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Adrienne Smith, the Constant Traveler: Bemused in Brussels


By Adrienne Smith


Mar. 23, 2016:  I woke up yesterday morning to news of bombings throughout Brussels. This really hit home, for, you see, I was there three weeks ago and came back with some negative feelings.

You, my readers, know that I enthuse about almost every place I write about, but, for some reason, Brussels left me literally and figuratively cold.

I decided to stay in the city for four days on my way to a longer sojourn in the hauntingly lovely Bruges. The hotel I chose, Hôtel des Galeries, was a wonderful boutique hotel with its own gourmet restaurant. But its location came to symbolize the divisiveness that is the area.

If, exiting the hotel, I turned to the right onto the rue des Bouchers, I was greeted by a long line of second-rate restaurants, whose employees, in very un-European fashion, practically grabbed me to try their cooking, all a bit like walking through the cosmetics counters in New York's Saks Fifth Avenue. It was so unpleasant that I made every effort to circumvent the area.

If, instead, I turned left, I came almost instantly to one of the most charming areas in Brussels, the Galerie du Roi, a marvelous Victorian covered shopping alley, open at both ends, and loaded with luxury shops, primarily selling gourmet chocolates for which the country is famous. 

Beyond my immediate vicinity, the city itself was surprisingly bleak. Uninspired gray, institutionally designed buildings lined the streets. Nothing like Paris. Nor did the people walking the streets exude any kind of Parisian elegance. Yes, there was a pleasant art museum, a part of which was closed, and numerous Art Nouveau buildings, one of which I toured after standing in a cold rain outside for almost an hour. 

But what I did spend a great deal of time in were the railroad stations servicing the city. The Gare Centrale was a few blocks from my hotel, more a suburban and metro outlet than a full-service hub, but handy for my day-trip out to Antwerp. 

More like one of our stations, the Gare du Midi is the location for international and some domestic destinations. I took a Thalys train to Paris from there on an ill-advised day-trip as well as the Eurostar to London. 

Let me tell you about the Gare du Midi. It's quite huge, the station itself, along with many boutiques and food outlets, at ground level, and escalators and stairs up one level to the actual train tracks. It's completely open at both ends, so, on the day I went to Paris, when, unfortunately, an electrical problem at a key station messed up all train schedules, I logged a significant amount of time waiting for my trains.

Because of the station's open-air design, it was extremely cold inside. Add to this that, on my return from Paris, awaiting a train to Bruges, I had to spend a late-evening hour and a half there.

Most of the people in the terminal appeared to be going nowhere, and I felt somewhat uncomfortable. They were of mixed ethnicity, the result of Belgium's unfortunate colonial heritage. In addition, large groups of drunken lads roamed around, tossing empty beer bottles and otherwise disrupting what little peace there was. Police presence was quite minimal, nothing like what we find at Grand Central, and the few there seemed to turn a blind eye to the disorder in the station.

In fact, for a city that was at that time most probably the hideout of the number-one terrorist in Europe, it struck me as somewhat strange that security was so lax both at the station and throughout Brussels. In contrast, Paris had been teeming with police presence, including machine-gun-carrying personnel at the Gare du Nord and on the Champs-Elysées.

Have I made you eager to book a trip to Brussels? Probably not. But what I saw on a very superficial level may somewhat suggest what occurred yesterday morning. It's just terrible!

Pictured here:  Galerie du Roi in Brussels.

Photo by Adrienne Smith

 

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