I've been in Brussels for a couple of days. As you can tell from this picture, it was very dull.
It was foggy, very cold and damp. But worse than that, it was unpleasant.
I rather used to like coming to Brussels. There are times when I've had to come over weekly, and it never bothered me. It's not that big, it's easy to get around on the metro, there are pleasant restaurants to go to in the evening, and various things going on (eg, going to the opening of the Tintin museum, as I did a couple of years ago). I haven't been there for a few months, and I was surprised by how much I didn't like it this time. When I arrived, there were groups of (mainly) young men hanging around at the train station and in the subway. At Gare Midi there was quite a violent argument going on between some gangs of girls -- I couldn't understand what was being said, but it felt quite threatening, so I gave them a wide berth.
In the morning I went down to the subway at about nine o'clock and there were already drunks down there and I'm sure I saw lots more bums sleeping and begging in the subway that I do in London. What is going on? Belgium went without a government for a while last year and yet seemed to get along quite nicely, but obviously in the capital, something has gone wrong. Brussels apparently has twice the violent crime rate of London!
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