'Retards Possible'

I had a lovely holiday (avec la Boyfriend) in Bruxelles last week.

On Wednesday morning we set off for St Pancras and just a couple of hours later, we were at the Midi terminal in Belgium. Half an hour and a hop, skip and jump later, we arrived at the Hotel Bloom, a funky boutique-style hotel. Every room has a fresco painted on the wall by an artist, and some lovely Modernist furniture touches.

That night, after a day's exploring, we took a walk with the intention of hunting down some good food. Walking through a quiet residential backstreet, we happened upon a street brawl between 2 irate drivers.

Anyway, we scarpered after seeing the FITE kick off - with quite some kicking. Who said Brussels was boring?

So what did we see? Well...

• The Avenue Louise shopping district with loads of posh shops. We visited as many as we did to get out of the cold and rest after practising our ice skating along the slippery streets.
  
• The mainly west African Matonge district. Was so pleased to find a hair shop!
• The beautiful Grand Place

• Place St. Catherine, complete with ferris wheel and evening winter market, selling cups of vin chaud. What a tonic on a freezing night, I tell thee! We went back for dinner at one of the restaurants in the area.
  

• The arty Shoreditch-eque Place Saint-Géry district, complete with twats. We went to a hip caff and the guy behind the counter was asking people to come to the counter to get served because he was just so busy and clearly too cool to be seen serving people. See also: the insouciant little cow who bemoaned the fact that two people needed to be served at once. What did we think this was, some sort of service? Ugh.
  

• The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and a frankly pretty exhausting Magritte exhibition. Interestingly, la boyfriend parlez francais, so filled me in on what the teachers were telling their college students about Magritte's themes and the details in his works.

We took a walking map with us and went exploring for interesting places to go, things to do. It was fun to go off the beaten track and stumble across a place or building that one of us had wanted to see.

We ate fish and lobster in fine restaurants, and kebabs from the shop across the road. We looked in designer boutiques and rifled through old vinyl in backstreet record shops. We ate waffles, chips with mayonnaise, and guilt/calorie-free chocolate. We saw the Pissing Boy and shat icicles - it was about -5C when we were in town last samedi/zaterdag and I was so cold that I nearly cried. For most of my time outdoors, the most intelligible thing I could say was 'Brrrghhbr brrrrghhhkkkkk'.
'Are you OK?'
'Nnnnmmmnngh!'

Which brings me to the snow. On the second day, we stayed in the Fine Arts museum for hours, reluctant to go out into the increasingly heavy snowfall. To cut out time tromping the streets, we made the mistake of taking a tram a few streets back to the hotel and it was the singularly most fucking tedious journey I've endured (and this is before what came at the end of our holiday). Stop... inch forward, grind to a halt... inch forward ever... so... slightly... STOP ABRUPTLY. Dear Lord.

From our 7th-floor king room (oh yes, darlings) we could see out over the city, including landmarks like the Statue of Europe, and watching the soft fluffy clumps fall to the ground at night seemed magical. I can tell you, hopes of an easy return journey on Sunday afternoon disappeared pretty quickly when we learned of the Friday mishaps on the Eurostar, which led to delays and total cancellation of services.

So a plan was hatched. It's a good thing one of us (um, not me) knew there was an airport in Rotterdam; the plan was to take a train there, then get a 5pm plane back to London. Cool.

Except it didn't quite go that smoothly.

I pulled open the curtains on Sunday morning and was confronted with a wall as white as those inside the hotel. It was snowing hard, coming fast and thick and not in a good way.
We were fucked, to put it politely.

We checked out after 11am, deciding it best to get a head start. After getting the Metro to Bruxelles-Midi after midday, we wait around for ages in the main station, taking a number and queuing up to buy tickets for a train to Rotterdam.
We got on the train and waited for the train to move.

It didn't.

While we were waiting, the group of tweenaged Dutch boys made it their business to wave at the passengers at the opposite train. A cute little girl waved back; her slightly older sibling stuck his tongue out.

40 minutes later, the sandwich guy gets on the train to tell us it's been cancelled. Cue much sighing and kissing of teeth. We trudge back to the main station, back to the ticket desk, and after seeing that the number on our ticket meant that there were at least another 200 people to be served before us (down from 250) we reconsider our options, plumping for a train to Antwerp where we could connect to a Rotterdam train. Time was upon us and we'd only a few hours to get up there and catch our flight.

