Becoming Immune to Brussels

4 am hurts. A black, dizzying punch that still aches 30 minutes later yomping along the towpath. I am king of an empty world all the way to St. Pancras.

The only demarcation between the dark tunnels of London and the backside of pre-dawn Essex is the scattering of distant sodium fireflies. Thanks to the recent Chunnel fire we crawl below the sea. With its usual sense of appropriateness, iPod shuffle offers up 6 Underground.

The French morning on the other side deliver a dull, metallic grey sky. The landscape a muted palette of shabby brown fields and failing green. Rolling through Belgium, the incremental benefits of more light are offset by pollution poxed concrete and graffiti contagion.

Gare du Nord’s usual aroma of urine seems significantly restrained this morning. I manage to descend and catch the metro with a single gag reflex. By the time I reach Arts Loi/Kunst-Wet I have even adjusted to the carriage’s stereo mix of Flemish in one ear and French in the other. Maybe I am becoming immune to Brussels.

After eight hours of discussion on climate change, I begin the drift from Cathédrale Saints-Michel-et-Gudule back to Zuidstation. Achieving my temporary duration grail of a Belgian edition of Paris Match with 14 pages on Jaques Brel, I am in a state of grace. The cold rain coming down does not want to fall on me. The city’s population of pissant pickpockets disregard me as a mark. I am reacquainted with the fact that the Metro PA plays music by a serenade of snatched Bowie every time my train hits a stop. Sunny-faced children wave at me. For a few minutes I feel as if even Mafya bullets would miss me.

I shop for gifts that could also double as a suicidal diet, filling my bag with Leonidas chocolates, cheese, Ardennes butter, biscuits and beer. Nabbing a French graphic novel called Ghostmoney, I spend the wait for the 18:59 back to London trying to improve my French. ‘La marche s’était arrētée et un entrange silence était tombé … un cri a retenti de láutre cōté de la rue.'

Looking out at the unrelenting black beyond the window, the only sign of crossing the French border is the twitching as my Blackberry shifts from BASE to Orange F. The Eurozone becomes one flesh in the dark. Nationhood reduced to data virtuality, the microwave whispers of sovereignty.

We enter the Chunnel. The soundtrack of Blade Runner folds into me. With nothing to look at but my own reflection in the dark glass, I close my eyes.

A City of Dirty Pissing Bastards and Thieves

5:30am. Coach 16, Seat 11. Dosed up on mocha and the Kronos Quartet. After a couple of minutes of tunnel turning the window into an unflattering mirror, I am gifted an A13 dawn.

The blades of a giant industrial windmill carve the air, there is a concrete road in the sky funnelling unrelenting traffic and I am on a train that travels under the sea. For a moment, this feels like the sci-fi future I dreamed of in 1976. I am moving through a landscape where UNIT trucks are sodium hour ghosts and Luke Haines’ ESP kids lie in wait for the perfect psychic ambush.

We move under the Thames and reverie stops. Kent is resistant to imagination. Its acres of sky dead to any possibility beyond the Monday morning commute. A landscape so bland, the black of the chunnel is actually a relief.

The milk chocolate brown of ploughed fields and verdant pasture that greet me on the other side are constant to the first ring of the Belgian rustbelt. When the last warehouses, container mountains and failed chemical plants eventually splutter out, Brussels’ ugly suburban sprawl begins. A choking catalogue of grey, narrow houses lined up on streets like a grubby second-hand paperback collection.

This morning every stairway and corner of Gare du Midi reeks of urine. I survive one pickpocketing attempt before I even descend to the Metro. A second happens somewhere between Troon and Kunts-Wet. I catch the would-be thief breaking the zip of my bag. Instinctually I stamp down on his hand. There is an awful, sickening crunch of bone. He screams out and drops my passport. Curses, pushes out of the Metro carriage before I can do anything else. As I struggle to pick up my stuff, I miss my station. Later, when it begins to rain, I discover the only thing I lost in the scuffle was my beloved monkey hat.

It is entirely irrational, unreasonable and ridiculous, but when I am let down by Brussels, I take it personally. I feel like shouting: “Both my grandfathers helped liberate you from fascism. Is it beyond you to be something other than a city of dirty pissing bastards and thieves?” Of course, I do not actually shout at anyone, just adopt a sullen face and stomp along till I get to Treurenberg hill. I can forgive a lot when I hear the 49-bell carillon of Cathédrale St Michel & Gudule.

My Innate, Old School Grasp of Romance

A burst of sodium orange signals the return to England. My iPod celebrates with a version of Cradle’s Second Nature sung in French – its usual irony clearly intact. Within seconds it is hard to distinguish between the blackness of the Chunnel and the darkened Kent countryside.

I did not achieve frites or a decent croissant while in Brussels. However, as the Eurostar rolls across South East England with the speed of a getaway driver hyped to the gills on dexedrine, the amount of chocolate I was importing made my trip feel like a partial success. The fact it was even bought at the shop previously specified reassured me that Surreal Girl would be pleased to see me when I arrived at St. Pancras.

Of course, as I had promised to buy her a glass of fizz at the station’s champagne bar she already had a good reason to be happy to see me safely return from the continent. Surreal Girl might be my best friend, but if the finest Belgian chocolates and a drink at the world’s longest champagne bar does not demonstrate my innate, old school grasp of romance, I am not sure what does. Not that it takes something similar to woo me. I am wowed by a crème brûlée gelatai or a poke of chips to be shared on the beach at Leigh-on-Sea.

A Very Brussels Breakfast

I had a very Brussels breakfast today, Irish tea, English baked beans, French omelet and Belgian spiced meatballs. If I had been so inclined, the mish-mash on my plate could have been expanded to take in a breakfast item representative from every country in the European Union.

With a good’s night sleep, I might have been able to turn the symbolism in the clash of food cultures in the Crowne Plaza restaurant into a witty, coherent point about the EU itself. However, witty and coherent is nigh on impossible on less than 90 minutes worth of zzzs. The symbolic meaning of German cheese and Polish Szinki will just have to wait for a day less fuelled by rocket launch grade coffee.

Not Everyone's Idea of Fun

Tomorrow – if I can find my passport – I am leaving England for a few days. It is strictly business. Having dinner with members of the European Parliament and chairing discussions with officials from the European Commission is not everyone's idea of fun. In fact, many people would rather drink their own urine than have to go to Belgium and engage with the politicos of Brussels.

When glancing through a city with an agenda not of your own making, your relationship to it changes. I will be unable to navigate by my usual personal landmarks. There will be no dizzying, childlike glee from a visit to Brüsel, a comic book shop whose range and unstuffy attitude shames the likes of Forbidden Planet. There will be no supping in the history of four generation of the Vossen family along with a beer and the Art Nouveau décor at À la Mort Subite (which I think translates as 'Instant Death'). No half-en-half with Belle Époque temporal refugees at Cirio.

Dislocated from my map of the city, I will look for moments of personal pleasure in the simplest of things. A decent croissant and coffee, successfully finding the shop Surreal Girl wants chocolates from and maybe if I am really lucky, getting some perfect street frites.