jn_12
Senior Member
Just a touch of Brussels. We used this as our base for Belgium and made day trips to Brugges and Ypres. I'll post those pictures tomorrow. We stayed across from the EU parliament as well.
These pictures are mostly of the touristy places (Grand Place, St Michel Cathedral, etc). Much of the downtown is heavily graffiti'd, especially on the shutters that are pulled down once stores close, Turns out I didn't take as many pictures of the graffiti as I thought, but you get a sense of how big of an issue it is from the picture of the train below (it is a government run train inter-city train). Also very interesting about Brussels is that on side streets there are no stop signs, which if you're not used to it takes a bit of nerve the first few times you cross the street, but it really helped make the streets feel like shared spaces.
Brussels is also officially a bilingual city and all street signs and Subway stations were in Dutch and French. When asking for directions it was normal for people to use a dutch name for a station and french names for a street in the same sentence so you end up having to be aware of whether street names/stations have been given to you in french or dutch. I'm fluent in French and even though it' easy to distinguish between the two languages, its awkward to understand Belgian dialect of French and have to pay attention to Dutch words that are thrown in to the mix.
Anyways hope you enjoy, and feel free to ask questions.
These pictures are mostly of the touristy places (Grand Place, St Michel Cathedral, etc). Much of the downtown is heavily graffiti'd, especially on the shutters that are pulled down once stores close, Turns out I didn't take as many pictures of the graffiti as I thought, but you get a sense of how big of an issue it is from the picture of the train below (it is a government run train inter-city train). Also very interesting about Brussels is that on side streets there are no stop signs, which if you're not used to it takes a bit of nerve the first few times you cross the street, but it really helped make the streets feel like shared spaces.
Brussels is also officially a bilingual city and all street signs and Subway stations were in Dutch and French. When asking for directions it was normal for people to use a dutch name for a station and french names for a street in the same sentence so you end up having to be aware of whether street names/stations have been given to you in french or dutch. I'm fluent in French and even though it' easy to distinguish between the two languages, its awkward to understand Belgian dialect of French and have to pay attention to Dutch words that are thrown in to the mix.
Anyways hope you enjoy, and feel free to ask questions.
