Belgium in the Rain

I’ve been listening to Lølø for years. I had never been to Belgium, and I had never been to a concert outside Italy. It seemed like the right occasion. Then the overthinking kicked in.

My brain is great at postponing: wait for the right moment, the right company, the right weather. Meanwhile ticket prices kept climbing and Belgium seemed off the table. I slept on it, hoping for the intercession of the God of the day after, and for once it worked: legs of the trip cut, two days off work, hotel booked with a VPN from the United States, twenty euros saved.

I’ve got everything, off we go. Actually no: flight delayed because of a fire. Me stuck at the airport, 10:50 a.m., backpack against my back, staring at the departures board. And underneath it all, the nagging annoyance of having to go alone.

Then we take off. Out the window, clouds, or maybe the smoke from the fire, doesn’t matter. I’m in the air, and everything fades away.

Brussels ugly, Antwerp wet

Brussels is ugly. I’m saying it right away so I can get it off my chest. I arrived by bus from Charleroi at the south station. If squalor were a place, it would without a doubt be this station. I took a tram and wandered around the center. I photographed the various peeing statues and smelled the pee in the alleyways. I’d already had it up to here with this city.

So I jumped on a train and by eight I was already at my hotel in Antwerp, my base for those days. Simple room, it was fine, except for a shelf at head height that I headbutted in a freeze-frame-worthy collision.¹ I wash off the fatigue of the journey and I’m ready to go out, heading for the port. The area is beautiful, full of that post-industrial stuff that softens at sunset. For a moment I think that maybe the trip is off to a good start. Then I look up and see black storm clouds on the horizon. Me, meanwhile, in shorts and a T-shirt.

And so the evening began inside an O’Tacos. I didn’t even want to go in, but it was the only place still open, because here at nine everything shuts down, and outside it had started to rain. So there I was, stuck, some sort of sandwich in front of me and my phone in my hand. I was checking my stories: none of my crushes had seen them. It’s a stupid thing. But when you’re alone, soaked, in a Belgian fast food joint you didn’t choose, bored while waiting for the storm to pass, you have to invent some problem for yourself to kill the time².

After half an hour that my brain perceived as a decade, the storm had passed and now there was only a light drizzle. I decided to risk it and head back to the hotel. Naturally, exactly halfway there it started pouring, the sky lit up with the purple of lightning, and when I got back to my room I discovered there was no hairdryer. At that point I thought: this trip is cursed. I’m going to sleep hoping tomorrow goes better.

Antwerp, a one-day city

Tomorrow it rains just the same, but at least Antwerp is prettier than Brussels. It’s a pleasant city to stroll through, so I lost myself in its streets for a while. I really liked the PAKT, a green oasis built in an old industrial area, where you can have a proper breakfast. Walking back toward the center I ran into a lot of strangely dressed people (my editor claims they’re Orthodox Jews, and I trust him). I think they were coming back from some religious service. I was tempted to take a few photos, but I was too scared³.

Around lunchtime I remembered I’d been in Belgium for almost twenty-four hours and still hadn’t eaten any fries. I had to make up for it. I stopped at Frites Atelier. According to the internet it’s supposed to be one of the best places to eat fries. Honestly, they were nothing special. Good, but not memorable, while the sauces were spectacular, especially the basil mayonnaise. But what really stuck with me was the decidedly outrageous price.

After lunch it started raining again, so I decided it was the perfect moment to go visit the Sint-Anna tunnel and shelter from the rain for a bit. The tunnel runs under the river and connects its two banks. Since it’s for pedestrians and bikes, you can get some nice shots of the bicycles, but watch out not to get run over. Coming out, I finally found some sun and took advantage of it for another walk, but I had the feeling the city had run its course by then.

