The cold and rain of autumn has really been making itself felt over the last few days, and it seems that once one reaches a certain age, traipsing around a strange city in the wet and cold is not as exciting as it once was despite the plethora of sights and attractions awaiting our call.
Since Brussels has an enormous network of very affordable public transport, the thought of travelling in a heated tram was infinitely more appealing than spending the day in wet joggers. We have in the past, managed our way around many of the world’s great cities with little fuss, but in the absence of a degree in Brussels transport, the transport maps were puzzling to say the least.
We were looking for line 6 on the tram we thought, and the sign said we were in the right place, but it wasn’t too long before we observed that all the trams on this route were number 81. We concluded after quite a bit of searching, that the subway was referred to as “the tram” by the nice lady in the hotel giving us mis-directions, and it ran just one story below where we were. When we did find the correct subway line, we were non-plussed to discover “our” train covered in “do not enter” tape and a plethora of security guards, each of whom was suggesting that we should think about taking a train to somewhere far away from where we wanted to be.
We did get there in the end, to the Museum of Modern Art, and spent far too much time on our feet astonished and a little transfixed by the “Rubik’s Cubism” exhibition by once famed graffiti guy “Space Invader” - Hundreds of pieces constructed entirely of stacked Rubik’s Cubes manipulated to create pointillist style pop images.
We weren’t sure that we really felt like walking the few kilometres back to the hotel because we were on such a high from the artwork, or whether we were just a little gun-shy about tempting fate with the transport network, but we were sure that our shoes would be dry by morning in any case, and it really was quite pleasant out there after all with our raincoats on.
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