Brussels

I recently had my first business trips into Europe, both to Brussels. Brussels one of the administrative centres of the European Union, and therefore has a lot of law firms practicing EU law (mainly to do with competitions investigations, ACCC-type actions as they would be known in Australia). Meetings with some of these law firms took me to Brussels.

The beauty of going to France or Belgium from London is that you get to catch the train. And when it comes to choosing between training and flying, rail wins almost every time. Trains, of course, are slower than planes, but when you factor in the time getting to the airport, checking in, waiting, boarding, taxiing, flying, landing and getting from the airport on the other end, the city-to-city connections trains provide are very attractive. The first and last time I caught the Eurostar train to the continent was back in late 2006, and since then the English side of the high speed train line has been upgraded (from slow to really fast). And instead of going from the seedy Waterloo International station, you now depart from the magnificent St Pancras International. London to Brussels is only 1 hour and 50 minutes!

Brussels is an interesting international city. All the signs are in French and Dutch, although French is the spoken language. Despite this, it seems almost everyone speaks English, and in the law firms there are people from all over Europe, who all seem to speak a selection of languages.

In terms of city sights, there are some really nice old squares and some typical Northern European buildings to look at, but out of the main tourist areas it is mainly office blocks and industry. If you are planning a holiday to Belgium for the first time, pick Bruges instead, but Brussels is certainly an interesting place to pass though. And a any trip to Belgium can be fruitful – with an ever-present selection of cherry beers, waffles and fine chocolates .