I have always had a soft spot for Brussels - a quirky city that seems appropriate as the home of surrealism. It was the first European city I explored independently when I started travelling in my teenage years. A few days after receiving my A level results I arrived in Brussels, with a friend, as part of a hitch-hiking tour that took us through to the Rhine Gorge.
Over the succeeding years I have visited Brussels many times, for a whole variety of purposes - lecturing at the universities, meeting EU officials, visiting local friends, spending weekends here visiting the museums and historic sites (Magritte's house, the wonderful museum of musical instruments, the art gallery), passing through en route to somewhere else, or just enjoying the city itself. I've already been twice in 2015 - some years it has been three visits in 12 months, although rarely more than a few days in length.
I have seen a lot of changes in the city. On my first visit, and several subsequent ones, I was hitch-hiking around Europe as a student and Brussels was an essential stopping off point en route to Germany - then the friendliest country in Europe to hitch-hikers. It was the period of language tensions in Belgium - there were frequent student riots in Leuven over what should be the dominant language in the university before a new French-speaking institution was created just across the language frontier at Louvain-la-Neuve, allowing the ancient university of Leuven to revert to Flemish. I used to stay in the French-speaking youth hostel in rue Verte, but just a couple of blocks away was the Flemish-speaking equivalent where non-Flemish-speakers were made to feel unwelcome. That whole area uphill from the Gare du Nord (the North Station) was, at that time, a working-class Belgian district, before the arrival of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants that has turned it into a very cosmopolitan area. But the tram route out from Ste Josse to place Meiser is still the 90, as it was when I used to set off from Meiser in a queue of often 50 or more young people all seeking lifts to Liège or beyond into Germany and south from there to Italy. Many of them were British, during the period when there was a limit of £50 on the export of currency - my aim was to spend less than £1 a day in order to spend as long as possible travelling (a night in a youth hostel, with evening meal, generally came to just over half of that).
The linguistic oddity of the city remains. It is technically bilingual, yet I have been with a Flemish-speaking friend in the past who has insisted on ordering in his language in bars and restaurants and has deliberately (he speaks perfect French) got very irate when he has not been understood. This afternoon the Belgians at the table next to me in a bar were initially French-speaking but were then replaced by three Flemish-speakers for whom the waiter hesitatingly changed language - although a colleague who served them later could only address them in French.
Over the succeeding years I have visited Brussels many times, for a whole variety of purposes - lecturing at the universities, meeting EU officials, visiting local friends, spending weekends here visiting the museums and historic sites (Magritte's house, the wonderful museum of musical instruments, the art gallery), passing through en route to somewhere else, or just enjoying the city itself. I've already been twice in 2015 - some years it has been three visits in 12 months, although rarely more than a few days in length.
I have seen a lot of changes in the city. On my first visit, and several subsequent ones, I was hitch-hiking around Europe as a student and Brussels was an essential stopping off point en route to Germany - then the friendliest country in Europe to hitch-hikers. It was the period of language tensions in Belgium - there were frequent student riots in Leuven over what should be the dominant language in the university before a new French-speaking institution was created just across the language frontier at Louvain-la-Neuve, allowing the ancient university of Leuven to revert to Flemish. I used to stay in the French-speaking youth hostel in rue Verte, but just a couple of blocks away was the Flemish-speaking equivalent where non-Flemish-speakers were made to feel unwelcome. That whole area uphill from the Gare du Nord (the North Station) was, at that time, a working-class Belgian district, before the arrival of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants that has turned it into a very cosmopolitan area. But the tram route out from Ste Josse to place Meiser is still the 90, as it was when I used to set off from Meiser in a queue of often 50 or more young people all seeking lifts to Liège or beyond into Germany and south from there to Italy. Many of them were British, during the period when there was a limit of £50 on the export of currency - my aim was to spend less than £1 a day in order to spend as long as possible travelling (a night in a youth hostel, with evening meal, generally came to just over half of that).
The linguistic oddity of the city remains. It is technically bilingual, yet I have been with a Flemish-speaking friend in the past who has insisted on ordering in his language in bars and restaurants and has deliberately (he speaks perfect French) got very irate when he has not been understood. This afternoon the Belgians at the table next to me in a bar were initially French-speaking but were then replaced by three Flemish-speakers for whom the waiter hesitatingly changed language - although a colleague who served them later could only address them in French.
Another quirky feature of the city is the juxtaposition of characterful old buildings, often in local brick, against modern concrete monstrosities - a reminder of the fact that until recently Brussels had no planning restrictions and no conservation zones so that, in architectural terms, 'anything goes'. It is only a few years ago that a solution was found to a joint architectural / linguistic problem in the shape of what to do with the place des Martyrs. The imposing civic buildings on this square commemorating events at the foundation of the Belgian state in 1830, itself a controversial episode in the relationship between French and Flemish speakers, had fallen into a state of disrepair - with trees growing out of their roofs - because of a lack of agreement between the two linguistic communities about renovation. Happily that has been resolved more recently and the square, although tucked away and not receiving the tourist attention it deserves, at least now looks smart and well-maintained.
I don't want to make Brussels out to be too odd, but one final feature to mention is the 'pre-métro'. In addition to building a couple of real metro lines, they also envisaged converting some existing tram routes into metro lines by taking them underground through the city centre. In doing so they created full metro stations to take long trains - bit they never did convert the tram lines so that today short tram cars stop at cavernous underground stops.
Too much rhetoric in the UK sees 'Brussels' in a negative light - as the seat of European bureaucracy and somewhere to be fought off. It is the metaphor for all that a eurosceptic press and populist politics dislikes (without understanding how small that bureaucracy is - I recall a Lord Mayor of Sheffield returning from a visit to the European Commission to note that it had fewer employees than Sheffield City Council).
To me Brussels is a city of parks; of rows of little terraced brick houses; of art nouveau architecture; of interesting museums; of beer, mussels and chips. And it has the finest square - the Grand Place - that I know in any city. When I first came there was still traffic in the square, and a daily market. At Christmas I have enjoyed the live crib with real animals (donated by another of Belgium's linguistic groups - the German-speaking communities of the far east). Today it is thronged with tourists from all parts of the world, but with a particularly strong contingent of Japanese. But every time I am in Brussels I try to undertake one small personal ritual - a glass of wine and a slice of fruit tart in the 'Chaloupe d'Or' bar on the western side of the square. And I have just fulfilled that for this visit (as I also did for my previous visit six weeks ago, and for many more before that).
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