Tuesday, February 15

 
 
YEAR:  2022 | Tags:  | |
 
 
 
 
 

Brussels Airport-Zaventem, 9:46

 
 

The plane left Helsinki at 7:35 approximately one quarter full. I had a row to myself, as did almost everyone. It arrived five minutes early and I had absolutely no luggage to collect because I took my larger rucksack and fitted everything from laptop to underwear in that. The result: I walked through the airport to the railway station and caught a train to Etterbeek thirty minutes earlier than I expected.

I get into the train and notice that I seem to have the entire train to myself. Nobody else gets in and off we go. I take some photographs of rush hour on a Belgian train.

I walk to the Fondation Hicter from Etterbeek which Google estimates will take me 51 minutes. I do it in 49. Frédéric and I adjourn to a nearby café and spend almost three hours catching up with each other and then planning a strategy for tomorrow.

I will decide to walk to the hotel. Google will prophesy a journey time of about 2 hours and only the fact that I stop for lunch along the way will render its prediction inaccurate. I will have vegetarian chilli cheese fries hand-chipped from real potatoes at an appropriately if prosaically named place called Public House.