(blog article)

What do you know about Belgium? You probably immediately thought of fries, Belgian waffles and Grand Place. Well, there’s a lot more to this place that you don’t know yet, so let’s talk more about the capital of Belgium — Brussels.

The headquarters of the European Union and the NATO office are located in Brussels. This Belgian city fascinates with a lot of historical architecture, wonderful parks and interesting people. However, do you know what makes this city different from others? I have prepared several points that will help you familiarize yourself with the peculiarities of Belgium and Brussels.

Different nationalities

There are a lot of refugees and emigrants in Brussels, so you can find people from different parts of the world here. While you walk through the streets of the city, you can hear English, Spanish, Ukrainian, Polish and many other languages ​​spoken not only by tourists, but also by citizens of the country.

Belgium has three official languages

This country is conventionally divided into 3 parts where different languages ​​are spoken (French, Dutch and the smallest number of people speak German). When traveling to different cities in Belgium, be prepared for the fact that from the French-speaking part of the country you will end up in Flanders, where they communicate exclusively in Dutch.

Travel to other cities

Belgium has a well-developed transport system. Personally, I really like traveling by train here. All the cities are very close to each other, so in an hour from Brussels you can reach the city of Bruges, and in 30 minutes you can even reach another country. That’s right! After traveling for such a short time, you will already be in France, in the city of Lille.

Metro

No matter how good the transport system is, there are certain problems with the metro in Belgium. The metro is modern enough (although there are also old trains here), the time intervals between trains are 2-5 minutes (except for emergency situations), and on the board you can always find out when the next train will arrive. However, there are also disadvantages.

Very often, I got into a situation when the subway stopped abruptly, and then an announcement was made that the train was broken and everyone should leave the train. There is no information on when it will be repaired, so now you have to rack your brains to figure out how to get home.

In the Belgian metro, no one monitors the turnstiles, so you have to scan your travel card when entering and exiting. Now there is good news for those who decided to travel illegally by not paying: almost every day these turnstiles fail, and anyone can pass through them without scanning the card.

Normally in Brussels, the metro is not very crowded, so it is not adapted to a large number of passengers. Because of this, it is very inconvenient to ride the metro during rush hour or emergency situations, because the trains are quite narrow and they do not have many handrails.

Garbage sorting

In Belgium, the situation with garbage is somewhat different from other countries. In all districts, garbage is taken out on different days. For example, in my district it is Monday and Thursday. On Monday, you can throw away blue and white bags, which are responsible for plastic and “other”, and on Thursday — white and yellow, the last ones are responsible for paper. Garbage can be taken out only on these days after 18:00, otherwise no one will pick it up and the bags will lie on the street for an unknown amount of time.

Another problem arises from this — a large amount of garbage on the street. In Brussels, there are almost no garbage cans, therefore trash bags always lie on the streets until someone picks them up. This creates a very unsightly picture when there are bags of garbage anywhere you go. At first, I was surprised, and I had the impression that this is normal for European countries. However, after talking with my classmates from Sweden, France, Austria and other countries, I came to the conclusion that garbage on the street is a feature of Brussels.

We can talk about the peculiarities of Belgium and Brussels for a long time. This is a very interesting city with its pros and cons. However, in my opinion, there are still more pros. Being a foreigner in Brussels is comfortable, because it is a city of strangers. It doesn’t matter whether you know the language or not, you will always be smiled at and helped.