2 hours near Brussels Midi Station

[MinnieMountain]

I’ve got 12-2pm to kill around Brussels Midi station on Monday, because I don’t trust Deutsche Bahn not to mess up my connecting train travelling there.

What can I do? Not bothered about lunch. I’ll have a rucksack and a small wheelie case.

Me too!

It's very often necessary taking trains in/to/from Belgium to know place names in both French and Flemish and sometimes German too – especially if you need to change trains there. You would think a bilingual country would put both names on departure boards, but they don't, which can be panic-inducing if you have five minutes to catch your train! And they're not all as intuitive as Bruxelles/Brussel either:

Courtrai – Kortrijk
Anvers – Antwerp
Tournai – Doornik
Gand – Gent
Bruges – Brugge – Brügge
Liège – Luik – Lüttich
Louvain – Leuven
Namur – Namen
Aix-la-Chapelle – Aken – Aachen
Cologne – Keulen – Köln

Be careful though. The number of times I have stood on the allotted platform at Bruxelles-Midi to suddenly hear I needed to change platforms and have about 30 seconds to get there! 😂