included addresses of where to go and what shuttles we needed. I sang the song "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast loudly in the shower, because that's about as far as my exposure to French goes. We finally opened up our curtains to see the outside world in the light of day, and, SURPRISE! Brussels! The bustling capital of Belgium!.. Was absolutely nowhere in sight. In fact, the vast emptiness as far as the eye could see suggested we were nowhere near civilization at all.
The hotel receptionist confirmed this as we checked out and I asked "What's the best way to get to Brussels from here?". His eyes widened and he actually chuckled and said "Brussels?!", I nodded, he once more failed to stifle his laughter, and then said "I guess you should take a taxi to the Charleroi train station and then find a train into Brussels". I thanked him, turned to leave, saw again the nothingness outside the doors, and turned back to him and said "Can we even get a taxi from here?". He laughed again, half in pity and half in amusement, and kindly called us a taxi to the station.
Once we finally got there, we found our train with the help of our Scottish fairy godmother, who confirmed it was the right train and told us we could sit by her and she would show us which stop to get off. We used our spare time to get some muffins and coffee for the trip, using our Bonjour's, Merci's and Au Revoir's for the first time, then settled in for the two hour train ride. The ride showcased the beautiful countryside, with rolling hills and giant windmills, as well as neighborhoods displaying a very Industrial Revolution aesthetic. Eventually, our godmother told us the next stop was ours, and we got off waving as she wished us luck and said "Be safe out there girls!".
Then we were finally where we were supposed to be; Brussels City Center. We walked for a bit in the light drizzle and enjoyed the beautiful architecture and elaborate garden by the station. I enjoyed looking at all of the comics on display, as Brussels is the birthplace of the TinTin comic, and then we began a search for food so Maddy could avoid becoming 'hangry'. It took a while, mostly because I wanted to stop and see everything along the way. We wandered through the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, where we later ended up purchasing delicious chocolate and macarons from a chocolatier with a long and rich history. We stumbled into the famed Grand Place, the beautiful square featuring the City Hall and filled with breath-taking halls gilded in gold. I could have stared at the building for hours and still been unable to fathom how the builders managed to carve such beauty and immense detail into inanimate material.
We finally picked a colorful place to eat called the Drug Opera, where we both enjoyed fish n' chips and enjoyed the company of the friendliest waiter in the country. When we left, filled with delicious food and faith in humanity, we meandered down some smaller streets, past horse-drawn carriages, through some stores, and then got some mouth-watering Belgian waffles! My only qualm was the cruel torture of giving us fragile and tiny plastic forks to eat such a decadent dessert with. We got to see the famous Mannequin Pis as well, and an even more impressive chocolate rendition of the statue. Overall we had a great day, and Brussels truly seemed to be a city straight out of a fairytale.
As it got dark, we started the trek to the train station where we believed the night shuttle to the airport was, and despite the gps telling us we had arrived when we clearly had not, we managed to find the station easily, despite accidentally wandering into an unsavory situation on the way. No matter! We survived and we found the shuttle to the airport, which we took at about 10pm because we had no hotel for the night and it seemed better to play it safe after an unsettling and annoying encounter with some men outside the train station.
We had about 9 hours to kill at the airport, and at this point social grace was irrelevant to us, so we spent a while in the arrivals section watching reunions sentimentally unfold. When no one ever showed up for us and people began to look at us strangely, we staked out a decent plot of territory on the airport floor behind a trash compartment, where we would remain for the next 8 hours. I slept most of the time and Maddy got lost within the depths of Youtube. I woke up many times because the fully armed security guards kept rounding the corner of the trash bins and practically hitting me in the face with the barrels of their assault rifles each time a new unknowing pair came onto patrol. I never thought I would be so accustomed to waking up to the barrel of a gun that I would just grumble and go back to sleep, but life is weird.
We got on our plane in the morning groggy but eager to get back to our familiar home in Copenhagen. It was incredible how comforting our new city felt, and we happily went back to Maddy's room and slept most of the day away.
Overall takeaways;
I've never been more reliant on complete strangers, and I never would have expected them to be so utterly kind and helpful. Constantly being cautious and aware of the evil out there in the world sometimes makes us forget how much good there is, but this trip was definitely a refreshing reminder.
French really is a romantic language, and it's hard to be stressed when such beautiful words are flowing all around you.
Spontaneity is fun. Homelessness is not. After experiencing, in an EXTREMELY mild manner, how it feels to not have a place to rest my head at night, being financially limited, and not speaking the native tongue in a foreign country, I've been thinking even more about the difficulties of those experiencing homelessness and displacement. What breaks my heart even more is that more often than not people are unwilling to give them the help and guidance that Maddy and I received, and I can't imagine how terrifying that must be. Having absolutely no one that is willing to help you or even look at you in your most desperate hour; no person in this world deserves to feel that.
The idea of rejecting immigrants or foreigners is another very confusing topic in my mind. The whole idea that people should stay in the physical region they happened to be born in is baffling to me. What are the odds that we were all born in the one place that we would choose as our homes? What is the likelihood that our favorite place in the world, or the place we feel most at home, is the small dot on the globe where our stories began? I personally feel like I (and everyone) should have the right to travel and find my home(s), and I would be proud to welcome others into my town or city or country so that they could enjoy it as well. The thought that we are only entitled to geographic segments of the globe is ludicrous. We should be able to appreciate as much of our earth as we choose to.
Brussels will be a trip I will remember forever, and a reminder that sometimes plans go wrong, but everything is still alright.
If I could go back would I change anything? Nah. I would just bring a bigger fork ;)
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