When you choose Brussels as a handy base for further travels, and experience a handful of cultural shocks...

The arrival to Brussel-Noord, the city’s second biggest railway station, was almost surreal – huge glass office buildings all around, giving the place an absolutely impersonal feel, combined with rubbish and bums on the street level. "The capital of Europe," I kept telling myself. "This is the proud capital of Europe..."

Hotel Siru, close to the railway station, was a typical big boring antiseptic hotel – where you expect a certain level of professionalism. The young female receptionist was all honey and sugar... until she informed me that my credit card didn’t work. Then she managed to combine the sweetest smile with a look of utter disgust as if a dirty bum was trying to get a room at their place despite having no money to pay for it. It must be a mistake, the card works fine, I insisted (the card later proved my words on the very same day). That didn’t sway the receptionist to give the card another chance; in a honey tone peppered with threat she only told me that we were "very lucky" the booking wasn’t cancelled. Gritting my teeth, I paid with my debit card and was awarded with a key card serving not only to unlock the room door, but to enter the corridor and the lift as well. A truly powerful tool... if it was activated. After several desperate attempts to leave the lobby, I had to admit defeat and return to the embodiment of helpfulness manning the reception. When I complained about the issue, the receptionist smiled even more sweetly than before: "How come that it never works for tourists, but always works for me? Magic?" Then click, click, she activated the card and made a great show of demonstrating how perfectly it worked. The humiliation of the guests had been completed, her little victory had been won. (And topped by gladdening the victims with a room furnished in bright pink which offered a "splendid view" of a brick wall blocking the window.) I guess I’d never encountered sheer malice (or trolling) wrapped in such a perfectly sugary coat before. But well, bored receptionists deserve a bit of fun.

We spent the days visiting Antwerp (whose railway station could compete with a royal palace) and Leuven (a beetle stuck on a needle... a giant shiny green beetle impaled legs up on a giant shiny needle... how could such a piece of public art not overshadow other attractions, no matter how plentiful?) and only devoted some spare evenings and early mornings to Brussels as such. The main square is truly picturesque, especially when a lightshow illuminates the historical townhall and surrounding houses in ever-changing colours, turning them into magical fairy-tale castles. The city boasts some impressive gothic churches, too. And a shop window filled only with Manneken Pis figurines, from tiny keychains all the way to something that must be bigger than the original statue, makes quite a sight as well. 

 

Cultural shocks didn’t end with the arrival to the city, though. Never before had I seen sex shops proudly displaying their rich assortment in shop windows (on a main street in the centre of the city, in between innocent souvenir shops). Not to mention "working girls", proudly posing in shop windows lining the train tracks (just like their colleagues in the infamous Red Light District in Amsterdam). The cultured capital of Europe... 

(It’s fair to say that the "tradition" of exposing sex-shop goods in plain sight is not confined to the Belgian capital. The quaint picture-postcard town of Bruges boasted at least one such establishment in the very centre, right among the famous chocolate shops. It had a cute pink rubber duck in the window, with make-up and a fluffy pink fur around its neck. I couldn’t help imagining children crying: "Mum, mum, look! That’s a lovely toy, I want it! Let’s go inside and buy it!" Of course, chocolates shaped like male and female private parts in the surrounding shops could provoke difficult questions from the mouths of innocents too...)