Dear Benonie and other Brusselers,
Right at the start I want to make something very-very clear. Be it the farthest from me to be or appear either condescending, arrogant, vainly/unnecessarily negative or the like. 'Spoiling the party' and creating an uncomfortable bad atmosphere is, naturally, not my aims.
To the point now:
I realized that here on this site the natural reaction in most cases is the often mindless rapture of the respondents regarding the overall profile of a city - be that almost any city in Europe or even elsewhere, but mostly this happens with European cities. I can't see why? Surreal. Why are people normally so utterly and totally uncritical when sharing their opinions I'm wondering? This is one pattern that I've observed here. On Brussels. My opinion differs from the uncritical 'rapturers'' - I think, that more or less Brussels is an ugly city in general (minus the few, not too many!, beauty spots here and there...), which even lacks a proper river - forgive me, but in my honest opinion a city should have some kind of water in or around it. Brussels has had to suffer terrible wounds by its 'urban planners' throughout the years. It was caused an unforgivably brutal and drastic intervention in the 1960s which made matters worse, much, much worse. Whole neighbourhoods lost their characters, but mainly around the axis of the artery (unfortunately I don't know its name) that leads from the Cinquantanaire to the inner city downtown, but elsewhere too. We are talking about a city in Europe which is sadly leading in this respect (brutal and harming mindless intervention, some say aggression after WWII).
In my opinion Brussels can hardly be described by terms such as 'beautiful', 'stunning', 'wonderful' and 'fantastic' (or any number of ridiculously sycophantic terms) nor, a totally other chracteristic, organic. How can a city be termed in superlatives which a.) does not have a river - OK, this is just my personal 'tick' or b.) that lost so much of its architectural heritage? A friend of mine who's been living in the city for close to 4 years now thinks that Brussels is a place when one (an outsider, foreigner) can perhaps feel at home in virtually right after arriving, but it lacks any and all kind of a national characteristic (in itself it is not a problem) and whole parts of the city have been 'f***ed up'. I tend to agree with him.
I think, to summarize, that Brussels is very-very far from a place that the 'rapturers' are rapturing about senselessly. But, of course, I know all of this is relative and personal. sorry, I hope you won't take the negative criticism (too) personally.
Ciao,
G.F.
Prev
One for Oslo to, please!
Brussel/Bruxelles
Linear Mode