The concert

But the day wasn’t over yet: that evening, finally, there was the concert. The reason I was there. Before a concert I always have the same ritual: eating something greasy. Grease, plus adrenaline, is one of the most beautiful things in the world. So, leaving the hotel and heading for the venue, I had the brilliant idea of stopping for a nice burrito. I really do love Mexican food.⁴

I was expecting a small venue. Not that small. Basically a room.⁵ Lølø a few meters away, no anonymous crowd to disappear into. A whole different thing from the concerts you have in your head, the big ones, where you’re a tiny dot at the back. Here I was inside it.

Around me, people decidedly more punk than me. I’m punk on the inside; on the outside I look like someone who asks for permission. And yet I didn’t feel out of place for a single second.

And then it was beautiful. Between one song and the next she’d stop and talk to us, and not the polite stage banter kind of talking. Her eyes were sparkling. She was more excited than we were, and that thing hits you head-on, you can’t pretend it doesn’t. I got hyped like an idiot and sang every song at the top of my lungs. And even now, months later, every so often I rewatch the closing of hot girls in hell, one of those songs that make you feel invincible and wrecked at the same time. In short, exactly what you need to face another day of routine⁶.

The truth is I like Lølø because we have the same mental illnesses. She too, I’m sure of it, obsessively checks who’s seen her stories.

Ghent and Bruges

The day after the concert I got on the train to Ghent wearing my yellow Ferrari shirt⁷. Probably everyone else in the carriage took me for an idiot who’d arrived early for Spa. Maybe they were right to call me an idiot, but for other reasons: I didn’t even know if I’d then go on to Bruges too. Let’s see how it goes, I’d told myself.

In Ghent I took it easy, wandered around a bit, took some photographs, and even stopped for brunch with a coconut milk matcha latte⁸. I realized the day was going well and that I’d have the energy needed to face the mass of tourists in Bruges⁹.

Both cities are beautiful, truly beautiful, those postcards of water and brick you expect from Belgium and that until that moment had been denied to me. In Bruges I stumbled into an area all green, where the canal widened until it almost became a lake. A café, a church, a bridge. All gorgeous, until I realized the bridge led straight to the tour bus parking lot. Bruges, despite the tourists, beats Ghent by a hair. But I enjoyed them both, and half a day of walking through them was enough to forgive this country all the rain.

Brussels, again

The last morning I woke up slowly. Check-out, breakfast with a little pastry from Domestic, train to Brussels. And naturally it was raining. I decided the best place to take shelter from the hostile weather was the Magritte museum. After all, what better way to spend a rainy hour than with a man who painted apples instead of faces?

Then I went to the European quarter, and I liked it. A lot. The European Parliament, for me, is more an idea than a place. I feel deeply European, and there, in the rain, surrounded by strangers each with their own language, I felt at home. And not far away, at Maison Antoine, I ate fries while watching people in suits and ties, fresh out of Parliament, eating greasy fries too, standing on the sidewalk. I loved it to bits.¹⁰

I took several photos with my analog camera. Partly because that month film photography was my passion¹¹, partly because that fucking rain was still coming down and I was afraid of breaking my Fuji. I bought the magnet for mom and the chocolate bar for my crush, without knowing if I’d ever get the chance to see her¹². I drifted a little longer through the streets of the center, and this time I liked Brussels. It wasn’t ugly, I had just arrived from the wrong side.

And that’s okay

It wasn’t the trip of a lifetime. It was a trip that was cursed at times, with the rain on my back, the missing hairdryer, the unseen stories, my favorite song left off the setlist. I was afraid of leaving alone, and at moments I was afraid while I was there. Not the big fear, the movie kind. The small one: sitting down at a table and having no one to say look at this to. Eating in silence. For a few days nobody knows where you are. And at first it hurts a little.

And yet it was the first time I went to a concert outside Italy. One line fewer on the list of things I had never done. And here’s the part I only understood later, back home, tired. Going alone is something I keep getting better at. I no longer have to wait for someone to feel like it, for calendars to line up, for the right moment to come along: I just leave. It’s a freedom I’ve earned piece by piece, trip after trip, therapy session after therapy session.