Brussels, Belgium

It had been great to see a familiar face in the form of Noesha, especially given the relatively solitary life I’d had on the bike and in the empty hostels I’d bunked up in across France and Germany. We’d spent just the right amount of time together – any more and we would’ve started arguing – and I hoped to catch up with her the other side of Christmas when I set off again. Noesha refused to have her pic taken for the blog, so I’m afraid all you’ve got is a photo of  me wearing her glasses.

I jumped on a couple of trains heading southwards out of Holland and into Belgium. I’d never been to Belgium before – well, I’d crossed it by car once without stopping, but I don’t think that counts – and despite having met some very sound Belgians on the road and the country producing some of the best beer and chocolate in the world, I didn’t have very high expectations for the place, especially Brussels, the administrative capital of the European Union to which I was headed.

First impressions were not great. The station wouldn’t have looked out of place in some kind of apocalyptic scenario, in the process of falling apart as it was. I headed straight for the Eurostar section in order to pick up my ticket back to London I’d booked a week or so previously. More urgently, I had to temporarily say my goodbyes to Ron Junior and check him in as baggage at least 24 hours before my departure to ensure he would be there to pick up on arrival in St Pancras.

When I’d finally found my way out into the fresh air, I was very nearly turned into road waffle crossing the road on green man by a driver buzzing unconcernedly through a stoplight. Probably a faceless Brussels bureaucrat, I thought as I waved a digit in the direction of the receding car, as I prepared myself for a tedious, bland, concrete European nightmare of a city.

It was just the opposite. Brussels had many faces: grandiose London-style buildings with fiddly facades, soaring modern skyscrapers, including one with a giant vertical-scrolling display to which you could text messages and have them displayed up the building, as well as quite a bit of grottiness, in all senses of the word. People of all sorts were milling about, giving the place a really vibrant and cosmopolitan feel. I was very pleasantly surprised at how full of character Brussels was compared to the drab hellhole I had expected it to be.

The hostel I’d picked – called 2G04 – was a modern affair, all keycards, pastel colours and Ikea wood. The central location was spot on, and they offered free internet, which was a nice touch. I was in a mixed dorm for the first time on my trip, with my dormmates being two friendly Yank girls who were studying at Leeds uni and a Kiwi couple who had been working in London and were at the end of their time in Europe.

I had another wander of the centre later, looking for a place to settle, and found the perfect spot: a threadbare establishment offering Belgian beers on tap and packed full of others talking, reading, writing and playing chess. I extracted from my bag the late birthday/early Christmas present Noesha had given me – the last Harry Potter book – sitting back and relaxing for the evening, thinking that the only thing that prevented me from fitting in perfectly here was the lack of a beret.