please empty your brain below
Bilingual signs on metro stations take quite some getting used to: Arts-Loi becomes Kunst Wet in Flemish, oddly popular for sniggering tourists taking selfies.
The river Senne/Zenne is not much in Brussels because it became an open sewer so (without a Bazalgette) they just built roads over it! Like Vienna, the city walls were also demolished and turned into roads.
A general thing in Belgium (and other western European countries) I've noticed is that pedestrians and cyclists get a lot more respect from motorists than in the UK. For example when turning right (equivalent of our turning left) into a side street they always give way to pedestrians / cyclists on cycle paths.
• Things I didn't quite get used to: knowing which language to start talking in - French or something else? (I usually lapsed into a feeble English instead)
French in Brussels but English is widely understood. I have read that there is a certain disdain between French and Flemish speakers, and that both would prefer to speak to one another in English rather than lower themselves to speak in the other's tongue! I don't know if there's any truth in that though.
• Things I didn't quite get used to: spotting a C&A (still with Clockhouse garment branding) in the main shopping street.
@Jo W; you've just burst my bubble as I thought my mum had coined that phrase!
I barely even look these days when I step out. Unlike say Paris where crossings are a one-way invite for a trip in the back of an ambulance.
Having lived in a few 'big' cities for at least 5 years (London, Paris, Chicago and now Brussels) I like this town a lot. It's not persistently photogenic or has any great sweeping vistas or views but the diversity / international-ness / layout / general friendliness works for us. Or for a change, jump in the car for a short hop to one of four other countries for a day trip.
Beer - fantastic. Chocs - great, frites + mayo - great. Traffic jams and general quality of driving - bonkers. Metro / tram system - slightly dodgy in parts and can be a bit smelly - but it's cheap, efficient and covers the entire city (take note LDN.)
Likewise despite being pretty good with public transport I struggled a bit; the distinction between tram and metro is as artificial as it would be here if the DLR and Croydon Tramlink ever met, and some maps just showed one or the other. For no obvious reason there seemed to be 24 hour and calendar day tickets on both paper and the MOBIB card, and it was a while before I was sure that you really could use tickets on everything as in London.
The Trammuseum isn't yet open for the season, but is highly recommended, particularly when they run the vintage trams on normal tram lines. Just don't try to get there from the city centre on the tram that has "Trammuseum" as its destination unless you want a tour of most of the outer suburbs...
I agree about the tram museum and in years past there used to be a national public transport day in the autumn where you could travel across the country for a stupidly low price. There also used to be a national Train+Tram+Bus (TTB) ticket which was marvellous for short holidays. I think they've stopped doing that though. I've got a stack of photos still to scan from past Brussels trips so they'll end up on Flickr at some point.
The tram/metro distinction is blurred in Brussels because the whole system is undergoing a decades-long process of conversion, which started in 1969. The initial stage for each line has been to put the trams in the city centre under ground (like the long-gone Kingsway subway) known as pre-metros, and then at a later date extend those subways into complete metro lines, the first being in 1976, the most recent in 2009. Lines 1,2,5, and 6 are full metros, lines 3, 4 and 7 are premetros, (Line 7 having opened in 2011). There still sixteen routes which have street running throughout or with very limited tunnel sections.
The most obvious parts of the conversion from pre-metro to full metro are to the signalling and the platform height, and of course the change of rolling stock.
Last time I went to Brussels I bought chocolates to take home and left them on the Eurostar!
Huge generalisation alert, but try French: the Walloons prefer it (like the French in France, they are often unwilling to accommodate non-Francophones), the Flemish will recognise from your accent what your native language is, and probably speak it perfectly.
Place names are confusing: my local bus stop was Sterrenwacht (star-watch)/Observatoire, but some similar place names actually are not the same: Midi and Centraal are not the same station (the former is the Zuid (south) station in Flemish).
Machelen and Mechelen are not different spellings of the same place but are respectively a suburb near the ring road, and half way to Antwerp, but both in the same direction from the city centre.
And as soon as you leave Brussels City limits the bilingual signs become Flemish-only, switching to French-only as little as two miles further on, at Waterloo.
Consective signs on the ring road can therefore point you first to both Mons and Bergen, then to Bergen only, (with no sign for Mons), then for Mons only, with no sign for Bergen.
Tim's overgeneralising too, there are plenty of Dutch speakers in Brussels. You're in Flanders, after all.
I similarly tend to try a bit of French, lose confidence and lapse into monosyllabic English unlike anything an intelligent human being would speak. And finally just point at stuff.
Actually no, you're not in Flanders when in Brussels. You're in the Brussels-Capital Region. Not the same thing. However, the Region's powers aren't unlimited, and some, like education, are the competence of the flemish and french communities.
@Timbo,
I am a francophone Belgian from Wallonia, and let me say this word of warning. Never call a French-speaking person in Brussels a Walloon. Especially for the older native ones, it's an insult.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels#History
And that is why we Belgians have a very hard time explaining, or even understanding, our political system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communities,_regions_and_language_areas_of_Belgium
Brussels was ethnically part of Flanders, but the local dialect, unlike one of the many on which modern literary Flemish/Dutch is based, was a French one. So the majority of people born within Brussels city limits are Francophone Flemings (as is evident from their surnames). This is the main reason some 80% of the population of the city of Brussels is Francophone. The suburbs, however, are Flemish-speaking.
TridentScan | Privacy Policy