I’m a tourist that has recently come back home after visiting your country. This is just a few of my experiences and a little bit of ranting, maybe you’ll find it somewhat amusing.
So I visited Bruxelles, Brugge, Gent, Antwerpen, and Liège. I even spent some time at Charleroi and lived to tell about it (it wasn’t bad, some people like to pretend it’s the worst thing ever, but I just saw an industrial city).
Before travelling to Belgium I expected the country to be somewhat bilingual, but it’s more like one language stops at some border and the other begins. I can bullshit my way through French, but I don’t speak Flemish or Dutch at all, so I became a bit worried. In the end I didn’t have much trouble communicating in English. I allso noticed that people in the north were a bit more likely to speak English, but that could be because of the kind of places I visited in each region.
My first impression was a bit strange. My plane arrived at around 21:30 at Totally Not Brussels South. Getting to the bus shuttle stop to Charleroi was a bit of a challenge, since there are many works and fences around the terminal and very little indication on where to go. Once I got to Charleroi central, more of the same, a weird maze of fences to get out and into the city. By the time I got to the hotel it was like 22:30, so finding a place to eat was pretty hard. The city was pretty dark, not much public lighting, so it was a bit scary. But after that it was all good. The city looked much better in the morning and after a waffle and some tea.
Anyway, I won’t tell everything that happended, just some things I found interesting or weird.
During my visit, a lot of beer was consumed and a good time was had by all. The quality and variety of beer is impressive and much appreciated. However I have an issue. You guys don’t really get the concept of tapas. Very rarely was I offered something to eat with my beer. I don’t mean that I couldn’t order food, I mean food included with my order of drink for free. I got a few small cubes of cheese at a fancy place and some nuts at some pubs, but that’s it. In Spain, if a bar doesn’t give me something to eat with my order I probably won’t come back, and depending of the place, I may expect more than a few olives or chips. I’m not expecting every joint to offer Zamora tier pinchos or tapas, but I usually got nothing at all.
Also, I saw a few places offering something with tapas in the name, but you had to pay. It’s not a tapa if you have to pay! In that case the amount is going to be bigger and we call that ración. I know Vasques have their pintxos and they want you to pay for them, but those are a bit different, since they are usually more effort to prepare, and not the norm in all of Spain. Anyway, imagine getting [some of this](https://www.sehacecaminoalandar.com/tapas-en-zamora-ruta-de-tapeo/) while you enjoy your beer!
About the food, I had some nice experiences too, even if I didn’t have great expectations. Had some of the usuals, your mussels, carbonade, frites, etc.
Why are the “famous” mussels from Zeeland? It’s a bit weird for me that one of the “national dishes” comes from the neighbour country (and former enemy). I was also suprised at their price, but then again, I live in a mussel production area in Spain, so maybe I’m used to them being cheap.
I had a great soup at Gent. It was a rainy day and the promise of warm soup for 5€ was too tempting. It was a tiny place run by a deaf man, near the fortress, probably some of you know about it already. I didn’t even know he was deaf when we decided to eat there, but other than the initial surprise, it was not a problem at all. Very nice man and very tasty soup.
I also had a great plate of pasta at an Italian restaurant at Antwerpen. (Yeah, going to Belgium to eat Italian food, I know…). They guy actually dunked the bigoli inside a wheel of Parmigiano and scraped some of the inside of the chees to add it to the pasta. It was the best pasta (and cheese) I had in a long time. It was near the docks at the opposite side of the MAS.
I loved the concept of the P&R near the big cities, it was great to park there and not worry about the car while I enjoy the city. I also loved the rental bike system in Antwerpen, so convenient! It was pretty nice to see so many bikes around, it’s something I wish we could do in Spain. There have been some advances, but it’s still not there yet.
I was also pleasantly suprised by the people. Many well dressed and good looking individuals, and almost everyone was pretty thin (probably because bikes instead of cars). I also saw more blondes in Belgium than I have seen in the UK and Ireland combined, pretty curious to me. I didn’t really have any unpleasant interaction with anyone, most people were courteous to us, and very patient with the language barrier.
A few days ago I saw someone on this sub say that they didn’t have any reason to feel proud of being from Belgium, but I found a lot of things to be proud of. This country is about the same size of my own region of Galicia, but there are a shitton of highways, factories, trains and bussiness. People seemed happy and wealthy and the country seems to run well. When we travelled from Charleroi to Liège, we followed the river and saw a lot of industry and ships with metal scrap and minerals moving goods down the river. We saw a lot of steel plants. We even saw a nuclear plant. And a lot of goods beign trasported in the highways. In Belgium I saw a lot of things we could have in Galicia and Spain. A center of industry and a great port to Europe. A country of healthy young people in bicycles and very beautiful cities.
Also, please keep your distance in the highways! We saw a lot of weird behaviours in your many highways and almost everybody was almost touching the bumper of the car in front while driving at 120. Still, not as weird as the crazy shit of the Dutch highways.
by pepimanoli