In 2017 I had the chance to speak at FOSDEM in Brussels, so I explored the city with some friends.

Brussels is a big city, but I didn’t have any problems navigating it. The experience was great, actually.

Stay

It was my first time ever trying a hostel. Looking now in retrospect, the experience in Brussels was not great, but at the time I found it quite interesting.

I stayed in the hostel 2G04. It has an amazing location, it’s like 3 minutes by foot to get to the main square of Brussels. The main square is just astonishing, so the hostel was nice in this regard.

The experience with this hostel was not the best. I forgot to bring a lock and there were not many people there to ask for help. The bathroom was quite weird. Not dirty or anything like that, just not comfortable at all.

I wouldn’t recommend this hostel in particular, but it was better than one that a friend got for the same date. I remember leaving there with a feeling that it was not the best, but could be much worse.

Transport

Brussels is a big city, I used the tram and busses a lot to navigate the city. I don’t really remember what I did to pay for the rides, but I think I got their transport cards and it worked well.

It was nice to see for the first time that they had no specific mechanism to block people from entering the tram or train if they don’t validate the ticket. People can just go in and out without validating the ticket, and if they are lucky enough, nothing is going to happen to them. If they are not lucky, they will get a fine for it.

I’m not sure if this is something people do, but for a brazilian, it was quite interesting to see this happening.

The trains work great too. It’s a bit complicated to understand how they work if you’re not used to it (which was my case 😅). Once you get your ticket, you just have to go to the right platform, wait for the train going to where you want to go and go in. It was not obvious for me if the train was right or not, I asked and people gave me enough guidance for me to go in, but it could totally go wrong for someone not used to it.

Places

• I enjoyed the visit to the Atomium. It’s a nice structure and a science museum.
• I decided to go for the Manekin Piss, just to see the famous statue. Nothing outstanding there, but was worth the visiting.
• After visiting the Manekin piss I went for the other two statues that follow the same pattern. I quite enjoyed seeing the peeing dog. 😅

Food

• I went for a restaurant in the main square in the first day and it was quite nice. Don’t really remember the name though. 😕
• I went to Delirium, for some beers. I don’t really like beer, but it was definitely a good experience to visit the place.