Right. So we get to Antwerp, and find ourselves making the maddest dash we've ever made - with 16kg suitcases in tow - to catch a train (to a town in south Holland called Roosendaal) that turned out to be delayed by nearly half an hour anyway. On the train we get talking to a lovely Dutch couple who assure us that the Netherlands are just as crap at dealing with shit weather as the Brits. Although I say: 'I really hope our 5pm plane has been delayed!', it becomes clear that without some sort of time machine we are going to miss it, so it's quickly rescheduled for the later 8pm flight.

The delayed train sets off, taking us through every single goddamned village in the (mostly) pretty Antwerp.

We arrive at Roosendaal to catch our Rotterdam train and it's freezing, seriously freezing. I am cold all the way to my bones. My hair is cold. My brain is cold. My soul is cold. I don't even care about getting home at this point; all I want is a cuddle and a hot bath, with a massive vat of vin chaud on the side for me to guzzle.

I don't know how long we waited (it was best not to keep an eye on the time) but after a while, and announcement came on in Dutch (natuurlijk) and the hundreds of people waiting for the Rotterdam suddenly went, 'AAUUUGH!' Someone told us that we had to wait another 15 minutes. I thought for a second that it was fifty and nearly lost the plot.

When we got on the train, Lovely Boyfriend got the rations out - a big fuck-off (that's an official unit of size, OK?) Fiji apple, of which I was designated half.
'Eat it slowly,' he said. 'Yeah, that's your dinner,' the young Dutch bloke sitting across from me quipped (My favourite thing about the NL is the dry Dutch sense of humour).

As the train chugged along, the ice on the pylons crackled and popped, creating an alarming yet beautiful display of flashing blue and white light. Then came an announcement, again in Dutch. Everyone groaned and looked around - the train might not get to Rotterdam as there was a problem with a bridge somewhere, and it as touch and go as to whether it might be fixed. There'd be an update later. Oh, shit.

Another announcement came after a couple of stops, and it sounded more upbeat: 'Something something something ROTTERDAM'. Spontaneous cheering, no translation needed!

Time was still upon us, however. After another mad dash outside Rotterdam station, to find first the bus shuttle and then the taxi rank (the guy at the bus stop we needed had been there nearly half an hour, waiting for a service that normally ran every 15 minutes), we get royally skanked by the taxi drivers.

Boyfriend: How much is it to Rotterdam Airport?
Taxi driver: Fifty euro.
BF: It's normally twenty...
Taxi driver: Fifty euro *shrug*. Dangerous roads.
BF: Yeah, I know, but come on! Thirty? Forty?
Taxi diver: Fifty euro.

They weren't messing about, either. One poor English guy (who, it transpired, lives down the road from where the boyfriend works) had been at the taxi rank trying, failing, crying and wailing to get them to take him to Schipol for less than 100 euro. He only got it down to 75 because he jumped in the taxi with us.

We got to Rotterdam airport in time to catch our 8pm flight!

...which was then cancelled.

But hark! The 5pm flight we were meant to be on originally was still on the tarmac at 7.30pm. So we were put on that instead. After nearly an hour of de-icing (of the plane, and runway not the passengers or freezing cabin staff) it was... could it be?... ready to go.

You know what happened?

The little Fokker only took off without a hitch, didn't it? The Little Hairdryer That Could got us home safe and sound.
(Oh, and propeller planes? In 2009? Where are you flying me to, 1924?)

I've never done a victory dance before when touching down after a long journey, but I did one in full view of the passengers waiting by the boarding gates at London City.

Weirdly, neither of us got stressed or threw tantrums at any point during this 11-leg Planes, Trains and Automobiles odyssey. Not when I broke Usain Bolt's land speed record with my suitcase, not after hours without proper food or drink, not even - and this was the acid test - when the cabbies at Rotterdam took the piss and nearly 3 times as much cash as usual.

I'm glad I got away, but I'm glad to be home! As I write, Eurostar is gingerly moving into action... no thanks to something called nutagak?!