21 Things I Miss About Brussels, Belgium
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Now that I’ve moved back to my home country in Canada, there are several things I miss about living in Brussels. I came up with a list of 21 things. I stopped because I probably could have kept going for a while. The funny thing is that some of the items on this list were things about Brussels that I couldn’t wait to get away from.
Things I miss about Brussels:
- Carrying a freshly-baked baguette under my arm
- Strangers yelling “Excuse moi madame”
- Dodging huge potholes and bags of garbage on the cobblestoned sidewalks
- Taking the Metro
- The women’s voice in the Metro saying the next stop in three languages
- The misty rain
- The Arcade du Cinquantenaire
du Cinquantenaire
- Speaking in broken french
- After-work drinks on the patio with (~15) of my office colleagues at one table
- The cold rudeness of service staff
- Grand Place
- Frits (fries) in a cone
- Australian Ice Cream
- Leige Waffles
- Cote d’Or Chocolate
- Tiny coffees
- Manneken Pis
- Working in an office building that is in an old mansion
- Place Lux
- Random worker strikes and other news that’s so odd that it doesn’t sound real/true
- Markets, especially Christmas markets
When I look at photos from Belgium, I feel nostalgic so I have a feeling that it won’t be too long before I’m booking a vacation to Europe.
Did you come back from living abroad and miss “random” things about the country/culture? Were there things that you were surprised you missed?
#1 – Baguettes! 100% with you on that one. Nothing beats a baguette from the corner bakery, and I can’t think of a simpler way to “feel European.”
I think the reason the baguette isn’t quite the same in the Americas is because we don’t do the other thing I miss about Granada (where I studied) – walk places. Corner bakeries only make sense in urban areas with a lot of foot traffic, and there are a lot less places in the US (although I can’t speak for Canada) where walking is the primary mode of transportation.
I miss shopping at Delhaize, I totally miss the bread, the cheese and the architecture of the buildings. These are the things i miss so far, but I am sure many more things will come up, as I just move out from Belgium only four months ago.