We expected the streets to be bustling, especially around the central train station. However, it was dead. Everywhere was quiet. There were no cars driving by and no people walking around. Every café we passed was closed, and not a single light was on in any house we passed.
Eventually we found our way to our apartment, where the owners had promised a courier would meet us.
For fifteen minutes we stood in the doorway of a miserable, dark building. The only sign on life was a group of kids kicking a ball around in the empty road as their mother locked up her store for the night.
And then our knight in lycra showed up. An insane Finnish guy arrived with a sudden stop of his bike and apologised profusely. He showed us upstairs and after a short conversation about Game of Thrones (seemingly the universal language) he left us to it for the evening.
The flat was cold, gloomy and damp. The kitchen was full of mouldy dishes and the beds had springs physically poking out.
We decided to take a quick walk up to the main road and find somewhere to eat. Nothing special, just something more than the half packet of wine gums we'd devoured early in the morning, all that time ago in St Pancras. A bit of food might cheer us up a bit and get us seeing the bright side of the city.
Half an hour later, and no luck. The only place we had stumbled upon was a small bar that wasn't serving food, and was on last orders for the evening. We wandered back up to the apartment, starving, and decided to look for a take-away online.
An hour, and some guessing at Flemish translations, later, we sat down to a meal of hint-of-curry Carbonara, hint-of-curry Bolognese and hint-of-curry Tiramisu. We'd only been in the city for a couple of hours and already I was sick of the place. We'd been told that there wasn't really anything to Brussels and it was okay for an overnight stop but that was it. And right there and then; I fully agreed.
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